The profile that let’s you see yourself as others do

Psychologists have come up with some tests for checking out the suitability of online partners who you may be talking to across thousands of miles without ever meeting.

The tests are free and are pointers towards your partner’s personality and compatibility with you – and if you are really brave, you can try the marriage test as well.

Good advice is to hold back on the marriage test for a while, because you don’t want to frighten the guy or girl off too quickly!

The compatibility test is based on famous psychologist’s Karl Jung’s work in ‘typology’, which is a model of personality traits.

Before you take the test, remember it’s not infallible and is just one of several indicators you should base any decisions that you might make about your relationship.

The test is just a list of questions that requires simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answers. The questions are designed to disclose information about you. Don’t worry about what you reveal because the test is anonymous and you don’t have to show anyone the results.

Click this link to take the test.

The test identifies four facets of your personality:

* Extraversion - introversion – whether you are outgoing or ingoing
* Sensing and intuition – believing information you receive direct from the outside world or from your own imagination

* Thinking and feeling – do you make decisions by logic or emotion

* Judging and perceiving – judging means you are organised and perceiving means you act on the spur of the moment

From the score under each heading, psychologists have modelled 16 character types and researched how these traits affect your life, romances and career.

As a bonus, the test results also gives a list of famous people who have similar personality traits to you.

A good reason to take the test is before you write your online profile. If your profile is not picking up a lot of hits and you want to know why, then taking this test is a good way of seeing yourself as others do.

You can then take the information of your personality type and rewrite a more accurate profile.

Just how much does your profile photo say about you?

The answer is a lot more than you think - a picture can say a thousand words and help you make an instant connection with a life partner, so you should choose your profile image wisely.

The experience is common for people meeting through online dating sites – often with the decision of whether someone is liked or disliked made in just a few seconds.

First impressions do count for a lot, according to a new study in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, that claims we can learn a lot about each other’s personality just from appearance alone.

Almost 700 million people have online profiles

A staggering 700 million people worldwide spend time social networking online and most have profiles on several sites with their photographs.

The study found that putting the wrong picture online could give people a completely inaccurate impression about you.

Researchers for the study looked at full body photographs of 123 people that they did not know or had ever seen before. The photos either had the subject in a controlled pose with a neutral facial expression or a natural pose.

The researchers were then asked to rate each person on 10 personality traits by just looking at the photos.

The ratings were combined to work out how well the observers were able to guess the traits.

Even people standing in the controlled pose had their major personality traits accurately predicted, including extroversion, self-esteem, and even how religious they were.

Pick up a partner’s vibe from their photo

For people in a natural pose, the judgments were accurate for nine of the 10 personality traits, like extroversion, agreeability, conscientiousness, emotional stability, openness, likability, self-esteem, loneliness, religion and political orientation.

The message is that however hard you try to be someone you are not, people soon pick up on your real personality and whether they like you or not.

Translating this to your online profile pictures, depending on how the site controls the size of images you can pose, don’t zoom in too close and if possible, show a full body photo.

This gives potential partners a better opportunity to judge your personality rather than flicking on to the next profile. Likewise, before setting on a meeting, ask your friend to send you a full body picture to see what sort of vibe you get.

…And always post a profile picture or you are likely to be ignored, as observers have nothing to make a judgment against.