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This free personality test, which is based on the well-proven Eysenck Personality Questionnaire, provides the tools for a wide-ranging analysis of your personality, so you can know yourself better. Covering the areas of Introversion/ Extraversion, Emotional Stability, Determinism, Sexuality and Social & Political Attitudes, it will help you see yourself - your mental, emotional and behavioral strengths and weaknesses - in a more objective light. It is an ideal starting point for personal development. As Andrew Schneider says...

"Insight occurs when, and to the degree that, one knows oneself."

Introduction

How you see yourself and how others see you may be quite different. It is hard to be objective about oneself - after all, one is being oneself and therefore there is no distance from which to view. The following Questionnaire is intended to provide this objectivity. It is based on tried and tested principles, the result of research by renowned Professor of human psychology, Hans Eysenck, and described in his popular book 'Know Your Own Personality' published first in 1972. He had a clear understanding of how introversion and extraversion, combined with the degree of emotional stability and self-determinism, determine the personality traits that result in much of an individual's behavior. A description of his theory of personality traits and the theory of the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (EPQ) is given on our page describing the work of Prof. Eysenck.

Eysenck, however, as a behavioral psychologist believed that personality, like intelligence, is determined to a large extent by a person's genes and is unchangeable beyond an effort to cover up negative traits through learned behavior. On the contrary, we have found that while one's genetic constitution is a significant factor (particularly affecting the balance of neurotransmitter chemicals in the brain) and environmental factors (such as upbringing, education, cultural conditioning and even the quality of nutrition) are equally significant, in practice a tremendous amount can be done by the individual to restructure their own personality and even to improve intelligence. A lot can be done to improve brain chemistry and nutritional deficiencies too! Exactly how such personal development can be achieved is described in "Transforming the Mind".

Of great significance in the development of personality is an individual's experience, both pleasurable and painful, in this lifetime, from birth onwards. Some would say pre-birth and even past-life experiences play a part. These experiences result in both positive and negative learning: the acquisition of skills and understanding, and the acquisition of fixed ideas and conditioning. This learning can be revised!

So the results of this Questionnaire should be seen as an instructive guide to your present psychological makeup and an indication of areas of your life that you may choose to transform by applying appropriate techniques of personal development.


The Questionnaire is grouped into Categories, each with a number of psychological Traits. Each Trait is presented on a separate page. Each page also provides an automatic display of the resulting scores. At the end of the questionnaire, a full Report contains an analysis of your scores. Needless to say, the validity of the analysis will depend on how candidly you filled in the Questionnaire!

As mentioned above, the basis of the questionnaire is the long-established Eysenck Personality Questionnaire, used worldwide by the psychiatric profession. The idea is to test against cultural stereotypes, that is the "norm", the way a statistical majority of people actually are in Western society. The "norm" is not necessarily an enlightened point of view, it simply represents what a typical person's responses are likely to be. It doesn't mean the normal responses are 'right' or 'correct'. High or low positions on a scale may represent neurosis if your answers represent compulsions, obsessions or inhibitions, and you may want to become more free in that area. But if they represent conscious choices in the way you play the game of life, then of course, that's fine! A person relatively free from cultural conditioning in an area of life is unlikely to be the same as the 'normal person' who tends to be riddled with such conditioning.

Normally answers are not available to the person doing the test. We have made them accessible so one can be aware of the test's shortcomings, and also hopefully in the process become more aware of one's own fixed or limited beliefs, as well as fears and neuroses - as well as how one is likely to compare to the average guy down the street.

The idea is to expose fixed and conditioned ways of thinking, feeling and behaving, not to indicate that any particular way is right or better than another. The questions can expose ways in which you are a stereotyped product of your culture, more liberated than the norm or more neurotic than the norm, or just different - the interpretation is up to you, the more honest the better!

A picture will emerge from the high or low scoring traits and the accompanying analyses - make what you will of this picture... know yourself better, perhaps learn some lessons, decide to do something about what you find, or be happy you are the way you are.

We hope you enjoy participating in the questionnaire.


BEGIN THE QUESTIONNAIRE...


IMPORTANT NOTE: The questionnaire is completely confidential, in accordance with all privacy regulations. You do not enter your name or email and no identifying information is requested nor recorded. When you move on to the next questionnaire page, your previous scores are displaid in the score box at the bottom of the page. However, your scores are not actually stored in the web browser nor the server - when you close the current window or tab, your scores are no longer retained, and will not be available later to yourself or anyone else. For that reason, at completion of the questionnaire, you have the facility to save the scores you obtained, if you so wish, as a web page.


You can also enter the Questionnaire on a particular page, as below:

Category A - INTROVERSION/EXTRAVERSION

Category B - EMOTIONAL STABILITY

Category C - MASTERY/SYMPATHY

Category D - SEXUALITY

Category E - SOCIAL & POLITICAL ATTITUDES


The Questionnaire is also available to Download as a PDF and in Word format.

Interpretation of overall results

Eysenck Chart

It may be that you score higher than the norm in some extravert traits and at the same time higher in some introvert traits. That's to be expected; many people are ambivert - in some circumstances extraverted and in others introverted, depending on their needs and corresponding fears, and other factors like conditioning. But one moves into the type of person that may be described as "extravert" or "introvert" if that way of being becomes dominant. At what level does one consider it to be dominant?

Extraversion is dominant if there are high levels of activity, sociability, risk-taking, expressiveness, and can become neurotically so if there are also high levels of impulsiveness, lack of reflection and lack of responsibility, or if risk-taking is very high.

Introversion is dominant if there are high levels of responsibility, high reflection, low impulsiveness, low risk-taking, and can become problematic if there are low levels of activity, sociability and expressiveness, or if impulsiveness and risk-taking are very low.

I offer here a brief outline of how to interpret the scores in response to a reader's question:

"I'm currently at college studying Sports Science. As I have a real interest in psychology, I am doing a research project on personality and playing positions in netball teams. In order to gather my relevant information from each netball player I shall be using Eysenck's Personality Questionnaire. I have one main problem, I do not know how to interpret the results."

These are the qualities of people who are extraverted but a bit on the unstable side: active, optimistic, impulsive, changeable, excitable. And more unstable: aggressive, restless, touchy

These are the qualities of people who are extraverted but also more stable than normal: sociable, outgoing, talkative, responsive, easygoing, lively, carefree, leader.

These are the qualities of people who are introverted but a bit on the unstable side: quiet, unsociable, reserved, pessimistic, sober, rigid, anxious, moody.

These are the qualities of people who are introverted but also more stable than usual: passive, careful, thoughtful, peaceful, controlled, reliable, even-tempered, calm.

Extraversion tends to go with: more active, sociable, risk-taking, impulsive, expressive, tending to lack reflection and tending towards irresponsibility.

Emotional instability tends to go with: less self-esteem, unhappiness, anxiety, obsessiveness, less self-directed (autonomy), may be hypochondriac, tendency to dwell on guilt and so on.

These dimensions are dealt with on the EPI (Eysenck Personality Inventory). The EPQ (Eysenck Personality Questionnaire) includes the dimension or temperament of 'tough-mindedness' (somewhat independent of the two previous temperaments of extraversion and emotional stability) which has these qualities: aggressiveness, assertiveness, achievement orientation, manipulation, sensation-seeking, dogmatism, masculinity.

Of course people don't fit into little pigeon holes quite like that. In some areas of life, a person may be shy and introverted (where fears and past bad experiences cause barriers) and in other areas the person may be more confident and outgoing (where maybe the person has done better in the past, perhaps connected with talents in that area or support). Or a person might be quite stable normally but in some circumstances his or her 'buttons' easily get pushed and the person may get uncharacteristically distressed or angry.

My online book 'Transforming the Mind' talks about this in terms of 'reversal theory' which you may be interested in - but that would complicate the issue too much for your purposes here. Just bear in mind that in the context of playing netball a person may have a rather different personality than in other areas of her life.

I marked the qualities in bold above that seem to me most desirable for a participant in a netball team. In general, emotional stability is the biggest plus as all the emotionally unstable qualities are not much help in the team. Extraverted and moderately unstable is OK nevertheless.

Regarding positions, as you say, the forward positions probably are best filled with the more extravert persons (who will take risks and look for chances) and the defensive positions with the more introvert (who will stay calm and take the defensive duties seriously) but also reasonably tough-minded.

A person is better to edge on the side of tough-minded, but not too much as that temperament edges into psychoticism (you don't want psychos on your team!) - but you don't want weak-willed people either, when the going gets difficult. (There's more information about the EPQ here.)