Are Personality Tests the New Horoscope?
Many years ago, psychologist Kurt Lewin gave us one of the simplest but most powerful equations in psychology:
B = f(P, E)
Behavior is a function of the Person and the Environment.
It looks almost too obvious.
Of course our behavior is influenced by our personality, our history, our thoughts, our emotions — but also by our relationships, culture, opportunities, pressures, and the situations we find ourselves in.
And yet, despite this simple idea, we humans keep falling back into a very old habit.
We turn patterns into things.
Someone takes a personality test and says:
“I am an introvert.”
“I am an INTJ.”
“I am just not the emotional type.”
Now, there is nothing wrong with noticing patterns about ourselves. Awareness can be helpful.
The problem starts when a description becomes a prison.
“I often behave this way”
slowly turns into:
“This is who I am.”
And eventually:
“This is who I will always be.”
In some ways, personality tests can become the modern version of horoscopes. Not because they are exactly the same, but because they can serve the same psychological function.
They give us certainty.
They give us a story.
They make a complicated human being feel easier to understand.
Because uncertainty is uncomfortable.
It is much easier to say:
“He is difficult because he is a narcissist.”
“She acts that way because she is an introvert.”
“I cannot change because that is my personality.”
But contextual psychology invites us to ask a different question.
Not:
“What kind of person am I?”
But:
“What happens to me in different contexts?”
When am I quiet?
When am I confident?
When am I afraid?
When do I become the person I want to be?
Because maybe we are not fixed statues waiting to be discovered.
Maybe we are ongoing patterns constantly interacting with the world around us.
A personality test can be a mirror.
But be careful when the mirror becomes a cage.