Assess Yourself

I recently did a psychometric personality self assessment.  It’s created and published by noted Canadian psychologist Jordan B, Peterson and his university group.  I went to a Peterson lecture concert up in Jax last month with my wife and enjoyed the presentation.  I’m keenly interested in neuropsychology and functional imaging and how that affects lives and especially in the investing arena.  It’s 10 bux for the test so I decided to see what Jordan’s assessment has to tell me.

Peterson is a big brain and is also interested in neuropsychology and I find him quite credible and proliferative.  The study of personality over the years has evolved into what is called the “Big Five”.  These include:

• Agreeableness: Compassion and Politeness
• Conscientiousness: Industriousness and Orderliness
• Extraversion: Enthusiasm and Assertiveness
• Neuroticism: Withdrawal and Volatility
• Openness to Experience: Openness and Intellect

Each of the big five are further refined into 2 more dimensions giving a greater granularity.   Each trait can be viewed non judgmentally as each trait conveys it’s own power and support structure upon society (family, work, friendships, Church etc.) and melds it’s utility into the matrix of life.  As you discover the traits you come to know better “How you are” not just who you are.  My interest especially is with an eye on investment.  What type is a risk taker, what type procrastinates.  What type has a high barrier to investing and what manner of investing suits whom.  Investing at some level is competition and understanding the game and it’s players is useful.  Eventually we will be investing against AI and a comparative analysis of how you think and how an AI thinks will be mandatory.    It also gives some insight into choice of mate and understanding how your traits might mesh with theirs.  Information is power and nothing ventured nothing gained (the test tells me that’s one of my off the scale traits).  The test is available at Understanding Myself.  You are compared to men and women of all ages and strata so if you imagine a 10 dimensional heat map of society you get some idea of where you fit in 10 space.  Peterson’s goal is to give the assessment and then conjoin this knowledge with a self authoring program where you can write your story, and in the act of writing your story you gain significant insight into yourself.  Enough insight that you can start to iteratively make changes for the good.  He has a lot of good ideas to help people empower themselves for successful lives instead of just living in the stew.

I’m open to releasing my results but I won’t because I’m not sure how a preview would affect reliability for someone else taking the test.  Especially for physicians who are very testing savvy.  Some innocence I’m sure improves validity.    You take it only once, as repeated testing adds noise and unreliability to the result.  You can probably take it again 4 or 5 years down the road as personality changes as we mature in our life’s roles.  It’s kind of the basis of for at 20 you’re a liberal because you have a heart and at 40 you’re conservative because you gained in wisdom.   The scores in each dimension is read out numerically and a narrative provided regarding what people along that dimension are like.  I will say many of my scores were extreme, but then I kind of do live on the perimeter, stoned immaculate.  It’s my feature.  I wasn’t sure what to expect but I felt it interesting and the insight useful.  So for the price of a couple flights of craft beer you can get your head shrunk, gain some insight and have a hoot all at once and not wake up with a headache, having to pee like a race horse.