Self-evaluation matrix

Are you more of a practical or effusive person? Is it more important for you to stick to your principles or to listen to your feelings? It is usually easy to answer spontaneously, but if you take the time to think about it, you will generally come to the conclusion that the only real answer is ‘it depends’. Because in some situations you might be goal oriented and pragmatic, in others dreamy or distracted. Which brings us to one of the most frequent criticisms of such methods: their binary nature. You have to be either introverted or extroverted, thinking or feeling. There are no grey areas and therefore no ambivalence.

By getting older our personality types are evolving, and self-evaluation tests provide good orientation in our behavior and psychology. Some of the following questions and citations I found useful in writing self-reflection matrix, guided by Mikael Kroger’s and Roman Tschappeler, in The Test Book.

Modern personality tests reveal an important shift in testing: aptitude tests or psychological assessments were prescribed by the powers that be. Nowadays you could say that the question ‘Who am I?’ has been replaced with the self-optimizing question ‘Am I good enough?’ At their core, most tests are about inferring future performance, risks, intentions and possibilities from the past (career, medical history, buying behavior), from the present (abilities and personality) and from comparisons with others (norm group, target group, circle of friends). It is ‘prognostic validity’, i.e. promise of an alleged predictability of events, which makes evaluation more attractive.

In modern psychology, the ‘Big Five’ model is the standard means of categorising personality types (Big Five Test). This test is also criticized for asking too little with too many questions. However, at least its five personality types are scaled- you are both one thing and another, not one or the other.

In the light of modern psychology, the four temperaments and their hybrid forms have became obsolete. And yet they form the historic foundation for the way in which we define human characteristics. The choleric, whose fire flares up and abates without providing warmth; the sanguine one, who is vivacious but jumps erratically from one thing to another; the melancholic, who is a burden to themself, and the phlegmatic, who is a burden to others.

How am I behaving in my worst mood?

Your temperament comes to the fore when you feel like you have been treated unfairly. Your character is revealed in the way you treat people from whom you have nothing to gain.

What sport do I like to do?

A phenomenon that has received a lot of attention in Norway is that top executives prefer individual sporting disciplines. In particular, they like to ‘relax’ outside work doing extreme sports in which they alone are responsible for achieving their goal. On the while, these executives are also high performers at work and surpass their objectives, but their social skills are weak.

How emotionally intelligent I am?

Research of the social psychologists John D. Mayer and Peter Salovey findings by journalist Daniell Goleman in his work about Emotional Intelligence were categorized into four domains:

1. Self awareness. Do you know why you feel happy or unhappy?
2. Self management. Are you able to control your emotions?
3. Empathy. Can you recognize how others are feeling?
4. Relationship management. Are you able to influence other people’s emotions and moods?

‘If one only wished to be happy, this could be easily accomplished; but we wish to be happier than other people, and this is always difficult, for we believe others to be happier than they are.’ Montesquieu

Am I self-confident?

The foundation of these domains is interlinked with the self-confidence. With higher self-confidence people don’t make less wrong decisions than the others, but they suffer less for them. They, too, feel anger, sorrow, and despair, but without losing their self-respect.

The Core Self-Evaulation Scale (CSES) developed by Timothy A. Judge and his team in 2003 was designed to assess not only our self-esteem, but Rhee other areas too. First, our self-efficiency, I.e. how well we perform across a variety of situations. Secondly, our neuroticism, i.e. how badly we react to stress and are susceptible to feelings of helplessness. Thirdly, our locus of control, i.e. how strongly we believe that we are in charge of our own destiny.

How do I handle money?

When psychologists research the subject of risk, their favorite barometer is money. Nothing says more about someone’s predisposition to risk than their willingness to gamble with their own income. You could just ask yourself how willing you are to take risks. However, from the point of behavioral psychology, it is more interesting to ask how ‘risk tolerant’ you are. That is, how well you can deal with the prospect of making a loss. Because when it comes to decision-making, losing has a greater psychological impact than winning. There are four different aspects of risk tolerance:

1. Risk ability or risk acceptance. Which loss can you cope with?
2. Willingness to take a risk. Which loss are you willing to take?
3. Necesssity of risk. What level of risk do you need to take in order to achieve your objectives?
4. Ability to bear a risk. How long can you, and how long do you want to, bear the burden of a particular risk?

The Swiss economist Petra Jorg Perrin carried out a meta study in which she analyzed various factors that influence risk tolerance. Unsurprisingly, the extent of a person’s financial assets played a decisive role: someone with a lot of money is more willing to take risks than someone who can’t afford to lose much without losing everything. Men are bigger risk-takers than woman. The study also found that the more educated people are, the more willing they are to take risks. Marriage, children and mortgage reduce risk tolerance, presumably because you are also responsible for others and not just yourself.

How do I decide?

In the 1990s the Swiss sociologist Peter Gross coined the term Multioptionsgesellschaft, or multi-option society. His theory is that we have so many choices that they become burden to us. Distinguishing between two types of a decision maker: the ‘maximiser’ and the ‘satisfyer’. The maximiser asks himself: is this the best choice? The satisfyer asks: is this the right choice? Objectively, maximizers are better at making decisions than satisfiers, but are no less satisfied with the result. The more effort you make to reach the right decision, the higher your expectations, the harder they are to fulfill.

Can I motivate myself?

Research makes a distinction between three different self-leadership strategies. People with strong self-leadership are able to influence development of these skills in others. A good questions for self-evaluation are — how do you normally reward yourself when you have finished something? And how do you punish yourself if you fail?

1. Behavior. This refers to the capacity to change one’s own behavior. That doesn’t sound like much but it is the core of self-leadership. Let’s look at an example. Say that you find it hard to meet deadlines. How do you deal with this? Do you avoid deadlines? Or do you simply accept the fact that you finish projects at the last minute — and procrastinate each time? Or do you try and change your habits?
2. Rewarding yourself. This refers to the capacity to create situations in which you are motivated. When we enjoy what we do, we feel more competent, more in control, and work feels more meaningful in general. But not all tasks are enjoyable. Therefore, are you able to enhance the attractive aspects of a task, or to block out its negative ones?
3. Thinking patterns. This refers to the capacity to reshape your own thinking patterns to make them more positive. A good example of this is ‘self-talk’. We all imagine important situations that might go wrong. In our heads, we seem to be pessimists. Good self-leadership means: are you capable of turning destructive, discouraging internal dialogues into positive ones?

Is it love?

There is no reliable test to find out whether what we feel is love. ‘The imperative that couples should keep up the tension in their relationship is one of the most absurd imperatives of our times’— Connie Palmen about nature of love. There are four clever questions that a Norwegian priest from Bergen asks couples before they get married.

1. Do I like myself in the company of my partner?
2. Can I imagine my partner as the parent of my children?
3. Do we both prefer to sleep with the window open or closed?
4. Would I take myself in my arms if I woke up next to myself?

Relationships are routines, routines are habits, and habits are the fingerprints of character. ‘Love is never the one who is loved but in the one who loves. We cannot find the love missing in ourselves in others,’ writes German social psychologist Erich Fromm.