Personality

Personality is defined as the characteristic sets of behaviors, cognitions, and emotional patterns that evolve from biological and environmental factors. While there is no generally agreed upon definition of personality, most theories focus on motivation and psychological interactions with one's environment.  SOURCE:  Wikipedia

According to Brett Hardin (who has his own blog):  People types have been around a long time. Originally called the four temperaments by Hippocrates, they establish the four archetypes of people’s personalities. It was expanded by Myers-Brigg personality test which is overly complicated.

At any given time someone can be any of the four, but people typically feel most natural in one. The archetype that people fall into is easy to recognize once you understand the four and you can change your posture and language accordingly, once you identify what personality you are dealing with.

The four personality types are: Driver, Expressive, Amiable, and Analytical. There are two variables to identify any personality: Are they better at facts & data or relationships? And are they introverted or extroverted.

• Driver — Fact-Based Extrovert
• Analytical — Fact-Based Introvert
• Amiable — Relationship Introvert
• Expressive — Relationship Extrovert

While Brett Hardin thinks that Myers-Briggs Personality is overly complicated...  this writer does not agree with that assessment at all...  in fact, the questionnaire that is used to determine the various personalities (and there are 16 of them) is relatively simply minded in the kinds of questions that are being asked...  and the only complicated aspect of that is deciding if you agree with the question or not as it pertains to what you do or do not do...  act or not act...   think or not think...

I have taken the Myers-Briggs questionnaire four different times and there was a  10 year interval between each time that I took the questionnaire...   and in those 10 years of growth and change one would think that one's personality would change...   BUT THERE WAS NO CHANGE IN MY PERSONALITY.

• I was an INTJ at age 35
• I was an INTJ at age 45
• I was an INTJ at age 55
• i was an intj at age 65

Interestingly, when I read the description of an INTJ, the description fit me perfectly in all aspects...   and, it was so accurate that the first couple of times that I read the description, it was damn near scary.

The Myers–Briggs Type Indicator is an introspective self-report questionnaire indicating differing psychological preferences in how people perceive the world and make decisions. The test attempts to assign four categories: introversion or extraversion, sensing or intuition, thinking or feeling, judging or perceiving.

Most of the research supporting the MBTI's validity has been produced by the Center for Applications of Psychological Type, an organization run by the Myers-Briggs Foundation, and published in the center's own journal, the Journal of Psychological Type, raising questions of independence, bias, and conflict of interest.  Independent sources have called the test "little more than a Chinese fortune cookie", "pretty much meaningless", "one of the worst personality tests in existence," and "the fad that won't die".

Though the MBTI resembles some psychological theories, it has been criticized as pseudoscience and is not widely endorsed by academic researchers in the field. The indicator exhibits significant scientific (psychometric) deficiencies, notably including poor validity (i.e. not measuring what it purports to measure, not having predictive power or not having items that can be generalized), poor reliability (giving different results for the same person on different occasions), measuring categories that are not independent (some dichotomous traits have been noted to correlate with each other), and not being comprehensive (due to missing neuroticism). The four scales used in the MBTI have some correlation with four of the Big Five personality traits, which are a more commonly accepted framework.  SOURCE:  Wikipedia