It’s fun to learn what type of person you are. 

Personality tests and other pop cultural psychological categorizations like learning styles are marketed as tools meant to unlock a greater understanding of how we move through the world and what kind of person we are. 

Where these categories tend to fall flat is their assertion that there are only a few different types of people or learning. 

Can something as nuanced and indefinable as personality or information synthesis truly be boiled down to such strict, black-and-white categories? What can these categorizations miss? Is there truly a finite number of types of people and learners? 

Maybe we’re missing the point. 

We can be everything and nothing all at once. These types are important but not in the way we think. Few people fall into any category exactly, and the areas of overlap between categories can actually be more indicative than we realize. 

Do these supposedly formulaic tests even hold up to scientific standards? 

Not really — at least not the tests you’re likely thinking of. The logic behind personality tests lends well to the popular learning style tests. 

I’m sure most, if not all of us, have had to take a learning styles quiz at some point in our education. By answering a brief questionnaire, we can figure out whether we process information best visually, auditorily or kinesthetically. 

Visual learners are best off watching and replicating concepts, auditory learners learn best when verbally instructed or explained to, and kinesthetic learners are best in hands-on environments, right? 

I recently took one of these tests and was disappointed to find out that I was a visual learner. Not that there’s anything wrong with visual learning, but I realized that none of the study suggestions listed were anything I’d had luck with or felt inclined to try in the future. 

It was disappointing to feel unaccounted for by one of the most popularized methods of understanding the learning process. I felt like a big piece of the puzzle was missing. 

We’ve been fed the lie that knowing our learning style will maximize our learning potential and outcomes. This is not the case. 

Nathan Kuncel, a Marvin D. Dunnette Distinguished Professor of psychology at the University of Minnesota, said knowing one’s learning style doesn’t correspond to better understanding.

 “Learning styles is a bit of a pretty epic myth in education,” Kuncel said. “There’s a lot of people who are making money off of offering learning style curricula and programs and so on. But the research database, the scientific evidence, just doesn’t support it actually mattering”

Certain personality categorization methods don’t tell the full story either. 

Take, for instance, the stereotypical dichotomy between personality types A and B. Type As are rigid, strict and detail-oriented. Type Bs are chaotic, messy and more likely to fly by the seat of their pants. 

Of course, not everyone aligns perfectly within these two categories, and they’re so broad that they don’t tell us much beyond the surface. 

Someone could generally be labeled as type B because they keep a messy room or car, but excel at detail-oriented work in their professional life. Personality isn’t always fixed — it can change based on environment, stage of life and a ton of other factors. 

Jazper Simonson, a second-year student at the University, said he believes this dichotomy isn’t quite representative of most people.

“I’d say most people are in the middle because extremes are odd,”  Simonson said. “I feel like it’s sort of limiting” 

It’s a safe assumption that there are more than two types of people in the world. 

Kuncel said while differentiating between these personality types can be a start, there are better methods to get a more accurate picture of one’s personality. Type A and Type B personalities aren’t the best way to capture or measure personality as there are more updated and accurate tests out there. 

“There’s research that shows that certain personality characteristics measured in youth are associated with a whole host of kind of life outcomes,” Kuncel said. “They predict whether or not people wind up divorced. They’re associated with people dying young that they make mistakes and make choices that unfortunately get themselves killed.”

Kuncel said there are scientifically-backed methods of assessing personality. The Big Five Aspects Scale, developed in part by Colin DeYoung, a professor at the University, is a prominent example. 

“That measures five broad categories with two subcategories under those five broad categories,” Kuncel said. “That’s been associated with life outcomes, neurological I mean, it’s a great way of thinking about and measuring how we kind of differ and go about our lives differently from each other.”

We will never truly see ourselves from the perspective of another person, and a part of separating ourselves from the people we’re surrounded by is identifying what makes us who we are or what differentiates us from other people.

Maybe our curiosities about ourselves and how we measure up to the general population cause some to seek out exact, formulated tests to examine exactly what makes them who they are. 

It’s a lot easier to digest a short questionnaire situated on a binary between two personality extremes than it is to delve deeper into what truly makes us tick. 

Personality tests can be amazing tools for self-discovery when used in the correct ways. The popularization of inaccurate or misleading personality-driven testing is giving personality tests a bad rap. 

These tests shouldn’t limit our potential for learning or hinder self-discovery when they are intended to do the opposite.