Personality theory

Disclaimer

The personalities

Personality traits are primitive emotions made reasonable: premeditated to be viable in the long term & over broad circumstances. A person's dominant trait changes only under stress, mostly before adulthood, so you should be familiar with all these types from high school (giving enough observational data to render controlled experiments redundant). All these traits have existed (@ least) throughout recorded history. But due to societal pressures & lack of availability, not everyone's vocation matches their personality; so the above traits may refer instead to an avocation. Most jobs & personalities have prioritized mixtures of traits.

A person's philosophy is a statement of their personality. This means not only ethics, but also epistemology -- their definition of truth/reasoning. This is why political/religious differences have no logical resolution. (Just as it's pointless to have a debate, e.g., on whether chocolate or vanilla is "better" based on nutritional or financial data.)

My classification scheme is based on the age-old trichotomy of subjects of interest -- people, things, & ideas, each subdivided into those who are (relatively) agressive (subjective) or passive (objective) in their approach toward these 3 types of objects. (Related ideas & some of their history are discussed below.)

An example is recent American politics. The dominant traits (with strong mixtures of neighboring ones) for most politicians is:

Hierarchy

This "stratigraphic" ordering also matches educational level, as knowledge in a society increases with time (apparent "dark ages" notwithstanding). Correspondingly, there is an increase in education required in going from manual/clerical work (things), to dealing with other people, to intellectual endeavors (ideas). Within these 3 divisions, there is subdivision for aggressive/passive (or subjective/objective) attitudes, as greater knowledge is required to understand the world than to assert oneself. Polls show a correlation between educational level & politics (@ least with respect to progressive vs. conservative).

The emphasis on knowledge makes this a level-6 oriented ordering; other orderings (or lack thereof) follow from different levels of view: E.g., a deteriorationist (like Hesiod) might claim this table is better represented upside-down.

A coincidental analogy is quarks, which come in 6 "flavors", discovered in order of increasing mass. They come in 3 (weakly interacting) pairs, each of electric charges +⅔ & -⅓. The most recent is sometimes called "truth", & its partner "beauty".

Another coincidental(?) analogy is the stratigraphic ordering of body parts metaphorically associated with the 3 types of decision making: brain (ideas), heart (people), & gut (things). A better anatomical association is with the triune brain theory of Paul D. MacLean, dividing it chronologically into the reptilian (physical), paleomammalian (social), & neomammalian (intellectual) complexes. ("Mammalian" should be generalized to homeothermic or "warm-blooded" to include birds, & "reptiles" to the rest of the verterbrates.)

In other words

• Ambiguity in one's trait description often indicates one's own personality.
• Happiness is an aftereffect, not end.
• Becoming better/best is universal;
  "at what" is the trait. (Similar remarks apply to courage.)

• politics: see first table above.
• money/materialism: economics column.
• jobs that don't match personality.
• utility, by definition.
• another's ends: basis of trade.
• altruism: paraphrasing George Herbert Palmer, "If we are here to help others, then what are the others here for?"

Relative terms, chronologically: conservative (right) for earlier, progressive (left) for later. (Liberal & libertarian are also used oppositely, but switch roles in Europe vs. the United States.) Misnomers: Soviet "Socialist" (Communist), like National "Socialist" (Nazi), is authoritarian (2), not socialist (4), & thus right of capitalist (3).

I added a level 0 for no/pre-personality, sometimes confused with level 1. In the corresponding Neolithic prehistory, villages were homogeneous in lifestyle & architecture, with a subsistence economy, & thus not "true societies" (civilization).

Relation to other models

Each author's level of view (when it affects their hierarchy) is given next to their name. (Not all scientists have 6 as their dominant level.) Their own ordering is indicated by numbering in the body of the table, but circular orderings have no true origin nor orientation.

1. Karl Marx didn't apply his evolution of society explicitly to psychology. (His communism is now commonly called "anarchism".)
   • Oscar Wilde (1891) called Marx's top level "Individualism" & identified it with artists.
2. Eduard Spranger's "types of individuality" was the 1st personality trait/type theory (before even Freud & Jung).
   • His "hierarchy of values" was inverted, but paired most of the levels.
   • He interpreted the "vital" value (1), discussed by Friedrich Nietzsche, Henri Bergson (élan vital), Georg Simmel, Max Scheler, & Paul J.W. Pigors (his translator), as a composite of his other values.
   • He considered types based on only spending (1) or saving (2), but not both, as "perversions" of his economic level, whose sole end was identical to his biological type, survival (with utility, used to define that type, admittedly only a means).
   • He interpreted entrepreneurs as primarily political (3), using economics only as a means.
   • Abraham Aaron Roback (1927) described Spranger’s traits as derived from basic emotions.
3. Abraham Maslow's "hierarchy of needs" had 5 basic levels. A self-described "humanist" (anthropocentrist), his esthetic & cognitive needs were auxiliary, & thus not entered into the hierarchy: From the 1st chapter of his book,

   `… the limit to which the "pure" scientist approaches is not an Einstein or a Newton but rather the Nazi "scientist" of the concentration-camp experiments or the "mad" scientist of Hollywood. … Science for science’s sake can be just as sick as art for art’s sake.'

   (So much for his "positive theory of motivation". Maybe playing the Nazi card was more common back then.)
   • But Roe misinterpreted them as @ the top of his hierarchy, apparently based on the chronological order in which they appeared in the 4th chapter of his book. (Graves pre-1966 work was initially based on her interpretation.)
   • Similarly, humanist Gene Roddenberry centered Star Trek (1966) around the all-too-human Kirk, using Spock as an example of the deficiencies of scientists. But science fiction fans chose Spock as their favorite character.
   • According to Todd Bridgman, Stephen Cummings, & John Ballard (2019), "Maslow’s pyramid" originated with Charles D. McDermid (1960).
4. Gerald Heard's described "five ages of man":
   • He related ontogeny to phylogeny, but assumed all people went through each level @ the same biological age.
   • He 1st identified alternation, as "exploration of his environment (& expansion of his power in it)/investigation of his subjective being (& attempt to achieve peace with it)".
5. Clare W. Graves' "levels of existence" (1966) modified Maslow's hierarchy. Rather than the predetermined responses and classification of standard multiple choice questionnaires of some popular personality theories, his levels were based on giving students in his personality course 4 weeks for "their own personal conception of the psychologically mature human being". He described Heard’s alternation as (1970):
   • focus on the external world & the attempt to master it/inner world & the attempt to come to peace with it
   • adjustment of the environment to the organism/organism to the environment
   • express/sacrifice(deny) self
   He then adapted the ordering of levels 0-4 to history. He paired only the top 2 levels, as (‘66) individualistic (aggressive/pacifistic) or "being" levels (‘70). But:
   • His 2 lowest levels (physiological & traditional) did not appear in those surveys.
   • He identified "scientism" (positivism) only as a means for the materialistic level (as did Heard); in fact, while using technology, capitalists are the biggest deniers of pollution & global warming.
   • He found few examples of his highest 2, so his descriptions were vague, & detailed quotes from them were not published.
   • In particular, he quoted poetry to describe his top level (intuitive).
   • He speculated an infinite number of unknown higher levels, with all levels in related groups of 6.
6. Joy P. Guilford, Paul R. Christensen, Nicholas A. Bond, Jr., & Marcella A. Sutton surveyed interests to classify vocations, defining the groups better. (Actions speak louder than words.)
7. Anne Roe modified Guilford et al.'s vocations in the "groups" dimension of her better, "cylindrical" ordering (1956; "truncated cone", 1969), with a non-circular "levels" dimension indicating education/training. Originally (1954) she included all jobs requiring power tools (1) @ lower levels of science (e.g., aviator, electrician, repairman, truck driver, unskilled factory hand, and even chauffeur), forcing the relationship of that group to "physical" (later technology/outdoor), including technical jobs not requiring power tools (though perhaps using them). Then (1956) she included all technicians in technology, but also all engineers (6), @ different levels. E.g., some distinctions I would make:

   6	railway engineer	electrical engineer	rocket scientist	"nerd"
   1	railroad engineer	electrician	test pilot	"jock"

   Nowadays, all jobs relate to technology (but not necessarily to science).
   • An interesting analogy is to assign colors to the traits as red (6), yellow (5), green (4), cyan (3), blue (2), violet (1). The human eye sees the even numbers as primary colors via its 3 types of receptors, & the odd as secondary, which can be arranged in a circle ("color wheel") or hexagon. But a prism shows the true relation as linear ("spectrum"), based on wavelength (or frequency).
   • Despite her numbering, Roe specifically stated in her book that "cultural" was closest to "service" & "arts".
8. John L. Holland based his "Holland codes (RIASEC)" on the vocations of Guilford et al. (in 1959), circular ordering of Roe (in 1969, with Douglas R. Whitney, Nancy S. Cole, & James M. Richards, Jr.), & his own surveys.
   • In his original descriptions, Holland implied pairings similar to Spranger's: I & A as "abstract, thinking, intellectual, intraceptive", and S & E as "interpersonal, verbal, social". While R was classified as "physical, acting, concrete", and each of these 3 groupings were stated as avoiding the other 2, C was not unambiguously defined in these terms. (Other terms were also used to distinguish the types.)
   • Dale J. Prediger (1976) used these groupings (also for Roe's types), classifying I & A as "ideas" ("intrapersonal"), S & E as "people" ("interpersonal"), and R as "things" ("nonpersonal"). C was identified with "data" ("impersonal"), in order to obtain "2 bipolar dimensions" with things opposite people & data opposite ideas. (The subtle distinction between "impersonal" & "nonpersonal" is lost on me, & on dictionaries. Although E was clearly included in people in the description in the text of the article, it was shown closer to data in the figure, & listed as "data-people" in the table, since this choice of "coordinates" didn't fit Holland's types to a regular hexagon.) Others (earlier & later) also tried fits to various choices of 2 (& higher) dimensions.
   • Like Roe's original classification, Holland considered some technicians as primarily scientists: e.g. (1970), airplane pilot, bowling alley equipment mechanic, pipe fitter, TV repairman, & various machine operators. So he classified both engineers & technicians as both RI & IR, whereas I identify technicians as RC & engineers as IA.

     	Roe (1954)	Roe (1956)	Holland	me
     6	scientist engineer technician	scientist	scientist engineer technician	scientist engineer
     1	technician	engineer technician	engineer technician	technician

   • But my (1-dimensional) hierarchy is implied by educational level in studies by Linda S. Gottfredson (1980) and Robert C. Reardon, Stacie H. Vernick, & Corey A. Reed (2001). (For the latter, the gaps are larger between my pairs than between elements of each pair.) The resulting linear (level-6 based) ordering differs from Roe/Holland's circular only in making R and I maximally distant rather than close.

     Holland Gottfredson Reardon et al. GED prestige Cx 6 I 5.3 58 72 5 A 4.7 52 69 4 S 4.5 51 63 3 E 4.3 45 60 2 C 3.5 44 55 1 R 3.1 35 52

     (GED = General Educational Development tests, Cx = Cognitive Complexity)

Among less-related models:

1. "Character strengths and virtues" by Christopher Peterson and Martin Seligman had related categories, but without ordering.
   • The factions of the Divergent books/movies (Veronica Roth) were also based on virtues. The implied ordering is an inverted hierarchy typical of "mad"-scientist/post-apocalyptic/action-adventure plots.
2. The popular "Big Five" model (Donald W. Fiske, 1949; Ernest Tupes and Raymond Christal, 1961), unordered, includes "neuroticism" as a trait. Inclusion of neuroses/psychoses makes this also a model for abnormal psychology, unlike any of the previous. Mental disorder no more defines a personality than suffering from a disease defines a species.
   • Similarly, the "colors of love" (John Alan Lee) includes "mania". But 2 (agape) is considered the "top" level.

The "Myers–Briggs Type Indicator" (Isabel Briggs Myers & Katharine Cook Briggs, 1944), based on the work of Carl Jung (1921) treated pairs of approaches to various subjects as opposites. They can better be treated as complementary or redundant; roughly (cf. the top table):

Comparison

1. used both alternation & pairing, which implies a unique classification & ordering,
   • alternation: found by Heard, adopted by Graves
   • pairing: found partially by Spranger, hinted @ by Holland (& slightly by Graves), treated as opposites by Jung/MBTI
2. & considered both history & jobs,
   • history: used for sociology by Marx, applied to psychology by Heard, adopted by Graves
   • jobs: found by Guilford et al., adopted by Roe & Holland
3. & thus recognized educational level gives an ordering in agreement with the historical one.
   • Roe considered education, & Maslow's hierarchy, but for her chronological "levels" dimension, mistaking it as orthogonal to her groups dimension in the above table.
   • The ordering originated by Roe, & improved by Holland, was circular rather than linear due to confusion of engineers (intellectual) with technicians (physical), & attempting to treat educational level as independent.