This November, I’m challenging myself to write every day. You can read them all under the “Shorts” category, where each post should be around 500–1k words. Think of them as “less polished” than my usual longer blog posts. This is Day 13.
What's your MBTI? Or astrology? What about your Hogwarts house? Why are people obsessed with learning about themselves and others through personality quizzes?
As we evolve, we become more interested in learning about ourselves, what makes us unique and how we fit into this world. It's why we turn to personality quizzes or other sources to learn more about ourselves. Or even rely on job titles and other labels too, but that's a different story to tell.
These quizzes serve as a guide for us as we navigate the ambiguity of life. We'll be able to invest and play to our strengths or actively try to improve our weaknesses as we'll know the reason behind our thoughts and feelings. For example, if I enjoy staying at home with a good book and coffee, it could tell me that I might be more introverted. There's also the social validation factor which makes people feel seen and give us a sense of belonging to a larger group with similar personalities and interests. After all, when it's easier to define and categorise ourselves, these quizzes can bring more comfort and meaning to our lives .
Learning about people's personality types can be a shortcut to learning about them as well. Human behaviour is difficult to grasp. So it's no surprise that personality quizzes are popular if there's a way to easily identify someone's traits. It's reassuring to know that we're not the only ones behaving in certain ways. This also allows us to see things from their perspective to better emphasise with them, especially when it comes to difficult topics.
You might call these people narcissistic because they are obsessed with (learning about) themselves, but it's another mean to self-discovery. It's only human. It's fine to use these quizzes to help identify ourselves, but they're not the most accurate and they're certainly not the truth. Ultimately, they're only quizzes.
Humans are notoriously prone to bias. We shape our personal beliefs through our personal experiences. Once we become convinced, it can be hard to unlearn them.
However, people are more diverse than we realise, and it's almost impossible to categorise 7 billion people into these few buckets. It can run deep into social identity and tribalism but I'm not qualified to talk about that. All in all, personality quizzes don't fully take into account the full spectrum of human personalities. As a result, we might make incorrect assumptions about people and ourselves, so remember to take these quizzes with a grain of salt.
Conversations are still the best way to get to know someone personally. The best way to get to know ourselves is through lots of self-reflection and learning new things to discover what we like or dislike.
And as we discover ourselves, it's possible that we will also change as a result. We can grow out of our old skins and become newer (and better) versions of ourselves. That's one of the reasons we get different results from these quizzes. It's a long and tedious process to self-discovery, but that's part of the fun, right?
