Personality tests are labels: don’t cling to them

As a senior, I thought I had participated in every icebreaker imaginable: two truths and a lie, turn to the person next to you and shake hands, share what you did this summer, etc. — until last week, when one professor asked each student to introduce themselves by briefly describing their personality type.

The cringe-worthy thought of standing in front of a group of strangers and saying, “Hello, I’m goal-oriented and high-stress! Nice to meet you!” made me break a sweat. I wondered if my introduction would scare away potential group project partners and how it would measure up to others’ descriptions. I found myself suddenly invested in whether the person next to me was an INTJ or a Type A, even though I didn’t know their name.

While personality assessments have become typical ways of categorizing people in career, classrooms and even clinical settings, why do so many of us still find such a strong sense of self in aligning with a type?

Many of my classmates added disclaimers before sharing their personalities, such as apologizing for being one of the first Type Bs to introduce themselves or admitting the closest they’ve gotten to discovering their personality was by taking a BuzzFeed spirit animal quiz. On the other hand, one peer casually admitted they keep a note on their phone listing their friends’ Myers-Briggs personality types to have for reference.

This showed me while each person thinks about their personality a little differently, the majority of college students do still place an emphasis on identifying as some sort of “type.”

I find this interesting, because in an era where we have so many ways to craft our identities creatively, visually or through our work — for an audience of both significant others and strangers — we are so much more than an acronym-clad description or a letter that supposedly dictates our stress levels or our strengths.

One reason I think we cling to these personas is because by framing ourselves via a relatable, well-known category or label, we can take power of how we are presented. Social psychologists refer to this concept of telling stories about ourselves or describing ourselves in specific ways to take control of how people perceive us. Positioning ourselves as one “type” of personality, whether it’s a Type B, a motivator or a debater, is one way of engaging in identity work.

Labeling our personality may make us feel more in touch with who we are on the surface and how we work with the people in our lives, but after my class activity, I started to wonder if my generation sees these descriptors more as status symbols that showcase our apparent strengths.

Plus, the black-and-white divide between Type A, a notoriously high-stress, ambitious personality, and its complete opposite counterpart, Type B, is cliché and outdated.

We each take on different qualities — even from personas we may not identify with all the time. For example, on days I feel high-strung, I am completely in touch with my Type A side — while many other times, I feel more carefree and embrace elements of the Type B persona. So while personality types may shed light onto some behaviors of our friends or classmates, they just barely scratch the surface of who we are as people, and they may not always be 100 percent accurate.  

Latching on to a persona means something different for each of us, but I think we should look beyond the type and embrace all parts of our personality — and the uniqueness of those around us.

Darcy Schild is a UF journalism senior. Her column normally appears on Wednesdays.