Types of Personality Tests: A Complete Guide to the Most Popular Assessments
Personality tests have exploded in popularity. Over 88% of Fortune 500 companies use some form of personality assessment, and millions of people take online tests each year to understand themselves better. But with so many options available, which personality test actually works?
This guide breaks down the most common types of personality tests, explains their methodologies, and helps you understand which assessment fits your needs—whether for personal growth, career planning, or team building.
The Major Personality Test Frameworks
The personality assessment landscape is dominated by a handful of frameworks, each with distinct approaches to understanding human behavior. Some categorize you into types. Others measure you on continuous traits. Some focus on workplace behavior, others on deeper psychological motivations.
Let's examine what each offers and where they fall short.
MBTI and 16Personalities: The Cultural Default
The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is the most recognized personality framework globally. Developed in the 1940s by Isabel Myers and Katharine Briggs, it's based on Carl Jung's theory of psychological types.
How MBTI Works
MBTI measures four preference dimensions:
- Extraversion (E) vs Introversion (I): Where you direct your energy
- Sensing (S) vs Intuition (N): How you gather information
- Thinking (T) vs Feeling (F): How you make decisions
- Judging (J) vs Perceiving (P): How you approach structure
Combining preferences produces 16 personality types: INTJ, ENFP, ISTP, and so on. The popular website 16Personalities has introduced millions to this framework with engaging type descriptions and memorable character portraits.
The Scientific Reality
Here's what the research shows: MBTI has significant reliability problems. Only about 50% of people receive the same personality type when retested within a few weeks. After nine months, that number drops to just 36%.
The core issue is that personality traits actually distribute on bell curves—most people fall near the middle on each dimension. Forcing binary categories on continuous data loses information. Someone who's 52% Thinking and 48% Feeling gets assigned "T" and the nuance disappears.
When MBTI Makes Sense
Despite scientific limitations, MBTI provides value for:
- First exposure to personality concepts
- Shared vocabulary with others who know the types
- Quick self-reflection and conversation starters
- Exploring how preferences affect communication
The type descriptions help people recognize patterns they hadn't articulated before. Just don't use it for high-stakes decisions like hiring.
Big Five (OCEAN): The Scientific Gold Standard
The Big Five personality model emerged from decades of empirical research and represents the most scientifically validated framework in personality psychology.
The Five Factors
Unlike MBTI's types, the Big Five measures you on five continuous trait dimensions:
- Openness: Creativity, intellectual curiosity, appreciation for novelty
- Conscientiousness: Organization, discipline, goal-directed behavior
- Extraversion: Social energy, assertiveness, enthusiasm
- Agreeableness: Compassion, cooperation, consideration for others
- Neuroticism: Emotional reactivity, anxiety, stress response
You receive a percentile score on each dimension, not a binary label. Someone might score high on Conscientiousness (85th percentile), moderate on Extraversion (55th percentile), and low on Neuroticism (25th percentile).
Why It's More Accurate
The Big Five demonstrates 80-90% test-retest reliability—dramatically higher than MBTI. Research shows it predicts real-world outcomes like job performance, relationship satisfaction, and health behaviors with meaningful accuracy.
A study comparing frameworks found Big Five outperformed both MBTI-style assessments and the Enneagram in predicting life outcomes. The continuous measurement captures reality better than categorical boxes.
The Trade-Off
Big Five scores require interpretation. Getting told you're in the "72nd percentile for Agreeableness" doesn't immediately tell you what to do with that information. The framework excels at measurement but provides less actionable guidance than type-based systems.
Enneagram: Deep Psychological Motivations
The Enneagram takes a fundamentally different approach. Rather than measuring behaviors or preferences, it focuses on core psychological motivations—the fears and desires that drive human action.
The Nine Types
The Enneagram describes nine interconnected personality types:
- Reformer: Driven by principles, fears making mistakes
- Helper: Driven by connection, fears being unwanted
- Achiever: Driven by success, fears failure
- Individualist: Driven by authenticity, fears ordinariness
- Investigator: Driven by understanding, fears incompetence
- Loyalist: Driven by security, fears abandonment
- Enthusiast: Driven by experience, fears missing out
- Challenger: Driven by autonomy, fears being controlled
- Peacemaker: Driven by harmony, fears conflict
Each type has characteristic patterns of behavior, but the Enneagram emphasizes that these patterns emerge from deeper motivational structures.
Scientific Validity Concerns
The Enneagram faces legitimate criticism from academic psychology. A 2020 review found mixed results for reliability and validity. Some psychologists have categorized it among "discredited" personality assessment approaches.
The Riso-Hudson Enneagram Type Indicator (RHETI), the most rigorous Enneagram assessment, shows better psychometric properties than informal online tests. But the framework overall lacks the empirical support of the Big Five.
Where It Excels
Despite scientific limitations, many people find the Enneagram's focus on motivations and fears provides deeper psychological insight than surface-level behavioral descriptions. It's particularly popular in personal development, coaching, and spiritual growth contexts.
The framework acknowledges that personality isn't static—each type has characteristic "stress" and "growth" directions that describe how people change under different conditions.
DISC: Workplace Behavior Focus
DISC emerged from psychologist William Marston's work in the 1920s and has become a staple of workplace personality assessment.
The Four Behavioral Styles
DISC measures four behavioral dimensions:
- Dominance (D): Direct, results-oriented, assertive
- Influence (I): Enthusiastic, collaborative, persuasive
- Steadiness (S): Patient, reliable, team-oriented
- Conscientiousness (C): Analytical, detail-focused, quality-driven
Unlike MBTI's psychological preferences, DISC focuses on observable behavior in work contexts. It's explicitly about how you act, not why.
Practical Workplace Applications
DISC shines in team settings. The framework translates directly into actionable guidance:
- How to communicate with each style
- What motivates different behavioral types
- How conflicts typically arise between styles
- Task assignment based on behavioral fit
The assessment typically takes 15-20 minutes and produces immediately applicable insights for collaboration.
Limitations
DISC doesn't measure cognitive abilities, emotional intelligence, or deeper personality structures. It's a specialized tool for workplace behavior, not comprehensive personality assessment.
CliftonStrengths: The Positive Psychology Approach
CliftonStrengths (formerly StrengthsFinder) takes yet another approach: instead of measuring personality types or traits, it identifies your top talent themes.
Strengths-Based Development
The framework measures 34 distinct "talent themes" across four domains:
- Executing themes (Achiever, Focus, Discipline)
- Influencing themes (Command, Competition, Communication)
- Relationship Building themes (Connectedness, Empathy, Includer)
- Strategic Thinking themes (Analytical, Ideation, Futuristic)
The philosophy is explicitly positive: develop your strengths rather than fix your weaknesses. Over 36 million people have taken the assessment.
Research and Outcomes
Gallup's research shows that people who use their strengths daily are significantly more engaged at work and report higher wellbeing. The framework has strong organizational adoption and documented positive outcomes.
The Limitation
CliftonStrengths isn't really personality assessment in the traditional sense. It measures talent themes and potential, not stable personality characteristics. It's optimized for workplace development, not comprehensive self-understanding.
Which Personality Test Is Most Accurate?
This is the question everyone asks, and the honest answer is: it depends on what you're trying to measure.
For Scientific Accuracy
The Big Five wins decisively. It has the strongest empirical support, highest test-retest reliability, and best predictive validity for real-world outcomes.
For Workplace Application
DISC and CliftonStrengths provide more immediately actionable insights for team dynamics and professional development, even if they're less comprehensive.
For Self-Understanding
The Enneagram's focus on motivations and the MBTI's rich type descriptions often provide more personally meaningful insights, despite weaker scientific foundations.
For Type-Based Clarity
MBTI and 16Personalities give you a clear identity and shared vocabulary, useful for casual self-exploration and conversation with others familiar with the types.
The Problem With Traditional Personality Tests
Most personality tests share a fundamental limitation: they ask everyone the same questions in the same order. Your answer to question 10 doesn't affect what question 11 will be.
This creates inefficiency. If your first ten answers strongly indicate extraversion, asking ten more extraversion questions adds little value. Fixed questionnaires can't adapt.
Additionally, most frameworks force categorical assignment. You're an ENFP or you're not. But what if you're genuinely in between? The nuance disappears.
A Different Approach: Adaptive Assessment
Modern statistical methods offer alternatives to fixed questionnaires. Adaptive assessment selects questions dynamically based on your previous answers, maximizing information gain at each step.
Instead of assigning categorical types, probabilistic approaches return distributions: "45% Blue, 30% Red, 15% Black, 10% Green." If you genuinely span multiple patterns, the results reflect that reality.
Soultrace applies this methodology to personality assessment. Using Bayesian inference, the system updates probability distributions across five color-based archetypes—White, Blue, Black, Red, and Green—with each answer. The algorithm selects questions that will reduce uncertainty most efficiently, achieving higher precision with fewer questions.
Rather than forcing you into one of 16 boxes, you see exactly how confident the assessment is about different aspects of your personality. Real people don't fit perfectly into categories—and adaptive assessment doesn't pretend they do.
Choosing the Right Personality Test
Here's a practical decision framework:
For rigorous self-understanding: Take a Big Five assessment for scientifically grounded trait measurement, then explore the Enneagram for motivational depth.
For workplace teams: DISC provides immediately actionable behavioral insights. CliftonStrengths works well for development-focused cultures.
For casual exploration: 16Personalities offers engaging type descriptions and shared vocabulary with millions of other users.
For precision with nuance: Adaptive assessments like Soultrace provide probability distributions rather than categorical labels, preserving uncertainty where it genuinely exists.
The Bottom Line
No single personality test is "best" for everyone. Each framework emphasizes different aspects of personality and makes different trade-offs between scientific rigor, practical utility, and personal meaning.
The Big Five offers the strongest scientific foundation. MBTI provides cultural familiarity and rich type descriptions. The Enneagram explores psychological depth. DISC delivers workplace applicability. Adaptive approaches like Soultrace combine statistical rigor with honest uncertainty.
What matters most is choosing an assessment that fits your purpose—and interpreting results with appropriate humility about what any personality test can actually measure.
Ready to try adaptive personality assessment? Take the Soultrace test and see your personality as a probability distribution, not a box.