THE MELANCHOLY OF

Personality tests have always intrigued me. Whenever my friends and I do them, I can always see that the results they get match up to their personalities. It never seems that way for me though..

In the last few months or so I’ve done two personality tests – the Four Temperaments test and the 16 Personalities.

Now I don’t know about you, but I am an extremely moody person. I’ll be relaxed one minute, and then wanting to miserably hurt someone the next. I’m not particularly sure why it’s so, although I suspect I might have some kind of hormonal imbalance which most likely plays a part in it. Being so moody makes me feel like I’m more than one person. It seems to effect my personality so much that I don’t even know what “the real me” is like.. Even my interests can change depending on my mood, and because of this, I’ve always been kind of intrigued by personality tests.

I came across the first test at a youth group session we had not too long ago. The person sharing asked us to do this test because she wanted to talk about how different we can be and how we can get along with people of different temperaments. In this test there are four outcomes or temperaments: Sanguine, Melancholic, Choleric and Phlegmatic. You can read more about it here and here if you’d like.

The outcome was quite interesting. Our youth group was split into two – most people either fit into the Sanguine or Phlegmatic temperament. There was only one or two in Choleric and Melancholic. As for me? I got an even split between the two least favoured outcomes.

The thing is though, when we went through the results I didn’t feel like I was a choleric or melancholic. Sure, the “weaknesses” sections were all too real and relatable, but I couldn’t see myself in any of the general personality descriptions or strengths. I wasn’t alone in thinking that either. A lot of people couldn’t see many of those certain qualities in me like I could see evident in their descriptions. I left that night wondering if I was some kind of an oddball.

(It was still quite an insightful night though, and I learned a lot about my friends!)

The other night I was reminded of personality tests when I came across a forum aimed towards INTJ’s. I knew it was some sort of personality thing but I wasn’t sure exactly what, so I googled it up and the 16 personalities website was one of the first hits.

I thought this test might have been more accurate considering it had 16 outcomes as opposed to 4. And I guess it was, because a lot of the things described for the INFP personality really hit home for me. Still, there was always going to be some things I didn’t agree with (like the name.. Mediator? I cause arguments, not solve ’em!), but I think this test described me more accurately than the first one.

The thing with personality tests though, is that if I did one and all the results were very general or even the same at the end, absolutely anyone could relate to them – including myself. This kind of makes me wonder if I’m only seeing these results in my life because they’re written down in front of me, and if they’ll somehow subconsciously affect me in the near future? Regardless, I think doing personality tests can be very insightful, despite not exactly fitting into one of the possible results (I don’t think that’s really expected anyway). I’m sure there are a lot of people out there who feel similarly, feeling like they don’t really belong to any kind of personality type. Instead of feeling like a total weirdo though, we should use this information to learn about our various strengths and weaknesses. After all, we are all unique snowflakes, special in our own way, and every other idiom that implies we’re individual, haha.