Personality Assessment - Overview

Teresa Pangan, Phd, RD

Getting Started

Assessing your Personality Type

Personality type helps individuals understand themselves and how they operate by focusing on four key areas (called dichotomies) and eight extremes on the key areas (called preferences):

Preferences

Everyone’s personality falls onto one side of the midpoint on each of these dichotomy scales. You can fall stronger on one preference than another, it is not all or nothing. Those individuals stronger on one preference are close to the end point. Others may not have a pronounced preference for a key area and may fall just slightly to one side of the midpoint of the dichotomy. People with strong preferences and sit on opposite ends of a scale are very different from one another.

Do not worry about the terms for the different personality preferences (judging, perceiving, extroversion, feeling…). I will give you many clues to use to find where you lie on each of these scales in a moment. The first or second bolded letter for each preference is emphasized because they are used in combination to designate the sixteen personality categories. In total, there are sixteen possibilities thus sixteen possible personality types. Why sixteen, not thirty or ten? The research has validated that sixteen is enough of a breakdown for people to be grouped into similar personalities. People within the same personality category will be similar, not identical. They will have differing values, skills, experiences in life, interests. Also, people do not cross over to a different personality category at different times in their life, personality is constant throughout life.

Assessing Yourself

Next I have given descriptions, tips and keywords to help determine which of the preferences for each dichotomy describes YOU. While reading these the MOST IMPORTANT concept to remember is focus on finding the preference you were born with. Not the preference you have been rewarded for pursuing or a preference others have encouraged you pursue.

The analogy of whether you are right-handed or left-handed helps clarify how to select your personality type preference. If you are right-handed, when you write it feels easy and natural to use your right hand. It is automatic and almost effortless. Then try using your left-hand to write. You may have to concentrate very hard to write even one word. If you try hard, you may get a sentence down. That is your non-preference hand – your left hand. Then, if you broke your right-arm and had to wear a cast for months, you would adapt. It would be difficult, draining and slow at first. Over time you would get much better at using your left hand. In this case you have adapted to using a preference that is not your natural preference. Once the cast comes off, you go instantly back to using your right-hand. It feels easy again and does not drain you to use it.

For many people this can happen with preferences. Even though we use both preferences on a dichotomy every day, one feels more comfortable, trustworthy and easy. People use all eight preferences day in and day out. You may even have adapted to using a non-preference for many years. This happens especially in the category of introversion and extraversion. People frequently learn to or are encouraged to become more extraverted. Extraversion is encouraged in sports and certain jobs require a lot of networking and interacting with people every day – extravert activities. Thus people in sports and these types of jobs have to adapt to extraversion whether it is their natural preference or not.

People can become very good at a non-preference. So do not rush through the assessment, you may be surprised what you find when you slow down and really think through your answers.

The best way of filtering through your previous experiences to find your true preference is to read carefully the tips for each dichotomy and refer back to the time when you were a child. Think of how you were then naturally, and not how you think you should be or how your parents encouraged you or how your job has pushed you to. Think of your grade school years and who you were, what you enjoyed doing. How did you approach activities? Which ones did you enjoy a lot and why? You can ask your parents for insight too.

I was going through the assessment with my sister and she mentioned our mom told her she enjoyed more staying home on Friday nights growing up than going out with a large group of friends. She went out frequently due to the pressures of being socially active, but she enjoyed being home to regain energy she lost during the school day with friends. She preferred introversion. I initially would have put her into extraversion, but in reality she is more to over the midpoint on the introversion preference.

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