I was given the assignment to do the Learning Style Inventory based on Kolb’s Experiential Learning model. I scored in the 99th percentile* for abstract conceptualization! I might be pretty abstract and pretty conceptual, but I don’t buy that I am such a beautiful and unique snowflake.

I believe this is a subject-expectancy effect: I expect to my learning style to be abstract-conceptual so I choose answers to confirm my expectation. It’s a pre-test effect because the reason I expect that is other personality and learning tests I’ve taken in the past.

This makes me wonder about the validity of this test (and similar self-reports), but at least we weren’t using the neuro-linguistic programming model that highschool teachers seem to think is scientific: visual, auditory, kinesthetic and the other one.

* An unpublished draft of this post said “100th percentile”, which is impossible because I am in the sample.