People classifications – including naïve ones

Many classifications have been devised for classifying a person’s personality – some more scientific than others. This paper identifies some schemes – and questions their usefulness and fairness in the hands of managers.

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Contents

Abstract and conclusions. 1

The big five personality traits. 2

The four most common personality types. 2

Conclusions and remarks. 3

Footnotes: other schemes. 3

HEXACO Model 3

Myers-Briggs Type Indicators. 3

A tongue-in-cheek classification. 3

Belbin’s classification of team roles (not personality types) 3

Eysenck's model of personality - edited from Wikipedia. 4

Jungs’ Enneagram of personality types - edited from Wikipedia. 4

Abstract and conclusions

Managing people is difficult. Managers are drawn to schemes that promise to simplify the choices they have to make about how people will be organised and what roles they play. And among the worst sins of business management is the abuse of personality classification schemes such as the HEXACO model, Myers-Briggs Type Indicators, Belbin’s classification of team roles (not personality types), Eysenck's model of personality types, and Jungs’ Enneagram of personality types.

Frankly, some of these popular schemes are pseudo-science, and even the more scientific ones are of little practical use in management science.

As Dr. Kevin Murphy, Pennsylvania State University has stated: “The problem with personality tests is [their] validity as predictors of job performance is often disappointingly low. The argument for using personality tests to predict performance does not strike me as convincing in the first place.”.

The validity of using these tools is questionable not only because their predictive value is weak, but also because classifying people becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Once somebody has been pigeon-holed as one of a type, managers may stop making the effort to understand and manage the individual. Instead, they start treating the person as one of the type. Every conformance to type is used as evidence to confirm the classification, every deviation from the type is disregarded as exceptional.

By managing a person as one of a type, managers force the person to fit the type (or to rebel and be seen as a trouble maker). Thus, a manager comes to disregard a person’s flexibility or ability to occupy other pigeon holes.

The big five personality traits

This is the personality trait classification scheme most widely accepted by psychologists. The “Big Five” traits are:

· Extroversion

· Neuroticism

· Openness

· Conscientiousness

· Agreeableness

These five traits emerged in the 1940s through studies of the English language for descriptive terms. The categories were validated in the 1990s as a scientifically backed way to evaluate a person’s character. At least four sets of researchers have identified the same five factors.

“The predictive effects of the Big Five personality traits relate mostly to social functioning and rules-driven behavior. They are not very specific for prediction of particular aspects of behavior.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits

The four most common personality types

In theory, the big five traits are a continuum with thousands of permutations of scores that make up unique personalities. New research published in Nature Human Behavior identifies trait scores common to many individuals. The researchers believe these groupings reflect a set of prototypical personality types. They’ve labelled them:

· role model (low in neuroticism and high in openness, agreeableness, extroversion and conscientiousness)

· self-centered (high extroversion, medium neuroticism, along with low openness, agreeableness and conscientiousness).

· reserved

· average (high neuroticism and extraversion, low openness, and medium agreeableness and conscientiousness).

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/big-data-gives-the-big-5-personality-traits-a-makeover

“The researchers, borrowed methods developed to study particle physics to analyze the responses of 1.5 million people from four separate studies measuring the Big Five. Using machine-learning algorithms, they scanned the first data set of nearly 150,000 responses looking for clusters of people who scored similarly on the five traits. The algorithms initially identified 13 clusters, which the researchers then narrowed down to the four densest pockets that encompassed a higher than average number of people. When they applied their algorithms to the other three data sets, the same four clusters emerged, confirming the status of those trait scores as distinct personality types.”

“To say that you are a this or a that, that’s a mistake,” says William Revelle…

Robins cautions there is a risk of “arbitrarily drawing a circle around a particular cluster of people…

Revelle agrees. “Breaking it down into one of four types would not allow me to understand you very well,” he says. “If I want to know what you’re like, I need to know how able you are to do something, how stable you are, how interested you are in things. I need to know all of that to predict or understand what you’re going to do.”

“Whereas this new research does not settle the question of the validity of personality typing, for the moment the field of psychology does have two definitive categories: those who believe in personality types and those who don’t.”

Conclusions and remarks

In short, be very wary of pigeon-holing people using personality classification schemes. See also the “Human Factors in Hierarchical Organisations” page at http://avancier.website.

Footnotes: other schemes

HEXACO Model

A six factor model similar to the five factors model.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HEXACO_model_of_personality_structure

Myers-Briggs Type Indicators

“Although popular in the business sector, the MBTI exhibits significant psychometric deficiencies, notably including poor validity and poor reliability. 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.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers%E2%80%93Briggs_Type_Indicator

A tongue-in-cheek classification

I have forgotten the source of this classification.

	Clever	Not clever
Hard working	Dangerous	Useful (workers)
Lazy	Useful (save time and money)	Useless

Belbin’s classification of team roles (not personality types)

Belbin's 1981 book Management Teams presented conclusions from his work studying how members of teams interacted during business games run at Henley Management College.

Amongst his key conclusions was the proposition that an effective team has members that cover eight (later nine) key roles in managing the team and how it carries out its work.

This may be separate from the role each team member has in carrying out the work of the team.

· Plant: A creative, imaginative, unorthodox team-member who solves difficult problems.

· Resource Investigator: The "Resource Investigator" is the networker for the group.

· Chairman (1981) / Co-ordinator (1988): The "Chairman/Co-ordinator" ensures that all members of the team are able to contribute to discussions and decisions of the team.

· Shaper: A dynamic team-member who loves a challenge and thrives on pressure.

· Monitor-Evaluator: A sober, strategic and discerning member, who tries to see all options and judge accurately.

· Team Worker: The "Team Worker" is concerned to ensure that interpersonal relationships within the team are maintained.

· Company Worker (1981) / Implementer (1988): The "Implementer" is the practical thinker who can create systems and processes that will produce what the team wants.

· Completer Finisher: The "Completer Finisher" is the detail person within the team.

· Specialist (1988): Belbin later added a ninth role, the "Specialist", who brings 'specialist' knowledge to the team.

Eysenck's model of personality - edited from Wikipedia

The following table describes the traits that are associated with the three dimensions in Eysenck's model of personality.

Psychoticism	Extraversion	Neuroticism
Aggressive	Sociable	Anxious
Assertive	Irresponsible	Depressed
Egocentric	Dominant	Guilt Feelings
Unsympathetic	Lack of reflection	Low self-esteem
Manipulative	Sensation-seeking	Tense
Achievement-oriented	Impulsive	Moody
Dogmatic	Risk-taking	Hypochondriac
Masculine	Expressive	Lack of autonomy
Tough-minded	Active	Obsessive

Jungs’ Enneagram of personality types - edited from Wikipedia

Type	Characteristic role	Ego fixation	Holy idea	Basic fear	Basic desire	Temptation	Vice/Passion	Virtue	Stress	Security
1	Reformer	Resentment	Perfection	Corruptness, imbalance, being bad	Goodness, integrity, balance	Hypocrisy, hypercriticism	Anger	Serenity	4	7
2	Helper	Flattery (Ingratiation)	Freedom, Will	Being unloved	To feel love	Deny own needs, manipulation	Pride	Humility	8	4
3	Achiever	Vanity	Hope, Law	Worthlessness	To feel valuable	Pushing self to always be "the best"	Deceit	Truthfulness, Authenticity	9	6
4	Individualist	Melancholy (Fantasizing)	Origin	Having no identity or significance	To be uniquely themselves	To overuse imagination in search of self	Envy	Equanimity (Emotional Balance)	2	1
5	Investigator	Stinginess (Retention)	Omniscience, Transparency	Helplessness, Incapability, Incompetence	Mastery, Understanding	Replacing direct experience with concepts	Avarice	Non-Attachment	7	8
6	Loyalist	Cowardice (Worrying)	Faith	Being without support or guidance	To have support and guidance	Indecision, doubt, seeking reassurance	Fear	Courage	3	9
7	Enthusiast	Planning (Anticipation)	Wisdom, Plan	Being trapped in pain and deprivation	To be satisfied and content	Thinking fulfillment is somewhere else	Gluttony	Sobriety	1	5
8	Challenger	Vengeance (Objectification)	Truth	Being harmed, controlled, violated	Self-protection	Thinking they are completely self-sufficient	Lust (Forcefulness)	Innocence	5	2
9	Peacemaker	Indolence (Daydreaming)	Love	Loss, fragmentation, separation	Wholeness, peace of mind	Avoiding conflicts, avoiding self-assertion	Sloth (Disengagement)	Action	6	3

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