Throughout life people are often administered or choose to take various personality tests. Strangely enough despite all the tests i have taken results tend to be consistent. After taking the two tests i was classified as an ENFP personality type, something which i already knew and did not surprise me much. Then taking the Big 5 I again was told that I was an extrovert and very empathetic, although i was shown to have a low score in conscientiousness.
What i did find surprising though was the color quiz, as after taking the test it was scarily accurate. Describing habits that i had been showing these past few weeks looking back, one being the wanting of change but the unwillingness to put the effort in to make such change happen, among others. Overall i found this test to be accurate but the reliability of it is unclear to me.
Kyle's Gen Psych Blog 
I had an opposite experience when taking the personality tests I found them varying slightly each time. The problem with many self-report questionnaires is that it has face validity, in which an individual can manipulate the answers. An empirically keyed test would have gave you better results to define you as a person such as the MMPI2 which is easy to give, quick to score, and provides reliable results. Problems that come with assessment is that some people try to make themselves look good or socially desirable while others are malingering and try to make themselves look bad. There are many cultural issues with tests like the ones we took online as well were many find it hard to identify to a particular group. The Barnum effect may have occurred when taking the color personality test in which results are so general that it could apply to everyone. That is why it seems crazy accurate because they are such broad statements that everyone is able to relate. Many people also feel that the tests are oversimplifying and reductionist to boil down their personality to a single couple words. It is also claimed that people exhibit different personalities in different situations or environments like with friends or at home.
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Kyle,
At the time, I also thought the results of the Color Quiz were scarily relatable to experiences I have had in my life, and I was also unsure of its reiability. After class, I can now attribute the feelings we had towards the Color Quiz as the Barum Effect. The Barun Effect, as seen in this case, occurs when the psychological results of a quiz are made to be so broad that almost anyone could relate to them; therefore, this process creates the effect that the results are “scarily accurate” to you, but are instead just broadly defined. This seems to be a tactic used to get more people to click on and take the quiz, as the more you think the results relate to you, the more likely you are to recommend that other people take it as well.
Overall, I believe that we were both correct in being skeptical of the reliability of the Color Quiz! Good job on that note and on your response in total!
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