Mind Media Review

Over the years, we have found that most of the people who visit our websites love taking mental tests. Whether it be IQ, personality or a measure of something a bit more exotic, you love it.

So as part of our website, we have the largest collection of links to online tests and other collections of links to tests available anywhere!

In writing this version of the newsletter, which every month tells you five sites worth a visit, I've decided to give you a special treat and recommend five mental test websites. Well my mind got a workout taking these tests but -- you know -- I feel like a know myself a bit more now. I think that's why you like talking mental tests and if you do -- here's some winners:

1. The Locus of Control Test measures what psychologists call your "attributional style." More simply put, this means whether you consider your own failures and successes are the results of your own actions and behavior or caused by external factors which you cannot control. Where you place your "locus of control", within yourself or outside yourself plays an important part in determining your motivation, self-esteem, risk-taking and even the outcome of what you undertake.

The Locus of Control Test found here takes about 15 to 20 minutes and is computer scored. You can learn a lot about this important yet not popularly known personality measure on this well done test.

Over the years, we have found that most of the people who visit our websites love taking mental tests. Whether it be IQ, personality or a measure of something a bit more exotic, you love it is what we have found from all of the letters we get from you.

Brain Builder Version 3.0 is a proven software tool for building brain power. This is a member of the group of programs called "neurobic" software. The term playfully comparing this brain exercise program to aerobic exercise but with the "neuro" short for neuron.

2. You know your IQ but did you know that your EQ can be as important or even more important than your IQ for success in life. EQ is short for Emotional Intelligence.

Here is a short bit of information from the website: "Having great intellectual abilities may make you a superb fiscal analyst or legal scholar, but a highly developed emotional intelligence will make you a candidate for CEO or a brilliant trial lawyer. Empathy and other qualities of the heart make it more likely that your marriage will thrive. Lack of those abilities explains why people of high IQ can be such disastrous pilots of their personal lives."

"An analysis of the personality traits that accompany high IQ in men who also lack these emotional competencies portrays, well, the stereotypical nerd: critical and condescending, inhibited and uncomfortable with sensuality, emotionally bland. By contrast, men with the traits that mark emotional intelligence are poised and outgoing, committed to people and causes, sympathetic and caring, with a rich but appropriate emotional life -- they're comfortable with themselves, others, and the social universe they live in."

Utne Reader's EQ Test by psychologist Daniel Goleman Ph.D., who wrote a book about Emotional Intelligence is well done, scores itself and is worth a visit.

3. The Lucher Color Test is one of the most popular personality tests ever devised. It is deceptively simple yet very accurate because it does not rely on verbal or symbolic feedback but simply on your preference for colors.

This is the short form of the Lucher Test but gives excellent results which are more detailed than I've seen elsewhere. For those of you who have been asking us to bring back the Lucher Profile software we sold in the early days of our catalog, now you can get a lot of what was there online for free!

4. Here is a Myers- Briggs-like personality test which gives you a more detailed analysis than most others online including most versions of the Keirsey Temperment Sorter. Called the Inner Self Test, one or two of the questions give away that it is authored in the UK.

The test presents you with one question at a time. I backed up on one and found that the next time, it presented me a different question. It had replace the order of the questions which indicates that the test is doing a good job. You will notice that many of the tests online resemble paper and pencil tests with all the questions on the same page. This one is clearly different.

The test goes further than rating you on the four Jungian scales (thinking:feeling, intuition:sensation, extroversion:introversion, judgement:perception) by assigning you a label. The test assigned designation Treasurer because it believed I was a good person to trust money with. Tell that to my wife.

5. What do you do when you've finished taking the four tests above?

The answer: take the weirdness test! It will definitely make you smile and you can also find out the level of your "weirdness purity."

For more great MENTAL TESTS see the Mind Media Guide to Personality Tests