The Four Personality Types

I’ve attended a few different churches over the course of the past twenty years. For the ones that I’ve stayed at for a while, inevitably, either in a discipleship class, a small group “family” meeting, Sunday school, or in a sermon, the folks “in charge” have presented the idea that there are four basic personality types and that people are distinguished from each other by which category they favor the most. Along with this presentation, there usually was a self-test that people would take to determine which personality type they had. The names given to these four types were either based on ancient notions of the body or on names of animals that gave clues as to the nature of each type. There were the choleric (“lion”), melancholy (“beaver”), phlegmatic (“golden retriever”), and sanguine (“otter”) personalities. In a very small nutshell, cholerics tend to be bossy, type A’s. Melancholies are finicky, perfectionist, and slaves to detail. Phlegmatics are more relaxed and laid back, with a tendency to be lazy. And sanguines are naturally sociable types who sometimes have trouble keeping up with their commitments.

I remember when one small church I attended gave out the self-test and then asked those in the assembled group to stand when the personality name that they belonged to was called out. I stood up by myself when “phlegmatic” was called. When “choleric” was called out, almost everyone else stood up! This was in spite of the fact that the teacher had just said that the choleric personality accounted for only about 2% of the general population. That should have been a dead giveaway that I was in a decidedly unbalanced social environment. I probably should have left that church then, but, you know, I’m a phlegmatic and, well, I didn’t see what the point would be in making a big fuss about it. Besides, I suspect that some of those who stood up were trying to paint themselves as “leaders”, so answering questions to appear choleric was, to them, an exercise in virtue (as opposed to lazy old me, who just answered the questions honestly). I think the rationale behind the churches promoting this four-type idea was threefold. First, they wanted their congregations (or fellowships, or whatever you want to call it) to appreciate rather than pass judgment on people, especially fellow church-goers, just because their personalities were oriented a little (or a lot) differently. Second, the idea was put forth that Jesus was the perfect balance of all four categories, and that believers should consciously strive to grow in those areas that do not come naturally to them. And third, it gave church leaders another opportunity to get their people to “volunteer” to perform service functions for the church (in other words, you don’t have to be a “lion” to mow the church lawn or clean the bathrooms).

Although it was organized religion through which I became aware of this four-part psychological division of humanity, I’ve found that it's enhanced my understanding of the different characters presented in fictional literature. And one of the true masters at depicting people by personality types (albeit not in the described formal manner) is Stephen King. In his novel The Tommyknockers, which I just recently finished reading, Bobbi Anderson’s sister Anne has to be the “choleric from hell” (actually most cholerics seem that way to me, that former church notwithstanding). But most fictional characters, as well as most real people, don’t fit perfectly in one particular category. They are rather composites of the four in different proportions, and at different times and under different circumstances may seem to be more like one than the others. I think this four-personality-type idea is a good exercise, but I wouldn’t advise anyone to get carried away with it. With a little effort, I could probably come up with a different system to divide up the collective human psyche along completely different “fracture lines”.