Posts Tagged ‘psychology’
Know Thyself
One of the few good things about the GRE and TOEFL tests are the reading and listening comprehension passages. They’re the final frontier (tongue in cheek) as far as GRE prep goes, often the bane of the “I mugged up the Baron’s lists and still screwed up the GRE” junta.
But I really like them as little snippets of deeply academic and scholarly work in fields as diverse as biology, philosophy, geology and so on. Reading a GRE comprehension passage one boring Manic Monday morning and learning about a bit of beautiful analogy on human nature by Plato was one of my memorable aha! moments.
Another interesting concept I learnt of this morning was the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) personality test.
While I am normally wary of any such surveys and questionnaires ( perhaps a result of following the tests published regularly in the Pune Times, and the disastrous consequences therein), I nevertheless took the test this evening. In fact, I took it twice, once casually and once with serious thought and consideration. The results on the 2 occasions were about sixty percent similar-but very nearly accurate. Some of the conclusions I had just about started to form about myself, or that those close to me had told me of, were confirmed to me with a clarity and simplicity that appealed immensely to me, more so given the flattering and uplifting nature of such personality portraits.
A few excerpts ,
” …are inclined to go everywhere and look into everything that has to do with the advance of good and the retreat of evil in the world. They can’t bear to miss out on what is going on around them; they must experience, first hand, all the significant social events that affect our lives. And then they are eager to relate the stories they’ve uncovered, hoping to disclose the “truth” of people and issues, and to advocate causes. This strong drive to unveil current events can make them tireless in conversing with others, like fountains that bubble and splash, spilling over their own words to get it all out.
…. consider intense emotional experiences as being vital to a full life, although they can never quite shake the feeling that a part of themselves is split off, uninvolved in the experience. Thus, while they strive for emotional congruency, they often see themselves in some danger of losing touch with their real feelings, which they possess in a wide range and variety. In the same vein, they strive toward a kind of spontaneous personal authenticity, and this intention always to “be themselves” is usually communicated nonverbally to others, who find it quite attractive. All too often, however, they fall short in their efforts to be authentic, and they tend to heap coals of fire on themselves, berating themselves for the slightest self-conscious role-playing.”
“They come up with great ideas, and are a major asset in brainstorming sessions. Follow through tends to be a problem, however; they tend to get bored quickly, especially if a newer, more interesting project comes along. They also tend to be procrastinators, both about meeting hard deadlines and about performing any small, uninteresting tasks that they’ve been assigned. They are at their most useful when working in a group w ith a J or two to take up the slack.
hate bureaucracy, both in principle and in practice; they will always make a point of launching one of their crusades against some aspect of it. “
Take the test here. I’d love to know what the test says about you.
