What's your type?

What is your type?
I suspect that randomly asked, in eighty percent of cases, the answer to this question would be one of the twelve zodiac signs, with exception of few asking back, "in what sense?". Most of us are so used to typify people based on one's zodiac that one hardly ever recognizes that in effect one is hard-fitting a complete personality into a box using a speculative typification which is based on just one data: the day of a month, the person was born. I can bet there are many who would swear by Linda Goodman's book! Few months back a news portal flashed a news that present zodiac chart is inaccurate and as per star positions, we have a new zodiac sign called Ophiuchus. Since the number of months and days in a year did not change, mapping between zodiac signs and days of the year needed to be remapped. As a fallout, this would make many scorpios, libras and so forth. As soon as the news was out, it drew angry reactions from many quarters. I remember one lady from US tweeted that she did not care what people say, she and her daughter were capricorn and will remain capricorn no matter what changes are brought in the chart! Evidently she saw it as a personal attack to her identity even if that identity is shared with million others.
Fact is the need to belong is almost instinctive. Standing on one's own without the psychological support of clannish or type identity is scary for most of us. Most of the ancient religious texts said something in the effect that every creature is created uniquely by GOD. Even for those who are not GOD-fearing, science has enough proof that each individual is unique. Before geneticists came, we learned that each individual has unique fingerprint and retina-print. After geneticists came, they proved beyond doubt that DNA fingerprint can uniquely identify every human being that ever lived on this planet. That, however does not change our inclination to look for 'types'!
Medical Scientists have been trying to find types for many decades. There is no denying that we all fall into only few blood groups. But blood-groups do not describe your persona. So there was a need to psychologically classify people. We want to know what is inside a person! The approach that medical scientists took for classifying blood groups, evidently could not be used here given the unbelievable complexity of human brain and shallowness of objective knowledge about human mind.
Birth of psychological classification
Sigmund Freud, the father of modern psychology though laid the foundation for modern psychoanalysis, it was his mentee (till they fell apart) Carl G. Jung who actually started the process of defining psychological archetypes. Jung believed that people are intrinsically either introvert or extrovert and introvert people behave differently than the extrovert [although Jungians use the word extravert] people. In his model of human psyche, psyche is an apparatus for adaptation [to environment stimulii] and orientation and it expresses through a set of psychological functions that underlie one's behavioural disposition. He identified following functions:
Rational functions: Thinking as opposed to Feeling
Irrational functions: Sensing [conscious perceiving] as opposed to Intuiting [unconscious perceiving]
Behaviour is essentially an expression of these functions operated through one's intrinsic disposition of extroversion/introversion.
This model first published in 1921 in his seminal book, Psychological Types, is still the basic conceptual framework for many of the psychometric tests that are in vogue today. Most notable of the lot is Myer-Brigg-Type-Indicator [MBTI] Test which is used in many corporate setup even today.
MBTI Psychometric Types
         During the World-war II when women joined industry workforce in mass-scale, Katharine Cook Briggs and her daughter Isabel Briggs Myers set forth to create a personality inventory in order that a candidate could find the job that matches her personal preference. Using Jungian Type model, they came up with their Psychometric Tests which became popular as MBTI test. They defined four independent ranges that could describe one's psychological characteristics. The ranges or to use their word, dichotomies, come in four pair:
  I -E [Introversion - Extraversion]
 N-S [iNtuition - Sensing]
 T-F [Thinking - Feeling]
J-P [Judging - Perceiving]
If you notice, they took the implicit judgement attribute out of Jung's type model and separated them as fourth parameters. J-P defines your style preference between judging and perceiving , T-F assesses your judging function whereas N-S assesses your perceiving function.
Based on the answers to the MBTI questionnaire, one gets a score that pegs them in the four dimensional space and that becomes one's type indicator. For example, ESTJ category of people are predominantly Extrovert with Judgmental predisposition and prefers to use Sensing and Thinking functions. Based on the huge sampling that they got, they went on further describing each type and even today if you take the test, you are likely to match the description to your category. In case you are interested, I have provided few references, at the end of this post, that allow you to take online free test without needing to disclose your personal credentials. In a team setup, it often helps to be aware of your co-worker types and a healthy team should have good mix rather than a predominantly single type. In some organizations, this is also used for career development.
DISC
MBTI is not the only test, in fact there are more than a handful different psychometric tests; each designed with specific goal in mind. Of all the different types of tests that I have undergone [or I was made to undergo!] beside MBTI, one I remember well is DISC. This test unlike the MBTI, tries to rate you in four different dimensions of behaviour: Drive,Influence,Steadiness and Compliance. The 24-question test tries to assess where you stand in these four dimensions. Since your psychological traits manifest in your behvaiour, it is expected that behavioural assessment gives you relatively fixed coordinates about your own psyche, unless you lie to the tests!

None of these tests are without their critical lacunae. However applicability is driven by the sampling that each test has covered. Even though MBTI is criticized for leaving vagueness in actionable aspects of its type indicator, it is most widely adopted test as of today [total sampling has crossed more than 300 millions]
OCEAN or Big-5 personality Test
Since MBTI came up, analytical psychology covered some distances and newly acquired knowledge helped people to understand and define more elaborate tests that expect to identify psychological types with more clarity. The most notable of the lot is OCEAN or big-5 personality model. OCEAN model originated in the 60's but it was not until 90's that psychologists accepted this as a better model. A lot of its success could be attributed to its approval from geneticist who after all genome studies, came in a big way in researching about heritability of human personality. OCEAN unlike other models, used a broad-based research across races and regions and then categorization to come up with five primary traits that is supposed to encompass all personality definitions.
OCEAN stands for Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness and Neuroticism.
Each trait define a dimension of human personality.
Openness refers to the dimension ranging from liberal, imaginative, curiousness, interested in new experiences to conservative, traditional, and conforming.  Like all of these five traits, people will fall somewhere on a continuum, with most falling somewhere in the middle.
Conscientiousness dimension ranges from organized, careful, and determined to careless, and weak-minded.  Those on the high end of this factor may be seen as stoic, cold, and methodical.  Those on the low end may be seen as gullible, followers, or may see the needs of others as always superseding their own.
Extraversion refers to the qualities ranging from outgoing, extrovert, energetic, party-loving to reserved, solitary, closed.
Agreeableness ranges from qualities like friendly, compassionate, helpful, kind to unkind, suspicious, cold.
 Neuroticism refers to traits that range from anxiety, anger, controlling, nervousness to calm,self-assured, secure, confident disposition.
OCEAN personality test provides a score on each dimension. For example 57-49-54-42-48 means the person falls in 57th percentile in the Openness dimension, 49th percentile in Conscientiousness dimension and so forth. Although this is the one model that seem to gathered blessing from most of the scientific community, it is not without criticism. There are studies that argue that there are personalities that the scale cannot include. Compared to Jung type model, OCEAN is more a bottom-up approach and therefore more objective, like blood-groups. What it tells about the person and how it helps is a domain of psychologists and very specific to the person.

However more often than not you hear less about these types and more about Type-A, Type -B personality or Alpha male/female type. These types were loosely coined by cardiologist [again medical professionals] in the 50s to describe people with high risk for heart diseases. The Type-A or [Alpha type] people are described as aggressive, ambitious, control-freak [kind of bull-dog Boss type] and therefore stress-prone and therefore with higher risk to heart diseases. These, as you can understand, have little merits or rigour and therefore not worthy of your attention.

Online Tests
I compiled few online free tests that are available today, in case you want to try yourself:
1. MBTI free offline test
2. MBTI online test  Please note that this test is not free.
3. DISC free online test
4. OCEAN free online test