There are a lot of personality tests out there, and we humans are endlessly fascinated by them. There are the ones popular in pop-psychology like Myers-Briggs and the Enneagram. There are highly clinical and academic models like the HEXACO and the MMPI. One of the most widely used and respected personality tests in academic and scientific circles is the Big Five, or OCEAN model. It scores people based on five traits—Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism. It doesn’t group people into concrete buckets with snappy names, like “The Innovator,” but your collective scores in the five areas it measured come together to tell a story about you. But some people’s results don’t fit neatly into a story. It’s rare, but fewer than 10% of people have extremely unusual results that don’t fit within the usual personality maps. Scientific research uncovers “personality mutants” A 2018 study published in Frontiers in Psychology, conducted by researchers at the University of Tartu and the University of Warwick, coined the, admittedly provocative term after testing over 4,000 participants from the Czech Republic and Estonia. Each person completed a personality inventory and was also scored based on someone who knew them well in order to get the most accurate and realistic data. What the researchers realized was that a handful of personality traits, while all scored individually, are typically related: “When people describe their own or somebody else’s personality, many of the descriptors typically go hand-in-hand with each other. For instance, people who are often angry also experience many other negative emotions. Similarly, individuals who have vivid imaginations are regularly more open to trying new food and entertaining new ideas and values. And those who are motivated to achieve are usually also self-disciplined and methodical.” Most people have personality profiles that make logical sense. People who are highly Extroverted are usually Open to trying new things. People who are highly Neurotic often tend to be less Extroverted. But the researchers also discovered some fascinating outliers in their data. Fewer than one out of every 10 participants had a personality trait map that just… didn’t fit. For the purposes of their study, the researchers coined the term “personality mutants.” The 3 types of personality outliers Not only did about 10% of all people not fit neatly into the usual pattern of personality traits, the data showed that there were three specific personality combos that accounted for most of the “mutants.” They had multiple traits that didn’t seem to go naturally together, or had only one of a pair of traits that are almost always found in the same person. The clusters, sadly, did not receive a cool, grabby nickname like “mutants.” The first cluster, called H1, saw people who scored high in “Straightforwardness” also score low in “Trust.” These are straight-shooters who are usually frank and sincere, but don’t trust that others are returning the favor. These traits don’t usually go together in this combination. Most people who are highly honest and frank project that worldview onto others and trust easily. But some are more skeptical, and use their acute understanding of what honesty sounds like to easily sniff out people who are being deceptive. The H2 cluster features people who are highly Conscientious—that is, disciplined, organized, and responsible—and score high in Aesthetics, meaning they place a lot of value in their style and visual tastes. However, this cluster of people scores low in other areas of Openness. They are stubborn and extremely resistant to trying new things or changing their mind. Interestingly, this cluster also featured people who were highly Straightforward but distrustful, just like cluster H1. The third cluster, H3, is a fascinating one: These folks score low on Fantasy, Aesthetics, and Emotional Sensitivity. But they’re highly open to trying new things, exploring new ideas, and challenging conventional beliefs; even their own. They’re a cerebral bunch. Not big on imagination, art, or style. Deep thinkers who are more head than heart. It’s an unusual and rare combination. Even more fascinatingly, this group showed a different trust pattern than the other two: H3s were highly Trusting of others but less Straightforward themselves. The “mutant” personalities discovered in the research are not inherently good or bad. They simply exist as outliers, and the researchers cite about one in 3,000 people being born with an extra finger as a parallel. It’s the normal elements, just configured a little differently. Human personality is hard to classify It goes to show that even the most scientifically validated personality tests can’t perfectly capture the full spectrum of human individuality. Any test that claims all people fit into one of a handful of rigid “types” is missing the forest for the trees. The researchers put it best and beautifully: “Personality facets are more like Lego, which can be assembled into different configurations. In addition to the customary assembly of elements, several infrequent compositions of the same elements can emerge.” If you’ve ever felt like you weren’t quite like everyone else, like the personality tests could never quite peg you perfectly, well, you were probably right. The post 1 in 10 people have such unusual personality trait combinations that researchers call them ‘mutants’ appeared first on Upworthy.