Their personality, as demonstrated through essay

“Personality’s a natural thing to try,” you say. “But the typical ways of measuring personality have been done to ****. Did you see the survey paper assigned? We’re drowning in an OCEAN. Let’s do something more creative.”

“Let’s ask people how they feel about sex,” Vishal says. “It’s brilliant! The ultimate personality test.”

You give him a skeptical look.

“How does that tell you anything about someone’s personality?” you ask.

“Well, you’ve got your subs and your doms, adventurous people and plain vanilla folks, and cumming inside and cumming outside is basically introversion versus extroversion.”

“You know what, that’s a fair point,” you say, scratching your chin. “But somehow, I don’t think that’s going to fly.”

“Yeah, pity,” Vishal mutters, folding his arms over his chest.

“What about this,” you say. “We get people to demonstrate their personality through an essay.”

“How is that going to work?” he asks.

“We all wrote some kind of personal essay to get into Stonewall,” you say. “I think it’s simple. We make people submit their college app essay and that’s what other people will use to judge their personality.”

“We’ll just get a bunch of resume padders and sob stories. I damn well know that I wouldn’t want other people reading that shit about me. It’s fake, plastic shit.”

“That’s the experiment! We’ll randomize it so that half the people have a chance to edit their essays to show a little more personality, and the other half just have to submit it as it was,” you say.

“Is that really getting somebody’s personality though?” Vishal asks, narrowing his eyes.

“No, not really,” you concede. “It’s more like how you choose to present yourself to others.”

“Well, whatever, it’s still something that psychologists care about,” Vishal says.

“So we’re good to go?” you ask.

“I’m worried that some people won’t get the point,” he says. “They’ll just keep extending that laundry list of accomplishments or adding more stories about how diverse they are or whatever the fock they initially wrote. No personality.”

“Well, that’s on them,” you say. “It’s not our fault if other people don’t like it.”

“Fair point. They sure as hell aren’t getting laid!” Vishal laughs. “Meanwhile, I’ll be getting away with all that sweet booty.”

“We don’t know if you will,” you say. “That’s the point of running our experiment. Also, don’t you have a girlfriend?”

“Minor details,” Vishal says, waving his hand.