The 4 Personality Types According To Gerlach, Farb, Revelle And Nunes Amaral

Throughout the history of psychology, different authors have developed different theories of personality designed to describe different types of personalities. Just recently, a group of researchers at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illionois (USA) carried out a comprehensive analysis of data, the results of which challenge the paradigms of personality psychology. This study was led by Martin Gerlach.

The social psychologists raise the question of whether there are different personality types. Human traits are another aspect of their investigation. Personality traits “can be consistently measured across ages and cultures,” said Amaral, co-author and professor of chemical and biological engineering at Northwestern University’s McCormick School of Engineering.

The researchers reviewed data from more than 1.5 million respondents and found that there are at least four different groups of personality types: average, reserved, self-centered, and exemplary. These four personality types are based on five basic personality traits: neuroticism, extraversion, sincerity, kindness, and awareness.

The study cited here was published in the journal Nature Human Behavior .

A concept that is still controversial in psychology

William Revelle, Professor of Psychology at Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences and also lead author of the study, explains that “since Hippocrates, people have tried to classify personality types. But previous studies have shown that it doesn’t make sense. ”   However, the data from this new research show that ” certain personality types have a higher density.”

Initially, however, Revelle was skeptical of the hypothesis presented for the study. The concept of personality types remains controversial in psychology, especially as several different classifications have been published and eventually received support. However, earlier experiments based on smaller groups of test persons regularly led to results that were not meaningful and not reproducible.

“Personality types only existed in self-help literature and had no place in scientific journals,” says Amaral . “We now believe that this will change because of our study.”

The personality types: a new approach

This new study combined an alternative computational approach with data collected from more than 1.5 million subjects around the world using four questionnaires and John Johnson’s IPIP-NEO of 120 and 300 items, respectively. The myPersonality project and data sets from a study by the BBC were also incorporated.

The questionnaires developed by the research community for decades comprise hundreds of questions. The study participants answered these voluntarily in the form of online questionnaires, whereby they felt motivated by the opportunity to learn more about their own personalities.

From this extensive dataset, the research team identified the five traits that may be gaining greater acceptance: neuroticism, extraversion, openness, kindness, and awareness. After developing new algorithms, four groups or personality types could be defined:

• The average type: The number of people with this personality type shows a high degree of neuroticism and extraversion, while their openness is rather low. According to the researchers, women are more likely to belong to this personality type.
• The reserved type: The reserved type is emotionally stable and at the same time a little neurotic. Those people who belong to this personality type are not particularly extroverted, which does not mean that they would not be pleasant to interact with.
• The exemplary type: The people who correspond to the exemplary personality type have a low score for neurotics, but a high score for all other traits. The likelihood that someone has an exemplary personality increases dramatically with age. According to the researchers, these are very reliable people who are open to new ideas. They are also people who like to take on responsibility. Again, women are more likely to belong to this personality type.

• The egocentric type: egocentric people achieve extremely high scores in extraversion, but below average when it comes to openness, friendliness and awareness. The number of self-centered types decreases sharply with age, both in women and in men.

As can already be deduced from these definitions, our personality changes in the course of life. The researchers explain that as a person matures, so does the configuration of his personality. For example, older people tend to be less neurotic but more conscious and kind than people under the age of 20.