Same personality test, 8 years later

I have always had fun filling up tests, especially about myself.

There is this test, Personal DNA which have been around for quite a long time and, for some odd reason, keeps getting upgraded with functions that don't work. That ATTAP company responsible for it has no contact info and no way to know what's happening there... Creating account doesn't work, to begin with its issues.

But it's still the best personality test I've ever seen! It takes about 30 minutes to complete, it's very extensive and even if you take it twice in a roll you won't have the exact same results. So it is quite subjective indeed. It also brings some typical personality info that I like to compare to horoscope. It's just a lot of mumble jumble, such as "You are well-attuned to your talents, and can deal with most problems that you face.".

 The coolest part about it, I think, is the 13 personality traits. It's represented in a weird colorful map and later dissected point by point. They claim:

Each bar indicates the percentage of test takers who entered a lower value for that trait than you did. For example, if Confidence is at 80, that means that 80% of people entered lower values for confidence questions than you did. Based on a sample of 30,000 users

If that's true, and if there is indeed enough people taking the test, that's wicked cool!

So...

My old personal dna report, from my previous blog post, says I'm a "respectful leader" and gives me this weird and colorful map (mouse over to see each color's description):

Respectful Leader

My new one says I'm a "free-wheeling analyst" and gives this other colorful map:

Free-Wheeling Analyst

Almost half of my traits changed a lot over those last 8 years. Most didn't. I'd assess they are all basically true!

For the 6 big changes: seems like I'm extremely less open to new experiences than I was, this means I'm ready to choose and do stuff; a lot more extroverted and outgoing, awesome; got much much more empathy towards others thoughts and emotions, yeah baby; and trust a lot less in others, so I think now think most people aren't good at heart (nor bad for that matter), because I actually believe most people are just zombies (more on that to another blog post, maybe). I also believe much less than I already did in agency, in other words, how much me or anyone can change the future - I indeed now believe we can't, just like we can't change the past; and I became much less interested in how things look while much more interested in how things work, though I always prefered functionality over aesthetic, the previous test showed I cared much closer to 50 50, while now it's almost 0 to looks.

For the rest of 7 little changes, some of which may be insignificant: a little less confident about expressing my opinions, which I like to translate as less confrontative without necessity; little less masculinity and little more femininity, which is good because I was too extreme in both stereotypical traits before; a little more spontaneity reaching the awesomeness of being comfortable with having no plans; little less attention to style or fashion, which is quite irrelevant as I never gave any attention to how my own dressing style looks, although I eventually might; little more authoritarianism, favoring the order and the law a little more, but still not so much; and very little less earthy, or more imaginative - I've always loved theory and abstraction, but I still prefer practice way much more. Many people may find this last one weird, as many mighty say I dream too much.

What I do find bad about this and all other similar tests is exactly this... From my point of view, I got better in every single one of the 13 aspects. I worked to get better, and I did, and I'm glad to see it reflects in such a test. But, in both tests, they say I'm something awesome. How did I go from "Respectful Leader" to "Free-Wheeling Analyst"? That doesn't seem to reflect the improvement I've made, nor to reflect what I was or what I am. This whole "feel good" horoscope part of it is terrible! I'd like to see "You're a spoiled kid" result for a change, which can actually teach us in what we can or should improve to engage in social norms and / or to learn how to know ourselves.

In any case, there. That was my " having fun with a personality test" for today! :-P