Reflective Essay: How To Measure Personality

How to Measure Personality

Have you ever felt flustered with someone because you did not understand their nature or how to deal with them? Many people have trouble fully understanding personality: the individual differences characterized by certain thoughts, feelings, and behaviors associated with a certain group of individuals

(Pervin, 2000). Although people are different and unique, there are still some major traits that fit certain people. This paper analyzes personality tests and what they say about people.

First of all, I took the Keirsey Temperament Sorter (KS-II) to find my personality type.

The Keirsey test was created by Dr. David Keirsey in 1978 (1996) and was designed to measure the student 's understanding of their temperament

Intuiting (Introspective), Thinking (Tough-minded) vs. Feeling (Friendly), and

Judging (Scheduled) vs. Perceiving (Probing). The method behind discovering temperament is broken down into sections called rings. Rings use questions from the Sensing vs. Intuiting scale to determine if one is a more abstract or concrete person. Concrete people are more observant and down to earth, while abstracts look inside with their head in the clouds. Next, one is determined on a Cooperative (working with others to do what 's right) vs. Pragmatic (using thoughts and feelings to do what one thinks is right) scale. Combining the two will give one of the four temperaments: Artisan, Guardian, Rationalist, or Idealist. The third part is Directive vs.

Informative. This scale determines how one normally communicates with others, dividing the temperaments into 8 subdivisions. Finally, Expressive vs. Attentive describes how one interacts with their environment to give a grand total of 16 personality types. This theory was developed

HOW TO MEASURE PERSONALITY 3 from theories of Plato, Hippocrates, and Aristotle. Also, after reading Carl Jung 's book and reading Myer-Briggs theory, Keirsey was able to further expand these findings into his

The MBTI (Myers-Briggs Type Indicator) was designed to assess student learning style and evaluate the probability for psychological disorders (Jung Typology Test, 2008). There are several differences between the MBTI and Keirsey test. Keirsey focuses on behavior and groups people by temperament; MBTI focuses on how people think and feel while grouping by

"function attitudes". Also, MBTI emphasized the extroversion/introversion

(expressive/attentive) dichotomy and uses a linear four-factor model. On the other hand, Keirsey emphasizes a sensing/intuiting (concrete/abstract) dichotomy and uses a systems field theory model (Keirsey, 1996). Although Keirsey and Myers-Briggs both have their pros and cons, I think the Myers-Briggs test is more useful than Keirsey. My reasoning behind this opinion is that MBTI is used for counseling, psychological therapy, private industry, U.S. military, and federal government (“Personality Testing in the Workplace”). In an environment where a person 's type is highly evaluated, you would want to use MBTI because it groups by the dominant attitude, not just by temperament. These personality tests have broadened