A friend emailed me a link yesterday to Personal DNA:

PersonalDNA is quite possibly the most accurate personality test available. Developed by a team of PhD psychologists from New York University, PersonalDNA differs from other personality tests in its use of fun and intuitive graphical responses to questions, rather than yes/no or whole number numerical ratings. The innovative response mechanisms allow for nuanced, and thus more honest, answers; honest answers yield a more accurate personality assessment.

PersonalDNA.com’s personality test yields one of 256 possible personality types — exponentially higher than the most well known personality test that categorizes individuals into one of 16 personality types. PersonalDNA measures 13 traits, including openness, extroversion, masculinity, femininity, authoritarianism (adherence to social order and obedience), spontaneity, locus of control (agency), attention to style, and aesthetics/functionality.

So naturally I took the test. Ten pages of questions with easy-to-understand slider bars and movable blobs on magic quadrant-type charts. Very cool interface (I wonder if it’s Ajax-based).

Anyway, I got my results which say I’m a “Benevolent Creator.” Those results also suggest some areas to consider if I want to be different.

I also got my personal DNA map:

If you hover your mouse over the little coloured rectangles, it will give you a quick overview of various elements of my personal DNA.

I think you have to take any such self-analysis tool with a little pinch of salt. This is no scientific analysis. Still, I’m pretty impressed with how close it is to how I broadly see myself. But what’s that an indicator of? Just my own perceptions really.

The full report is here if you’re interested in the details. And, if you really want to, you can take your own test and then psych me!

The company behind Personal DNA is ATTAP Technologies who also does Riffs (“your social recommender”) and LifeIO (“you power – coming soon”). Not looked at those two yet.