How to Analyze Personality Using Specific Personality Theories

Exploring your own personality and the personality of those in your life can be an extremely elucidating and rewarding experience. Unfortunately, learning the specifics of different personality systems can be intimidating as well as time consuming. However, with a few tips, tricks and guidelines, the process can become accessible to anyone. Once you feel comfortable with a personality typing system, you can discover what makes you unique and understand the hidden dynamics between yourself and loved ones.

Things You'll Need

• Paper
• Pencil

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Instructions

Analyzing Personality Type

• 1

  Explore some of the main personality typing systems and choose which you would like to delve into first. Three of the most common systems are the Myers-Briggs, the Enneagram and the Big Five. Research each of these to get a sense of which would be the most rewarding for you to examine first. For example, the Enneagram is an archetypal system where an individual is one of nine types, whereas the Big Five and Myers-Briggs give different scores for various different items.

• 2

  Locate a version of the test you want to start with--online or in print. A very accessible website with a plethora of legitimate personality tests is similarminds.com. Fill out the test, making sure to consider the behavior and traits that you embody and display the majority of the time.

• 3

  Submit your test online or score it by hand if you are using a book in print. Examine your scores closely, and copy them down into a notebook for your records. If you are using the Myers-Briggs or the Big Five, pay special attention to the items that you scored high or low on, while paying less attention to the items in which you scored around the middle. For example, if you score a 52% on extroversion and a 48% on introversion, this tendency does not set you apart much from the norm. However, if you score 82% on judging and 18% on perceiving, this is an extreme aspect of your personality and deserves much attention.

• 4

  Retake your tests again in a day, a week or a month and pay attention to how much your scores shift based on your current mood and mindset. This can be especially important for personality tests like the Enneagram, where the end result is fitting into one particular type among nine. This test yields nine scores for each type, where you are given a percentage rating for 0 to a 100 for each type. Examine the three highest scores and then read the descriptions of each of these types. It is ultimately you that decides which type fits the best, not the score.

• 5

  Encourage your friends and family to go through the same exploration process, and when they notify you of their type, take the time to read up about their type so that you can get a sense for it beyond a textual profile. Look up information on how your two personality types interact, and see if you can gain any insight from it.