Personality Types

The psychological classification of individuals into different types, or styles of behaviours, attitudes (extroverts v introverts) and cognitive functions (sensation, intuition, thinking and feeling - according to Jung).

Assessing your personality type can suggest the type of direction you might like to consider for a job move or career development. The results might (or might not) provide you with the catalyst to think more deeply and objectively about your personality and the direction you wish to take.

Personality tests can help to provide a general indication of the way you might respond to different situations, however, do not fall into the trap of being pigeonholed and thinking you have to conform to a personality type you know you aren’t. You should use a personality test as a way to reflect on and to help you build on your qualities that you think need improving.

There are many types of personality test that can be taken which aims to potentially identify the general personality of an individual based on the preferences to questions that the person has given. When the results to the responses are analysed a judgement is made of the type of personality that the person would typically fall into.

One popular test is the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, MBTI, which uses four contrasting positions, and which results in a matrix of 16 different personality types. An individual would be placed in one of the matrix boxes depending upon the combination of answers given.

Criticisms of personality tests relate mainly to how reliable they are and also to their validity; the test should be seen as a contributory part of decision-making when trying to understand an individual’s personality and how they might best fit into an organisation.

Limiting the diversity of human personality to a number of ‘pigeonholed types’ is arguably an inadequate representation of the depth and breadth of humanity.

Personality type tests only provide an indication of a person’s preference at the time of taking the test; if the individual has been under stress or does not provide an honest reply to the questions being asked then this will influence the reliability and validity of the test result: Results should therefore be treated with caution.

[All the following were accessed on 5th October 2025)

Online personality tests
There are numerous web sites offering free online personality tests, some examples of these can be found at:
Human Metrics
Personality Testing

Further reading:

Pittenger, D.J. (1993) 'Measuring the MBTI...And Coming Up Short'
Jackson, S.L. (1993) 'An Investigation of Multiple Models of the Underlying Factors of Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) Items'
Wikipedia: Personality Test