Types / Personality facets / Questioning tradition
A facet inside Openness
How readily you question authority, convention and established ways of seeing things.
How readily you examine authority, convention, tradition, and fixed ideas about right and wrong. The lower end gives established rules more weight.
This is one scale with two ends, not two camps. Most people land somewhere between them, and neither end is better. The labels describe different ways of answering the statements.
Someone toward this end often treats inherited rules as starting points for responsible action. Established procedures can reduce needless debate and give a group a shared way to decide. The cost is that a rule may remain in place after its original reason has disappeared.
Someone toward this end often examines the rule behind a rule and asks who benefits from keeping it. That scrutiny can open room for fairer arrangements and better reasons. The cost is that inherited practices may feel unearned, while constant challenge can make cooperation harder for people who need a shared starting point.
Openness is the average of six facets, and Questioning tradition is one part of it. Someone can land differently on each of the six scales, so the broad result doesn’t tell the whole story.
How vividly you imagine, daydream and become absorbed in thoughts or fantasy.
How strongly art, poetry and beauty catch your attention and matter to you.
How closely you notice your own feelings and sense what others feel.
How readily you choose variety, welcome change and move beyond familiar routines.
How much you enjoy abstract, theoretical or philosophical questions and discussion.
How readily you question authority, convention and established ways of seeing things.
Answer 120 short statements for a reading across all 30 facets, with each scale explained in plain English.
No. Each end comes with something that helps and something that gets in the way. Some scale names sound like faults in everyday English, but an end label describes what the statements asked about, not a grade.
It happens often, and it’s the reason these 30 facets exist. A broad score is an average of six parts, so one part can point the other way. Nothing is wrong when a facet and its broad trait don’t match perfectly.
A score is compared with 320,128 U.S. adults who answered the original statements online during the roughly 12 years before 2014. Their published average and spread provide a typical range for the facet, showing how the score compares with that group.
