Blog Post #1

Personality vs. Behavioral inventories

Personality Inventories

The Ancient Greeks gave us four temperaments: sanguine, choleric, melancholic and phlegmatic (and God forbid you were born phlegmatic!). Since then, we have moved past these definitions in hope of discovering a model that truly identifies, with all of our complexity, the individual.

A personality inventory seeks to find a person’s personality type. Even though we exhibit so many random variations in our behavior, Carl Jung claims that our personality is quite orderly and consistent, due to basic differences in how we use our perception and judgment (MTBI). This theory is now the backbone for most personality research. According to Jung, Perception involves all the ways of becoming aware of things, people, happenings, or ideas, while Judgment involves all the ways of coming to conclusions about what has been perceived (MTBI). So, our awareness of the world leads to our interpretations of it, and that adds up to our predictable personality. 

Modern personality inventories, especially those based on the Myers-Briggs theory (16personalities.com is an example), claim that our personalities run deeper than that. Our actions, they say, are also influenced by our environment, experience, and individual goals. Personality is just one aspect of our actions. Together these elements reveal the probability that you will act a certain way. Myers-Briggs has a four-letter naming model common throughout the field.

·         Introversion (I) or Extraversion (E)

·         Intuition (N) or Sensing (S)

·         Thinking (T) or Feeling (F)

·         Judging (J) or Perceiving (P)

But we have only scratched the surface. Sixteen personalities are not enough. Services like 16personalities.com incorporate five more personality traits, or the Big Five, a five-factor model aiming to create an alignment between an employee's drive and the organization's goals (AM). The Big Five compliment the Myers-Briggs theory.

Behavioral Inventories

Behavior, they say, relates to what a person does—how they act, a result of our values and beliefs. You can change what you do but not who you are. That, I think, is the key difference between the two—you can use behavioral inventories to change, while in personality inventories, you cannot. Even though 16personalities.com uses the four-letter personality model, they also incorporate the Big Five. This is where these inventories overlap. The five behavioral factors (Extraversion, Neuroticism, Conscientiousness, Agreeableness and Openness) that shape you can also be molded and transformed by your boss. Besides Myers-Briggs, the Big Five seems to be the most common model.

Behavioral inventories all seem to target the workplace, both for employers seeking to hire or train and for workers trying to become more hireable or agreeable. Assessment Associates International offers a workplace-specific behavioral inventory. The People Styles model addresses workplace scenarios exclusively. And Truity.com also offers a DiSC Behavior Inventory, which like Bolton, addresses behavior exclusively. 

Invented by William Marston—a women’s advocate who created the comic book character Wonder Woman—the DiSC model looks at Dominance, Influence, Steadiness, and Conscientiousness. Websites using this model target companies who will use this inventory to hire better employees. It is also much different than the People Styles model because their graphic is “disc”-shaped, not square.

Bringing It Back to Bolton

How else do these relate to our People Styles model? The Boltons’ People Style model focuses on people styles: "[A] cluster of habitual assertive and responsive behaviors that have a pervasive and enduring influence on one’s actions" (p. 19). The most glaring difference between their model and others is that theirs is based on other people’s perceptions of you (or more precisely, how you think other people see you), not on how you see yourself. Where personality tests might help you to know thyself, the People Styles model simply wants you to create and maintain relationships. It is not concerned with what lies beneath. The People Styles model also narrows down Responsiveness and Assertiveness as the only two behavioral clusters worth mentioning. With others, things get more complicated.

Cost/Access/How used?

Tests are mostly free, but if you want to learn more—which is where they get you—you are prompted to purchase. Since initial access is free, these sites target guests with a casual curiosity and lure them deeper down the rabbit hole. What, then, am I to do with this information? Many more inventories exist. Some compare you to Game of Thrones characters, others tell you your "Disney character age." Taking these tests is fun--mostly superficial, but fun. The sites look great and the services are mostly very impressive, but the whole endeavor feels like a gimmick. I am quickly reminded that personality and behavior inventories are an industry, a gargantuan industry, where according to one website, tests are completed by over 10 million people each year in recruitment, personal development, coaching and team building (AM).

On 16personalities.com, the test is free, but if you want to “balance your needs with the needs of others, without compromising your values,” well, that will cost you the price of their Premium Profile, which comes with a 159-page e-book at $32.99.

Truity.com has a TypeFinder test. They have a free version, which is a “quick way to get started,” but for $29 you “can plan a life that sets you up for success” with the paid version. Either way, they want you to sign up for an online account. Free of charge, they also have a temperament test and an ideal partner test, in which you describe how your ideal partner would act and where to find them (for me, “an entrepreneurial type, possibly in conferences exploring the cutting edge of tech”). Just like that, I am provided a solution, an answer to one of life's greatest mysteries: How do I find the perfect partner?

Useful To Me?

The complex modern world is daunting and confusing and isolating, and more so than ever we face a personality crisis, an existential crisis when our relationship or our profession is no longer gratifying. We feel responsible. Ignoring the problem does not help. We then seek the proper diagnosis to solve the puzzle, perhaps originating within our mind. Why do I do these things? What should I do now? I have made the wrong diagnosis before. I need guidance, but where to turn? What is the source of my unhappiness? That, at least, is the way I feel. As of now, 60,640,852 tests have been taken at 16personalities.com. Convenient and hassle-free, these tests take 10 minutes to complete, and in the end, you are provided simple explanations to the web of complexity that allegedly created all the confusion. It is a start, at least. 

References

AM Azure Consulting. (2013, November 25). DISC: the fascinating story of William Marston and his DISC legacy. Retrieved January 20, 2017, from http://www.slideshare.net/AndrewMunro/disc-28615306

DiSC Profile - What is DiSC®? The DiSC personality test explained. (n.d.). Retrieved January 20, 2017, from https://www.discprofile.com/what-is-disc/overview/

MBTI® Basics. (n.d.). Retrieved January 20, 2017, from http://www.myersbriggs.org/my-mbti-personality-type/mbti-basics/

 The Battle of the Giants: Big Five versus MBTI. (2013, April 16). Retrieved January 20, 2017, from https://staffanspersonalityblog.wordpress.com/2013/04/14/the-battle-of-the-giants-big-five-versus-mbti/