What this quiz measures
No short quiz can decide a marriage. The decision includes history, money, children, housing, safety, promises, and facts that a personality inventory cannot see. What these questions can examine is the style you bring to conflict and change. They look at how quickly threat enters the room, what happens when you feel wronged, how readily you assume good faith, and whether you bend or dig in when two needs compete.
A useful review separates the marriage from the latest argument. Ask what the same disagreement looked like six months ago, what repair followed it, and whether either person changed a repeated behaviour. Frequent conflict can still include honest repair. Quiet can hide distance, resignation, or a careful peace. Staying can come from love, practical duty, fear of disruption, or several motives at once. Leaving can come from a clear boundary or from the hope that any new setting will remove an old pattern. The score does not rank those motives. It helps you name your own part more precisely.
Read the result beside concrete records. What agreements were made? Which were kept? When you raised a concern, did the conversation become clearer or smaller? Can both people describe the other person's view fairly? If safety or control is at issue, a joint exercise may be the wrong tool and private support matters more. Otherwise, a written timeline can cut through the way one intense evening colours the whole year. The point is not to turn a relationship into a spreadsheet. It is to keep memory from becoming the only witness.
The six things it looks at
The six measured parts cover your response to threat and frustration, willingness to work with another person, expectation of good faith, care for others, and openness to a changed life. They describe your side only.
Anxiety
How readily the alarm goes off, often before there is a specific thing to point at.
Most people score between 7 and 17 out of 20.
- Worry about things.
- Fear for the worst.
- Am afraid of many things.
- Get stressed out easily.
Anger
How fast frustration turns hot when something gets in the way, and how visible that is to everyone else.
Most people score between 7 and 18 out of 20.
- Get angry easily.
- Get irritated easily.
- Lose my temper.
- Am not easily annoyed.
Cooperation
How much you would rather compromise than fight, and what it takes to make you fight.
Most people score between 10 and 20 out of 20.
- Love a good fight.
- Yell at people.
- Insult people.
- Get back at others.
Trust
Whether you assume people mean well before you have evidence either way.
Most people score between 8 and 18 out of 20.
- Trust others.
- Believe that others have good intentions.
- Trust what people say.
- Distrust people.
Altruism
How rewarding you find helping, and how much other people's welfare shapes your day.
Most people score between 13 and 20 out of 20.
- Am concerned about others.
- Love to help others.
- Am indifferent to the feelings of others.
- Take no time for others.
Adventurousness
Preference for the unfamiliar over the routine — new places, new food, new methods.
Most people score between 9 and 17 out of 20.
- Prefer variety to routine.
- Prefer to stick with things that I know.
- Dislike changes.
- Am attached to conventional ways.
What this is built on
Defaults runs on the IPIP-NEO-120, a public-domain 120-item Big Five inventory developed by Dr John A. Johnson. Each short quiz uses 24 of its actual items, word for word, and scores them against Johnson's published adult norm tables rather than rescaled against your own answers. The same 24 count toward the full 120.
Personality measures can describe recurring response styles. They do not measure a partner, the quality of a marriage, legal options, financial consequences, or whether a home is safe.
- Johnson, J. A. (2014). Measuring thirty facets of the Five Factor Model with a 120-item public-domain inventory. Journal of Research in Personality, 51, 78-89. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2014.05.003
- International Personality Item Pool. https://ipip.ori.org/
Common questions
Can this quiz tell whether my marriage can be repaired?
No. Repair depends on both people's choices, the facts of the relationship, and whether change is possible and safe. The quiz only describes tendencies in your answers. Use them to sharpen a question or conversation, not to predict what another person will do.
Should my spouse take the same quiz?
Only if they freely want to. Two results can help each person describe their own style, but they do not produce a compatibility verdict. Comparing scores can also become another argument if either person uses them as proof. Start with what you learned about yourself and keep the language specific.
What if we rarely argue?
The absence of loud conflict does not settle the question. Look at whether concerns can be raised, heard, and acted on. A calm relationship may be secure, or important topics may never reach the table. The difference lies in what happens when one person makes a clear request.
What should I write down before making a decision?
Record repeated events, attempts at repair, promises, changes, practical constraints, and what a workable relationship would require from each person. Separate observed facts from guesses about motives. That record will not make the choice easy, but it can make the choice less dependent on the mood of one day.