FAQ

What is the YOUniverse Self-Assessment?

This test is based on the Five-Factor Method of personality (a.k.a. “Big 5”) assessment which is the most scientifically backed and the best at predicting future behaviors. The test was developed through psychologists starting with ~18,000 words that could describe personality traits and whittling them down to five. These final five traits best capture the majority of core behaviors people exhibit.

Each personality trait is further broken down into six facets, which compartmentalize the unique aspects of each trait (e.g. for the “Extraversion” trait, two facets are “Gregariousness” and “Excitement-Seeking”). While there is some debate about how many unique facets there truly are, our application details the ones most commonly used in personality psychology.

This method tests you on five personality traits and lets you know how you “score” with respect to each trait. For example, the higher someone scores in a certain trait, the more likely they are to exhibit that trait’s related behaviors, and thus the more frequently we are likely to see it.

There are many free tests out there. What is different about this one?

Ability to compare to multiple people, AND relationship-specific commentary

First and foremost, our test allows you to compare yourself to an UNLIMITED number of your connections. Most other tests either: don’t provide comparisons, only support comparing to a romantic partner, or charge extra to compare.

The greatest value of our application is that it provides you with insights into the superpowers and vulnerabilities specific to how the personalities of you and a chosen connection interact.

Improved construction and balance of questions

Most personality tests out there ask a set of questions that is very likely to lead to less accurate and less precise results.

We have put significant effort into maximizing the validity of our test, through replacing questions that were:

• Weakly related to a given personality trait with others more strongly related to it,
• Likely to influence you towards answering one way with others less likely to bias you, and
• Biased through lack of review outside of academia.

In this way, your answers provide a significantly better reflection of your behavioral tendencies.

Greater level of detail in results

Our test will allow you to learn about yourself in a more nuanced manner beyond being put into one box or another. Specifically, most popular tests define people as having either “a” or “b” trait, whereas the Five-Factor Method allows you to see yourself along a scale as compared to others.

This test also provides six sub-components (facets) within each of the five traits to add even more color to your results. For example, some people may have similar results for the Extraversion trait but express their extraversion in very different ways. The results for the six _facets _of Extraversion helps to explain these differences.

How accurate are my results?

YOUniverse vs Other Self-Assessments

Compared to most self-assessments out there (MBTI, DISC, etc.), the type our platform is based on (Five-Factor Model) is undoubtedly the most scientifically backed. In addition, the self-assessment we use was proven through a series of studies as able to account for the factors identified by other tests. So, not only does our test have significantly more scientific rigor supporting its development and use, it also encapsulates the value that other types of tests claim they provide.

Also, these same core personality traits emerged when deriving them in other cultural contexts and languages. This means that what is being measured in our test are core human conditions, unlikely to be biased by Western cultural context.

Self-Assessments in General

Many people ask the reasonable question of, “how accurate can a self-assessment be since someone is giving answers about their own behavior and they may want to think they have more desirable traits than they actually do in reality?” There are a few answers to this question, but the short version is that self-assessments provide accurate reflections of your true behaviors.

The long-winded answer is that asking people to answer questions about themselves has been proven to be quite reliable and accurate. Specifically, tests have been done where people answer questions about their own behaviors, and their friends and spouses report on their behaviors as well. The tests showed that the closer the person was to the individual being scored, the more similar their scores were to the individual’s self-assessment scores. This means that the closer someone is to knowing you as well as you know yourself, the more similar your answers get which indicates self-assessments are great at reflecting your true behavior patterns.

Finally, they are as accurate as you make them. Take your time completing the test, thinking of examples and asking yourself if the opposite of the statement is true. This forces you to evaluate how common it is for you to behave in the stated way or if it doesn’t apply to you at all. The more examples you think of before answering, the more accurate your results will be.

Where can I go to ask more questions?

Currently, we are answering questions in an open chat room which can be found on Discord here. As we grow, we plan to transition away from this towards supporting a community forum within the application. But for now, please drop your questions and feedback in the appropriate channel of the chat linked above.

What can I do with my test results?

Gain more deep understanding of yourself

We all know ourselves fairly well, but oftentimes we aren’t aware of the implications of our tendencies. Your results segment your overall personality into bite size chunks so you can discover the deepest drivers of your behavior and understand yourself at your core. To make meaningful progress in any aspect of our lives, it is essential to know where we are starting. Having this information

Improve yourself

Knowing your core tendencies allows you to build habits that work for you, as opposed to building habits that work for someone else’s core tendencies. For example, if your goal is to exercise consistently, if you are high in Openness, running on the treadmill everyday will likely get boring for you, making you more likely to quit. However, if you introduced variety into your routine, either running different routes outside or changing the type of exercise you do every so often, you are much more likely to maintain the habit and reap the benefits.

Improve your relationships

Still need to fill in

How can I change some aspect of my personality?

To many people, this is the most important question to answer. Unfortunately it is also the most difficult question to answer briefly in a way that translates into action.

There are two primary ways to make significant and lasting changes to your personality.

1. One is to experience a life-changing event that leads you to having a huge change in one of your core perspectives about the world and how you live in it. This approach tends to be undesirable (to say the least) as it is often the result of trauma. It is also not something people tend to seek out or plan around, making this more of an accidental route to personality change.
2. The other is through long-term practice. Specifically, choosing some aspect of your personality that you want to change and consistently practicing your desired behaviors over the course of months to years until it becomes natural. While this sounds straightforward, the specifics of the approach can vary significantly depending on the individual. This is a feature that we look forward to integrating with our app in the future, but until then, you can find some helpful resources here.

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Why would I pay for this?

1. While the free test provides high level information which is useful, the most actionable insights are found at the facet level and when comparing yourself to those you are closest to.
2. Actionable insight into your strong behaviors that you should leverage more, and weaker ones you can bolster, IN CONTEXT SPECIFIC TO YOUR RELATIONSHIPS. Unmatched level of detail at an unmatched price.

Self assessment that allows you to reflect on your core behaviors and thinking patterns.