Audre, you're a Skydiver!

Relaxed		Apprehensive
Self-Doubt		Confidence
Safety-Seeking		Risk-Taking
Internal Experience		External Appearance

 

How You Approach Life

You, Skydiver, are a free-spirited mix of some of the best qualities around. Your drive to live an adventurous life compliments your penchant for abstract thinking and disdain for the conventional and routine aspects of life. Your unusually high self-esteem and desire to do the just and right thing contribute to your particularly high level of responsibility. With all this going on, it's amazing that you lead such a markedly balanced life.

Even though your thirst for adventure seems unquenchable, you know where the line is — which is ultimately why you're so reliable. Though admittedly, sometimes that line is harder to see than others.

You are independent, fun, interesting, and gung-ho about life. So much so that people tend to find you an irresistible presence to be around. You're open and extroverted, and willing to see issues from at least a couple of different sides.

Both professionally and amongst friends, you are a great leader. You're a self-starter and are conscious of picking up the slack when others don't. That's not terribly surprising, since you also are such a tremendous communicator who's looking to mix it up and stay away from routine. Your enthusiasm is contagious — and along with your sincere love of life — will take you far.

What makes you a Skydiver?

Your two sub-types are Seeker and Golden. Your primary sub-type is defined by "Seeker" characteristics and your secondary sub-type is defined by "Golden" characteristics.

Your primary type is Seeker

Like other people with Seeker characteristics, you have a thirst for highly stimulating experiences. You gravitate towards unpredictable situations and then thrive once you find them. You would rather improvise than live by a strict calendar that adds structure to daily life. Also, you tend to find consistent routines absolutely strangling.

Intellectually, you're an explorer — which is why you tend to enjoy abstract thinking. In terms of entertainment, you veer toward media that is dark and edgy, flashy and loud, strange and intellectual. You tend to be interested in activities that get you out in the world including the performing arts and new age spirituality.

Your secondary type is Golden

People with Golden characteristics have unusually high self-esteem and are very conscientiousness. They are responsible, dependable, and dutiful — people others rely on. They are also efficient, and do not like to waste time. They tend to go about life with a positive attitude — both about themselves and the world around them.

Intellectually, Goldens are careful, deliberating thinkers. In terms of entertainment, Goldens enjoy media that is romantic, happy, and inspiring, and tend to avoid media that is dark, edgy, and sad. They are interested a wide variety of things including cooking, eating out, nutrition, travel, sports, recreation, fitness, health and traditional religion.

Your Four Personality Dimensions

Your primary and secondary personality sub-types determine your personality type. There are, however, additional elements that contribute to your complete personality profile.

Based on how you answered the questions on the Ultimate Personality Test, we have determined where you fall on four distinct personality scales: Relaxed/Apprehensive, Self-Doubt/Confidence, Safety-Seeking/ Risk-Taking, and Internal Experience/External Appearance. The scales are not dependent on one another. They are meant to show you whether you tend towards one or the other extreme, or are somewhere in the middle.

Here's the breakdown of your scores on the four personality dimension scales.

Relaxed		Apprehensive
Self-Doubt		Confidence
Safety-Seeking		Risk-Taking
Internal Experience		External Appearance

Your scores place you in the extremely relaxed region of the relaxed/apprehensive scale. This means that relative to others who have taken the test, you have a calm disposition. It also indicates that you are good at dealing with change and chaotic situations.

Like other people who score high on the relaxed side of this scale, you are likely to be stimulated by chaos and may approach life with a "the more the better" kind of attitude. Your energy levels veer toward high because you tend to be relaxed about problems that are out of you control. You are someone who is relatively less inclined to react emotionally to things that happen — not because you don't feel the emotions, but because you don't let things get to you as easily as others.

The flip side of this is people who score high on the apprehensive side of this scale. They are likely to be drawn to situations that are less stimulating to their senses. Because they are easily affected by change, they try to stay away from environments that can over-stimulate them.

These people have strong reactions to what others would consider minor changes. That is why people who score high on the apprehensive side of the scale try to slow down the pace. When faced with chaotic situations, they will look for more calming places to be. Despite their talents, they are generally more self-critical and shy than others, even if it seems there's no reason for them to be.

Your scores place you in the mid-range of the self-doubt/confidence scale. This means that relative to others who have taken the test, you're more confident than some and less confident than others. It also indicates that you have confidence when it matters the most — even if it isn't present all the time.

To give you an idea of how to gauge yourself on the self-doubt / confidence scale, let's look at people who scored towards the extreme ends of the scale.

People scoring high on the confidence side are extremely self-assured and responsible. Because of these traits, they are often the one friends and colleagues come to rely on — both on the job and in personal situations. These people are also known for having unusually high self-esteem and are natural leaders.

People who score high on the self-doubt side of the scale have a tendency to look to others to determine their self-worth. They seek calm environments and often focus their energies on jobs that have less responsibility and are therefore less stressful. They are sometimes prone to being overly-critical about themselves, but can work their way out of those thoughts because ultimately, others might point out their talents.

Your scores place you well into the risk-taking side of the safety-seeking/risk-taking scale. This means that relative to others who have taken the test, you play with the possibilities and thrive on heading towards an unknown outcome.

Like other people who score high on the risk-taking side, you combine a love of the new and unusual with a talent for inquisitive, abstract thinking. You have a tendency to seek out action and in all likelihood, find structure and predictability to be strangling experiences.

On the flip side are people who score high on the safety-seeking side of the scale. They prefer their environments to remain stable. They feel that predictability has positive connotations and that stability is a comfort and an indication of safety.

Your scores place you in the moderate internal experience region of the internal experience/external appearance scale. This means that relative to others who have taken the test, you're focused on the internal experience of a given situation. It also indicates that occasionally, you take more pride in how things appear to others.

Since you scored just slightly more on the internal experience side of things, let's take a look at characteristics of people who scored more towards the extremes of the scale to gauge where you fall in between.

People who score high on the internal experience side of the scale don't really believe that material possessions are a reflection of their success. In fact, they tend not to focus on how things appear to others at all. They feel that success comes from doing a good job, and knowing that they have positively influenced the world.

People who score high on the external appearance end of the scale tend to be motivated by a wish to be socially desirable. They want to move up and be seen in the world. For them, true success is important, and material possessions are the sign they have achieved it. Therefore, these people sometimes believe that happiness is directly a result of success and that the possessions they own are a reflection of that success.

The Skydiver & World Around You

How Others See You
People see you as down to earth with a free spirit. You convey your genuineness to others with your ability to focus on what counts — you are not easily swayed by superficial things. You also don't act in fake ways to “get ahead” or to look better than others. People notice that about you and appreciate it. People intuitively trust you with their secrets. They can see that you are not judgmental, and that appeals to many. You are open and free, yet grounded in the things that really matter.

Communication Style
Your gift, is the ability to handle intense conflict without losing your cool. With your level-headed approach, you are able to shrug off most of the bothersome things people say. Occasionally, you might question your actions or others' criticisms of you. But despite some lingering concerns, you are almost always well-served by your composure in the face of confrontation.

Your Romantic Life
You have high standards for love, believing in one love that outshines the others. To you, successful romance has two aspects: an emotional connection based on mutual care, and doing things together that you and your partner both love. You're happy with someone who enjoys the unexpected as much as you do. You'll both be excited at the prospect of situations with an unknown outcome. You and your well-suited mate enjoy high quality conversation and fulfilling experiences together. You are deep, sincere and willing to take emotional risks. You succeed in romance when you use your intuition and intelligence to choose someone whose compatibility with you goes deeper than the surface.

You At Your Best
You are blessedly free from many common fears and anxieties about the world. You're at your best when you're using your ease and fearlessness to explore possibilities and get to know yourself better. Entertain your inclinations. Learn by trial and error. Challenge yourself and then be gentle when you bump up against your limitations. You'll find great satisfaction and strengthen your sense of self when you get your feet wet in the stream of life.

Achieving Success
You are capable of more than you think. At this point, your most important task is to explore just where your greatest talents lie. You're not prone to care a whole lot about getting ahead of the game or looking good in an expensive car. You're looking for other kinds of success. So cast a wide net as you try out possible jobs, activities, and areas of interest. You're bound to learn a lot about yourself, the world and what excites you. Keep an open mind, a positive outlook, and above all, don't sell yourself short. Armed with self-knowledge and a good attitude, there's nothing you can't do.

Conflict
You value issues that go beneath the surface so you're not likely to get caught up in petty conflicts. When you do find yourself in conflict with people, it's likely to be people you're truly close to and with whom you're emotionally engaged. The topic of the conflict tends to be something fairly complex and definitely profound and challenging. Your insight and calm help you get through these situations with minimal drama. The only drawback there is that sometimes people mistake your cool demeanor for not caring about the issue. Your challenge is to communicate that getting upset isn't the only way to thoughtfully address a difficult issue.

Getting Unstuck in Your Life
You may not know it yet, but you're ready to take some chances. You'll break out of insecurities and stuck places in your life when you open up to new experiences. Try something new and pay attention to how it makes you feel. You have a natural resilience; so don't fear that your experiments with work, interests, relationships or self-exploration will fail. Wherever they lead you, you'll find yourself with more self-knowledge and a richer understanding of your place in the world.

What is Personality?

You know that everyone has a different personality, but what exactly is a personality?

While most people agree that a human being's personality is far too complex to categorize and label, some scientists and philosophers have devoted their lives to doing exactly that. They believe that although there are idiosyncrasies to each distinct personality, there are more general “personality types” that can be identified. One of the advantages of defining these types, is that once you know how someone tends to behave, you can start to predict future behavior. This has applications in both the real, and the theoretical world.

Before we get into exactly what these models are useful for, let's look at the history of personality typing and how older theories have developed into today's more popular personality tests.

History of Personality Tests

As early as the fifth century B.C., the Greek philosopher/physician Hippocrates recorded the first known personality model. He based his four “types” on the amount of body fluids an individual possessed. The Greek physician Galen expounded upon Hippocrates' theory. He believed a predominance of blood led to a confident person who was cheerful and strong. A predominance of mucus led to an indifferent, slow personality. A predominance of black bile led to a depressed personality, and a predominance of yellow bile led to a violent and strong personality.

German philosopher Immanuel Kant later popularized these ideas in the 1700's, when he organized those constructs along two axes, feelings and activity. Depression represented weak feelings, confidence reflected strong feelings. Indifference represented weak activity, violence represented strong activity.

The next big step came from Wilhelm Wundt who started to think about these categorical groups not as finite, but as continuous dimensions. He proposed that the four temperaments fall on high or low positions on two axes, changeability and emotionality.

The idea that four basic temperaments existed, eventually became the basis of a number of late 19th-/20th-century behavioral theories. Some of the most significant work on this subject was done by the Swiss psychoanalyst, Carl G. Jung. In 1922, he introduced four categories of mental functioning: sensing, intuition, thinking and feeling in his work Psychological Types. At the time, Jung's ideas about personality types went largely unnoticed, due to the frenzy surrounding the modern psychoanalytic theories of Sigmund Freud, B.F. Skinner and others.

In the 1950s, however, Isabel Myers and her daughter Katherine Briggs revived Jung's ideas. Myers and Briggs used Jung's personality types as a base, then devised a 16-type indicator designed to identify patterns of human action. This test became the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), a tool for identifying different aspects of someone's personality. This “tool” exposed a whole, new international audience to Jung's psychological types. The tool further connected the science of personality typing, because the MBTI types were consistent with Hippocrates' four temperaments.

More than three million Myers-Briggs Type Indicator tests are administered each year in the U.S. More than four million people have taken this Ultimate Personality Test.

Behavioral scientists are not the only researchers interested in personality types. For a more mystical look at personality, we should turn to the Enneagram. This system has a more mysterious background. Based on an ancient nine-pointed diagram used as far back as 2000 B.C. by Pythagoras, the Enneagram leaves a blurry trail through many of history's mystical philosophies. Plato and his followers, the Kabbala branch of Judaism, the Islamic Sufi tradition, and even esoteric branches of Christianity have all found spiritual significance in the nine-pointed symbol. It wasn't until the 20th century that the Enneagram meshed with new-age psychology. The nine-pointed symbol became the template for a personality typing system that overlayed nine personality types on top of the Enneagram structure.

Modern Personality Tests
In addition to the MBTI (the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator) which is still one of the most widely used personality tests, other popular theories and tests exist. The Keirsey Temperament Sorter is a test built around David Keirsey's groundbreaking 1978 book Please Understand Me. The Keirsey Temperament Sorter is similar to the MBTI in its use of four dimensions and 16 categories, but the Keirsey method claims to have a more complex system of characterization.

In the 1970's researchers agreed that there was another way to measure personality traits. Tests like the IPIP-NEO are based on a five-factor personality methodology. Some scientists feel this is the most revealing way to describe personality because it can measure five fundamental dimensions of personality.

Personality Tests and Daily Life
An important thing to remember about personality tests is that no one personality type is better or worse than another. In addition, the results of most personality tests, including this Ultimate Personality Test, derive their final personality types from more than one influence — usually a primary type shaded by at least one secondary type.

Although it is an imperfect science, personality models shed light on the complexities of human behavior. Undeniable patterns in human actions have existed since the dawn of man. Taken as guidelines and not absolute truth, personality tests can help us understand and better relate to ourselves and the world — to understand why we are the way we are. We can also use them to understand each other, not only to improve friendships, but to facilitate work relationships and career choices.

Many businesses use personality tests or abbreviated versions of personality tests to evaluate a prospective employee's strengths and weaknesses. Marriage counselors recommend certain personality tests to determine compatibility. But the most common use of personality typing is for fun and self-discovery. As you understand the spectrum of personality types and where you and your friends sit along that continuum, you can't help but gain a new appreciation for the simple differences, and amazing similarities, among us complicated beings.

The Science Behind This Personality Test
We spent the past two years developing the Ultimate Personality Test. While fine-tuning it, we wanted to make sure of two things: 1. That is was a fun and insightful test that yielded interesting wisdom about your personality and 2. That it was grounded in real science.

Your Ultimate Personality Test went through it's own tests while being developed. The test you took is 50 questions long — but those questions fell out of months of research that tested thousands of qualities associated with personality. These were the best of the best when it came to identifying and isolating personality types.

Our scientific research team pored over the vast literature on personality. We administered a two-hour test giving hundreds of questions to thousands of people. We performed factor and cluster analyses on the results, then went back to survey those same test-takers to validate our study.

Now, more than 4 million people have taken the test.

As we've collected that enormous volume of data, we have been able to refine the test and make it even more accurate — delving deeper into the personalities and characteristics of the individuals who take our Ultimate Personality Test.

The Ultimate Personality Test is scientifically accurate. The results of the test will tell you what your personality type is, and how your personality type reacts to situations that involve romance, career, family, and health. In short, this test will change your life.