Personality tests are everywhere. From career advice and hiring procedures to team-building sessions and dating apps, they promise to tell us who we really are. But how meaningful are these tests? And how much can they actually reveal about our personality? Personality researcher Manon van Scheppingen will take a closer look at the promises and pitfalls of personality testing. Drawing on scientific research, she’ll challenge the idea of personality as something static and fixed.
In the first part of the lecture, Manon van Scheppingen will explore what personality actually is from a scientific perspective, and how it can (and should be) assessed. She will explain the difference between well-validated personality assessments and widely used, but scientifically shaky, tests such as the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. Spoiler alert: Despite their popularity, these tests often offer confidence and clarity without the reliability or accuracy to back it up.
She will then shift the focus to a crucial yet often overlooked question: can personality change? Many personality tests suggest that your results define who you are and what you’re capable of. Decades of research tell a different story. Personality turns out to be both stable and malleable. Regarding the latter, for example, longitudinal research by Van Scheppingen shows that personality can change across adulthood, particularly in response to major life events. Together with evidence that people can intentionally change aspects of their personality, these insights challenge the static view implied by many popular tests and replace it with a more dynamic and realistic understanding of personality.
About the speakers
Dr. Manon van Scheppingen is an Assistant Professor at Tilburg University. Her research focuses on the origins and consequences of continuity and change in personality across the lifespan. Her work combines psychology with insights from disciplines such as demography and is based on large-scale longitudinal data. She has received several prestigious grants and awards, including an NWO Veni grant, recognizing her innovative and societally relevant personality research.
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