Exploring Professional Personality Assessment Instruments and OnlineTests

You can't surf the internet without stumbling across opportunities to take a variety of online personality tests and quizzes that promise to tell you more about yourself.

Do you want to know why you're so unhappy in that job your friends and family say you should be thrilled to have? There are tests all over the web that will promise to give you a clue. Wondering why you and your significant other are always bickering over trivial things? There are a gazillion tests out there that will offer up theories on that, too.

Online personality tests are as common these days as spam ads for Viagra, weight loss products and breast implants. And why not? Through the ages, people have been preoccupied with understanding themselves and those around them. The internet has just taken our efforts to do so to a whole new level.

You can find serious versions of online personality tests on sites dedicated to careers and job searching, relationships, parenting and education. Online dating sites use personality assessments in their matchmaking attempts.

Looking for something a little less serious? Surf the web, and you'll find entire sites dedicated to offering unique, interesting, entertaining and silly personality tests. Bloggers and online diary-keepers who are suffering writer's block make a habit of taking online tests and posting the results to their pages.

Bored at work? Surf a bit and you're sure to find a site where you and your co-workers can figure out what breed you'd be if you were dogs. Once you know your canine breed, you can go on to find out what Lord of the Rings character is your long-lost twin, and your Star Wars Doppelganger.

In fact, a combination of Samwise the Hobbit, Luke Skywalker and an Irish setter are actually writing this article.

I'm an admitted online personality test junkie, and have whiled away many rainy days or nights when sleep wouldn't come entertaining myself with internet pop psychology.