What Is the Jordan Peterson Personality Test?
The "Jordan Peterson personality test" people search for is Understand Myself, a paid, 100-question assessment built on the Big Five Aspect Scales. Here's what it measures, what it costs, and how it compares to a free Big Five test.
Jordan Peterson Personality Test: What Is Understand Myself?
Understand Myself is an online personality assessment sold through understandmyself.com, the site Jordan Peterson runs alongside his other self-development products. It's not a Jungian typology test and it isn't affiliated with MBTI-style typing in any way, despite Peterson's public profile overlapping with those topics in interviews and lectures.
The instrument underneath it is the Big Five Aspect Scales (BFAS), an academic personality measure. Peterson co-developed the BFAS as a researcher years before turning it into a commercial product, so the test's psychometric foundation predates the branded assessment you can buy today.
Like our own Big Five test, Understand Myself scores the five broad traits: Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism. What sets it apart is a second layer of detail underneath each trait.
Who Created the Jordan Peterson Personality Test?
Jordan B. Peterson is a clinical psychologist and, at the time the underlying research was published, a professor at the University of Toronto. Understand Myself grew out of his own academic personality research rather than starting as a consumer product.
The scoring model behind it, the Big Five Aspect Scales, was developed with two co-authors: Colin DeYoung and Lena Quilty. The three published the framework in 2007 in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, under the title "Between Facets and Domains: 10 Aspects of the Big Five."
That academic paper came first. The commercial Understand Myself assessment came later, packaging the same scoring model into a paid, consumer-facing report with percentile comparisons and written interpretations.
Peterson later became widely known for his books and public commentary well outside personality psychology, which is part of why so many people now search for "the Jordan Peterson personality test" without necessarily knowing its real name is Understand Myself, or that it's built on a specific, peer-reviewed model.
How the Jordan Peterson Personality Test Works: 100 Questions, 10 Aspects
Understand Myself has 100 questions and takes about 15 minutes to complete. You answer each item on a rating scale describing how well a statement fits you, the same self-report format used by most Big Five instruments, including our own.
The distinctive part isn't the question format, it's the scoring structure underneath. Each of the five broad traits splits into two narrower "aspects," for 10 aspects total. Openness splits into Openness and Intellect. Conscientiousness splits into Industriousness and Orderliness. Extraversion splits into Enthusiasm and Assertiveness. Agreeableness splits into Compassion and Politeness. Neuroticism splits into Withdrawal and Volatility.
That two-aspect split is the entire point of the BFAS research: DeYoung, Quilty, and Peterson argued that each Big Five trait actually contains two correlated but distinguishable sub-traits, and that scoring both separately gives a sharper picture than a single broad-trait number alone.
Aspects sit at a different resolution than the even more numerous facet-level breakdowns used in some academic Big Five instruments. Aspects are a middle layer, more detail than a single broad trait, less granular than a full facet inventory, which is part of why a 100-question test can still cover all of them without ballooning in length.
Practically, this means Understand Myself reports 15 separate scores per person: 5 broad traits plus their 10 component aspects. A standard Big Five test, ours included, stops at the 5 broad-trait level.
What You Get in the Understand Myself Report
After finishing the 100 items, Understand Myself generates a percentile-based report rather than a single type label. Your scores are benchmarked against a comparison sample of over 10,000 people who have taken the same assessment.
For each of the 5 broad traits and 10 aspects, the report shows where you fall relative to that sample, expressed as a percentile rather than a raw number. A higher percentile on a trait means you scored above a larger share of the comparison group.
Alongside the percentiles, the report includes written interpretations explaining what a high or low score on each trait and aspect tends to mean in practice, drawing on the same research base as the original BFAS paper.
Because the report breaks traits into aspects, it reads less like a single personality snapshot and more like a checklist of 15 individual data points, each with its own explanation.
Percentile framing also changes how you're meant to read a score compared to a raw number. A raw item average tells you almost nothing on its own, you need to know the scale's range and midpoint to interpret it. A percentile already answers the practical question, how does this compare to other people, without extra math on your end.
The written interpretations lean on that same comparative framing rather than declaring a trait "good" or "bad" in isolation. A low score on an aspect is described in terms of its typical tradeoffs relative to the comparison sample, not as a deficiency to correct.
Cost of the Jordan Peterson Personality Test
Understand Myself is not free. A single assessment voucher costs $9.95, purchased directly through understandmyself.com.
Volume pricing exists for people who want to give the test to others, a 5-voucher bundle costs $44.95, and a 10-voucher bundle costs $84.95, working out to a lower per-person price than buying vouchers one at a time.
There's no ongoing subscription. You pay once per voucher, complete the 100 questions, and get your report immediately online, no waiting period or scheduled delivery.
If cost is the deciding factor, our own Big Five test measures the same 5 broad traits at no charge, though without the 10-aspect breakdown that Understand Myself adds on top.
The Science Behind the Big Five Aspect Scales
The Big Five Aspect Scales aren't a Peterson-only invention layered on top of existing research, they're a peer-reviewed extension of the Big Five model itself, published in a mainstream academic psychology journal in 2007.
The core claim of that 2007 paper is structural: within each broad Big Five trait, item-level responses cluster into two correlated but separable factors, not one uniform trait. DeYoung, Quilty, and Peterson tested this using factor analysis across large samples, the same statistical approach used to validate the five-factor model in the first place.
This puts the BFAS in a different category from many commercial personality products, which repackage a founder's own theory without independent peer review. The Big Five Aspect Scales, by contrast, sit inside the same academic tradition as the IPIP-NEO instrument behind our own Big Five test, both are extensions of five-factor research rather than standalone frameworks competing against it.
That shared lineage is also why the two tests produce comparable broad-trait results. Someone who scores high on Conscientiousness on our test would be expected to score high on the Conscientiousness-related aspects (Industriousness and Orderliness) on Understand Myself, since both trace back to the same underlying five-factor research.
Since its 2007 publication, the two-aspect structure has been picked up by other researchers building their own aspect-level and facet-level Big Five instruments, treated as a stable finding worth building on rather than a one-off result specific to Peterson's lab.
Who the Jordan Peterson Personality Test Is For
Understand Myself fits people who already have some familiarity with Big Five terminology and want more resolution than a single trait score gives. If you've taken a standard Big Five test before and want to know why two people who share an Openness score can still feel different day to day, the aspect-level breakdown is built for exactly that question.
It's a less natural starting point as a first personality test. The report leans on percentile comparisons across 15 separate scores plus written interpretation, which assumes some baseline comfort reading a multi-part result rather than a single headline label. Our own Big Five test, or a shorter typology quiz, is an easier first step for someone brand new to trait-based personality testing.
It also isn't built for team or workplace use the way some commercial assessments are marketed. Understand Myself is sold directly to individuals for personal reflection, not licensed as an HR or hiring tool with employer-facing group reporting.
If your interest is specifically career-related, pairing a trait-based result like this one with an interest-based instrument, such as our own career test, generally tells you more than either alone. Traits describe how you tend to work; interests describe what kind of work you'd enjoy, and the two questions don't answer each other.
Common Misconceptions About the Jordan Peterson Personality Test
The biggest misconception is the name itself. There's no test officially called "the Jordan Peterson personality test," that's shorthand people use in search queries. The actual product is called Understand Myself, and its scoring model, the BFAS, has its own separate name and academic history.
A second common mix-up: assuming it's related to MBTI-style typing or Jungian typology because of Peterson's public commentary on those topics elsewhere. It isn't. Understand Myself is entirely Big Five-based, it doesn't sort you into a fixed type or letter code at all.
A third misconception is that the test is free. Search interest often assumes a public figure's namesake test will have a free version somewhere, but Understand Myself has never been offered for free, only as a paid, per-voucher purchase.
Finally, some people expect the report to function as therapy or clinical guidance. It doesn't. Understand Myself is a self-report personality inventory, the same category as our own tests, intended for self-reflection, not a substitute for professional evaluation.
A fifth misconception worth flagging: an aspect-level score isn't automatically "more accurate" than a broad-trait score, it's more granular. Granularity and accuracy are different properties, a 15-score report can still be affected by the same self-report biases (mood on the day you take it, how honestly you rate yourself) as a 5-score one.
Jordan Peterson Personality Test vs. Our Free Big Five Test
Both tests measure the same underlying model, so the choice mostly comes down to depth versus cost. Understand Myself adds a 10-aspect breakdown and a 10,000-person comparison sample, for $9.95. Our Big Five test covers the same 5 broad traits at no cost.
Neither test replaces the other, they're built on compatible but distinct instruments within the same five-factor research tradition, not competing claims about what personality is. If you want the deeper aspect-level detail and don't mind paying, Understand Myself delivers that. If you want a fast, free read on the same 5 broad traits, ours is built for that.
A practical way to decide: take the free version first. If your results leave you wanting more resolution on a specific trait, that's the signal Understand Myself's aspect layer is designed to answer. Taking the paid version without a specific question in mind mostly just adds ten more numbers to interpret.
You can also read more on how the Big Five model works generally, or how personality traits connect to career fit once you have your results, whichever test you take. Both routes lead back to the same five-factor foundation, just at a different level of detail.
FAQ
Is Jordan Peterson's Understand Myself test free?
No. Understand Myself costs $9.95 per assessment voucher, with bundle pricing for multiple vouchers. Our own Big Five test measures the same five broad traits for free.
What personality model is it based on?
It's based on the Big Five Aspect Scales, developed by Colin DeYoung, Lena Quilty, and Jordan Peterson in 2007, which split each of the five broad Big Five traits into two narrower aspects.
How is it different from a standard Big Five test?
A standard Big Five test scores you on 5 broad traits. Understand Myself scores those same 5 traits plus the 10 narrower aspects underneath them, for a more granular breakdown.
How long does the test take?
Understand Myself has 100 questions and takes about 15 minutes to complete.