Comment of the day: Is Pierley/Radford a design project?

Hands down, the Pierley/Redford Personality Test is the weirdest personality test out there. Showing you a series of shapes that blink softly like an old film projection, the test purports to ascertain aspects of your personality by asking you questions like "which shape wants to hurt you" and "where is...

By Jef Otte

April 13, 2011

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Hands down, the Pierley/Redford Personality Test is the weirdest personality test out there. Showing you a series of shapes that blink softly like an old film projection, the test purports to ascertain aspects of your personality by asking you questions like "which shape wants to hurt you" and "where is the betrayal" and having you to choose between the two shapes shown. Robin Edwards highlighted the test last week, urging you to "prepare yourself for nightmares about menacing shapes for the rest of your life," but reader SL thinks she might be missing the point.

The 'results' are randomly generated. It's a design project.

You know, SL, we wouldn't be surprised if it was -- the images have a certain compositional aesthetic to them, and the questions seem too bizarre really to be anything but art; we checked it out, though, and we were unable to find any reference in all the vast internets to that being the case. On the other hand, we weren't able to really find any reference to the test being a credible psychological evaluator, either, so that's probably something.

What do you think? Real or fake? Anyone else have any evidence to point either way?

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