10 online tests that are actually worth doing

SELF-DISCOVERY can be found in a lot of places: religion, meditation, a solo trek through the Andes.

Luckily, it can also be found on the internet. There are almost as many quizzes, tests and questionnaires online devoted to deciphering the Complex Wonder that is You online as there are kitten gifs and ads for Horny Wives In Your Area, meaning understanding yourself is only a few clicks — and occasionally a modest subscription fee — away.

But which are worthwhile, and which are a waste of time? As ever, Esquire is on hand to sort the scams from the savants, paving the way for true self-enlightenment. Jump in.

How good your emotional intelligence is

This one’s based on the work of psychologist Daniel Goleman, whose 1995 book Emotional Intelligence was a bestseller and brought the term into the mainstream. The idea that how well you empathise with and understand other people, and how well you understand and express your own emotions, is at least as important as your raw brain power was a particularly prescient one. This test sets out hypothetical situations and gives you four ways of reacting to it, and based on your answers gives you a score out of 200. Don’t worry if it’s a little below par: one of Goleman’s conclusions was that emotional intelligence is a skill which can be taught and learned, so just get studying.

What your politics really are

“A man who is not a liberal at 16 has no heart. A man who is not a conservative at 60 has no head.”

So said Benjamin Disraeli / Winston Churchill / your grumpy Granddad (no one can quite decide who). The point is, for most people, political convictions are something that change over time.

By testing how much you agree with various statements – some relatively straight forward (‘Possessing marijuana for personal use should not be a criminal offence’), some a little more challenging (‘People with serious inheritable disabilities should not be allowed to reproduce’) — the Political Compass plots where you on a scale of Stalin to Ghandi. Check back every few years to see if your own inevitable lurch to the right is on course.

What personality type you are

The Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator is probably the most famous – and strongly contested – personality test in the world. It uses four indexes – Introverted or Extrovered (I/E), Intuitive or Sensing (N/S), Thinking or Feeling (T/F), and Perceiving or Judging (P/J) – to fit you into one of sixteen possible personalities. This well-designed version of the test is the best online. Esquire is a ‘Protagonist’, apparently. Could be worse.

How you’d do as a suspect in a police procedural drama

You know the Rorschach test: those inscrutable ink blots are one of the many handy narrative tools that gets rolled out in detective shows when a writer wants a shortcut into the criminal’s warped mindset. Its reliability as a means of psychoanalysis are very hotly disputed these days, but working out whether you’d get sussed out by some egghead who’d keep winking at a two-way mirror is at least mildly diverting.

How smart you are

Esquire spent a migraine-inducing couple of hours trying out the plethora of free online tests that claim to tell you your IQ, and weren’t terribly convinced. Then we grudgingly handed over $4.99 to try the official test used by the International High IQ Society – who sound about as much fun as the Real Ale Society, but hey – and realised this was legit. You have 30 minutes to answer 40 questions, which involves identifying the correct missing pattern in a sequence. At the end you not only get your score but a series of helpful charts explaining where you come on the line between ‘mentally deficient’ and ‘gifted’. And no, we’re not sharing.

Who you find attractive

This admittedly pointless test is nevertheless fun as it involves everyone’s favourite pastime: looking at strangers and deciding whether they’re hot or not. The result purports to tell you which race, age and physical attributes you find most attractive, as if you don’t know that already.

How much of a psychopath you really are

If you’ve read Jon Ronson’s The Psychopath Test, you’ll know that psychopaths aren’t the rare birds you imagine they are. They’re not the hacking and slashing Patrick Bateman types you’re thinking of – they walk among us. In fact, they’re everywhere. You might be one. Of course, the whole point of the book is that Robert D Hare’s standardised 20-part psychopath test is a limited and reductive way of diagnosing a serious mental illness. But does it make for a good way of wiling away a slow Friday afternoon? You betcha.

What your sexuality is

In 1948, sexologist Alfred Kinsey (later depicted by a decidedly non-Taken like Liam Neeson in 2004 film Kinsey) devised a simple test to see where you fall on the spectrum between hetero and homosexuality, claiming: “Males do not represent two discrete populations, heterosexual and homosexual. The world is not to be divided into sheep and goats… The living world is a continuum in each and every one of its aspects.” See where you land on this rich tapestry.

Exactly how ‘chaotic good’ you really are

A few years ago, that matrix with lawful, neutral and chaotic from left to right and good, neutral and evil from top to bottom started going around, most often with characters from The Office or other meme stars jammed into its nine squares. But obviously, you’re not that bothered about Pam being lawful good. You know that. What you want to know is which bit you fit into. Fortunately, this quiz digs into the matrix’s roots in Dungeons and Dragons to give you a proper fix.

What you should do with your life

Like IQ tests, there is no shortage of online quizzes designed to tell you what career you’d be best suited to. Sokanu is one of the best, using a sophisticated algorithm and encompassing a broad range of possible outcomes. Looks nice, too. Most of the features require signing up and paying, but you can get some suggestions based on your work-based preferences for free. See ours above, and note neither ‘journalist’ nor ‘online quiz researcher’ gets a look in.

This article originally appeared on Esquire UK.