The Color Code

[Slim]

In college the other day, our teacher had us do the Color Code Personality Test. That wasn't my first time taking it. Most of you probably already have heard of it, and likely have taken it before.

If not, you can take it on The Color Code website, but it makes you create a profile, and it doesn't give you a breakdown of how many you scored for each color.

I found A list of all the questions, but you can't select ABCD, and have the computer do the work for you, you'll have to add your answers yourself. And it doesn't say the characteristics of each personality.

Anyway, I had exactly the same amount of Blue as White. (My breakdown was 4 Red, 17 Blue, 17 White, 7 Yellow) Does anyone have the book? I'm sure that would explain what mixed personalities are like (at least, I would hope so.)

So what color are you?

[eriador]

Ancient weapons and hokey religions are no match for a blaster at your side, kid.

[Petra456]

I got white, which sounds pretty right when I read the description.

[VelvetElvis]

Totally red, apparently.

[shadow-petra]

Blue!

[Gravity Defier]

I'm a blue, and it seemed pretty accurate.

[ender1]

I'm white.

[Gravity Defier]

I'm white.

*nod*

I'm brown.

[Petra456]

Took me a minute, now I can't stop laughing...

[jotabe]

I personally find this test extremely offensive.
I mean, what about the feelings of the resistors? Are you going to classify their personalities only because their stripes, because of their total resistence?

My faith in humanity (and in electronics) is leaving me.

[Luet]

I'm red too. Me and HBC...taking over the world.

[starlooker]

I used to have the book, and I loaned it to my cousin, who never gave it back.

I do not begrudge her this. I figure it's karmic recompense for all the books I've borrowed.

Anyways, the book itself is really very interesting (if you like non-validated simplistic personality sorts that neatly classify everybody and have an explanation for those who don't classify) (as I do. Heaven help me, but I am a total sucker for those kinds of tests). It also explains a lot about your "secondary color" and how that fits in.

Me, I've always scored as very White with a teensy bit of blue sedondary. Although, I'd be interested in reading it again, as I betcha anything my Red score has gone up in the past two years (despite the fact that this is supposed to be very stable).

[Young Val]

blue.

i don't know how i feel about it. and answering the questions from the perspective of my remembered childhood was BEYOND bizarre and stirred up all kinds of things that had totally slipped through the cracks.

[starlooker]

Huh, whaddya know, it says I'm blue. It's a different test than was in the book. Interesting.

[Young Val]

that's funny! judging from the tiny fraction of internet-self i know of you from here, the white seemed very Kirsten to me. what with the being a very good listening and the processing things deeply and with great clarity, or whatever it is that they said.

[starlooker]

That's nice to hear.

Honestly, though, the description of White seemed way more on-base to me (including the bit about being silently stubborn and avoiding confrontation at all costs). I think it might be because of the test's "as a child..." because memories of childhood are so filtered. The test in the book didn't have that except for on a few questions.

[VelvetElvis]

I'm red too. Me and HBC...taking over the world.

Apparently we are the only ones aggressive enough to do so. The rest of PWEB just wants to talk about it and hug. *snort*

[starlooker]

Go right ahead and take over the world if it'll make you happy, I don't mind. There's no need for conflict. It's all yours.

So, now, I'll just be over here, doing my own thing. Peacefully.

Okay?



(You know, my favorite line in my profile -- I consider myself white, no matter what it says! -- is that, "Feeling good is more important than being good." That makes me laugh.)

[Young Val]

i just love how my immediate reaction to being "blue" was to try to figure out how i felt about it.

then again, i've always been the poster-child for my Zodiac sign. so i shouldn't be surprised.

[Luet]

I would like to see how much of me was other colors because I had a very hard time with a lot of the questions. After reading the other colors, I think that I would almost equally fit the description of red and blue. I think a trip to the book store to take the full test and see the real result is in order...

[zeroguy]

I personally find this test extremely offensive.
I mean, what about the feelings of the resistors? Are you going to classify their personalities only because their stripes, because of their total resistence?

My faith in humanity (and in electronics) is leaving me.

Kinda makes sense, though... red wants to set things on fire by making a lot of current by lower resistance, and white is the peaceful opposite. Yellow I'm going to interpret as Gold, and since that's kinda high on the tolerance scale it's like, hey, no need to be really strict about the resistance value, let's just have some fun!

And blue? Well, that's easy. Blue -> six -> sex -> intimacy.

[shadow-petra]

And blue? Well, that's easy. Blue -> six -> sex -> intimacy.

I feel really stupid, but how does blue go to six to sex?

[BonitoDeMadrid]

SO White. Actually, White sounds like a psychiatrist's evaluation of me.

...And this is bad, because I wanted to be in Politics, or take over the world (I have plans) and whites aren't meant to do it; that's reserved for Reds. Maybe I should let my Angry side take the test.. (yes. Within me, my anger is a different side)

[Eaquae Legit]

I'm white, but I was really dissatisfied with some of the questions, so by the time I got to the end, I didn't care much. A handful of questions had no answer that really described me, and a handful of questions had answers that all described me. Same for the situations. It really wasn't a helpful test - I've done better ones. Also, it asked for my childhood self. I've worked hard at changing some of my childhood traits, and the answers for then were sometimes really different from my answers now.

I wish they'd stop using colours for these things. The "colour test" I did in elementary school pegged me as green. The one I did at my job pegged me as "green followed closely by blue followed at a huge distance by red" (the order and following distance were essential parts of the results). Both were testing for different things than this one. I'm so many colours I feel like a rainbow.

And it wouldn't tell me about the other colours, so I have no idea what they mean or how strongly they run.

[Mich]

Also, it asked for my childhood self. I've worked hard at changing some of my childhood traits, and the answers for then were sometimes really different from my answers now.

That was really my biggest beef with it.

Other than that, White.

[Dr. Mobius]

Eh, supposedly I'm white but I never trust the results from these things. I try to answer honestly but between problems like what Ali mentioned and my brain always wanting to say what's expected instead of what it really thinks my results are probably little skewed.

[zeroguy]

And blue? Well, that's easy. Blue -> six -> sex -> intimacy.

I feel really stupid, but how does blue go to six to sex?

I was continuing jota's joke about the colors of stripes on resistors. The color stripes on resistors show you the value of their resistance (without having to put it in a circuit or anything). The color blue represents a six. And... six is one letter away from sex.

[starlooker]

SO White. Actually, White sounds like a psychiatrist's evaluation of me.

...And this is bad, because I wanted to be in Politics, or take over the world (I have plans) and whites aren't meant to do it; that's reserved for Reds. Maybe I should let my Angry side take the test.. (yes. Within me, my anger is a different side)

Actually, according to the book, White and Red are similar in some ways because they both tend to conceive of things in terms of power -- its just that they have different reactions to power. Or something.

Anyways, please everybody do note that the test is entirely and completely bogus as an ACTUAL psychological test. It's just for fun and (for the creator) profit. Especially profit.

Screw blue, white, red, and yellow. I just about turned purple between rage and laughter when I read his little letter about how psychology is stupid because he's the first therapist who ever thought about looking at people's motivations.

[Rei]

I came out as blue, but I'm a bit skeptical. There were probably less than ten questions that were not a complete shot in the dark for me, because I have so little memory of my childhood and what I was like or how I reacted to things. I could sometimes eliminate words as definitely or likely not, but that usually left me with one that was also a pretty sure not.

I remember doing the True Colours test in high school which has the colours orange, gold, blue, and green. There I came out as a very strong green-blue (blue following right on the heels of green) and a very distant tied orange and gold.

I recently came across a different sort of test which my workplace likes to refer to called the Belbin Team Inventory. Its focus, though, is how people work with others.

[VelvetElvis]

I did that test, too, but in elementary school. In fact, it was the first thing I thought of when I read this, but I figured no one else would know what the heck I was talking about. I was green, but just barely. Gold lost by one point.

[Slim]

Lol, I just realized that I didn't put a link to the text-version of the color code test that I found. Okay, I fixed it now in my first post.

For me, though, the text version had me focused on what the answer at the end was going to be. Since A's all represent the same color, as does B's, C's and D's, I was going, "I've don't know if I've chosen enough ____ color stuff, I've been choosing too many _____"

But the weird thing was that I took this test when I had the same teacher a couple years ago. I think I answered the individual answers differently, but I got the exact same totals. Weird.

Yeah, I didn't like that the online version makes you answer as when you were a child. This is supposed to test your personality by showing your "inner motive" right? I'm no psychologist, but I think our inner motive can change over time. Or-- If it (as they say) supposedly doesn't change, then why can't you just say what you are like right now?



I took a look at the True Colors personality test and I didn't like it as much as the Color Code personality test. I did like that you could choose all answers, and just rank them as "most like you" to "least like you." But there was only five questions. I don't know if its just because its just a shortened online version or what, but I don't think anything can really be accurate with only five questions. And sure enough, it said I was "Gold," when while reading the descriptions, I felt more like a "Green."

I looked for other sites that have the "True Colors" personality test, and, what the heck? They had the same colors, but totally different questions ...

[starlooker]

Ah, but if you look further into the site, you discover that everything psychologists and therapists have said up to this point is pure bunk. He is God. And he can change you, permanently, quickly, by looking at your color code!

Anyways, actually, whether personality is formed permanently when you're a child and how much it changes over time is a question that has several differing schools of thought, none of which have come up with any conclusive proof -- although most of which have spawned a million different studies. A lot of which are really, really interesting.

I would guess that since the inventor of this particular test believes that you are born with your core personality intact, he's asking people to think back to childhood because A) people are less likely to feel a need to answer in a socially appropriate way when thinking back, and B) since you haven't learned all the defenses, what you were like as a child is closer to your core personality.

From a test construction perspective there are five million holes in this. At least, unless they've been attended to by some serious manipulations in research design. I'd seriously like to see write ups of any scientific tests that have been done re: validity, reliability, etc.

From an Adlerian perspective, we are selective in the things we remember about ourselves as a child. We remember things that are important to our self-concept. My first memory is so incredibly prototypically Kirsten that I buy this. Memory is not a recording, it's a reconstruction. So what you think about your childhood self -- whether you think it is incredibly different from your current self or not -- is filtered by your current lenses (not to mention what people have told you, etc.) Giving your childhood self a global trait for any of these things is likely to be inaccurate, since you'll forget the times that contradict that particular assessment.

Just as we do for our current self. Because, really, we have multiple "selves." Look at the Career work, think of Super (Life-Space/Life-Span). Some people are more consistent across situations, some less (high/low self monitors).

So, what, then, is the point of personality assessment at all?

I shall have to ponder that as I study for comps. Coincidentally, my first comp is on assessment and test construction. So I'm inclined at the moment to say there is no point to personality assessment at all. It's all a bunch of reified constructs. Intelligence is what intelligence tests measure. Etc.

Yeah. I'm gonna go study now.

(All of this, by the way, is why I like narrative philosophy. Similar to stuff in the speaker series, actually. It's all about the stories you tell yourself, and what matters is which story you choose to believe. This also explains my dislike for Axis II pathologizing -- if you don't believe in the personality, it's hard to believe in personality disorders.

And yet, still, I have this undying fondness for the MMPI-II and for all the zillions of personality tests out there, from Myers-Briggs to "Which celebrity dog are you?")