BLIRT
The following questions refer to the reactions people have when interacting with others. Please indicate how YOU react to these events by choosing a number from the following scale. Please base your answers on how YOU react, not on how you think others react or how you think a person should react.
1------2------3------4------5
Strongly DisagreeNeither Agree Strongly
Disagree Agree nor Agree
Disagree
_____1. If I have something to say, I don’t hesitate to say it.
_____2. It often takes me awhile to figure out how to express myself.
_____3. If I disagree with someone, I tend to wait until later to say something.
_____4. I always say what’s on my mind.
_____5. Sometimes I just don’t know what to say to people.
_____6. I never have a problem saying what I think.
_____7. When emotions are involved, it’s difficult for me to argue my opinion.
_____8. I speak my mind as soon as a thought enters my head.
To compute your score, simply add your responses to items 1,4, 6, and 8 to get the subtotal. For the other 4 items (2, 3, 5, and 7), subtract your response from “6” to get the “reverse scored” numbers for each of these four numbers. Then add the total of the reverse scores to the subtotal for your grand sum.
If you are 15 or below you would be considered a low blirter, 16-32 would be considered moderate blirters, and above 33 would be considered high blirters.
Brief description:
Blirtatiousness is defined as how quickly and effusively people respond to others. Swann and Rentfrow (2001) have recently introduced an eight-item measure of blirtatiousness they dubbed the BLIRT (Brief Loquaciousness and Interpersonal Responsiveness Test). High scorers (“High blirters”) know what they think and how they feel, are not afraid to say it, and tend to express themselves as soon as the thought occurs to them. They tend to endorse items such as “If I have something to say, I don’t hesitate to say it,” and “I speak my mind as soon as a thought enters my head.” Low scorers (“Low blirters”) are less clear about the nature of their thoughts and feelings, are socially inhibited, and are relatively slow in responding to others. They are apt to endorse items such as, “It often takes me awhile to figure out how to express myself", and “If I disagree with someone, I tend to wait until later to say something.”
The BLIRT has desirable psychometric properties (substantial internal consistency, temporal stability, discriminant and convergent validity). For example, it is associated with assertiveneness, extroversion, emotional clarity, fear of negative evaluations, neuroticism (negatively) and self-perceived social competence, but independent of measures of intelligence, affect intensity, agreeableness, social desirability, and openness. Moreover, when they completed the BLIRT, car salespersons outscored librarians and European Americans outscored Asian-Americans.
More important, blirtatiousness uniquely predicts several distinct phenomena in the field and laboratory even when its strongest covariates (e.g., extraversion, neuroticism, and assertiveness) are covaried out (Swann & Rentfrow, 2001). For example, high Blirters responded more rapidly and effusively whether the interaction was affectively neutral (a getting acquainted conversation or a college classroom) or contentious (a confrontation with a confederate who either disrupted the experiment by continuing to talk on her cell phone or insulted the participant and pummeled him with wads of paper). In contrast, overtly low Blirters responded slowly or not at all while their physiological systems slipped into overdrive (as indexed by blood pressure).