You’ve probably taken your fair share of personality tests. Whether at a corporate training day or just because you were itching to find out which Friends character you would be, it can be oddly relaxing to be told who you truly are inside.
But did any of those quizzes actually improve your life? The chances are – according to science – they didn’t.
That’s because most personality tests don’t hold up to scientific scrutiny, even those that are trusted by swathes of business executives and counsellors all over the globe.
There is a test out there, however, that does seem to work. So, if you’re looking for some genuine insight into your personality, here’s what to try… and what to avoid.
Built on an illusion
One form of personality type people are most familiar with is their horoscope. Countless people around the world swear up and down that yes, they really are such a Pisces. But in reality, they could just be a victim of the Barnum effect.
Also known as the Forer effect, the Barnum effect happens when a person is given statements that they believe are specific to them but are, in fact, vague.
Prof Joseph Devlin, a neuroscientist and the head of experimental psychology at University College London, explains how it works.
“This is exactly what you do with astrology,” he says. “When you give people their personality statements, there’s nothing that’s critical and there’s nothing that’s unique either. They’re all positive, and they all apply to basically everyone.”
For example, Devlin continues, the statements might be something like: “Socially, you’re outwardly skilled and have many friends, but inwardly, you sometimes worry that people don’t like you.”
When we read a bunch of statements like these, our brains allow the parts that don’t resonate to fade into the background while we focus on the nuggets that feel spookily true.
“It’s really easy to pick the stuff that fits you and, with the bits that don’t, you just think, ‘oh, that’s a little bit inaccurate’,” says Devlin. “I think there’s a lot of appeal to it, but that appeal is because people want to believe these things, rather than because they’re getting genuine insight out of it.”
Psychologist Bertram Forer is often credited with revealing this illusion in 1948, when he asked each of his psychology students to take a personality test.
After answering a set of questions, Forer gave them their ‘results’ – a supposedly personal description of each of their characters. The students rated these ‘highly accurate’, giving their own personality descriptions an average accuracy score of 4.3 out of 5.
But these weren’t personalised at all. Forer had given his students an identical list of platitudes taken from newspaper horoscopes, such as: “You have a great need for other people to like and admire you.”
It’s similar to any personality quiz you might do on the internet. Reading your results, you might feel that you really do have the warm and radiant personality of someone with a rose-gold aura and the patronus of a rabbit – but so might everybody else.
Even Myers-Briggs?
These are the tactics used by horoscopes and silly quizzes, as well as the most popular personality assessment in the world, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI).
Take a look at a description of an ENFP, one of Myers-Briggs’ 16 personality types, taken directly from its official website:
“Warmly enthusiastic and imaginative. See life as full of possibilities. Make connections between events and information very quickly, and confidently proceed based on the patterns they see. Want a lot of affirmation from others, and readily give appreciation and support.”
It’s got the Barnum effect written all over it. But the Myers-Briggs test isn’t like most other personality tests.
It takes itself seriously, and as such, it’s taken by more than two million people per year – businesspeople, counsellors and curious individuals alike. (And that’s just the official, paid version.)
Here’s how it works.
After answering questions about your personality, the MBTI scores you on four qualities, for each of which it allocates you a dominant trait: introversion or extraversion; sensing or intuition; thinking or feeling; and judging or perceiving.
Based on those four labels, you’re put into one of 16 categories. For instance, ENFP stands for extraversion, intuition, feeling and perceiving.
Myers-Briggs was inspired by a psychological theory of Carl Jung, but it was made up by two regular people, Katharine Cook Briggs and her daughter Isabel Briggs Myers, in 1940s USA. And there are a few big problems with it.
“All these ideas Jung described are just descriptions, and they’re not intended to be dichotomous,” Devlin says. “You’re not either extraverted or introverted; it’s a continuum and everybody falls in between.
“Jung even said, quite famously, that a person who is a pure extravert or a pure introvert would be in a lunatic asylum.”
Plenty of other personality quizzes are over-reliant on categorisation.
A ‘Which Disney princess are you?’ quiz, for instance, may well tell you you’re bookish and intelligent like Belle – but that doesn’t mean you’re not also sweet like Snow White, fearless like Mulan and graceful like Cinderella.
Dr Ed Morrison, senior lecturer in psychology at the University of Portsmouth, adds that as humans, we like sorting the world into boxes – but personality isn’t as simple as that.
“Two very similar people on either side of average would get put into different categories [in the Myers-Briggs],” he says. “That does not describe the data well.”
Morrison goes so far as to say that the Myers-Briggs is scientifically “rubbish”, and Devlin says his undergraduate students couldn’t pass one of their classes without being able to explain why Myers-Briggs is not a valid scientific test.
That’s because the Myers-Briggs doesn’t give reliable results, explains Devlin. In fact, a 2025 research review found that, among people who retook the Myers-Briggs test after just four weeks, approximately 35 per cent got a different result.
This suggests the MBTI is unreliable, says Devlin, because: “Personality doesn’t change much in your lifespan. It does change, but very slowly, and normally only after really large life events.”
Research has also indicated that the Myers-Briggs is not great at accurately predicting people’s careers, work performance, leadership potential, and more – precisely what it claims to be best at.
Measuring your personality can be useful
So, most personality tests – even those that are highly acclaimed and wildly popular – don’t stand up to scrutiny. That said, they can be fun and some people find them useful.
One of those people is Dr Cheryl Travers, an organisational psychologist at Loughborough University who says she has been using Myers-Briggs for more than 30 years, alongside other tools, to help people with their personal and professional development.
She says that such personality tests – when taken with a degree of scepticism – can help people learn about themselves, have compassion for others, and choose tailored goals.
“Psychology can often happen in the ivory tower of academic journal articles,” says Travers. “But I think we owe it to people to share things that could be helpful, even if they’re not perfect.”
Although Morrison doesn’t agree with Travers’ argument that Myers-Briggs is worth using, he argues there is merit in taking reliable and valid personality tests.
“The most useful thing is being able to summarise personality in a manageable form,” he explains. “There are potentially infinite ways to describe yourself, so personality tests are an attempt to make the subjective more objective.”
An accurate test can enable you to understand how you differ from those around you, so you can communicate and collaborate more effectively with them.
But while horoscopes, patronus quizzes and the Myers-Briggs all fall short of scientific legitimacy, there is one personality test which psychologists love.
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The Big Five
The prom queen of personality tests is the five-factor model, more commonly known as the Big Five.
“The Big Five is a good personality test,” says Morrison. “If you want to measure someone’s personality in a general sense, that’s the one I would go for.”
The Big Five gets its nickname from the five traits it measures: openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism. You can remember it with the acronym OCEAN.
1. Openness
The first dimension is openness. People who score highly on openness tend to be receptive to new ideas and experiences. They tend to enjoy seeking out adventure and art, and they’re aware of their own feelings and the feelings of others.
But people with low openness value perseverance and hard work. They prefer to stick to what they know – the comfortable and routine – and they may feel protective of their traditions and heritage.
2. Conscientiousness
Next up is conscientiousness. People with high conscientiousness tend to value self-discipline and structure. They might be motivated by a sense of duty, and they stick to their plans and routines. They work methodically towards success.
But those who score low on conscientiousness are a little more relaxed when it comes to staying tidy, sticking to deadlines, and paying attention to details. They may even be perceived as sloppy at times.
3. Extraversion
You may recognise extraversion as one of the Myers-Briggs dimensions, but it’s in the Big Five too.
People might be more extraverted if they get their energy from others, they enjoy social interaction, and they seem to exude enthusiasm when talking. They tend to be chatty and confident.
At the other end of the spectrum, introverts prefer spending time by themselves. In social situations, they may seem quieter or more comfortable when out of the spotlight. They may need some time alone to recharge after a lot of socialising.
But in the Big Five, most people fall somewhere in the middle, called ambiversion. These are people who enjoy socialising to an extent, but also value time alone.
4. Agreeableness
In at number four, there’s agreeableness. Very agreeable people value the opinion and goodwill of others. At best, they tend to be kind, empathetic and amenable.
At the extreme end, they may have people-pleasing tendencies, and as such, struggle prioritising their own needs and setting healthy boundaries.
But those who are more disagreeable put their own needs first and so might seem frosty or uncooperative to others. They can also appear competitive or stubborn, or even prone to conflict.
5. Neuroticism
Finally, the fifth trait of neuroticism is sometimes called turbulence or emotional stability. People who score highly for neuroticism may get more easily caught up in the stresses and pressures of life.
They may have more mood swings, struggle with emotional regulation or become nervous in everyday situations.
But those who are more emotionally stable tend to be more relaxed, calm and stoic in their daily lives.
The value of the Big Five
You may have read that list and thought it sounded like an awful lot of Barnum statements – or that many of the traits that crop up in the Big Five could also be captured by other tests, such as extraversion in the Myers-Briggs.
So, what makes the Big Five so special?
“The important thing is, it’s not dichotomous,” explains Devlin.
“People fall on a spectrum. And those five dimensions weren’t based on theory. They were based on collecting a huge amount of data about personality all around the world, and then analysing the underlying factors that explain the largest amount of variation.”
Consistently, he says, psychologists have found that these five traits – there or thereabouts – seem to crop up when they analyse differences between people.
“Scientists did decades of validation studies to see whether these scores are predictive, and whether they’re cross-culturally valid,” Devlin continues. “It turns out that they’re very good.”
Psychologists don’t always use the Big Five. For instance, they may add a sixth dimension for even more accuracy or turn to other models to analyse specific personality disorders.
“There’s a lot of your personality that’s not captured by this, but the largest amount of variance across the world in personality is captured by the Big Five,” says Devlin. “So, that’s what psychologists use.”
If you’re curious about yourself, you can find free Big Five tests online. For even more self-insight, Travers recommends viewing your results alongside additional sources, such as feedback from friends, old school reports and your own diaries.
“Then, look at the common themes and contradictions,” she advises, explaining that these themes can be used to develop goals and coping strategies for personal development.
Or, if you can’t be bothered, there are endless quizzes you can take just for fun. After all, there is a certain joy to finding out you’re a Monica rather than a Chandler.
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