Why Personality Tests Don't Work (And Why We Can't Stop Taking Them)
Personality tests are scientifically dubious, culturally biased, and statistically unreliable. So why have they been popular for 100 years? The answer says more about humans than about psychology. The first personality test was invented in 1919. Over a century later, we are still taking them. 16Personalities gets 15 million visitors a month. uQuiz gets 280,000. arealme gets 283,000. The numbers have not gone down. They have gone up. The Science Problem Here is the uncomfortable truth: most personality tests are not scientifically valid. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, the most famous personality test in the world, has been debunked by psychologists repeatedly. Its test-retest reliability is around 50%, meaning half the people who take it twice get different results. Its four binary dimensions do not correspond to any known psychological model. The company that produces it has never published peer-reviewed validity data. And yet: millions of people take it every year and feel seen. The Receipt Format We chose the receipt format because receipts are honest. A receipt does not flatter you. It does not tell you that you are special. It lists what you bought and what it cost. Our personality receipts do the same thing: they list your traits and the cost of having them.