A Psychologist Made A Quiz That Tells You Which Historical Legend You Actually Are
Find out whether you lead like Caesar, persuade like Cicero, disrupt like Catherine the Great, or strategize like Queen Victoria.
By Mark Travers, Ph.D. | December 14, 2025
Personality tests don't always have to be about weighty topics, like whether you're a "highly sensitive person," a "covert narcissist," or if you exhibit a "fear of intimacy." Sometimes, we can learn just as much about ourselves through an entertaining personality quiz as we can through advice-driven tests.
Here's a fun historical figure quiz that illuminates aspects of your personality by matching you to a famous historical person. Take it to find your historical match (e.g., Joan of Arc, Plato, Gandhi, etc.).
While quizzes like these may feel far removed from the science-backed assessments created by research psychologists, there are more parallels than you may think. Historical figure quizzes hint at deeper questions — questions that fields of scientific inquiry like psychobiography and retrospective diagnosis have grappled with for some time. These approaches use historical accounts and analyses to uncover aspects of a historical figure's personality, psyche, and psychological disposition to better understand the person and the times in which they lived.
For instance, scholars have long suggested that Julius Caesar may have experienced epileptic seizures. The Roman historian Suetonius documented episodes resembling seizure activity in The Twelve Caesars. Similarly, researchers have speculated that Meriwether Lewis of the Lewis and Clark expedition may have struggled with depression or bipolar-spectrum symptoms, based on gaps in his journals and firsthand descriptions of mood instability.
Here are a few other examples of how historical personality assessment has helped us understand our world, past and present — and how your "historical twin" might reveal something meaningful about your own traits.
1. Abraham Lincoln And Depressive Temperament
Psychologists and historians have studied Lincoln's recurrent melancholy. His pattern of depressive episodes is documented through letters, anecdotes from colleagues and his own reflections. This has been synthesized in works like Joshua Wolf Shenk's Lincoln's Melancholy, which draws on psychological research to interpret 19th-century evidence. Scholars have also noted that Lincoln's introspective style aligns with what modern psychology describes as a depressive temperament, one that may have contributed to his empathy, careful judgment and moral clarity during the Civil War.
2. Florence Nightingale's Personality And Chronic Illness
Historians have debated whether Nightingale suffered from a psychosomatic condition or a long-term bacterial illness. Modern medical analyses suggest she may have had brucellosis, but psychobiographical work also highlights her perfectionism, sense of mission and high conscientiousness. Such traits are linked in contemporary personality research (e.g., the Big Five model) with prosocial leadership and a reformist drive. This combination of medical and psychological insight may help explain both her resilience and her occasionally intense work habits.
3. Beethoven And Mood-Related Creativity
Beethoven's alternating periods of explosive productivity and emotional withdrawal have drawn interest from psychologists studying creativity and mood disorders. Articles in journals such as Bipolar Disorders have examined whether his fluctuations resemble cyclothymia, a milder form of bipolar disorder. While retrospective diagnosis can't be conclusive, these analyses offer insight into how mood variability may interact with bursts of creative output.
4. Queen Victoria And Attachment Style
Letters between Queen Victoria and Prince Albert reveal a strong emotional dependency that some psychologists have analyzed through the lens of attachment theory. Researchers have noted that her distress during separations resembles patterns associated with anxious attachment — a style linked with emotional expressiveness and closeness-seeking behaviors. Understanding this dimension helps historians contextualize her political decisions, public image, and the prolonged mourning period after Albert's death.
What Does This Have To Do With A Fun Personality Quiz?
Even though a playful quiz about which historical figure you resemble isn't meant to be a scientific assessment, it does touch on questions that modern psychology studies seriously, such as:
- What traits shape a person's decisions?
- How do our motivations influence the legacy we create?
- Which traits lead people toward leadership, creativity, diplomacy or rebellion?
Psychological research shows that people intuitively use narrative identity, the idea that we understand ourselves through stories, to interpret their personality. Dan McAdams of Northwestern University describes narrative identity as the internal story we build to make sense of who we are. Historical figure quizzes tap into this tendency: they invite you to see yourself reflected in the lives of people whose exaggerated qualities illuminate something familiar to you in your own personality.
Someone who gets Plato, for example, may score high in Openness to Experience, a Big Five trait associated with intellectual curiosity and abstract thinking. Someone matched with Joan of Arc might score high in Assertiveness and Moral Conviction. Gandhi aligns with self-regulation and conscientiousness, Catherine the Great with ambition and strategic thinking, and Cicero with diplomacy and rhetorical skill.
Moreover, there's as much value in knowing your historical "opposite" as there is in knowing your twin. Personality researchers often study trait opposites to highlight blind spots or complementary strengths. For example:
- Extraversion vs. Introversion
- Emotional Stability vs. Neuroticism
- Dominance vs. Agreeableness
Seeing yourself in contrast can be just as illuminating as seeing your match.
Curious to know who your historical personality twin is, as well as your historical opposite? Take the Historical Figure Quiz for an instant answer.
A similar version of this article can also be found on Forbes.com, here.