Personality Tests: What’s Your Type?
By Megan Snyer
Grace College loves its personality tests. A vast majority of the students on campus have at least heard of the Meyers Briggs Type Indicator or MBTI for short. The freshman class was made to take this test in Freshman Foundations in past years. In the Leadership class, potential student leaders take the DiSC, which determines a person’s personality based on everyday practices and behaviors. Another popular personality test is the Love Languages test, developed by Gary Chapman. Also on the list for tests given at Grace is a test to determine how a person handles conflict, and a person is designated a specific animal that corresponds.
In the MBTI test, there are four different categories with an alphabetical designation for each factor of the test. According to Katharine Briggs, the woman who developed the test based on Carl Jung’s theories of personality: “Perception involves all the ways of becoming aware of things, people, happenings, or ideas. Judgment involves all the ways of coming to conclusions about what has been perceived. If people differ systematically in what they perceive and in how they reach conclusions, then it is only reasonable for them to differ correspondingly in their interests, reactions, values, motivations, and skills.”
Based on the MBTI, there are 16 different outcomes, all corresponding with the same sets of factors. For example, a person could have the result of being an ENTP: Extroverted, Intuitive, Thinker and Perceiver. Jim Swanson, a self-proclaimed Feeler, thinks very highly of the MBTI, citing it in many of his classes. When asked why he thinks the MBTI is so important, he said: “I believe the MBTI is the single greatest tool to help us understand and appreciate people and differences at work and in marriage/relationships.”
While the MBTI calculates how people relate to each other, the other major test that helps people discover themselves and others is the Love Languages test. There are five major languages: Words of Affirmation, Gifts, Quality Time, Acts of Service and Physical Touch. Though geared towards married couples, this test is helpful in understanding how to best show that you care for a person and to know how you can be cared for as well. At least in Alpha, this test is very popular and is definitely recommended to all.
College is a time to discover who you actually are, as cliché as that sounds. Why not take a few personality tests along the way? The MBTI, Love Languages and DiSC tests are all available online.
Do you know your type?
