BSODmyself

As part of the requirements for my upcoming entrance to business school, I’ve been required to take and submit a number of personality tests. Outwardly it will be used to help plug me into a diverse “Real World”-esque team of fellow business students. Being a slightly odd and quirky person, I’m sure that whoever sees the results at the College of Management will either have a good laugh or they will be afraid. They will be very afraid. It’s probably not quite that bad. Having studied psychology a number of years ago and received a degree in it, personality testing has always fascinated me.The first required test was the IPIP-NEO. It measures five different domains of personality and thirty sub-domains. The domains measured included extroversion (and introversion), agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism and openness to experience. The College requested only the domain results and not the sub-domain results. This probably works to my advantage. Had they received the sub-domain ratings, they may have barred me from coming onto campus, which would have made completing my degree requirements difficult. I joked with one of my recommenders that he could tell the MBA program, as I’ve agreed to waive my rights of review on my recommendations, that I am a menace to society and should be shot on sight. Hopefully, he didn’t actually write this in my recommendation, but if he did, the admissions committee looked past it.

According to my IPIP-NEO results, I scored low on extroversion (thus, I’m introverted, lost in my inner world and a loner) and high on agreeableness (which includes trust, morality, cooperation and modesty). The other categories were about average for my particular demographic. As with averages, low values can offset a high values. For example, in the case of conscientiousness, I scored extremely high on cautiousness, while scoring extremely low on self-efficacy. Being overly cautious more than likely explains why I can’t get things done. Having benefited from the opportunity of completing this evalutation, I will now try to trust myself more and (hopefully) move forward.

Similarly with the neuroticism category, a low sub-domain result offset a high sub-domain result. As suggested by this tool, I have an extremely high level of anger. This was offset by my extremely low level of depression. This is actually a good thing, since the majority of my undergraduate years were marked by long and deep bouts of depression. While, it is not desirable to have an extreme hot-head in an academic environment, I’m sure it will be offset by my extreme level of agreeableness.

As oppenness to experience went, I scored very high on imagination, but low on artistic interest. I was a bit shocked by my score in the intellect sub-domain, but was relieved to find that it was a measure of dealing with concrete items as opposed to hypotheticals. This domain also contained a sub-domain called ‘liberalism’. Liberalism, in terms of this personality evaluation, is defined as:

…a readiness to challenge authority, convention, and traditional values. In its most extreme form, psychological liberalism can even represent outright hostility toward rules, sympathy for law-breakers, and love of ambiguity, chaos, and disorder…

Overall, this evaluation was right on the money, until it came to my average level of psychological liberalism. I am the most psychological liberal person in the entire world. This probably came about, however, by my desire to rebel being overshadowed by my need to be agreeable. I guess this is an example of the spirit being willing, but the flesh being weak.

In addition to the IPIP-NEO exam, I was asked to take the Jung Typology Test. This oldie-but-goodie has had generations referring to themselves by enigmatic four letter combinations. Mine came out to be INTJ. This is probably one of the nerdier types. Only INTP could be spazzier. The analysis labeled the typical INTJ as a Mastermind (like Ulysses S. Grant). I’ve never thought of Grant as being a spaz, but maybe that was the case, since only nerds are against the concept of seccession. There was also a more robust list of other famous INTJs (real and fictional). Other than Michael Dukakis, Charles Rangel, Donald Rumsfeld, Ensign Ro (WTF?) and Hannibal Lecter, I feel I’m in at least half-decent company. Let’s hope the College of Management agrees.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 6th, 2006 at 10:14 pm and is filed under Rants.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.