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Free personality test

Big Five personality test

Free, with no sign-up. Twenty short statements take about three minutes, and everything runs in your browser, so your answers are never sent to us.

Describe yourself as you generally are now

Not as you wish to be. For each statement, choose how accurately it describes you. There are no right or wrong answers.

  1. 1Am the life of the party.
  2. 2Sympathize with others' feelings.
  3. 3Get chores done right away.
  4. 4Have frequent mood swings.
  5. 5Have a vivid imagination.
  6. 6Don't talk a lot.
  7. 7Am not interested in other people's problems.
  8. 8Often forget to put things back in their proper place.
  9. 9Am relaxed most of the time.
  10. 10Am not interested in abstract ideas.
  11. 11Talk to a lot of different people at parties.
  12. 12Feel others' emotions.
  13. 13Like order.
  14. 14Get upset easily.
  15. 15Have difficulty understanding abstract ideas.
  16. 16Keep in the background.
  17. 17Am not really interested in others.
  18. 18Make a mess of things.
  19. 19Seldom feel blue.
  20. 20Do not have a good imagination.

0 of 20 answered

Reading your result

What your scores mean

Each score is the average of your four answers for that trait, from 1 to 5. It describes what you said about yourself, not a ranking against other people.

Lower1.00 to 2.25
Your answers leaned away from this trait. That is a preference with its own strengths, not a shortfall.
Moderate2.50 to 3.50
You answered near the middle, which is where most people land on most traits. The situation tends to decide which side shows up.
Higher3.75 to 5.00
Your answers leaned toward this trait. Expect it to shape how you prefer to work, and how you like to be written to.

What each trait describes

  • Openness

    Higher: Curious and imaginative, drawn to new ideas. Lower: Practical and grounded, prefers what is proven.

  • Conscientiousness

    Higher: Organized and thorough, plans ahead. Lower: Flexible and spontaneous, comfortable improvising.

  • Extraversion

    Higher: Outgoing and energized by people. Lower: Reserved and reflective, prefers smaller groups.

  • Agreeableness

    Higher: Warm, cooperative and considerate. Lower: Direct, skeptical and focused on the task.

  • Emotional stability

    Higher: Calm under pressure and slow to worry. Lower: Feels stress keenly and stays alert to risk.

All five trait guides, with how to write for each end

After the test

How to use your result at work

Notice your own defaults

Your scores shape what feels normal to you. A long, detailed email reads as thorough to someone who shares your conscientiousness, and as heavy going to someone lower on it.

Adapt to the person in front of you

Before an important message, read the guide for the trait that matters most in that conversation and borrow one or two things from it.

Never use scores to judge people

Short self-report results, yours or anyone else's, are for insight and conversation. They are not evidence for hiring, promotion or performance decisions.

Come back to it in a year

Average trait levels shift slowly with age, with conscientiousness and emotional stability rising through young adulthood (Roberts, Walton and Viechtbauer, 2006).

Limits

How much a 20-question test can tell you

The Mini-IPIP is a 20-item short form of a 50-item public domain inventory, with four items for each trait (Goldberg, 1999; Donnellan et al., 2006).

Across five studies its internal consistency was at or well above .60, its test-retest correlations over a few weeks and several months were close to those of the longer measure it came from, and its pattern of validity matched other Big Five measures (Donnellan et al., 2006).

Fewer questions still means less precision. Four items give you the broad trait rather than the narrower facets underneath it, and one unusual answer moves a score further than it would on a long questionnaire. Treat a surprising score as a reason to read those four statements again, not as a verdict.

Questions

About this test

Is this personality test free?
Yes. There is no sign-up, no email address and no payment, and there is no paid report at the end. You see all five scores as soon as you finish.
How long does the test take?
About three minutes. There are 20 statements, and you choose how accurately each one describes you. You can change any answer before you see your results.
What is the Big Five?
The Big Five is the trait model most widely used in personality research. It describes personality along five continuous dimensions: openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and emotional stability.
Where do the questions come from?
They are the Mini-IPIP, a 20-item inventory published by Donnellan, Oswald, Baird and Lucas in 2006 and drawn from the public domain International Personality Item Pool. It was designed as a short measure that still tracks the longer questionnaires it came from.
How are my scores calculated?
Each trait has four statements. Some are worded in reverse, such as "Don't talk a lot" for extraversion, so those answers are flipped before averaging. Your score for each trait is the average of its four answers, from 1 to 5. Emotional stability is reported as the opposite of the inventory's neuroticism scale.
Are my answers stored?
No. The test runs entirely in your browser. Your answers are not sent to Tejesha or anyone else, and they are gone when you leave the page.
How is this different from what Tejesha does?
This test asks you to describe yourself. Tejesha's product estimates the same five traits from what a person has written publicly, and shows how confident it is in each estimate.
Can this test be used for hiring?
No. Short self-report tests like this one are for personal insight and learning, not for decisions about people.

Sources

  1. Donnellan, M. B., Oswald, F. L., Baird, B. M., & Lucas, R. E. (2006). The Mini-IPIP scales: Tiny-yet-effective measures of the Big Five factors of personality. Psychological Assessment, 18(2), 192-203.
  2. Goldberg, L. R. (1999). A broad-bandwidth, public domain, personality inventory measuring the lower-level facets of several five-factor models. In I. Mervielde, I. Deary, F. De Fruyt, & F. Ostendorf (Eds.), Personality psychology in Europe (Vol. 7, pp. 7-28). Tilburg University Press.
  3. Roberts, B. W., Walton, K. E., & Viechtbauer, W. (2006). Patterns of mean-level change in personality traits across the life course: A meta-analysis of longitudinal studies. Psychological Bulletin, 132(1), 1-25.

Items come from the International Personality Item Pool (ipip.ori.org), which is in the public domain.

See the Big Five at work

Tejesha estimates these same five traits from public professional writing, so sales and recruiting teams can communicate better.

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