πŸ’‘ self-actualization πŸ’‘


Like any feedback-addicted millennial* I love online personality quizzes etc. Here’s one that claims to be less bullshit:

Now Scott Barry Kaufman, a psychologist at Barnard College, Columbia University, believes it is time to revive the concept [of self-actualization], and link it with contemporary psychological theory. … To this end, he’s used modern statistical methods to create a test of self-actualisation or, more specifically, of the 10 characteristics exhibited by self-actualised people, and it was recently published in the Journal of Humanistic Psychology.

Christian Jarrett, Aeon

You can take the test here. Here are the traits that they measure for (maybe take a look at these after taking the test):

My strengths were Efficient perception of reality, Authenticity, and Purpose, and lowest scores on Peak experience, Continued freshness of appreciation, and Good moral intuition, which tracks very closely to my self-perception. My only quibble with the grading is that I don’t think that having a fast/quick moral sense is the same thing as having a good moral sense. I’d rather come to the right answer than the fast answer.

*My pet theory about this is that it comes from a marriage of the eternal human desire to fit in and not stick out in the herd with the brand-new dogma that data driven insights are more true than our own lived insights.


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