Cooler Dirt

Personality tests have been around for a while, and are widely used by businesses, schools and even religious groups.  A few friends of mine and I recently had a conversation about these tests and whether or not they are worth anything.

Some argue that many personality tests cater strongly to the Forer Effect, that tendency of people to view positive, yet vague, assessments of themselves as highly accurate.   This effect is often used by charlatans, astrologers and others of questionable scruples as their way to entice new victims.

The premise is simple: say something flattering about a person and they will believe you to be smart.  If you take it a step further and say the flattery is derived from a test or other diagnostic tool, they’ll believe that the tool is not only accurate, but useful for determining what that person would do, how they should act, etc.

Further confounding this is the evidence.  Many, if not most or even all, personality tests (even the widely used ones) have little reliability or predictive value.  Basically that means that if you take the test more than once, you’ll get a different result, and if you use it to try to predict your behavior, you won’t get it right.

So why take these tests at all? Why take a useless, or at best questionable test, if there is little reason to believe it is worth anything?

Well for one, because they are fun.  We all like to hear nice things about ourselves, and the promise of a test telling us what how great and special we are caters to our ego’s.  But it also allows us a moment of introspection.  Many of us spend the majority of our days in pursuit of something, we have little time to turn our attention towards less immediate tasks.  A little time spent thinking might do us some good.

So here is a basic personality test you can take that might allow you that moment of introspection.  It may prove useful, or it may be worthless.

But no matter how it turns out, it is fun to think about.

(Photo courtesy Thomas Hawk’s Flickr page through Creative Commons license.  Thanks, Thomas Hawk!)

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Don’t worry, our weekly Testing, Tuesday, Testing post isn’t going to be hard, and it’s not the kind of thing you need to study for. These tests are designed to get

“Designed?” You ask. Yes, but not by us. We rely upon people who actually know what they are talking about. We’ve scoured many of the internets (the blue one and red one mostly) to bring you the finest self-diagnostic/life-hacking/deep-thinking-type-thingy-with-the-attachment-and-the-thing-that-tells-time.

So, this weeks quiz is for everyone who smiles.

But it’s not what you think. We’re going to test whether or not you can detect a fake smile. You know what we’re talking about, don’t you? Have you ever known someone who’s smile just somehow seems odd? Or maybe a person who has the same smile on every picture you’ve ever seen them take?

According to research, a genuine smile is very different than a fake one. But, most people are not very good at telling the difference. How about you?

You can take the test for yourself. In this test, you’ll be shown short videos of several faces as they smile. You only get a very short time to see the smile, and you cannot repeat the video, so watch closely.

We know a relatively simple way to spot the fake smiles, but we’re not going to tell you until after you take the test. (Meaning on a late post.)

So take the test and let us know how you did. How good are you at spotting a fake smile? What are you looking for, specifically? Is it something in the overall demeanor, in the smile, in the face? Is it magic?

Good luck. And don’t worry if you don’t spot the fake ones. Once you learn how to spot the real smile, it is much easier.

(Photo courtesy Misterteacher’s Flickr page through Creative Commons license. Thanks, Misterteacher!)

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