General Psychology

In a circular fashion, even the later, more playful tests in this app rely on self-knowledge to generate self-knowledge. When taking the Family Relationship Test (a set of drawings from which to pick the best pictorial representation of you and your kin), subjects who select image 4 - three figures looking passively on while one figure lugs loads of baggage - know full well they feel imposed upon by relatives without looking up the key at the back (“burdened”) or they wouldn’t have chosen that answer. As an expat who has put the Atlantic Ocean between herself and her family, I had no trouble selecting image 5: three figures in the foreground bent toward one another, while a smaller figure in the distance runs away. But then, I already knew I was an absconder (“escaping,” according to the key), which is why I circled image 5 in the first place. What have we accomplished? (Though, the drawings are charming.) In other instances, there may be a big difference between what subjects claim they would do in a given hypothetical situation, and what they would really do. For example, in the “Matter in the Wrong Place” Test, I answered the theoretical “Your partner adopts the annoying habit of turning on the kettle most times they walk past it” with c) “You politely explain to your partner that there is little advantage in keeping water close to boiling point in this way.” But anyone (like my husband) horribly familiar with my bossy, autocratic modus operandi in the home would have chosen d) “You seek to impose a ban, to nip this insidious habit in the bud. It could lead to other bad habits, after all.”

Yet if you usually know the answers - anyone who lives in an unabating state of rage probably doesn’t need a questionnaire to identify an “angry” temperament - why are these tests so addictive? In general, the earlier examples in this app are efforts by authorities to identify aberrant proclivities for their own evil purposes, whereas the more recent, more open-ended tests in the latter chapters encourage self-exploration, but taking both types is entertaining. Once freed from the anxiety about failure that school days impose on the experience, test taking is fun; it’s a game. Psychological tests are an opportunity to look in the mirror, and recognizing traits in ourselves is validating, regardless of which traits they are. Personally, I’m more apt to look for evidence that I’m an outlier rather than for proof that I’m just like everybody else, an inclination that lately, alas, makes me just like everybody else: while Western culture grows more conformist politically, in respect to sex and psychology we have grown less normative. As an alternative to an amorphous blob, any form reflected back at us is a relief: I am fucked up, therefore I am. It was curiously satisfying to take the Shyness Questionnaire and confirm that I am far shyer than most friends would imagine, even if I knew that already.

This app includes:
Contents
Mental Meddlers
Classic Psychological Tests
Lowenfeld Mosaic Tests
Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory
The Szondi Test
The Odor Imagination Test
The Faces Test
The McAdory Art Test
Psychological and Intelligence Test Kit for Children
Make a Picture Story Test
Pictorial Completion Test
Intelligence and Perceptual Speed Tests
Inkblots
Inkblots
The Ghosts of My Friends
The Rorschach Inkblot Test
What Do You See? What Does it Mean?
The Thematic Apperception Test
The Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)
Test Your Personality: Check Your Mood
The Coexistence Scales
Personality Inventory
Personality Tree
The Story Test
Moods
The Feeling Test
Modern Life Frustrations Test
The Wilson-Patterson Attitude Inventory
Writers Imagine Questionnaires
Writers Imagine Questionnaires
Charles Boyle: The CB Identity Questionnaire
Robert McCrum: Six Types of Reading for a Better Kind of Life
Kate Pullinger: Everyday Guilt Test
Neil Bartlett: The Sex Questionnaire