KNOW YOUR OWN MIND

These pages provide the tools for a wide-ranging analysis of your personality, so you can know yourself better. Covering the areas of Introversion/Extraversion, Emotional Stability, Determinism, Sexuality and Social & Political Attitudes, it will help you see yourself - your mental, emotional and behavioral strengths and weaknesses - in a more objective light. It is an ideal starting point for personal enhancement.

How you see yourself and how others see you may be quite different. It is hard to be objective about oneself - after all, one is being oneself and therefore there is no distance from which to view. The following Questionnaire is intended to provide this objectivity. It is based on tried and tested principles, the result of research by renowned Professor of human psychology, Hans Eysenck, and described in his popular book 'Know Your Own Personality' published first in 1972. He had a clear understanding of how introversion and extraversion, combined with the degree of emotional stability and self-determinism, determine the personality traits that result in much of an individual's behavior. A description of his theory of personality traits and the theory of the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (EPQ) is given on our EPQ page.

Eysenck, however, as a behavioral psychologist believed that personality, like intelligence, is determined to a large extent by a person's genes and is unchangeable beyond an effort to cover up negative traits through learned behavior. On the contrary, I have found that while one's genetic constitution is a significant factor (particularly affecting the balance of neurotransmitter chemicals in the brain) and environmental factors (such as upbringing, education, cultural conditioning and even the quality of nutrition) are equally significant, in practice a tremendous amount can be done by the individual to restructure their own personality and even to improve intelligence. A lot can be done to improve brain chemistry and nutritional deficiencies too! Exactly how such personal development can be achieved is expounded in "Transforming the Mind".

Of most significance in the development of personality is an individual's experience, both pleasurable and painful, in this lifetime, from birth onwards. And also, I have found, the experience which is brought into this life from the prior existence of the individual's spiritual essence. These experiences result in both positive and negative learning: the acquisition of skills and understanding, and the acquisition of fixed ideas and conditioning. This learning can be revised!

So the results of this Questionnaire should be seen as an instructive guide to your present psychological makeup and an indication of areas of your life that you may choose to transform by applying appropriate techniques of personal development.

The Questionnaire is grouped into Categories, each with a number of psychological Traits. Each Trait is presented on a separate page.

Each page also contains the Scoring key for the questions of that Trait and an Analysis of the resulting scores. Needless to say, the validity of the analysis will depend on how candidly you filled in the Questionnaire!

Category A - INTROVERSION/EXTRAVERSION

• Page 1 - ACTIVITY
  
• Page 2 - SOCIABILITY
  
• Page 3 - RISK-TAKING
  
• Page 4 - IMPULSIVENESS
  
• Page 5 - EXPRESSIVENESS
  
• Page 6 - REFLECTIVENESS
  
• Page 7 - RESPONSIBILITY

Category B - EMOTIONAL STABILITY

• Page 8 - SELF-ESTEEM
  
• Page 9 - HAPPINESS
  
• Page 10 - ANXIETY
  
• Page 11 - OBSESSIVENESS
  
• Page 12 - INDEPENDENCE
  
• Page 13 - HYPOCHONDRIA
  
• Page 14 - GUILT

Category C - MASTERY/SYMPATHY

• Page 15 - AGGRESSIVENESS
  
• Page 16 - ASSERTIVENESS
  
• Page 17 - AMBITION
  
• Page 18 - MANIPULATION
  
• Page 19 - SENSATION-SEEKING
  
• Page 20 - DOGMATISM
  
• Page 21 - MASCULINITY/FEMININITY

Category D - SEXUALITY

• Page 22 - SEXUAL LIBIDO
  
• Page 23 - SEXUAL SATISFACTION
  
• Page 24 - SEXUAL PERMISSIVENESS
  
• Page 25 - SEXUAL STEREOTYPE

Category E - SOCIAL & POLITICAL ATTITUDES

• Page 26 - SOCIAL PERMISSIVENESS
  
• Page 27 - RACISM
  
• Page 28 - BELIEF
  
• Page 29 - SOCIALISM/CAPITALISM
  
• Page 30 - LIBERTARIANISM
  
• Page 31 - REACTIONISM
  
• Page 32 - PACIFISM

Download a PDF of the Questionnaire
The PDF is a manual-scoring version of the questionnaire, ideal for reading offline and printing, and it is available on our Free eBook Downloads page.

The basis of the questionnaire is the long-established Eysenck Personality Questionnaire, used worldwide by the psychiatric profession. The idea is to test against cultural stereotypes, which is the "norm", the way a statistical majority of people actually are in Western society. The "norm" is not necessarily an enlightened point of view, it simply represents what a typical person's responses are likely to be. It doesn't mean the normal responses are 'right' or 'correct'. High or low positions on a scale may represent neurosis if your answers represent compulsions, obsessions or inhibitions, and you may want to become more free in that area. But if they represent conscious choices in the way you play the game of life, then of course, that's fine! A person relatively free from cultural conditioning in an area of life is unlikely to be the same as the 'normal person' who tends to be riddled with such conditioning.

Normally answers are not available to the person doing the test. I have made them accessible so one can be aware of the test's shortcomings, and also hopefully in the process become more aware of one's own fixed or limited beliefs, as well as fears and neuroses - as well as how one is likely to compare to the average guy down the street.

The idea is to expose fixed and conditioned ways of thinking, feeling and behaving, not to indicate that any particular way is right or better than another. The questions can expose ways in which you are a stereotyped product of your culture, more liberated than the norm or more neurotic than the norm, or just different - the interpretation is up to you, the more honest the better!

When you have completed scoring the questionnaire, a picture will emerge from the high or low scoring traits - it is up to you to make what you will of this picture, perhaps learn some lessons, decide to do something about what you find, or be happy you are the way you are. Some notes on overall interpretation are included below. I hope you enjoy participating in the questionnaire and that you will explore these issues further in Transforming the Mind, maybe go on to resolve some of them with New Life Course, then hopefully move on to The Insight Project for a complete resolution of all the factors that inhibit personal freedom and conscious awareness.

Interpretation of overall results
It may be that you score higher than the norm in some extravert traits and at the same time higher in some introvert traits. That's to be expected; many people are ambivert - in some circumstances extraverted and in others introverted, depending on their needs and corresponding fears, and other factors like conditioning. But one moves into the type of person that may be described as "extravert" or "introvert" if that way of being becomes dominant. At what level does one consider it to be dominant?

Extraversion is dominant if there are high levels of activity, sociability, risk-taking, expressiveness, and can become neurotically so if there are also high levels of impulsiveness, lack of reflection and lack of responsibility, or if risk-taking is very high.

Introversion is dominant if there are high levels of responsibility, high reflection, low impulsiveness, low risk-taking, and can become problematic if there are low levels of activity, sociability and expressiveness, or if impulsivess and risk-taking are very low.

I offer here a brief outline of how to interpret the scores in response to a reader's question:
I'm currently at college studying Sports Science. As I have a real interest in psychology, I am doing a research project on personality and playing positions in netball teams. In order to gather my relevant information from each netball player I shall be using Eysenck's Personality Questionnaire. I have one main problem, I do not know how to interpret the results.

These are the qualities of people who are extraverted but a bit on the unstable side:
Active, optimistic, impulsive, changeable, excitable
And more unstable: aggressive, restless, touchy

These are the qualities of people who are extraverted but also more stable than normal:
Sociable, outgoing, talkative, responsive, easygoing, lively, carefree, leader

These are the qualities of people who are introverted but a bit on the unstable side:
Quiet, unsociable, reserved, pessimistic, sober, rigid, anxious, moody

These are the qualities of people who are introverted but also more stable than usual:
Passive, careful, thoughtful, peaceful, controlled, reliable, even-tempered, calm

Extraversion tends to go with: more active, sociable, risk-taking, impulsive, expressive, tending to lack reflection and tending towards irresponsibility.

Emotional instability tends to go with: less self-esteem, unhappiness, anxiety, obsessiveness, less self-directed (autonomy), may be hypochondriac, tendency to dwell on guilt and so on.

These dimensions are dealt with on the EPI (Eysenck Personality Inventory). The EPQ (Eysenck Personality Questionnaire) includes the dimension or temperament of 'tough-mindedness' (somewhat independent of the two previous temperaments of extraversion and emotional stability) which has these qualities:
Aggressiveness, assertiveness, achievement orientation, manipulation, sensation-seeking, dogmatism, masculinity.

Of course people don't fit into little pigeon holes quite like that. In some areas of life, a person may be shy and introverted (where fears and past bad experiences cause barriers) and in other areas the person may be more confident and outgoing (where maybe the person has done better in the past, perhaps connected with talents in that area or support). Or a person might be quite stable normally but in some circumstances his or her 'buttons' easily get pushed and the person may get uncharacteristically distressed or angry.

My online book 'Transforming the Mind' talks about this in terms of 'reversal theory' which you may be interested in - but that would complicate the issue too much for your purposes here. Just bear in mind that in the context of playing netball a person may have a rather different personality than in other areas of her life.

I marked the qualities in bold above that seem to me most desirable for a participant in a netball team. In general, emotional stability is the biggest plus as all the emotionally unstable qualities are not much help in the team. Extraverted and moderately unstable is OK nevertheless.

Regarding positions, as you say, the forward positions probably are best filled with the more extravert persons (who will take risks and look for chances) and the defensive positions with the more introvert (who will stay calm and take the defensive duties seriously) but also reasonably tough-minded.

A person is better to edge on the side of tough-minded, but not too much as that temperament edges into psychoticism (you don't want psychos on your team!) - but you don't want weak-willed people either, when the going gets difficult. (There's more information on our EPQ page.)