Quiz: How often do you fill out personality quizzes?
A. Never. You already know everything about yourself.
B. Sometimes. It’s fun to see which Jersey Shore character would be your twin.
C. OMG all the time! You always find out new meaningful things about yourself!
Some students seek insight into their personalities through short, broad-topic encompassing quizzes often found on Facebook or in Cosmo magazine. In these locations, quiz topics range from what age students really are, which Sex & the City character they most relate to or what color their aura is.
Alle Keehan, sophomore art history major, said she takes interesting-looking quizzes on Facebook.
“I think they’re funny,” Keehan said. “Sometimes they’re really wrong and sometimes they’re right on so they’re fun to take.”
Keehan said she acknowledges the quizzes she takes are mostly stuff she could find out on her own. She also said it’s interesting to see how close they get.
“I took one recently and it was like ‘what color is most like you’ or something stupid like that,” Keehan said. “I think (my answer) was yellow and I was like ‘of course’. No one actually gets the bad colors; you always get the good colors.”
Other students said these personality quizzes are a waste of time and they have now given up taking them. Like Keehan, Jasmyn Jewett, senior psychology major, said she was intrigued by the interesting quiz titles, but now finds them to be fake and a waste of time.
“My friends read a lot of Cosmo and they’re always doing the one in the back of the magazine,” Jewett said. “I’m like ‘Oh my gosh get over yourself. You don’t need a book or a quiz to tell you if you’re datable or not.’”
While “What Twilight Character Are You?” may finally answer the question if Bella is your long lost twin, there are some personality tests which are based on psychological research and offer students a belonging in binary categories.
Some students are familiar with the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator personality test which explores whether a person is introverted or extroverted, sensing or intuitive, thinking or feeling and judging or perceptive.
“It was interesting,” said Jacob Young, junior English major. “It’s always fun to see the famous people that were the same type as you.”
Chloe Baul, freshman psychology major, said she also took the test to see what categories she fell into.
“It said I’m INFP, so that means I’m introverted and perceiving (and intuitive and feeling),” Baul said.
Regardless of whether students take the Myers-Briggs test or a Facebook quiz answering what color their aura is, the quest for complete self-understanding is limitless and, according to Jewett, impossible.
“Some people take them for self-reassurance (and) to answer questions they can’t answer themselves,” Jewett said. “They rely on something electronic to tell them. It’s impossible to know everything about yourself. It’s one of those things you learn from many experiences.”
***********STUDENT VOICES**************
Question: Do you take personality quizzes? Why/why not?
Danielle Byrd, sophomore marketing major
Alx Stickel / The Arbiter
“I’ve taken a couple a long time ago, (but I don’t take them now). I know my personality now. I don’t feel like I have to take a quiz to get it.”
Chloe Baul, freshman psychology major
Alx Stickel / The Arbiter
“I’ve taken a few of them (in Cosmo) but I haven’t done any Facebook ones yet. I actually like doing those. It’s interesting to learn about yourself.”
Jacob Young, junior English major with linguistics emphasis
Alx Stickel / The Arbiter
“Not generally, no. I just don’t put that much stock in them, because most of them are online and I just don’t think that’s going to be very accurate. If I were to take one in a class I would put a lot more stock into that.”
Adam McCoy, sophomore marketing and communication major
Alx Stickel / The Arbiter
“Generally, no; mostly because I don’t know which ones to take I guess and it’s not really something that I think about on a day to day basis. I just don’t really take them.”
