Self‐knowledge of personality can be defined “as accurate self‐perceptions about how one typically thinks, feels, and behaves, and awareness of how those patterns are interpreted by others” [1]. Self‐perceptions have always been an interesting and compelling discussion in psychology and more recently in social media. However, it may be difficult for us to say who we are and to figure out how others see us.
Back in time, self-knowledge was topic of interest among philosophers like Plato, Socrates and Descartes, so that is not a new obsession [1]. However, the advent of social networks and online personality quizzes make it appears a steady trend and compulsion. In fact, it is easy to find a result of personality quiz on our Facebook’s timeline.
But why do we like to answer questions like BuzzFeed’s “What City Should You Actually Live In?” and Zimbio’s “Which Star Wars Character Are You?”? Quizzes are very popular and nobody believes in the outcomes, because it is just entertainment, says Shapiro from Forbes [2].
Despite the outcomes of online quizzes, people are concerned to know themselves even in a fun way, that is the argument of Sherry Turkle, the MIT psychologist and cultural analyst, “it gives people something to look at, an object to think with. I think these quizzes are a kind of focus for attention for thinking about yourself [3].” This can make sense considering that in reality people have a low-level knowledge about their behaviours and they are far to get it accurate also from others’ perceptions [1].
Why do people love personality quizzes?
Some perspectives from psychologists about the relationship between social media and quizzes go from a sense of comfort to sharing results with others. Identifying the reasons why people are engaging with online quizzes and sharing the results on social media are relevant for designing Aura.
Online quizzes are fun, there is no doubt about this. But psychologists say that it may go beyond the entertainment, as it would be a form of giving “our sense of unfolding story”, a sense of narrative psychology, says Simmermon from Atlanta Ga [3].
- Theory of narrative psychology
Narrative psychology is a theory based on the idea that humans tend to organise events chronologically that help them to make sense of their lives, a way of describing who we are and where we come from [3].
Steven Meyers, Ph.D., professor of psychology at Roosevelt University in Chicago, explains that people tend to ask three questions when making sense of their lives: Who am I? Who do others think I am? And who do I want to be? So online personality quizzes can offer the opportunity to think about these questions in a fun way, especially when it is published online.
Simmermon says that personality quizzes give the “illusion of authenticity,” where the evaluation can reinforce the self-judgments, whether it has any credibility or not. People fancy to be a Harry Potter and, that is the reason it is rare to see any quiz asking if you were Hitler or Mussolini [3].
This attitude shows us that people want to tell a better story of themselves, which is an important point of observation for Aura’s quizzes development. Turkle and other theorists say that it is an exhausting performance to declare yourself, for example, people may retake quizzes to get a more favourable outcome, rather than just being. It is considered to be new to our evolution as individuals and as a society [2].
- The need for sharing results
One of the reasons that personality quizzes became so popular is because we can share our results with our friends on social media. So it has a signifier in itself when showing the result to others, it shows the performance and the feeling of who you are by how you share you are. It is the fusion of identification of yourself and who thinks you are fine [3].
Social media is used as a mechanism to show yourself and wait for the comments of your friends and followers. People may be interested in knowing what others think about them, then social media is an innocent and non-threatening way of discovery [3].
- People care about their self-image on social interactions
Why do people care about the feedback of others in personality quizzes? For example, why they are interested to know if people would like or not their result of “Which ‘Mean Girls’ Character Are You?” quiz. It is explained by social psychology, a discipline interested in how people’s behaviour, thoughts and feelings are influenced by others. The concept of “looking-glass self” in this discipline determine that people’s self-image is formed by how they think others see them [4].
According to Mitch Prinstein [4], a professor of psychology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, it is a natural behaviour of adolescents. However, it may continue into adulthood. A quiz can indicate that someone is in a kind of category, then this person establishes his or her self-image by showing this category to others.
However, people tend to share results that they like and ignore the ones they don’t. So it makes easier to take a personality quiz if people can block out the results that they feel it is not complying with their self-image.
- The reward of feeling normal
Despite each individual is a single and unique person with particular characteristics, talents and thoughts, more people are adopting a normal pattern in social interactions [4].
Prinstein explains that in personality quizzes, people can compare their results with others’ results. So these quizzes inform if someone’s behaviour is similar to others and show how close this behaviour to a sub-group of people and niche. This feedback makes people feel rewarded with the feeling of being normal [4].
- Conversation starters
How about reputable personality tests like Myers-Briggs test? There have been discussions about this type of test among psychologists, in which they declare that even those tests are not designed to fully say who we are, but they help to start conversations about us, says Christine Whelan, sociologist in the School of Human Ecology at the University of Wisconsin [4].
In the same context are online quizzes; she emphasises that “personality quizzes, at their best, are conversation starters, and give you a shared language to discuss things that are meaningful for you” [4]. This is also an observation made by Turkle in which she says: “It gives people something to look at, an object to think with. I think these quizzes are a kind of focus for attention for thinking about yourself” [2].
According to this argument, we may point out that the use of quizzes in Aura is a good start for conversations and analysis of mood and personality. Also, another important factor is that quizzes may be an important external validation. Prinstein says that people can declare that they are introverts, for example, but others probably say that is not true [4].
Overall, online personality quizzes are fun and it seems to be even more exciting when we publish the results on social media. This is because of diverse factors involved in this activity, a simple quiz can show the significance of a result in terms of self-image, what people care about the projection of their personality and the need for the feeling of being normal and part of a group.
This is an opportunity to make people think about themselves in a fun way and discover what others are thinking of them. So psychologists emphasise that personality quizzes are an entertaining way of starting discussions about our personality and behaviour. This argument makes sense in developing Aura as an application where people can play, identify, share and think and discuss their personalities.
References
[1] Vazire, S. & Carlson, E.N. (2010) Self-Knowledge of Personality: Do People Know Themselves? Social and Personality Psychology Compass. [Online] 4 (8), 605–620. Available from: doi:10.1111/j.1751-9004.2010.00280.x.
[2] Shapiro, J. (n.d.) The Reason Personality Tests Go Viral Will Blow Your Mind. [Online]. Forbes. Available from: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jordanshapiro/2014/01/18/the-reason-personality-tests-go-viral-will-blow-your-mind/
[3] Anon (2014) This Is Why Those Online Personality Quizzes Are So Irresistible. [Online]. 5 February 2014. HuffPost UK. Available from: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/05/psychology-online-quiz_n_4725593.html
[4] Falk, D. (2014) Why Do You Love Personality Quizzes? Experts Break It Down. [Online]. 4 August 2014. NBC News. Available from: https://www.nbcnews.com/science/weird-science/why-do-you-love-personality-quizzes-experts-break-it-down-n169896