I took the personality test billionaire Ray Dalio rolled out to his hedge fund employees with the help of top psychologists. The results were mortifying — and accurate. (2024)

Except for the fact that a lot of these tests are little more than glorified horoscopes, and even the most famous ones are misleading, inaccurate, and unscientific. They make us mindlessly cling to simple labels, when in reality personality is nuanced and complex. Personality tests are also biased, and are partly to blame for keeping women out of the technology industry and other discriminatory hiring practices.

It was in this spirit of lightheartedness tinged with skepticism that I took the new personality assessment that Ray Dalio, the hedge-fund billionaire founder of Bridgewater Associates, launched in April.

The free test, designed by a star-studded lineup of psychologists — including Adam Grant, Brian Little, and John Golden — combines psychometric analysis with research conducted by Dalio's team.

The new assessment arrives at a time when the $2 billion personality-test industry is gaining influence in corporate America. A growing number of organizations use personality tests in their human-resources departments.

The goal of this new assessment, Dalio said in an email, is to provide test-takers with insights into their natural dispositions to help them better understand themselves and others.

"By recognizing that people think differently and knowing what approach to thinking they have, they can improve their personal development and relationships," he said. "It also leads to successes that improve people's confidence and well-being."

I am dubious about that last part. For me, self-evaluation quickly turned to self-loathing.

Radical transparency in test form

I approached the test with a certain self-consciousness. I already have a decent sense of my fatal flaws, and knowing even just a little about Dalio's approach to personality tests — and to life and work — intimidated me.

A little background: Dalio founded Bridgewater out of his apartment in 1975. Today, it is the world's largest hedge fund, with about $138 billion under management. Dalio's early years running Bridgewater gave him an appreciation for how differently people think, he said. Inspired by the experience, he began to study and experiment with personality assessments.

The fund's selective hiring process requires candidates to take multiple personality tests to help recruiters discern whether potential employees have the right characteristics and emotional wherewithal to be successful there. And the new test has been in use at Bridgewater for a long time.

The company is known for its unorthodox workplace culture that prizes "radical transparency" above all. The vast majority of its meetings and internal debates are recorded, and its 1,500 employees use an app to constantly critique and rate each other across more than 100 attributes on a scale of one to 10.

Bridgewater's environment of critical, honest, and often blistering feedback is, Dalio said, the backbone of Bridgewater's success, as detailed in his bestselling book, "Principles: Life & Work." But it is certainly not for everyone.

Radical transparency helps people see what really exists, he told Insider. And the test, called PrinciplesYou, tells people "what reality exists about their thinking."

This no-holds-barred transparency is also beneficial in helping match people's thinking preferences to jobs in which they will excel, he said.

Spoiler alert: I would not excel at Bridgewater. Journalists are a notoriously paranoid, tightly wound, and thin-skinned lot, and I fit right in.

Know thyself

The assessment required me to rate myself on a range of prompts using a sliding scale of "Disagree strongly" to "Agree strongly." The prompts include things such as "I typically choose pleasing others over being honest with them," "I rarely complain," "I like to Google people first if I am going to meet them for the first time," "I find other people's life stories fascinating," and "I don't worry about things that have already happened."

It took about 30 minutes to complete, and the results were instant. I received a detailed report about multiple dimensions of my personality and a rundown of my tendencies, talents, and weaknesses — or in assessment parlance, "opportunities for growth." I also got a catalog of my core traits, complete with a description of how they are likely to play out in real-life situations.

Reading through my personalized psychic inventory was at turns inspiring and mortifying.

According to the test archetypes, I am an orchestrator. I have a preference for order and attention to detail, and a knack for connecting with people. The test also told me that I am determined, creative, nurturing, energetic, and a natural leader. At first, my ego swelled. "Maybe I should run for public office," I thought. "Maybe I do have what it takes to be a Peloton instructor!"

Then I dove deeper into my results. The findings were illuminating, but my self-esteem took a beating. I learned — or perhaps I was reminded — that I am not particularly flexible, adaptive, humble, or composed. "I like clear direction from others, but don't always follow it when it conflicts with how I think things should be done." Fair.

"On a team, I may perceive more emergent personalities as disorganized, while they might perceive me as rigid." Ouch.

Over a recent work-from-home lunch, I recited the results aloud to my husband. "Under stress, I may be resistant to taking advice from others, and I could benefit from working on maintaining my equanimity," I read.

He gave me a sidelong glance and said nothing. Hmm.

Everybody gets a test

A version of the PrinciplesYou assessment is available for business use as a people-management tool. Dalio told me that he envisioned organizations using it to "empower personal discovery" and development, as well as to help managers build high-performing teams at the organizational level.

The enterprise model of the test is packaged with personalized consulting and workshops — and comes at a cost, which the company did not disclose.

The test I took is aimed at everyday users. It even includes a feature that allows you to compare your results with those of friends, family, and colleagues, and provide you with insights about your relationship. I just may get my husband to take it.

Dalio said the assessment has been proved to have high retest reliability. And anecdotally speaking, he stands by individual results. "We ask everyone how it describes them, and the answers have almost always been 'spot-on,'" he said.

I give him that. The test gets an "A" for accuracy.