April 4, 2013

Psychology – Heffner
Big 5 Personality Test

While some of my scores where what I expected, there were a couple that surprised me.

My scores were “average” in the categories: extraversion, agreeableness, and conscientiousness.

My score in extraversion was 42 meaning I am not an extremely talkative person, nor am I a

submissive loner. I am cheerful, gregarious, and seek excitement but rank below average on

friendliness and even lower on assertiveness. In the agreeableness category I scored a 55

“indicating concern for others’ needs, but, generally unwillingness to sacrifice yourself for

others.” According to this test, I am very cooperative and trustworthy but not sympathetic. My

score in Conscientiousness was 34 meaning I have reasonable self-control, organization, and

dependability but am lacking in overall cautiousness. For neuroticism I scored 27 which is a low

score. According to the test this means that I am calm and levelheaded which I agree with. For

the most part I found these four scores to be mostly accurate. The final test score I found to be

the most surprising. I scored a 0 in openness to experience which shocked me. The test says that

I am plain and simple and am lacking in intellect which I do not agree with.

For the most part I found these scores to be accurate. The only category that I strongly

disagree with is the openness to experience category. Similar to what the test said, I consider

myself a very happy, calm, trustworthy, and levelheaded person. I do not get stressed too easily

and, for the most part, am a very organized person. I have been this way though out the majority

of my life but I feel as if these traits have become even truer as I have gotten older and matured.

Getting older has helped teach me what is worth getting worked up on and what is not. The

acceptance that potentially stressful and unwanted events will occur has helped me better react to

them. I was very surprised by my score of a 0 in openness to experience. Personally, I consider

myself to be very adventurous and imaginative. I am an Art History major so it is probably not a

good thing that I scored so low on this section of the test. Although school and school work is

not my favorite activity, I do not believe I deserve a 0 in intellect. I believe my level of intellect

to be situational. I work hard in school and enjoy studying topics that interest me more so than

other topics. I am a visual learner and as a result am better able to think abstractly and in symbols

when studying a visual work as opposed to something such as literature.

While taking this test I was not surprised by the questions it asked but I was surprised by

some of the results I received. I found the majority of this test to be reliable, but there were a few

instances that lead me to question its reliability. Reliability measures how consistent the test

results are. There were occasional inconsistencies in the test scores, for example, I received a 0

in the openness category but scored a 42 in the achievement-striving sub category and an 81 in

the excitement-seeking sub category. I acknowledge that there are multiple aspects that go into

determining these scores but my scores in other categories do not indicate that I should receive a

0 in openness. My scores in the openness sub categories, with the exception of intellect, range

from 8 to 20. This does little to explain my score of a 0 in openness. I do believe that the test has

good content validity. Content validity measures a tests ability to sufficiently span the domain of

interest. The test scores the test taker on five different categories, each having many sub

categories. The broad spectrum of questions asked and categories, although not necessarily

reliable, gives the test taker an assessment of their personality that has been determined by

multiple factors.