What Color are You? Take the Test

Allow me to distract you from Google Buzz for a moment. You can get your fix elsewhere — or everywhere, for that matter.

Instead, imagine with me your favorite color.

Is it the rich turquoise of an island shoreline? The deep burgundy of a glass of wine? The muted steel punctuating a sunrise? A buttery amber hiding in the center of a daisy?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ianagrimis/ / CC BY-ND 2.0

It turns out that our favorite colors have a lot to say about us.

A report in yesterday’s USA Today caught my eye with the headline Favorite colors test shows CEOs are different; take the test.

Three quarters of a million people have taken the test for the Dewey Color System — make that 750,001! — and apparently some patterns have emerged that point to personality traits and talents.

When more than 800 CEOs and former CEOs took the test, some interesting patterns were clear here, as well. According to the scientists studying this color theory, CEOs stand out as different:

“They are often wired in counterintuitive ways. For example, the color test shows that the typical CEO is more sensitive and private than the typical person and is less likely to be a perfectionist or to be dominant and more likely to be emotionally unstable. CEOs, it turns out, are not as self-assured as the public at large, and they are more cooperative and less forceful than the typical person.”

Our corporate leaders are more sensitive and less dominant than average Americans? They’re less assured and more emotionally unstable? Counterintuitive indeed.

Then I took the test myself. And the results were not at all as expected. Apparently I’d do great work as a financial analyst, a building inspector or a dental assistant. Who knew?

Anyway, there was a point to this story, and it wasn’t about my personality traits, but about being open to the unexpected. Some time ago my blogger BFF Lisa Barone wrote about the power of the unexpected, and here again is more proof.

Likewise, did you ever believe that:

• Super Bowl ads are the best advertisements? Maybe they’re not.
• We’d want our tech devices to get larger and simpler instead of smaller and more complex? Maybe we do.
• E-mail was missing an element of social interaction? Maybe it is.

While it can be easy to fall into comfortable habits, it may be more advantageous to find a creative new solution, break forth an innovative idea, and blaze your own magenta-hued trail.

Virginia Nussey is the director of content marketing at MobileMonkey. Prior to joining this startup in 2018, Virginia was the operations and content manager at Bruce Clay Inc., having joined the company in 2008 as a writer and blogger.

See Virginia's author page for links to connect on social media.