This May, it will be 31 years since I graduated college with my undergraduate degree. I graduated from the University of Notre Dame with an Economics degree and a secondary degree in Computer Applications. At least on paper, that defines a bit of who I am and what I studied in college. Sadly, a large part of my undergraduate coursework is hidden between the lines of my diploma.

You see, for three solid years I was a psychology major. I was on the cutting edge in the dual concentrations of industrial and managerial psychology. I was involved in the creation of studies to improve the performance of everyday folks in the workplace as well as in sports. The team that I worked with combined statistical research with all sorts of subjective observations to craft programs that greatly impacted the lives and performance of thousands of individuals across a broad spectrum of careers.

At the time, I was toying with becoming a sports psychologist. The problem was that not only didn’t that job title exist, but very few people in and around sports had any idea what a sports psychologist could do for their players or team. While it’s common today to hear that a team at the college or professional level has one of more psychologists on staff, in the mid-1980’s it was unheard of. I was a man ahead of my time!

Prior to my third year of college, two of the professors that I worked for presented me with the opportunity to take a year off and work with them on a company they were starting. At the end of that year, when they were taking sabbaticals from their teaching positions, we would all return to Notre Dame to continue our work, and I would complete my degree. At the time, the idea of paying my own tuition was out of the question…no matter how much I earned while working for them. My parents had agreed to pay for my undergraduate degree for four consecutive years, and like NCAA sports eligibility, taking a year off from my studies counted in those four years. So I would have been left to my own devices for my final year of college.

While I desperately wanted to follow the opportunity that my professors offered, the practical financial issues were a greater pull…so I rapidly switched to a new major and rushed to complete it in three semesters. While that’s a story unto itself, the fact that I left my study of psychology often comes to mind. It was a field that I really enjoyed, and despite the somewhat murky career prospects, I often wonder what life would have been like had I stayed the course, taken the risk of a year off, and continued to pursue psychology in general and the emerging field of sports psychology.

With that storied background, anytime I see a psychological profile test available online, I’m tempted to take it. Not only do I like to take these tests to learn about myself, I really enjoy considering the way the test itself is presented. I revel in dissecting the wording of questions, the order of questions, and even consider the questions that aren’t being asked.

I love categorizations of people. I find it fascinating to consider interacting differently with people based on their Zodiac sign (I’m a Sagittarius), their Hogwarts House (I’m a Ravenclaw with Hufflepuff leanings), or their brain-side dominance (I’m equally left- and right-brained). Over the years I’ve also taken dozens of personality assessments to figure out who I am.

Thus, it was with a keen degree of interest that I approached the personality test from 16Personalities. My good friend Liz had taken the test and posted a link to a description of her personality. It’s always interesting to read about someone’s personality profile. It was doubling interesting because Liz and I have never met in person. We’re Twitter friends who have an ongoing dialogue about our writing and life. On the surface, it’s completely unlikely that we would ever have met, more unlikely that we would have ever spoken, and completely absurd that we would have hit it off. We are about as diverse as two people can be in our social and political views. We approach many aspects of life entirely differently. We’re not opposites, we’re more tangents. We’re two skewed lines that had zero probability of every intersecting. But we did, and it’s been great.

As is my nature, I saw that she’d taken the personality test and that gave the test validity. I figure if somebody I know has made it all the way through the test it’s probably not horribly bad. If you know me, you know my immediate next step was to take the online test. Of course, if I’d had to pay for it or provide too much contact information I’d have closed the tab in an instant…but neither of those hurdles presented themselves…so a-testing I did go.

When I take tests like this, I try to turn off my analytical mind and not consider why certain questions are being asked, what the investigator is searching for, or how the test could be administered differently. I assess all those questions on my subsequent passes through these kinds of tests. In my first pass I read the questions and use the very first answer that comes to mind. No thinking about it, my mantra (which I often actually repeat aloud) is “just answer the question, stupid”.

After completing the test, I had the results e-mailed and then proceeded to read about the personality category that I was assigned. I fell into the INFJ (“The Advocate”) personality type. Like all such personality assessments, you have to read pretty deeply and assess the other personality types to understand how accurately you’ve been classified. The more types there are, the more in common you’ll have with many of them.

To that end, I was pretty surprised at how accurately the INFJ type described me. Honestly, it was a bit creepy how accurate the profile was. I had to dig deeper, so I read about the theory behind the assessment. It was fascinating. Of course, I’m a psychology nerd, so it’s no wonder that I found it fascinating.

I’ll admit that I did this assessment somewhat on a whim. I’ve taken many other assessments in the past, and most haven’t meant anything to me. I’ll take the test, read the results, then dissect the test and figure out why it shouldn’t matter to me. Oddly, this assessment stuck with me overnight, and I woke up thinking about it. Rather than being some theoretical mumbo-jumbo that I’ll toss away after a brief look, I’m contemplating using this as a starting point for addressing some parts of my personality. I’m pretty comfortable in my own skin, but there are always ways that I can improve. After reading the profile a half dozen times, I’m working on a plan to concentrate on some personality traits that might help me improve my interactions with people…especially my family.

Have you ever done a personality assessment?

What did you think about the results?

Did it cause you to change any of your behaviors?