More than half of all people are one of these personality types. Which one are you?

A long time ago, I picked up an excellent book. It was talking about four different types of personality. I was using a lot of time to try to figure out people, and personality theory just went up my alley. It was terrific to see that somebody had talked about this hundreds and hundreds of years ago already. In this article, I’m just going to talk to you guys about how personality theory can help you figure out people and figure out your life

Why should you learn about personality theory in psychology?

People are complicated. Especially these days, I would say that it’s tough to figure them out. A lot of times, you are trying to figure out why is it that this person reacts in a particular type of way. And now, I think people do not understand people at all. If anything, I would say that most people probably appreciate their cell phones more than others.

What is personality theory?

So there are many different ways you can look at personality theory. For me, I prefer the four temperaments. This is a prevalent theory. The type of personality you have depends on different kinds of fluids (or humors) that exist in your body. So, according to the four temperaments, there are four personality types. Sanguine, choleric, phlegmatic, and melancholy. I’ll cover all of them a little bit later. The point is that there are four different types of personalities, and depending on which you or other people fall into, it’s straightforward to figure out people and their characters. 

Don’t reinvent the wheel

According to some Greek philosophers hundreds of years ago, people used to understand people based on these humors or temperaments. Now the thing is that this is not a fundamental scientific theory, nor is this ironclad. This was around the same time that they invented this thing called bloodletting, which meant that to get people not to be sick anymore, they would take out blood from their bodies. A lot of people were hurt, and they died in this era. 

Nonetheless, it’s perfect to look at temperaments and see what they were talking about. If this fits into something interesting to you, then that’s great. If you think that this is some crazy pseudoscience that nobody should think about, then that’s good too. It makes for some good reading

Sanguine

Somebody who is sanguine is a naturally extroverted person. This is the type of person that will volunteer for anything. They love being in front of people. They are a natural actor; you can see their charisma. You’re the type of person that makes the party lively. At the same time, this type of person will volunteer for everything, and then tomorrow, they won’t even show up. I had a lot of friends like this growing up. They were happy and made you want to be around them. At the same time, they’re not very dependable

Phlegmatic

These people like to keep the peace. One of the defining factors about phlegmatic people is that when they say no about something, it’s forever. On the outside, they seemed passive, but actually, they have quiet strength. Phlegmatic people balance out the other temperments and try to make everything pretty calm.

Choleric

This is the boss type of character. They want to control everything, and they are the leader. This is the person that you put at the forefront and has a booming voice. They are the ones that are making the speech because they want everybody to do as they say. They're loud, and they don’t listen that much. These are sometimes good people you want to have if you want to organize some event. If you want everybody to do the same thing, then choleric people are where it’s at. At the same time, if you want somebody to listen to you, I would say that this is not the right person.

Melancholy

The melancholy personality is pretty unique. I would say this is the genius type of personality. The thing is that they aren’t genius’ all the time. Sometimes they feel like they’re with it, and sometimes they feel like they’re not. Michaelangelo, who painted the Sistine Chapel, was melancholy. So much so that he would be super depressed, and I mean, he painted this. So here’s the thing, even though these people might be a super genius, on a day-to-day basis, they might feel like trash. So sad is an exciting part of the personality spectrum.

Combinations 

Remember that most people are probably not purely one of these personality types. Some people might be an even distribution of two. I doubt that there’s probably somebody out there who has four of these personality types built in. In any case, it’s exciting to see that hundreds of years ago, people were really so in tune with others' personalities that they were able to figure this stuff out. For me, I like to play a game where I look at different people that I know and try to see what type of personality they fit into.

Who’s who

Do you fit into any of these personality types? Do any of your friends or family include intended these personality types? Do you think that these are suitable personality types to base on reality? Who knows? I mean, for me, four temperaments are a novelty, but at the same time, it’s a good rule of thumb to figure out people. If this was helpful for you, I hope that it was. You can go and check out some books and some other articles about the four temperaments. I read a couple of books about the stuff before I posted this article a long time ago. I hope this was useful. Please like and share