Veggie ID: The personality test craze sweeping Singapore

Move over, Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). There is a fresh personality test sprouting up in Singapore and the rest of the world.

Veggie ID is an online quiz that categorises users into quirky vegetable personalities such as Jalapeno and Napa Cabbage based on their choices in an interactive story set in VeggieVille, a world of sentient vegetables. Each personality type comes with strengths, weaknesses and catchphrases.

Since its launch on July 22, Veggie ID has attracted over two million users, with one in five of these quizzes completed in Singapore, according to Ms Sophie Liu, its Canadian-American creator who is of Chinese descent.

Ms Megan Quek, a 25-year-old marketing intern, identifies with the weaknesses of her quiz result, Leek, which is described as someone who would laugh at a joke 11 minutes later and is “oblivious to all romantic signs”.

However, her friends are quick to disagree with the quiz, which stated that her hidden Leek talent is being “very good at driving”.

For Ms Quek, it is these playful interactions that have fuelled the quiz’s popularity.

Meanwhile, Mr Kapil Agarwal, 27, says that his quiz result, Broccoli, was “scarily accurate”. Broccoli is described as having “weird bursts of courage”, “soft hands” and being “too scared to ask their crush out, and also delusional”.

The software engineer adds that he likes the whimsical adventure story that the quiz takes the form of, but was surprised when his choices caused his VeggieVille vegetables to be abducted by aliens.

Ms Liu, a 22-year-old computational biology graduate from Carnegie Mellon University in Pennsylvania, the United States, tells The Straits Times she designed the quiz’s 12 food-themed personality types based on “vibes” and drawing on the quirks of her friends.

“As for the vegetable theme, I just really like vegetables,” she adds.

She explains that Veggie ID started as a fun side project before beginning her current role as a software engineer. She created all the quiz’s cartoon graphics using a mobile phone app.

The quiz’s popularity in Singapore, Ms Liu believes, might be because it was brought to the island-state’s shores by her Singaporean university friends.

Mr Victor Pang, another Singaporean user, says the quiz reminds him of the viral personality test released by the Taiwan Design Expo in 2023, which sorted users into personality types like “Feline” and “Fire” based on their responses in an interactive story.

“It’s like the hero’s journey meets Myers-Briggs,” adds the 30-year-old English and drama educator, whose Veggie ID is Potato, a personality type described as “dangerously addicted to sugar”.

Personality tests have long been a cultural phenomenon, from magazine-based quizzes to the digital format popularised by media outlet BuzzFeed. The MBTI is among the most well-known of these tests, but has drawn criticism from the scientific community for lacking scientific rigour.

In contrast, academic research in psychology focuses on the Big Five personality traits: openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism.

Still, Professor Ryan Hong, deputy head of the National University of Singapore’s psychology department, suggests that these quizzes appeal to people’s desire for “self-discovery and self-verification”.

“Some people already have a good sense of who they are, and thus they seek results from these tests to verify or confirm their self-concepts,” he says.

There is also a social aspect, he notes. Personality quizzes offer opportunities for fun interactions, as people compare their results with those of friends, finding similarities and differences.

However, Dr Hong adds that people tend to emphasise traits that resonate with their self-image while downplaying those that do not, which can make personality quizzes seem more accurate than they actually are.

To take the quiz, you can visit the website here.

This article was originally published in The Straits Times.