There are a variety of personality assessments that can serve as tools for psychological examinations for institutions and businesses, or just a 10-minutes pleasant distraction from your day at work. You can easily find some of the more well-known tests online such as the Myers Briggs, Big Five Factor, and DISC. There's some sort of silliness associated with personality tests due to the multitude of questionnaires coming from BuzzFeed that are mostly for recreational purposes. This contributed to the skepticism that assessments have due to their inability to provide an accurate measure of all dimensions of the human personality. Many even argue that personality tests place people in artificial categories of their ideal self. While there is a fair criticism, a personality test also serves a unique role in personal development by providing a reference point of your traits, strengths, weaknesses. Assessments serve as a constructive instrument to know yourself, to be able to identify what you need in life, career, relationships, or otherwise. The purpose assessments should not be about accurately identifying deterministic cognitive abilities or behavioral dispositions, but to give an interpretation of the self as for who you are now and what you can do to care for and improve yourself. The true self cannot be determined, converted, or emancipated; the true self must be created (Foucault, 1981). Knowing yourself now is more possible than ever with the number of questionnaires designed for business and personal use, but avoid interpreting these tools solely for diagnostic purposes. There is a tendency to use these tests to discriminate against other categories in a personality test, notably in Myers Briggs where online forums could become tribalistic and create a sense of exclusion in the workforce between introverts and extroverts (Jackson-Wright, 2019). We should use the data to understand others' perspectives and recognizing their potential talents, along with the awareness that someone's personality type does not constitute their entire being (Manning-Schaffel, 2018). Personality tests should mostly function as a tool to understand yourself to improve yourself, not to justify yourself or idealize certain traits or categorize. Foucault, M., In Gros, F., In Ewald, F., Fontana, A., & Burchell, G. (2005). The hermeneutics of the subject: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1981-82. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Jackson-Wright, Q. (2019, August 22). To Promote Inclusivity, Stay Away from Personality Assessments. Retrieved January 21, 2021, from https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/22/smarter-living/inclusivity-diversity-personality-assessements-myers-briggs.html Manning-Schaffel, V. (2018, October 01). Why do we need personality tests to tell us who we are? Retrieved January 22, 2021, from https://www.nbcnews.com/better/pop-culture/why-do-we-need-personality-tests-tell-us-who-we-ncna914371

My issue with personality tests is that they try to put people in particular boxes based off the answers that one may pick to determine their personal traits. With over 7 billion people in the world, all coming from different cultural backgrounds with differing societal influences, it becomes almost impossible for a personality test to accurately inform someone of their personality through categorisation. People's personalities can also greatly change over time and depending on mood. [1] It may be that if the same person took the same personality tests at different times, the results differ greatly. [2] Personality tests flaw because they are unable to consider these other factors, meaning that a person might not be able to gage an accurate summarisation of their personality in test results. Personality tests fail to portray the wide range of human emotions and behaviours that make an individual's unique personality. Instead, they apply general labels to wide groups of people who in reality may have completely different personalities, limiting its effectiveness and overall benefit. [1] ‘The Problem with Personality Tests’ (https://www.wethetalent.co/experience-at-work/problem-personality-tests/#:~:text=A%20lot%20of%20personality%20tests,make%20a%20test%20scientific%20though.) [2] ‘How Accurate Are Personality Tests?’ (https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-accurate-are-personality-tests/)