Work in progress

A personality test that says what it doesn't know

Sixty-five questions. Nine dimensions that run from ordinary personality into clinical territory. Every biological claim graded by how good the evidence actually is.

Why it exists

It started as a response to the Braverman test, a 315-question questionnaire from a 2005 book that sorts people into dopamine, acetylcholine, GABA and serotonin "natures". That test has no published evidence of reliability or validity, and two of its four types don't correspond to any measurable trait.

The interesting part isn't that it's wrong. It's that the underlying intuition — that real physical differences shape how people behave — is right, and there is good research on it. It just doesn't say what that test says.

What you get

• Where you sit on nine dimensions, relative to your own other scores — not to a population, because we don't have the data to make that comparison honestly.
• What each one costs you and what it's good for. Both, always.
• The research linking each dimension to a biological system, labelled strong, moderate, preliminary, or none.
• A separate reading of how much your life is currently being affected, which changes what the rest of it means.

What you don't get

• A percentile. We haven't earned one yet.
• A diagnosis, or a disorder name attached to you.
• A claim about your neurotransmitter levels. No questionnaire can measure those.
• Supplement recommendations.