Life

This Personality Test Is Based On... Bread?

by Eliza Castile

Ladies, gents, and assorted other titles, it's time to face facts: No matter how scientifically-minded you are, how navel-gazing you find the activity, how derisively you scoff at your friend's addiction to BuzzFeed quizzes, everyone loves a good personality test. And so, if you haven't already heard about the bread personality test, you probably won't be able to resist checking it out. It's not exactly scientific — for that kind of thing, you'll probably want to stick with Myers-Briggs — but like most online personality tests, it's harmless fun, even if it will give you a craving for a bagel.

The "test," which is currently going viral on Twitter, matches nine kinds of bread with three personality characteristics each. That's it — super simple, right? It's up to the test-taker to decide which category they fall into, which admittedly takes some prior self-reflection, but what else are you going to do on your lunch break? Besides, if you already know your Hogwarts House classification by heart (and we all do), the answer should be clear enough once you take a look at the test.

That brings us to the question of the test itself. Without further ado, I present to you the bread personality test in all its carb-y glory.

Unless there was a breakthrough in bread-human psychic communication that I'm unaware of, the categories seem fairly random. A bagel "misses their mom," while pita bread "brags about their Neko Atsume cats." A croissant appears to be a closet romantic, whole grain bread suffers from RBF, and challah bread is a Gwen Stefani fan. It makes zero sense, to be honest, but a lack of logic doesn't make the test any less fun.

I'm not the only one to think so. According to Cosmopolitan, the test exploded in popularity after it was tweeted on Monday by Kelly Blaus, a teenager living in Florida. By the end of the day, it had been seen so many times that she tweeted her mentions kept crashing.

This is far from the first time an arbitrary personality quiz has caught the collective attention of the internet. Back in June, the "castle personality test" was similarly popular, and before that came the "cube test," which claimed to reveal hidden facets of your personality through a series of "guided daydreams." The latter became popular enough that BuzzFeed even made a video about it. Just last week, thousands of Instagram users posted about the "three characters" meme (a personal favorite), which asks users to describe themselves with three fictional characters.

So what makes these simple tests so popular? Little has been researched about the enduring appeal of the personality quiz, but it's safe to say that people love categorizing themselves. Although we may not take them seriously, easy, simplistic personality quizzes satisfy our inner narcissist because the results are usually flattering in some way. In the bread test, for example, a bread roll is "hot AF and knows it," and everyone gets a little excited when a personality quiz compares them to their favorite fictional character.

Furthermore, psychologists pointed out to NBC that personality tests can affirm your own self-image. You might already know that if you were an alcoholic drink, you'd be red wine (because you're so sophisticated and dry), but it doesn't hurt to have an external source of validation. On the flip side, it's fun to laugh at the results you don't expect. When a quiz totally fails to guess your age correctly based on your taste in sparkling water, you can just shrug and say you're an old soul.

On some level, though, we all know this already, and it doesn't make personality tests any less amusing. So go ahead, my fellow breadsticks, and post about what bread type you are. At the very least, it'll serve as inspiration for dinner.

Images: Daria Nepriakhina; Giphy (2)