Personality Types

Unsurprisingly, psychologists have tried to work out ways of categorizing people into personality types. The most popular method as far as I know is the Myers-Briggs type indicator. This method is based on whether people are:

• Introvert or Extravert
  
• Sensing or iNtuition
  
• Thinking or Feeling
  
• Judging or Perceiving

You can read up more about these factors on wikipedia. By using them people can be divided into 16 different personality types. You can read more about the types here or here.

Because I think it's fun, here are a couple of personality tests *grin*
The one which is definitely the most fun is a Harry Potter test ;) It assigns you to a personality type, but also to a character in the Harry Potter series which belongs to that particular personality type. This might seem like a strange thing to do, but you'll find psychologists actually write entire works about personality types in literature. In fact I rather think it's probably much easier to assign a fictional character to a personality type than it is a real person.
You can check out all the possible personalities with Harry Potter characters assigned to them here.

You can also check out the Jung Typology Test and a a test which is supposed to be for computer programmers but I think you'll be able to do it anyway :) (the cool thing about these two is that they tell you how many of your answers pointed towards which traits).

The other Myers-Briggs personality test I found is the BBC one. It uses slightly different terms, but it's basically the same thing. It's "planner or spontaneous" instead of "judging or perceiving", "heads or hearts" instead of "thinking or feeling", "facts or ideas" instead of "sensing or intuition".

Finally if you want a totally different kind of test, then check out this Big Five Personality Traits Test. This is based on a different sort of idea - rather than assign people to a personality type, they are evaluated on 5 different traits:

• Openness to Experience
  
• Conscientiousness
  
• Extraversion
  
• Agreeableness
  
• Neuroticism

By the way, according to wikipedia the Myers-Briggs tests have a very low reliability rate, about 50% of people get different results upon retaking it lol
But despite that I'm rather curious what you got on those tests - maybe you could post in the comments? :)
I'm also curious if you think my results suit me ;)

On the Big 5 test I got three traits average, Extraversion low and Openness high. My exact results are here if you want to see them (though I actually think it's the least interesting of the tests ;-P).

On the Myers-Briggs tests I mostly got INTJ (which is Snape ;) ), though I also once got INFJ (Dumbledore) on the HP test and ISTJ (Hermione) on the BBC test. On both of these though when I changed some answers that I thought I could have answered in more than one way I came up as INTJ. I think the ISTJ description totally doesn't suit me though ;-P ISTJ's are supposed to be very orderly with the way they put things, excellent with time management and very systematical - which I think are not really traits that many people would associate with me ;) On the other hand a personality that I didn't get, but I think some could argue for me is INTP (Voldemort). I think I'm probably an INTJ though, which is a bit interesting in that it's apparently extremely uncommon (0.8% in the USA) amongst women ;-P

In terms of numbers this is what I got on the programmer's test:
E=4 Extraversion
I=7 Introversion
S=2 Sensing
N=18 iNtuition
T=11 Thinking
F=8 Feeling
J=16 Judging
P=3 Perceiving

And this on the Jung test:
Strength of the preferences %
89% Introverted
88% Intuitive
38% Thinking
33% Judging

On a random note, I think the part of this FAQ about INTJs in which they tell you how to deal with INTJs is hilarious ;)

Freaky deaths

The BBC somehow managed to report three deaths that rather freaked me out in very short succession of each other.

Here's the story of Mariesa Weber, who was missing and then finally found dead by her family wedged upside down behind a bookcase in her room.

This is about a baby murdered in a microwave.

And this is about a boy who was eaten alive by a herd of pigs.

At first I read these stories in the way I would read a fictional horror story (I even once saw a film in which one of the characters was eaten alive by pigs). But then after a moment of reading and thinking about it I totally freak out - it's real! People really do die like that!

Random health issues

For some reason when I browse the BBC news site I end up reading a lot about developments in medicine (while I don't usually think much about this while I'm doing it, admitting to this now makes me feel as if I'm behaving like some old, grumbly lady - who else would be reading up on these things? ;-P).

Anyway, here's two articles that caught my eye (who knows, maybe there are more people like me who are grumbly, old ladies at heart and are reading my blog?).
The first is about smoking. According to statistics if you're a heavy smoker, cutting down does little to help your health, you just have to completely stop for it to have a significant impact.
Now while I do not smoke myself, the other article is one that veeeery much applies to me. It's about sitting in front of computers and the impact it has on your back. For some reason everyone always tells you to sit up straight - well apparently that's bullshit. Maybe I should bully my parents into getting myself a different chair for the computer - one which would allow my back a different angle ;-P

Prokofiev diaries published

Because I think my blog has become too serious and political, I've decided I must put in a few totally silly and senseless posts. And because I think all my readers will be utterly fascinated with this news, I thought it was worth putting in my blog ;-P
So, there you go, Sergei Prokofiev's diaries have been published.
And while I do own about 3 CDs of his music and think I might enjoy the read (if I ever get hold of the book which is doubtful), the true reason for posting this is because I thought it was a wonderful excuse to link to one of my favourite ever figure skating programs.

So this is Marina Anissina & Gwendal Peizerat skating the Free Dance that won the bronze medal at the 1998 Olympics to Sergei Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet:

I think they are one of the most unique ice dancers we've had in the history of the sport. They introduced so many things into ice dance that we, the fans enjoy to this day - an image based on unmistakable hairstyles, theatrical expression that made the ISU amend the rulebook with rules that ice dancers should aim to perform dancey routines rather than theatrical ones and lifts in which it was Marina who lifted Gwendal rather than the other way round (it was in fact in this program that it was done for the first time ever in skating).