Score 1 For The Team

[trickykitty]

I scored 33*.

I am not one bit surprised.

...

It bothers me that 24 of the questions score if you agree and 26 score if you disagree.
I think the fact that I bothered to notice this was more telling than the pseudo-test to begin with. It should be considered some kind of Bonus Round or something.

* The Calculate Score button no longer works, but it tells you how to score just beneath it. I loved screwing with these kinds of tests back in grade school and college. You can always give the test administrators exactly what they are expecting. Meyers-Briggs has always been the best to mess with, because administrators are so damned sure that it's 100% unbreakable. Only once have I ever seen a "personality test" that I actually liked.

---

EDIT: A repeat of this quiz a year later, and this time I scored 40. Much higher than I expected, but I'm also being more of my natural self now than I had previously been, so it's not completely unsurprising.

Comments

[badbookworm]

There were a couple of questions I felt strongly about (mainly the imaginative play and story ones), and others I could easily "slightly agree" or "slightly disagree" with, but for most of them I felt pretty neutral, really.

[trickykitty]

Many friends hate that I use the phrase "mildly Asperger's" to describe myself, but my OCD, slight social anxiety and social awkwardness all add up towards it.

[badbookworm]

Hnnnn. (That, apparently, is the noise I make when I'm on the fence. Who knew?)

I think it can be dodgy to co-opt specific diagnoses (although in your case, as you describe things, I think it would certainly be fair to say "I'm on the autistic spectrum", for example).

The problem is that there are so many variables - I have mild OCD and moderate (severe when untreated) anxiety disorder with agoraphobia / soial anxiety), but I definitely wouldn't class myself as autistic or having Asperger's.

[trickykitty]

See, and that's why psychologists cheat and add the term FUNCTIONAL in front of things.

I just view humans as lying on a continuum of options. Being able to label yourself sometimes just gives you an excuse for bad behaviours, and that's the most egregious downfall that I have with psychology as a whole.

[badbookworm]

Ha. Yes, I suppose I'm a "functional" depressive / sufferer of anxiety disorder.

You're quite right - a great many elements of human experience lie on a continuum.

IMO labels can be problematic, particularly when they are casually co-opted (NOT talking about you, here - talking about the "disorder of the day" types.) On the other hand, they can be very freeing. "I'm on the autistic spectrum" is a lot more useful than "I don't know how people interact with others - I can't seem to make it work"; and "I suffer from anxiety" is more useful than "sometimes I think I'm going to die and I don't know why". Especially for those of us who like to pigeonhole things ;-)