HOW THIS TEST WORKS
How Am I Defensive? works
How version core-v1 is scored, and what it can and cannot tell you.
How it is scored
Being defensive is not a diagnosis. It is a natural way people protect their self-image. Research on couples names defensiveness and stonewalling as two of the habits that most harm relationships (Gottman, 1994). Research on self-affirmation shows that when people feel secure in their values, they become more open to hearing difficult feedback (Sherman and Cohen, 2006).
This test looks at five areas: making excuses, pushing back, not seeing your part, feeling attacked, and shutting down. Each area has eight sentences. Half describe the habit and half describe the opposite, so you cannot get a high score just by agreeing with everything. Each answer gives 0 to 4 points.
Each area score runs from 0 to 100. Your overall score is the average of the five areas. Scores are read as Low (0 to 33), Medium (34 to 66), or High (67 to 100). These levels show how you answered. They do not compare you with other people.
PersonalitySite.com wrote all of these questions and descriptions. They are not copied from any other test.
What it cannot tell you
This test is for learning about yourself. It is not a diagnosis. Do not use it to label yourself or anyone else.
People tend to underrate their own defensiveness, and your answers may reflect one relationship more than others. Some criticism really is unfair, and pushing back on it can be healthy.
This version has not yet been tested with a large group of people, so we do not yet know how accurate it is.