Alongside validated psychometric instruments, there is a wide range of popular and “lightweight” tests and quizzes, aimed at self-exploration, entertainment, education, coaching, or providing a simple language for describing personal traits and experiences.
Here you can find examples of such tests, mostly published in self-help books by psychologists or other qualified authors.
Two large groups of tests are covered in separate sections: typologies and relationships.
For more formal approaches, you may also want to explore several scientifically developed areas of the Guide, including Personality, Intelligence, Emotional Intelligence, Dark Traits, Love, Attachment, Burnout, Career Guidance and many others.
Projective tests are based on the idea that individuals may project aspects of their personality, emotions, or inner conflicts onto ambiguous stimuli. These well-known tests originated within psychoanalysis and were initially developed as professional assessment tools. However, contemporary research generally does not support their use as reliable assessment instruments.
The Szondi Test presents a series of portraits and asks participants to select the most and least appealing faces. These choices are interpreted within a psychoanalytic framework, linking preferences to unconscious drives and personality tendencies.
The Luscher Color Test and its extended version, the Full Luscher Color Test are based on color preferences. By choosing and ranking colors, the test provides an interpretation of current emotional state, stress, and psychological needs.
The Color Mirror, developed by the German psychoanalyst H. Frieling around the same period as the Luscher Test, uses combinations of 23 colors and their symbolic meanings to generate a narrative-style interpretation of personality and emotional patterns.
The Multiple Choice Rorschach Test is a simplified adaptation of the classic inkblot method. Instead of open-ended responses, it offers structured choices while retaining the idea of interpreting ambiguous visual stimuli.
There are also purely entertainment-oriented projective tests that follow a similar logic in a simplified and more playful form.
The Secrets of the Cube invites you to imagine a cube, a ladder, a horse, and other elements in a desert landscape. The way you describe these objects is then interpreted as reflecting aspects of personality, relationships, and inner life.
The This Person Is You is a test by Christopher Markert that uses simple drawings and visual choices to produce a symbolic description of a person's current emotional state and situational tendencies, rather than stable personality traits.
The Your Sexual Appetite is a simple projective graphical test based on the interpretation of visual preferences. By choosing images, the test offers a symbolic description of sexual tendencies, preferences, and relational dynamics. (18+)
These self-help tools explore childhood emotional wounds, unmet needs, neglect, traumatic experiences, internalized messages, and long-term relational or emotional patterns that may be connected with early life experience.
The Lise Bourbeau Inner-Wounds Test is based on the concept of “core emotional wounds,” such as rejection, abandonment, humiliation, betrayal, or injustice, that are interpreted as shaping behavior and relationships.
The Wounded Child Questionnaire presented by John Bradshaw in Homecoming is a self-help checklist for exploring unresolved childhood wounds, unmet emotional needs, shame, fear, abandonment, and patterns that may continue to affect adult life.
The Emotional Neglect Questionnaire by Jonice Web is a self-help checklist for exploring possible signs of childhood emotional neglect, including unmet emotional needs, difficulty recognizing feelings, self-blame, emptiness, and discomfort with dependency or support.
The Drego Injunction Scale, originating from transactional analysis, assesses internalized “injunctions” – implicit messages formed in early childhood. These patterns are interpreted as influencing later emotional and behavioral tendencies.
The Post-Traumatic Stress Index by Patrick Carnes explores how past trauma may affect current functioning through behavioral patterns.
These tools focus on everyday thinking patterns, dysfunctional attitudes, cognitive mistakes that may influence mood and behavior.
The Dysfunctional Attitude Scale is a self-help adaptation by David Burns of CBT-based dysfunctional belief assessment (DAS). It evaluates maladaptive attitudes related to approval, perfectionism, achievement, dependency, and self-worth.
The Mistake-Maker's Quiz is a self-help test, grounded in CBT and presented in the book The 10 Dumbest Mistakes Smart People Make. It assesses common cognitive errors and maladaptive thinking patterns associated with everyday decision-making and emotional difficulties.
The Lifetraps Questionnaire, presented in Jeffrey Young and Janet Klosko's Reinventing Your Life. It is a self-help schema-focused tool for identifying eleven recurring maladaptive life patterns or “lifetraps.”
The Abandonment Beliefs Self-Assessment by Michelle Skin, based on Jeffrey Young schema-therapy, assesses the expectation that important relationships are unstable and that loved ones will eventually leave, reject, or become emotionally unavailable.
The Core Beliefs Inventory is a CBT-based self-help instrument, assessing limiting core beliefs and recurring assumptions about oneself, other people, and life, based on Matthew McKay and Patrick Fanning's book Prisoners of Belief.
The Constructive Thinking Inventory (CTI-30) is a popular version of Seymour Epstein's clinical instrument, focused on everyday patterns of constructive and destructive thinking.
The Inner Dragons Questionnaire, based on Jose Stevens's Transforming Your Dragons, is a self-help tool for identifying seven “inner dragons” or fear patterns: arrogance, self-deprecation, impatience, martyrdom, self-destruction, greed, and stubbornness.
The Are You Highly Sensitive? quiz by Elaine Aron explores the characteristics of high sensory-processing sensitivity and helps identify traits associated with the highly sensitive person (HSP).
The Are You a Sensation Seeker? quiz by Elaine Aron explores sensation seeking in relation to the HSP concept.
The How Sensitive Are You? quiz by Ilse Sand explores emotional and sensory sensitivity based on Elaine Aron's HSP concept.
The Are You an Empath? quiz by Judith Orloff explores the similar to HSP, but distinct concept of Empaths.
The How Introverted or Extroverted Are You? quiz by Ilse Sand explores where a person falls on the introversion-extraversion spectrum.
The Self-Assessment for Introverts quiz by Marti Olsen Laney explores where a person (or child) falls on the introversion-extraversion spectrum.
The Are You an Introvert, Extrovert, or Ambivert? quiz by Susan Cain explores where a person falls on the introversion-extraversion spectrum.
The Bittersweet Quiz assesses the bittersweet personality style as the tendency to experience joy and sadness simultaneously.
The Sensory Patterns Questionnaire by Winnie Dunn explores individual patterns of responding to sensory experiences and identifies four sensory types.
The Bio-Time Quiz by Michael Breus identifies four chronotypes – Bear, Lion, Dolphin, and Wolf – based on patterns of biological rhythms.
The Sorensen Self-Esteem Test assesses low self-esteem through self-critical beliefs, insecurity, negative self-evaluation.
The Values in Action: Inventory of Strengths (VIA-IS) by Martin Seligman assesses 24 character strengths grouped under six core virtues.
The Have You Got Charisma? test by P. Sellers is an informal magazine-style self-check for reflecting on perceived charisma.
The Emotional Sociability Assessment, presented by Friedman and Martin in The Longevity Project, is a self-help scale for reflecting on emotional sociability, interpersonal warmth, expressiveness, and emotional engagement with other people.
The Grit Scale by Angela Duckworth assesses so called Grit trait: consistency of interests and perseverance of effort.
The Courage Quotient by R. Biswas-Diener measures everyday courage, based on the ability to manage fear and the willingness to take action.
The RQ Test by K. Reivich and A. Shatte explores personal patterns that support or undermine resilience in dealing with adversity and setbacks.
The Assertiveness Inventory by Alberti and Emmons explores a person's assertive and nonassertive behavior.
The Surrender Test by Judith Orloff explores the ability to let go of excessive control, accept uncertainty and change, and balance surrender with appropriate assertiveness.
The Clance Impostor Phenomenon Scale (CIPS) assesses feelings of intellectual fraudulence, difficulty internalizing achievements, and attribution of success to external factors such as luck or error.
The Are You a Soft Target for Manipulators? quiz by Harriet B. Braiker assesses a person's vulnerability to manipulators.
The Are You Hampered by Shame? quiz by Ilse Sand explores the impact of shame on thoughts, emotions, relationships, and everyday behavior.
The Comprehensive Coping Inventory (CCI-55) is a CBT-based self-help tool by Matthew McKay, providing a broad assessment of coping strategies, linking cognitive and behavioral regulation processes.
The Test Your Own Optimism (ASQ, CASQ) by Martin Seligman assesses explanatory style – the habitual way people explain the causes of good and bad events. These patterns reflect a person's tendency toward an optimistic or pessimistic outlook.
The Defensive Pessimism Questionnaire (DPQ) by Julie K. Norem examines defensive pessimism as a cognitive strategy.
The Procrastination Style Quiz by Linda Sapadin explores six procrastination styles and the tendencies that contribute to delaying tasks.
The Am I a Perfectionist? quiz by Monica Ramirez Basco helps identify perfectionistic tendencies.
The Which Type of Perfectionist Are You? quiz by Katherine Schafler maps a person's perfectionist profile across five types.
The Narcissism Test by Craig Malkin explores narcissistic traits based on the spectrum model of narcissism, ranging from echoism to healthy narcissism and pathological narcissism.
The Is Your Partner a Narcissist? and Do You Have a Narcissistic Parent? checklists by Karyl McBride explore common signs of narcissistic behavior in intimate partners and parents.
The Dangerous Personalities Checklists by Joe Navarro explore warning signs associated with four potentially harmful personality patterns: Narcissistic, Emotionally Unstable, Paranoid, and Predator.
The Emotional Vampire Checklists by Albert J. Bernstein explore behavior patterns associated with five “emotional vampire” types: Antisocial, Histrionic, Narcissistic, Obsessive-Compulsive, and Paranoid.
The Anger Inventory by Les Carter measures how great is the need to confront one's anger.
The Anger Assessment by Signe Dayhoff explores how readily and intensely a person experiences anger and internal aggressive reactions.
The Emotional Style Assessment by Richard Davidson assesses a person's emotional style, defined by six core dimensions: Resilience, Outlook, Social Intuition, Self-Awareness, Sensitivity to Context, and Attention.
The Emotional Awareness Questionnaire, developed by Claude Steiner within the tradition of transactional analysis, assesses recognition, differentiation, and expression of emotions in interpersonal contexts.
The Emotional Maturity Questionnaire (EMQ), presented by Mark Atkinson, is a checklist for reflecting on emotional maturity, self-control, responsibility, empathy, and everyday emotional behavior.
The Professional Life Stress Scale by David Fontana provides a broad self-assessment of stress related to professional life.
The Stress Audit of Boston Medical Center assess perceived strain and stress-related experiences across different life domains.
The My Relationship with Work Test by Maslach & Leiter explores work-related factors that contribute to the development of burnout syndrome.
The Burns Depression Checklist is a symptom checklist introduced in David Burns's popular books on cognitive therapy.
The Type E Stress inventory by Harriet Braiker is designed to help a woman take stock of her ways of thinking about stress, as well as her typical stress habits and patterns.