What Does Your Imagination Say About Your Personality?

By: Elisabeth Henderson
Estimated Completion Time
6 min
What Does Your Imagination Say About Your Personality?
Image: PM Images / DigitalVision / Getty Images

About This Quiz

While your imagination may be known only to you, it affects the way you interact with the world and is reflected in your personality. The imagination is sometimes thought of as the bridge between the conscious and unconscious worlds, between waking and dreaming life. In the imagination, we play out possibilities we fear, desire, or are curious about. It can be a way to process turbid emotions or while away boring hours. 

Imaginations, of course, are as unique as the people who daydream, but they can have common characteristics. Like the personality, the imagination is not entirely under the control of the person but seems to have its own being. Through coming to an understanding of the movements of your imagination, you may unlock aspects of your personality that otherwise perplex you. 

The recurring scenes of your dream life, the images and fantasies you return to in downtime, and the inner worlds you create can reveal what drives you and what you desire. While a personality type shows what characterizes how you interact with the world, the link between your imaginative life and your personality opens the potential to understand what will ultimately fulfill you. If that’s hard to imagine, you can open your mind with this quiz! 

1-Focus
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If you are trying to remember something important, what do you focus on mentally to cement the memory?
I try to create a rhyme to remember.
I just tell myself to remember.
I see the memory as a shape.
I set it within a conceptual system.
2-Dreams
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Which of the following most resembles a dream you’ve had several times?
Swimming with whales and being ecstatic about the experience
Being at the helm of a great army, making decisions for a battle
Fixing a machine and having the parts fall apart as I put them in
Going on a long journey and searching for a map to find the way
3-Daydreaming
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What does it look like when you’re daydreaming in public?
Lying under the trees in park
I don’t daydream; I plan.
Staring off into space
Stirring my coffee incessantly

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4-Family
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Which of these are you more likely to ponder about your family?
I wonder what they really think about me.
I anticipate what we will have to do in order to provide for all our needs.
I think through the projects I need to do to keep the house running.
I wonder whether the bond between family is really stronger than other personal bonds.
5-Animals
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What kinds of animals frequent your dream life?
Horses
Lizards
Dolphins
Wolves
6-Career
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If you daydream about your career, what shape do your dreams take?
I visualize what I want to write or paint and imagine people appreciating it.
I think about how I would do my boss’s job.
I think about projects I want to work on and think through the steps from start to finish.
I wonder what good this career is in existential terms.

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7-Imagine
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If your imagination were a game, what would it be?
Candyland
Chess
Jenga
Game of Thrones
8-Imagine
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What do you need for your imagination to be the most active?
Time to sit alone quietly
A large white board
Something to work on with my hands
A cup of coffee
9-Seasons
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Which season makes you feel most energized in your inner life?
Fall
Winter
Summer
Spring

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10-Risk
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If you have a dream where you take a risk, how do you react to it?
I’m interested in what made me feel ready to take the risk.
I predict how the risk will play out.
I feel vaguely anxious.
I wonder what it means and whether the risk is connected to a theory I’m working on.
11-Dreams
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How do you typically relate to your dreams?
I pay close attention and often write them down to draw on their associations.
I don’t pay much attention to my dreams.
I often don’t remember my dreams.
I try to remember my dreams to see if they have any clues to understanding my questions.
12-Conversation
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How might one of your dreams come up in a conversation with a friend?
“So I had this dream last night...”
That would never happen.
“I think I had a dream about this...”
“Oddly enough, this idea came to me in a dream.”

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13-Dreams
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Which type of dream comes to you most often?
Encounters with close friends
Work problems
Purely visual, mechanical dreams
Epic journeys
14-Nude
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If you have the dreaded nudity dream, where are you?
On a public street, on my bicycle
In my workplace
In a classroom
In a field
15-Circles
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What shape do you associate with your dream life?
Organic, river-like shapes
Geometric shapes
Gear-like shapes
Circular shapes

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16-Dreams
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What type of dreams do you most commonly remember?
Beautiful connections with people
Nightmares in which my whole world comes crashing down
Epiphanies that show me the solution to a problem
Dreams of being lost in a wilderness
17-Dreams
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When you let your imagination run about your relationships, what do you think about?
Possibilities of getting closer with someone
How to change someone to be more how they should be
Fantasies about meeting someone who really gets me
Scenes of pure romance with an ideal person
18-Daydreaming
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What were or are your modes of passing the time in a class you don’t care about?
Writing bits of poems in my notebook
Imagining what I would say if I were the teacher
Counting tiles in the ceiling and floor
Considering the real problems of the world

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19-Dreams
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How does your inner life come to expression?
Through written or visual art
Through my work
Through my tinkering projects
Through my theories
20-Exercise
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When you are exercising, how do you imagine yourself?
I feel myself running like a deer.
I see myself charging in a battle.
I visualize all the systems working in my body.
I see myself hurting and sweating.
21-Thoughts
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What kind of thoughts dominate your inner life?
Musings and observations
Schemes to engineer events and systems
Blueprints of projects
Questions and theories

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22-Thoughts
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Which person do you think about the most when your mind is drifting?
My best friend
My coworkers
My kids
My romantic partner
23-Thoughts
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Who are you most likely to imagine yourself to be?
A famous author
A captain of an army
An important inventor
A famed philosopher
24-Thoughts
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What do you think your dreams can tell you?
Powerful unconscious images that connect with emotional realities
What my mind does with excess information
What I really desire
Clues to primal ways of understanding

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25-Daydream
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If you find yourself daydreaming at work, how do you respond?
I follow my train of thought to see where it will go.
I pull my mind back to useful business.
I shake it off and concentrate on the task at hand, unless it gives me useful material to work with.
I consider how my daydream fits into my current theory.
26-Work
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How do you use your imagination at work?
I imagine different ways of being in the world and try to inhabit them in my art.
I imagine solutions for complex problems in the systems that run my place of business.
I imagine how machines work and visualize their inner workings in order to build and fix them.
I imagine all the different ways a philosophical theory could be interpreted and played out.
27-Dream
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Can you effectively daydream and work at the same time?
Depends on what I’m working on
Not at all
Yes
Sometimes daydreaming is my work.

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28-Stars
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What do you think about when you look up at a sky full of stars?
I think about the stories that lie behind the constellations.
I think about issues I’m having at work.
I think about how far away the stars are and the physical processes by which their light reaches us.
I think about how the earth is situated in the great abyss of space and what that means for who we are.
29-Child
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If you had an imaginary friend as a child, what was it?
I still have an imaginary friend.
I had an imaginary friend who was the most popular kid in school.
I had an imaginary friend who was a horse.
My imaginary friend was a dragon.
30-Moon
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What techniques have you tried for remembering dreams?
I’ve practiced lucid dreaming.
None.
What are you talking about?
I’ve written down dreams at times.

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