Assessment · Personality · Research version 1.0

Roots Personality Type Assessment

A personality typology written for people of color. Like a Jungian type assessment, it sorts you along four dimensions and gives you a four-letter type. Its 48 statements come from everyday life: family gatherings, faith communities, elders, community spaces and moving between cultures.

48 statementsAbout 8 minutes4 dimensions · 16 typesDownload your results

How it works

The four dimensions

Each dimension is a range, not a box. Most people use both sides; your type shows which side you lean toward and how strongly.

The types

The 16 Roots types

Each type takes its name from a role people play in families and communities. Every type is valuable, and no type is better than another.

About

About this assessment

Why a culturally responsive typology?

Most personality tests were built and normed with mostly white, Western samples (Rad et al., 2018; Thalmayer et al., 2021). Their items can miss how many people of color live: in close-knit families, faith communities and extended kin networks, often moving between cultural worlds. The Roots assessment keeps the familiar four-dimension structure of Jungian typology, but every statement draws on settings and values that people of color across many cultures will recognize.

What it draws on

The dimensions follow Jung's (1921) psychological types. The items reflect African-centered psychology, including Boykin's (1983) cultural themes such as communalism, expressiveness, harmony and social time, and Nobles's extended self. They also reflect collectivist and familial values found in Latine, Asian, Indigenous and Middle Eastern communities. Every group is diverse, so the assessment describes individuals, not races.

How to use your results

Use them for self-reflection, journaling, counseling conversations or class discussion.
Do not use a type to hire, admit, diagnose or label anyone.
Type tests are best treated as a starting point for conversation. Research supports scores on continuous dimensions more than fixed types, so your percentages matter more than your letters.

Research version

This is version 1.0. Doc Lobe is studying its content validity with an expert panel and its reliability (Cronbach's alpha) as people take it. If you choose to share your answers, they are anonymous and help improve the assessment. See the research page.

References

Boykin, A. W. (1983). The academic performance of Afro-American children. In J. T. Spence (Ed.), Achievement and achievement motives (pp. 321–371). W. H. Freeman.
Jung, C. G. (1971). Psychological types (H. G. Baynes, Trans., rev. R. F. C. Hull). Princeton University Press. (Original work published 1921)
Nobles, W. W. (1972). African philosophy: Foundations for Black psychology. In R. L. Jones (Ed.), Black psychology (pp. 18–32). Harper & Row.
Rad, M. S., Martingano, A. J., & Ginges, J. (2018). Toward a psychology of Homo sapiens: Making psychological science more representative of the human population. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115(45), 11401–11405. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1721165115
Thalmayer, A. G., Toscanelli, C., & Arnett, J. J. (2021). The neglected 95% revisited: Is American psychology becoming less American? American Psychologist, 76(1), 116–129. https://doi.org/10.1037/amp0000622

Original items written by Doc Lobe Teaching, Learning, and Research Firm. Not affiliated with, adapted from or equivalent to the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator® or any commercial test. For education and self-reflection only; not a diagnostic tool. In crisis, call or text 988.