Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
This website claims to be able to draw a psychological profile of you from your blog. So what did it come up with for me?
The responsible and hardworking type. They are especially attuned to the details of life and are careful about getting the facts right. Conservative by nature they are often reluctant to take any risks whatsoever.The Duty Fulfillers are happy to be let alone and to be able to work int heir own pace. They know what they have to do and how to do it.
Not even close. Responsible and hardworking? Me? I may be the laziest human being on the planet; I don't know for sure because I'm too lazy to find out. Attuned to the details? Intellectually, yes. In other ways? Absolutely not. Reluctant to take any risks? I'm a poker player, for crying out loud. This is about as accurate as an astrological chart.
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This looks like it's based on some kind of word analysis that's supposed to yield a Myers-Briggs Type. It's bullshit. I've got a stable profile that I've known for years. I ran my site and it got the wrong result. Not surprising.
People love the Myers-Briggs because it can yield these little fortune cookie narratives. If I had to hazard a wild guess what the actual test might produce for you, I'd go with ENTJ. Here's what Typealyzer says:
Posted by: Dr X | November 22, 2008 9:54 AM
I'm sure that I am much lazier than you.
Posted by: Daniel Kim | November 22, 2008 11:24 AM
Ed - I ran two of your blog posts through that site the day your wrote about global warming, both came out with entirely different results which also differed from your finding.
Posted by: Michael Heath | November 22, 2008 11:50 AM
This is funny and completely wrong. Of course, for my blog I'm trying to write in a friendly, open way, which I suppose might be interpreted as extrovertedness by some random computer program. But I am an introvert through and through. Silly algorithm.
Posted by: Sarah | November 22, 2008 11:59 AM
When I was in high school I did a class project involving astrology. As part of it, I did two horoscopes for myself--one each for European/Middle Eastern and Chinese astrology.
Interestingly, they both turned out to be significantly more accurate than this. Doesn't speak well for Typealyzer, does it?
Maybe they could use that as advertizing: "Less accurate than astrology."
Posted by: ShadowWalkyr | November 22, 2008 12:31 PM
I'm the laziest of all! I'm too lazy even to finish writing one-paragraph blog comm
Posted by: Scott Simmons | November 22, 2008 12:36 PM
Ed, while I realize that your online persona may differ dramatically from your real-life personalty, it is hard to reconcile "lazy" with "4-6 posts a day even when sick or traveling, most of them with something more readable than 'hey, read this link.'"
None of which means this blogalyzer is anything but crap, of course.
Posted by: BobApril | November 22, 2008 2:51 PM
Well it said that my blog was written by a "Thinker", so who am I to argue?
Posted by: Joe Max | November 22, 2008 3:44 PM
Wow.
This reminds of the old Playboy cartoon--I only read so I could look at the boobs--where a couple are in bed, smoking a cigarette after having sex. The woman is waxing rhapsodic while the guy looks bored. She says,:
"I knew you were a Scorpio and that we were going to come back here and screw. And we did, too; even though you're a Leo."
Ed; do not let them pick your lotto numbers.
Posted by: democommie | November 22, 2008 3:45 PM
Apparently my blog shows that I'm playful and active.
Posted by: JStein | November 22, 2008 4:17 PM
I came out as a "Mechanic". Apparently I think and am "independent". Well, I'm an independent thinker, all right, but according to this analysis, I tend to have little "emotion" or "feeling", yet I do. Incidentally, I've taken Myers-Briggs type tests on several occasions, and each time I took it, I ended up in a somewhat different category. Because of this, I don't have much confidence in the efficacy of this type of test.
Anne G
Posted by: Anne Gilbert | November 22, 2008 5:51 PM
It scored me as INTP, which is close.
Posted by: Father Shaggy | November 22, 2008 7:12 PM
I entered my blog, and it told me it was in Thai and therefore couldn't figure it out.
Posted by: Skemono | November 22, 2008 7:15 PM
I plugged in two addresses - one for my old political blog, one for my current travel blog. The first sent back ISTP, the second sent back ESTP. As memory serves, whenever I've taken conventional Myers-Briggs tests, it usually sends back either INTP or ISTP.
Conclusion? It's crap, but not any more so than any other personality test.
Posted by: D Johnston | November 22, 2008 8:09 PM
Conclusion? It's crap, but not any more so than any other personality test.
Clearly, this device is worthless, but as for personality testing, in general, you don't know what the fuck your talking about.
Posted by: Dr X | November 22, 2008 8:41 PM
I had to do it. I put kkk.com through the thing, and nearly busted myself laughing:
ISFP - The Artists
The gentle and compassionate type. They are especially attuned their inner values and what other people need. They are not friends of many words and tend to take the worries of the world on their shoulders. They tend to follow the path of least resistance and have to look out not to be taken advantage of.
They often prefer working quietly, behind the scene as a part of a team. They tend to value their friends and family above what they do for a living.
They really do care! LOL
Posted by: Dana Hunter | November 23, 2008 4:25 AM
Clearly, this device is worthless, but as for personality testing, in general, you don't know what the fuck your talking about.
Thanks for resorting to an insult after a comment not directed at you personally.
I won't attempt to instruct you on the history of instruments of personality analysis, as you are a mighty psychologist and I am but a political science major (the exact same major as Isabel Myers, by the way). I will say that I have always understood personality measurements to be more a curiosity within the psychological and sociological communities, as they are difficult to test scientifically and are prone to confirmation bias and self-deception.
And I hope you don't plan on going to the mat for Myers-Briggs. If you really have a stable MBTI code, then you're in the minority. Many people get different results in subsequent tests, even after just a few weeks. Even CPP, the agency that administers the official MBTI, acknowledges in its literature that the test won't always be accurate and that it might need some adjusting ("If you feel the characteristics above do not fit you, the person who administered the MBTI can help you identify a better-fitting type."). That becomes problematic when it's used by companies to screen out employees, which, I might add, is what it was originally designed to do. Certainly no reputable analyst would tailor his approach to a patient on the basis of typology (be it Jungian, Big Five or any of the other myriad approaches), so why would any business use typology to weed out candidates?
Even the best personality tests just return what the recipient has given them. The results are interesting, perhaps insightful for those of us who like neat little categories. However, they provide nothing of appreciable value, and they would certainly never overrule simple understanding of the individual. Ergo, they are useless. I stand by that assertion.
Posted by: D Johnston | November 23, 2008 6:58 AM
I've been seeing this posted on a bunch of blogs lately. There seems to be a common theme about how off the mark it seems. A lot of the bloggers that I've seen who have also done Myers-Briggs have observed substantial differences between their personal and their blog assessments. My blog worked out to ESTP (personal-INTJ). Any analysis that begins with a claim of extroversion for me is off to a very bad start. I agree with the astrology observation.
Posted by: DougT | November 23, 2008 11:21 AM
D Johnston,
Yikes, that was harsh. My apologies.
Posted by: Dr X | November 23, 2008 2:24 PM
My blog came up with the same result when I did that stupid test for work last year. INTJ, at least I'm consistent.
Posted by: Kel | November 23, 2008 6:17 PM