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Personality Tests, Traits, and Empathy Measures

Personality and trait tools describe patterns in behavior, preference, empathy, social response, and self-perception. They are best used for self-understanding and discussion, not for labeling people or making clinical, legal, employment, or school decisions.

Choosing a tool

The tools here use several different approaches. Big Five describes broad trait dimensions; the Type Indicator combines preferences into a type; EQ and Toronto explore empathy. MEQ-30 concerns a particular experience rather than an enduring trait.

Specialist checklists such as PCL-22 use a very different assessment context from everyday self-report. Read the administration and audience information before choosing, especially if you are considering answering about someone else.

Personality descriptions are most useful when connected to examples across situations. A preference at work may look different at home. These tools offer vocabulary for reflection and discussion; comparing their numerical totals does not produce a ranking of character or ability.

Compare tools in this category

Use administration method, audience, and purpose to choose an appropriate educational or screening resource.

Buss Perry Aggression Questionnaire (BPAQ)

Administration
Self-report
Items
29
Intended audience
Adults and older adolescents reflecting on physical aggression, verbal aggression, anger, and hostility patterns
Primary purpose
The Buss–Perry questionnaire separates aggression into physical aggression, verbal aggression, anger and hostility.

Big 5 Personality Test (FFM)

Administration
Self-report
Items
50
Intended audience
Adults and older adolescents exploring relatively stable patterns of openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and emotional stability
Primary purpose
This 50-question personality inventory describes five broad dimensions: openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism.

Empathy Quotient (EQ)

Administration
Self-report
Items
60
Intended audience
Adults exploring self-reported empathy, social understanding, and responses to other people's feelings
Primary purpose
The Empathy Quotient asks about understanding other people and responding to their experiences.

Hare Psychopathy Checklist (Original) (PCL-22)

Administration
Clinician-rated
Items
22
Intended audience
Trained forensic or clinical professionals evaluating adults with interview data, collateral records, and observed behavior; not for self-assessment
Primary purpose
This 22-item checklist concerns interpersonal, emotional and behavioural features discussed in the early psychopathy-checklist literature.

Personality Type Indicator (PTI)

Administration
Self-report
Items
70
Intended audience
Adults and older adolescents exploring preferences in attention, information processing, decision-making, and daily-life structure
Primary purpose
This 70-question inventory explores preferences through paired choices about social energy, information, decisions and daily structure.

Revised Mystical Experience Questionnaire (MEQ-30)

Administration
Self-report
Items
30
Intended audience
Adults aged 18 or above and research participants reflecting on one specific past altered-state or mystical-type experience
Primary purpose
MEQ-30 asks about the qualities of a particular experience, including unity, positive mood, altered feelings of time or space and difficulty putting the experience into words.

Toronto Empathy Questionnaire (TEQ)

Administration
Self-report
Items
16
Intended audience
Adults and research participants exploring affective empathy and their typical emotional responses to other people
Primary purpose
The Toronto Empathy Questionnaire focuses on emotional responses to other people.

Available personality and trait tools