Personality quiz: Pick a chair design to see what kind of friend you are

Adapted from The Chair Friendship Test by Redstone Press

Why do chairs seem to take on personalities? It's partly a matter of how they look, which is vaguely human, and they certainly have characteristic that we associate with our feelings about other people.

They may look comfortable, making us think of them as someone with whom we could be familiar and would like to be with; they may look austere, and induce us to curb our self-indulgence and sit up straight; they may look efficient and practical, encouraging us to think we could work effectively with them; they may be grand and ornate, assuming something of the distinction and authority of those who use them - you can be in awe of such a chair.

We certainly have intense physical, emotional and psychological relationships with chairs, growing to like them or dislike them. Chairs, like friends, have meanings for us. That is why objects that we may think of as purely functional have been the focus of so much aesthetic attention, and have been designed in such an amazing diversity of forms and styles.

But it's not surprising that our choice or feeling about particular chairs are revealing in certain ways. Partly it's a matter of the persona we wish to project: we adopt a chair because of what we think it may say to others about us.

But partly it's unconscious: we are attracted (or repulsed) by certain characteristics that appeal to use (or we find disagreeable) for reasons we cannot fathom.

Whatever may be the case, the chairs to which we find ourselves attracted say something about our predispositions, particularly perhaps about our way of relating not only to chairs but to the people whose personalities they seem to reflect, the people we choose as friends.

Pick a chair to see which kind of friend you are:

ANSWER 1) You are attractive, sometimes provocatively so; and sometimes you are secretive about yourself and your thoughts and feelings. You have a combination of firmness and clarity and yet an inward delicacy and sensitivity. You have found that people are easily attracted to you, but they sometimes draw back, nervous of rebuff. This is because although you may be gregarious and generous, you are actually rather shy and hold back from expressing yourself, and other people may mistake this for aloofness. Perhaps you undervalue your gift for friendship, and worry unduly about how you come across in company, and thereby disguise your true feelings, fearful of rejection. Be bold, don’t be afraid to reveal your true feelings: your friends will respond all the more warmly to this.

ANSWER 2) Your inner strength makes you a dependable friend, but you have hidden depths, feelings you do not show. People love you for being strong, tough-minded and independent of spirit: it helps some of them to have confidence in themselves. They see you face life head-on, and get the most you can out if. They like that, and feel that they can be like that. What most of them don’t see (and that’s not a bad thing!) is that in learning to cope and be master or mistress of your fate, you have had to keep some feelings to yourself, especially those that might betray that you suffer a natural vulnerability like anybody else: it’s a difficult role to balance.

ANSWER 3) You are a fantastic friend! People love you because you are transparently honest about your affections, which are tempered by good sense and fine feeling. You list well, and your friends find in you a great confidante, because you seem to validate their own strengths and are tolerant of their weaknesses. Although you tend not to be critical, you are seen to be honest. You have good feelings about humanity in general, and your friends in particular, and yet you lack, perhaps, a high regard for yourself. You’ve been places and done things, but at the moment maybe you lack a strong sense of direction. Life has been good to you, and should get better, but there’s an element of disappointment in your present condition. You would not mean less to your friends if you communicated something of these inner doubts and involved them in a reappraisal of your situation. They would love to help you make changes: because they love you.

ANSWER 4) Friends find you a warm and supportive person, always willing to invite them into the world you create, which makes them feel at home, loved and respected. It’s a world in which they can show their true feelings and find sympathy. This willingness to be the reliable and dependable friend perhaps fulfils a need in you to be needed: it may indicate that you sometimes confuse giving love with being who you are, that you are OK so long as it is you who are doing the giving. Perhaps sometimes, however, you cover it up, you inwardly tend to reject or distrust the love and affection that others have for you, not because you don’t really want it, but because you cannot be sure that it is genuine. You give a great deal; try to take more, and be happy!

ANSWER 5) You are a bit of a rarity: you can be exotic and your responses to things are unpredictable and often unusual. This makes you attractive and sought after for your company, but it can also, perhaps, put some potential friends off, fearing that you are not quite what you seem. You sometimes focus more intently on the external factors in a situation: What shall we do? Where shall we go? This busy objectivity can disguise your inner feelings and your sensitivity to those you like to be with. So sometimes you end up on your own, feeling vulnerable. Stop being quite so anxious: you’re so interesting and have so much to give! Relax and enjoy your many friends; they love your company when you are your usual and interesting self.

ANSWER 6) Your friends may find in you an intriguing mix of strengths and weaknesses. You’re quite a balanced sort of person: you know yourself, and you have a depth of integrity of character which is appreciated. But because life for you doesn’t always work as you think or wished it might, you may come across as slightly displaced, a bit distracted. There are times when the confidence others might expect of you, and may have come to rely on, slips. At such times you should be open to your friends. They may not have realised that you need their loving support to bring out the confident side of your personality, which they know is there and which they value and love in you.

ANSWER 7) You appear at first as confident, cool and self-possessed. Your friends love your elegance and assurance, it appeals to their own self-confidence: they feel that having you as a friend reflects well on them! This is a great and positive quality to have as a friend, and although you are pretty well calmly in command of things, you do sometimes have to make an effort to keep up that outward appearance of self-controlled mastery of situations. Having to make this effort – as if it satisfies some need in you – sometimes makes you feel a little uncomfortable. It’s difficult for you to put your finger on, and you rarely give any of your friends the slightest hint that it’s there at all. Relax! You will be just as good a friend, and be seen by your friends to be so, if you let that cool guard down, show something of the inner doubts you sometimes feel. There’s something deeply attractive about the strong person who is able on occasion to show weakness.

ANSWER 8) You can be very attractive, seductive and absorbing. This reflects a certain emotional determination, of which your friends are well aware, and which they usually find attractive. They know you like to get what you want out of a situation, and they enjoy your quickness of wit and ability to move fast when it’s necessary. You have a great appetite for life, but your enthusiasms sometimes bring you more than you can happily handle. Behind all this us a certain sense of being misunderstood; even a little insecure? This makes your friends sometimes wary: they perceive a degree of compensating possessiveness in your make-up, and fear that this may sometimes motivate your affections rather more than simple disinterested love.

This piece was published with kind permission from Redstone Press. Pscyogames: Personality tests, games and questionnaires is available here