You’re you, of course, but how well do you really know yourself?
Like Walt Whitman, you contain multitudes, forever being shaped and solidified through your unique life experiences and journey.
Personality tests are a great way to better understand yourself. The best ones out there can help you make better life decisions and everyday choices, allow you to discover particular classes and university degrees you might excel at, and equip you with the knowledge to take smarter professional paths.
No BS (Buzzfeed silliness) here — only thoroughly in-depth personality assessments backed up by scientific studies and data are included.
Ready to understand your strengths and weaknesses, increase your self-awareness, and unlock hidden potential and opportunities?
If so, let’s get to it!
Here are the best personality and psychological skills assessments available to you – for free online!
1. Red Bull Wingfinder (~35 min)
Red Bull’s Wingfinder is one of the most comprehensive and precise psychological tests out there.
You might ask yourself, “Red Bull is specialized in the Energy Drink and Media Business, why did they build a psychological assessment?” Well, that question is addressed verbatim in their FAQs. Here’s their answer:
“Red Bull is all about giving Wings to people and ideas. By creating a highly valid assessment with feedback for all candidates Red Bull is providing insight and meaningful positive feedback to participants about their strengths with coaching guidance for action and development in their studies and careers.”
Red Bull teamed up with expert psychology professors from University College London and Columbia University in New York City to create one of the best personality tests to date. Through this online assessment, young professionals can obtain a deeper understanding of their levels in any of 25 different strengths from four personality areas: connections (interpersonal skills and self-management skills), creativity (including curiosity), thinking (fluid intelligence), and drive (including ambition and motivation).
Available in a number of languages, Wingfinder focuses on your strengths, the things you are naturally inclined to be good at, and gives you the tools and coaching to be even better. Check out the 35-minute assessment here.
2. 16 Personalities (~12 min)
Carl Jung was the founder of analytical psychology, and he conceptualized some of the most important theories and ideas surrounding human development, the psyche, and personas, among many other important contributions. Perhaps his most prominent contribution was his introduction of extraversion and introversion, also known together as degrees of openness.
The free online psychological evaluation by 16 Personalities attempts to take the Myers–Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) and adapt it to the widely accepted Big Five personality traits: openness to experience, conscientiousness, neuroticism, agreeableness, and extraversion.
Each of those Big Five personality traits have a scale, and the 16 Personalities test will help you identify where you stand in each. There are 16 outcomes based on personality types, hence the name, depending on your levels of self-discipline, intellectual curiosity, social engagement, willingness to try new things, anxiety and depression, and how well you get along with others, among other traits and characteristics.
Once you’re done with this popular personality test — 595M+ tests taken to date! — you’ll be granted one of 16 (or 32, with the hyphenated last letter) letter combinations signifying your personality type. Then, feel free to add this short string to your online dating profiles, Goodwall account, or even on your CV to help others better understand how you view the world.
Related Read: 10+ Niche Social Media Sites & Vertical Networks to Join
3. Career Explorer by Sokanu (~30 min)
One of the most difficult problems students and young professionals face is: based on what I’m skilled at and where my interests lie, what do I want to do for my career? It’s similar to the I want to be an astronaut when I grow up-type statement of your single-digit years, but with the anxiety and urgency that comes with feeling your time to decide is nearing its end. (That’s far from true, of course, but that’s a topic for another story!)
Sokanu created their career assessment test using a combination of machine learning, data science, psychometrics, and a database of over 1,000 career options, job descriptions, and degree majors. Built by a team including PhD-level career psychologists, Sokanu bills its career test as “the world’s most advanced career-matching system.”
Taking the 30-minute online assessment is a simple matter of answering a variety of multiple-choice questions. First, you’re given a scenario and are then asked to rate it on a 5-point scale from “Hate it” to “Love it.” Questions on the test include:
- Would you like to analyze data using statistics?
- Would you like to create art for sale and exhibition?
- Would you like to keep records of payments received?
After this personality archetype quiz, you’re given several job titles with short descriptions and asked to rate those on a 5-point scale from “Not interested” to “Very interested.” Then comes a few more multiple choice questions where you’ll give your take on various industries, such as law, military, or administrative work.
Next, you go through some college majors to choose from, degree categories such as health science, computer engineering, and business communications. Toward the end, you’ll answer several questions on what you might look for in a job or career, such as autonomy, fair managers, and earning potential, followed by a lot more questions on your personality and what you find enjoyable or troubling.
After you get through all these test questions, you’ll get your results. You’re taken to a page that shows your top characteristics (e.g., “assertive,” “explorer-minded”) and a list of job titles and degree options you might be interested in or particularly good at based on your responses. You can then click on one of their job titles or college majors to learn more about them and see what type of person generally succeeds in that field.
4. Berkeley’s Emotional Intelligence Test (~6 min)
This emotional intelligence quiz is quite simple, a 20-question test with random images of people’s facial expressions. For each question, you’ll have to identify the emotion they’re conveying. Is that wide-eyed, open-mouthed guy surprised, desirous, excited, or feeling shame? It may be harder than you think!
Put out by The Greater Good Science Center at the University of California, Berkeley, this test aims to identify your strengths and weaknesses when it comes to emotion recognition. With the emergence of remote work and distance learning, it’s more important than ever before to be able to correctly identify emotions from facial expressions, particularly without the aid of body and hand gestures.
If you found that one fun, there are a few other interesting, science-based tests on personality, empathy, and well-being. Try out their mindfulness quiz, forgiveness quiz, altruism quiz, gratitude quiz, stress and anxiety quiz, and all the others.
Related Read: How to Make Friends in College: 10+ Easy Ways to Meet People at Uni
5. Test Color (~3 min)
We said we would only give you scientist-approved personality tests, so how can a 2-question quiz be included?
Believe it or not, the Test Color personality test is backed by a wealth of scientific studies, including the effect of color on emotions, the hedonics of color, and color preference. According to their site, “Test color is the result of original research conducted and validated by a team of clinical psychologists, psychoanalysts and mathematicians.”
Here’s how it works:
- Question 1: You are given a 9×4 grid of colored boxes. Click on each of the 36 boxes in order of your most favorite color to your least favorite color.
- Question 2: You are again given 36 colored boxes, probably in a random order. This time, click on each box starting with your least preferred color up until your most preferred one.
Simple, right?
Though you are only given two questions, the results at the end are surprisingly comprehensive. You are given a pie chart broken down into 11 personality characteristics: management skills, contact abilities, dynamism, creativity, innovation, ability to make decisions, intellect, thoughtfulness, carefulness, attention to others, and organizational skills.
How Helpful Is It to Know Your Personality?
Personality tests offer you a great opportunity to better understand yourself, learn about your strengths, and determine weaknesses you can then begin to work on. But, keep in mind that you should only use these tests to learn more about your interests and characteristics — never make a decision solely based on an online personality test’s results.
As Simine Vazire, a personality researcher at the University of California, Davis, told Scientific American, “You should be skeptical. Until we test them scientifically we can’t tell the difference between that and pseudoscience like astrology.”
We didn’t include a test offering the Myers–Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), as most psychologists today agree that it’s unreliable, giving false information depending on confusing questions and differing results for the same person based on which day they take the test. We did, however, include 16 Personalities, which builds upon the MBTIs to be more similar to the Big 5 Personality Traits (also known as the 5-Factor Model). This one is considered much more reliable, popular among psychologists and personality researchers alike.
Studies also have also shown that personality traits can fluctuate with age during your developing years (under 30), particularly around the age ranges when most people enter university and again when many enter the workforce.
The point is, use these tests as a guide or as a way to discover potential educational and career paths you might not otherwise have considered. If you’re in university or have already graduated, make use of the school’s career counselor and other advisors to help answer any further questions.
We hope the free online personality tests we’ve listed above prove useful to you! If you have any questions, feedback, or other psychological quizzes, personality questionnaires, or behavioral assessments we ought to include, let us know in the comments below. Thanks for reading!
Related Read: 10 Important Skills Employers Look For & Will Want In 2022 & Beyond
