All about personality traits: Are these different types for real?

Your personality is what makes you unique. It’s your lasting traits that determine how you respond, including your interests, abilities and emotional patterns. Psychology has several theories to describe different personalities. But are these types real?

Psychologists have tried to differentiate between different types. While these personality indicators have become tools, there is no true scientific basis to support them.

The most common types of personality tools in use are Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), Types A–D, and the Enneagram model.

• Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)

This has a series of DIY questions that show various personality types based on four dominant character types. Different combinations of the same then allow you to form 16 different types of personalities.

The MBTI was first developed in the 1940s by Isabel Briggs Myers and her mother Katharine Cook Briggs, and it’s based on psychologist Carl Jung’s theory of psychological types. The purpose of the test is to “make the theory of psychological types described by C.G. Jung understandable and useful in people’s lives,” according to the Myers & Briggs Foundation. In other words, the MTBI is intended to give clarity and understanding of a person’s personality type in a practical way.

It purpose is to help people understand themselves and also choose professions where they xan succeed based on who they are.

You can take the MBTI personality test on several websites for free. You can even visit the US-based Myers-Briggs Foundation website for more information on various personality types and characters and how they inform you.

Also read | 5 different types of personality traits. Which one are you?

• Personality Types A, B, C, D

These four personality types were initially identified by Hippocrates in ancient Greece. They were further refined and defined in 1950s into ABCD personality types by cardiologists Meyer Friedman and Ray Rosenman. It categorises individuals into four distinct personality types based on their behaviour, attitudes, and responses to stress.

• Type A: Tends to be competitive, hardworking and likely to have heart issues.
• Type B: Tends to be more relaxed and patient and less likely to have heart issues.
• Type C: Is more logical and particular about things.
• Type D: Is the classic worrier and tends to be negative.

These personality types might be helpful for making sense of general behaviour patterns, but people can exhibit traits of more than one personality type.

In a study titled Role of personality in cardiovascular diseases: An issue that needs to be focused too! published by the Indian Heart Journal, authors Swapanjeet Sahoo, Sushant Kumar Padhy, Binayananda Padhee, Neha Singla and Siddharta Sarkar state that “There has been a sustained interest over the last half a century on the issue of relationship between personality traits and CVDs (cardiovascular diseases). Type A behavior was the initial focus of inquiry as it was observed that individuals who were competitive, hostile, and excessively driven were overrepresented among patients seeking treatment for CVDs… the research gradually expanded to assess the relationship of cardiac morbidity with various other personality facets. Furthermore, studies found out that negative effects (including anger and hostility) were also associated with adverse cardiovascular outcomes. Subsequently, a new personality entity named as the type D ‘distressed’ personality, which combined negative affectivity and social inhibition. type D personality then became the area of research and was demonstrated to be related with poorer cardiac outcomes.”

• Enneagram model

This tool helps people find self-discovery and meaning in life.

According to the Enneagram Institute, “Everyone emerges from childhood with one of the nine types dominating their personality, with inborn temperament and other pre-natal factors being the main determinants of our type. This is one area where most all of the major Enneagram authors agree—we are born with a dominant type. Subsequently, this inborn orientation largely determines the ways in which we learn to adapt to our early childhood environment.”

It’s a circular model with intersecting lines representing stress and growth. Each point on the circle represents a personality type, numbered 1 to 9.

Even though personality tests are flawed and often inaccurate, people love taking them. It could be because you want to learn something new about yourself. People also like to categorize themselves. Some people also believe that personality tests could help you understand other people better. But trying to understand someone’s personality can make you believe in stereotypes instead of seeing the larger picture.

If you enjoy taking personality tests as a fun diversion, there’s no harm. But if you’re counting on them to tell you something about yourself, they can disappoint because they are more than likely to tell you what you already know about yourself and therefore help you fit into a bracket. They’re not good predictors of performance over time or how satisfied you’ll be in a certain situation.