Love them or hate them, personality tests can convince people that they know themselves. But for the Christian, what good is self-knowledge if it does not change one’s behavior?
Katheryn Kelley, assistant professor of psychology, says tests like the Enneagram or Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) are not psychological in nature.
Tests like these show little scientific validity because they were not developed using psychological practices. If they were, perhaps they would be able to predict behavior accurately.
“When we're trying to predict people's behavior, or even predict how they might respond in a given situation, the types are not accurate predictors of that,” Kelley says. “To me, that means that the type might be useful to help you understand yourself and to think about who you are… but that they're really only useful on an anecdotal level.”
One of the reasons these tests are so popular is that many of the descriptions describe general, rather than unique, human behavior patterns. The cognitive bias for this is called the “Barnum effect,” named after showman P.T. Barnum, whose motto was to “have a little something for everyone.”
The Barnum effect was documented in 1948 after a psychology professor developed a personality test that he gave to all the students. Afterward, he gave each student personalized feedback; however, each student received the same feedback. With these new insights, many students said they understood themselves better.
“I think that's what happens with a lot of these [tests], like the Enneagram or the Myers-Briggs,” Kelley says. “It feels really resonant with people, partly because of the Barnum effect.”
On the other hand, Kelley says personality tests can be a tool for self-understanding, and other tests observe patterns with more validity.
The Big Five Personality Traits use statistical methods to analyze patterns that better predict people's responses to questionnaires. The Big Five includes a set of five polarized scales in which people present high or low aspects of a trait. The traits include openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness and neuroticism.
Knowledge of these tendencies can help people make better choices about how they spend their time and engage with others. For example, if one knows they are introverted, they may choose to spend time alone while navigating a busy, extroverted life at Taylor.
As a developmental psychologist, Kelley says personality is not unchangeable.
“The research shows that we have something innate called temperament, and our temperament forms the basis of our adult personality,” Kelley says. “But then what's built on top of that temperament are our life experiences, the kind of care we receive from parents, the kind of people we're around, what we think of as normal behavior.”
Culture can be built on top of temperament to produce adult personality. Personality is shaped by the way we learn to interact with others and our experiences, patterns thought by parents and social groups.
For someone to insist they cannot change because it is who they are is unfounded. Kelley says a personality test is not an excuse for an outspoken person to be unkind.
If there is a danger of personality tests being ingrained in Christian culture, Kelley does not think it’s because of the enneagram’s roots in mystical tradition. The danger is that people think self-understanding is the key to quitting sin. However, just because people understand why they sin does not mean they will not fall prey to it again.
Self-knowledge is not the same thing as holiness.
“I think Christians get caught in navel-gazing,” Kelley says. “Just thinking about myself constantly and somehow packaging it as spiritual growth. It helps to understand yourself. That's an important part of spiritual growth, but it's not the only piece of spiritual growth.”
For Mike Severe, program director and professor of Christian ministries, knowing your spiritual gifts is not the same as using them.
Severe has researched spiritual gift inventories and says that they can also be valuable because they give people something to reflect on and can move people to service in new areas.
Severe thinks the spiritual gifts listed in scripture are likely general categories or examples, and if a gifts assessment points to one, it can introduce new possibilities for service that someone was not previously aware of.
“We're exhorted by Paul to seek certain spiritual gifts,” Severe says. “We're to use our spiritual gifts. It is to develop the body, and if you don't even know what your gift is, it will likely be less developed or used in helping other people than it could be otherwise.”
Using a variety of gift inventories from different theological perspectives can help us find patterns.
Overall, the best measure of success is whether people actually go out and test their gifts.
“I think the best way to actually learn from your spiritual gifts is to go out and serve and to have a mentor who guides and walks with you on that,” Severe says. “No matter what you're doing, you'll probably find some of that that you're drawn towards, and other things you’ll [say], that's not really in my wheelhouse.”
To Severe, the best way to experiment with finding these gifts is actually to get in a small group of people, serve together, and reflect to one another what they see and learn. Often, when serving in groups like this, people will begin doing tasks, and it can become evident to one another what people are equipped for.
Something important in the church is not just getting people into volunteer positions, but developing them.
“I think what the programs in the church are meant to do is actually to develop disciples, and instead we use disciples to run programs, instead of using programs to make disciples,” Severe says.
Severe says everyone, not just church leadership, has spiritual gifts and is exhorted to use them.
If the body is not equipped to do ministry work in maturity and unity to resemble Christ, something's wrong.
“I think the role of anyone who has been called into ministry is to mobilize the church to do the work that leads them to maturity and unity,” Severe says.
Severe says that the church is often like a football game. There are 100 people on the field in need of rest and 50,000 people in the stands in need of exercise.
“I think we need to flip the script and mobilize the people of God into the work that they were called and gifted to do, and may not even know what the work is or how to do it, or what their gifts are, but that's the role of the leadership, is to mobilize the church to do it,” Severe says.
Kaitlin Neel, assistant director of the Calling & Career Office (CCO), says that personality tests can help students figure out how God has wired them and what strengths they have to work with.
“Personality tests are a huge piece of our work in the CCO. So we talk about in the office, really understanding what meaningful work looks like is kind of shaped by how God made you,” Neel says.
Besides using the Myers-Briggs and Enneagram tests, the CCO also uses the Strong's Interest Inventory, which focuses on specific interests. The inventory suggests specific roles and majors to consider within different themes and describes what the roles look like.
She says that the tests can also provide you with a language for talking about yourself and your interests.
By pairing these test results with what friends and family say about the student, what they learn through prayer, people can look closely at how God has made them.
Neel says that while the tests are valuable, it’s important not to be boxed in by the results.
“Probably the biggest limitation with personality assessments is that [they] can tend to have people box themselves in based on the results of the test,” Neel says.
Like Severe, Neel says testing out the results and putting them into action reflects whether the results are true.
“You may think you like art, but [you don’t know] until you try it out,” Neel says. “So, whether it's joining Biramma creative, or if it is being part of TWO, and designing things, those opportunities to test those things out, and can also refine what is true of the test and what isn't.”
