Difficult Person Test

Seven traits that make people hard to get along with

8 min · Free · No account

Difficult Person Test: Two coworkers at a table, one leaning back with arms crossed, the other gesturing mid-sentence over two coffees

What does the difficult person test measure?

It measures seven traits that make people hard to get along with: callousness, grandiosity, aggressiveness, suspicion, manipulativeness, dominance and risk-taking. They come from a study by Chelsea Sleep and colleagues (2021), who split antagonism, the opposite end of agreeableness, into seven parts. Each trait gets its own score. A high score means a trait shows up often in how you deal with people, not that something is wrong with you.

About this test

This test scores seven traits separately: Callousness (how little other people's feelings move you), Grandiosity (feeling special or owed more), Aggressiveness (hitting back when crossed), Suspicion (expecting hidden motives), Manipulativeness (flattery, guilt or half-truths to get your way), Dominance (needing to be in charge) and Risk-taking (acting on impulse or for the thrill). It is a self-reflection on how you treat people, not a judgment of who you are and not a clinical test.

What you'll discover

Callousness
How little other people's pain or feelings move you.
Grandiosity
How strongly you feel special, superior or owed more than other people.
Aggressiveness
How quickly you hit back, get loud or look for payback when someone crosses you.
Suspicion
How much you expect other people to have hidden motives.
Manipulativeness
How readily you use flattery, guilt or half-truths to get your way.
Dominance
How much you need to be in charge and have the last word.
Risk-taking
How often you act on impulse or chase a thrill even when it could go badly.

Understanding the Difficult Person Test

The test gives you 49 statements, seven for each trait, and takes about 8 minutes. Your highest trait is free when you finish; the full report gives all seven scores, so you can see whether you are difficult in one specific way or a little in several.

The seven traits come from research on antagonism. Chelsea Sleep and colleagues gave 532 university students 234 statements taken from seven existing personality questionnaires and looked at which ones clustered together. Seven groups came out: callousness, grandiosity, domineering, manipulation, suspiciousness, aggression and risk taking (Sleep and colleagues, 2021, doi:10.1037/per0000416). We wrote our own statements for each trait. This is an independent test built on that structure, not the researchers' questionnaire.

We think the split into seven is the useful part. Picture one person who snaps when provoked and another who quietly assumes everyone is lying to them. Both get called difficult, but they cause very different problems and need different fixes. The limit is that this is your own view of yourself. Someone who lives or works with you might answer some statements differently, and asking them is the best check we know of.

Where the Difficult Person Test comes from

Chelsea Sleep, Joshua Miller and colleagues at the University of Georgia and Purdue University mapped the structure of antagonism, the low end of agreeableness. They gave 532 university students 234 statements drawn from seven questionnaires of problematic personality traits, and a seven-factor solution emerged: callousness, grandiosity, domineering, manipulation, suspiciousness, aggression and risk taking.

How the Difficult Person Test is scored

Seven separate scores, one per trait. Each is the sum of seven statements, two of them reverse-worded so that agreeing with everything does not push the result up. A score shows how strongly you describe the trait in yourself; it is not a diagnosis. The seven-trait structure comes from one university sample, and the statements here are eTestor's own rather than the study's items, so the scores have not been checked against the original questionnaires.

Based on a published, peer-reviewed model

Sleep, C. E., Crowe, M. L., Carter, N. T., Lynam, D. R., & Miller, J. D. (2021). Uncovering the structure of antagonism. Personality Disorders: Theory, Research, and Treatment, 12(4), 300–311.

Written and fact-checked against the sources above on October 24, 2026. More on how we build and score these tests: our methodology.

Your questions, answered

Is the difficult person test free?

Yes. The test and your highest trait are free, with no account needed: just your email at the end. Every score, the written analysis and the certificate are in the full report: $1.99$2.41 in the first 30 minutes after you finish, $3.99$4.83 after that, or included in eTestor Unlimited.

Does a high score mean I'm a bad person?

No. It means you agreed with many statements about one or more traits. Most of these traits have a use: suspicion keeps you from being taken in, and dominance gets decisions made. They turn into a problem when they show up everywhere, with everyone, and the people close to you start paying for them.

Is this a clinical test?

No. It describes everyday traits in the ordinary range and cannot diagnose anything. The study behind the seven traits was done with university students, not patients. If you are worried about how you treat people, or how someone treats you, a therapist is the right next step.

Can I use it to find out if someone else is difficult?

Not reliably. The scores only mean something when you answer about yourself. Answering for someone else measures your view of them, and that view is easily colored by whatever conflict you are in. It works better if you each take it and, if you both agree, compare results.

How is this different from the Dark Triad test?

The Dark Triad scores three traits: narcissism, Machiavellianism and psychopathy. This test covers overlapping ground, antagonism, but splits it into seven narrower traits. Suspicion, dominance and risk-taking each get their own score here, which the Dark Triad does not give them.