Attention, Drama Queens! Are you listening? Of course you are; I can see you there, barely holding it together and breathlessly waiting to climb the walls and declaim to the world your woes, be they large or small, sucking all and sundry into the vortex of histrionics that is your daily life. Your coworkers never leave you enough milk for your coffee. Your cat is adorable but fragile. Your neighbors deliberately play their music too loud, you’re sure of this. This shouldn’t come as a surprise, but you have a need for drama. Calm down, for God’s sake! Let me explain. Psychologist Scott Frankowski and his team of researchers at the University of Texas in El Paso have developed a test to measure a person’s “drama scale.”
Almost 500 volunteers answered how they felt about statements such as “It’s hard for me to hold my opinion back” and “I say or do things just to see how people react.” The results indicate whether a person exhibits signs of a “compound personality trait in which individuals manipulate others from a position of perceived victimization.” Frankowski discovered that people with a high need for drama in their lives were generally more impulsive and have “an external locus of control,” meaning that they seldom recognize their own role in creating all the fuss. You can take the test here, after which you may feel the need to whine about the results on Facebook.
