S2Ep4: Are We Our Personalities?
There has been a boom of Personality Quizzes and Typology Assessments over the last 10 years, and even more so since the pandemic.
And it makes sense why.
In particularly chaotic and challenging times, we tend to look for something, anything, to help us make sense of things, to make sense of ourselves, and to reassure us that not only are we equipped to survive this chaos, but that we are able to thrive beyond it.
As we’re digging into the questions of who or what can tell us who we are, and the limitations of any person or tool that attempts to do that, I’m thinking about typologies.
Our interest in them, our reliance on them, and what that means–what we’re making that mean–about ourselves and about each other.
RESOURCES
- What Personality Tests Really Deliver | The New Yorker
- Job hiring increasingly relies on personality tests, but that can bar people with disabilities
Free Online Typology Assessments
- Popular Myers-Briggs Knock-Off | 16Personalities
- The Enneagram | Take the Free Enneagram Personality Test
- Love Language | 7 Love Styles Test
- Several Typology Assessments (Including those mentioned above and more) | Truit
IN THIS EPISODE
- The two fundamental problems with typology tests
- The long history of typologies, from Hippocrates to Myers-Briggs
- How employers began using typology tests and the consequences of relying on them
- How we could move beyond the existing limitations of typologies, and why we would want to


I’m Phyllis Wilson (hi!)
Thanks for joining me for another episode of We’re All Alright. I always love to hear from listeners like you!
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