In the spirit of ‘trying new things’, today I signed up for the private beta of Signal Patterns. This new service analyses your personality through a series of questions and then gives you a breakdown of the various traits that make up your personality.
Clicking through the questions it began to feel like one the ‘Free Personality Tests’ that Scientology is so keen on. Although the types of questions are similar, don’t worry – there’s not an E-Meter in sight.
You are presented with a series of statements and have to grade how similar to you each one is. Questions are along the lines of “I enjoy learning things and find abstract ideas interesting. I also have a large vocabulary and a good knowledge of language“, or “I panic easily and am easily hurt. I become overwhelmed by events and feel crushed by setbacks“. Once that’s done you get a description of all your key traits. You also get an opportunity to invite friends from Facebook to compare personalities.
You are then presented with ‘People Like You’ – people who have already taken the test who came out with a similar result. At this point even the most self-assured of people could be forgiven for becoming a little insecure. A user called ‘rogersdc’, I am told, is “more innovative and more intellectual” than me while another user is “more creative and more innovative”. Well whoop-de-doo for them! That said, a user called ‘Evan S’ is “more introspective” so maybe it’s not all bad. The good news is that apparently I’m intellectual, aesthetic and astute. It sounds to me like I should be a Victorian gentleman-about-town. Fetch me my top hat, Jeeves, we’re off to the British Museum!
So, what do Signal Patterns get out of offering this for free (albeit in closed Beta)? Well, a couple of the questions in the test related to whether or not your friends come to you for advice on buying new products. That suggests a direction they could be going with this. There’s a lot of money in personality assessment in the recruitment industry so that could be another avenue. As long as they don’t try to sell me overpriced courses and books for self-improvement, I’m happy. There’s more on the company’s background here.
They’re also offering a ‘Music Patterns’ survey which takes a different approach from services like Last.fm and iLike to music recommendation. I’ll be writing about that tomorrow. If you want to try Signal Patterns yourself, The Inqisitr was offering 500 invites. There may be some left if you head to their site quickly. In the meantime, here’s what they found out about my personality…
