• You are currently viewing our forum as a guest, which gives you limited access to view most discussions and access our other features. By joining our free community, you will have access to additional post topics, communicate privately with other members (PM), view blogs, respond to polls, upload content, and access many other special features. Registration is fast, simple and absolutely free, so please join our community today! Just click here to register. You should turn your Ad Blocker off for this site or certain features may not work properly. If you have any problems with the registration process or your account login, please contact us by clicking here.

What Exactly is the Temperament System?

Smilephantomhive

Active member
Joined
Aug 11, 2015
Messages
3,352
MBTI Type
ISTJ
Enneagram
6w5
Instinctual Variant
sp/so
[MENTION=3521]Eric B[/MENTION] or anyone else who knows about this system.

So what are the temperaments trying to measure? Is it simply the outward behavior of a person or is it deeper than that?
 

Lord Lavender

Bluered Trickster
Joined
Oct 21, 2016
Messages
5,851
MBTI Type
EVLF
Enneagram
739
Instinctual Variant
so/sp
[MENTION=3521]Eric B[/MENTION] or anyone else who knows about this system.

So what are the temperaments trying to measure? Is it simply the outward behavior of a person or is it deeper than that?

If you are referring to Kiserys temperments they are basically nonsense as the logic behind putting all the NF and NT types together is dumb as they share no functions in common. I would say he is measuring the outwards behaviour rather than the deeper motivations there myself personally. To an extent the sensors are also based on outwards manner than internal standards.
 

Smilephantomhive

Active member
Joined
Aug 11, 2015
Messages
3,352
MBTI Type
ISTJ
Enneagram
6w5
Instinctual Variant
sp/so
If you are referring to Kiserys temperments they are basically nonsense as the logic behind putting all the NF and NT types together is dumb as they share no functions in common. I would say he is measuring the outwards behaviour rather than the deeper motivations there myself personally. To an extent the sensors are also based on outwards manner than internal standards.

Oh I meant the stuff like melancholic, phlegmatic, choleric and sanguine. I'm not sure what they are called, but I heard a test refer to them as tempetaments.
 

Lord Lavender

Bluered Trickster
Joined
Oct 21, 2016
Messages
5,851
MBTI Type
EVLF
Enneagram
739
Instinctual Variant
so/sp
Oh I meant the stuff like melancholic, phlegmatic, choleric and sanguine. I'm not sure what they are called, but I heard a test refer to them as tempetaments.

Silly me :doh:. As for the four temperaments I personally think they tie in with other personality systems so they can be deep when mixed with other systems such as E types and MBTI but by themselves they are based on shallow traits. A bit like water as by itself it is just a chemical with hydrogen and oxygen but looking at other systems it is really deep as waters traits means it can for instance be denser at liquid form than solid form.

Likewise a sanguine person at the shallow definition is someone who is outgoing, optimistic and cheerful but when someone is a sanguine ESTJ for instance they are cheerfully organized and such.
 

Rouskyrie

New member
Joined
Aug 11, 2016
Messages
396
[MENTION=3521]Eric B[/MENTION] or anyone else who knows about this system.

So what are the temperaments trying to measure? Is it simply the outward behavior of a person or is it deeper than that?

To quote The Four Temperaments - About "The temperaments are a way of classifying peoples' emotional attitudes, the foundations of their personality. They apply in a very broad strokes way - that is, they are vague rather than specific and detailed - and make no attempt to identify every detail of a person's personality." as well as later saying "As humans, we all have access to a wide spectrum of different emotions. We all get angry, happy, sad, and so on. We all wish at times to be around others, or to be alone. The temperaments are determined by the balance of these emotions."
 

Lord Lavender

Bluered Trickster
Joined
Oct 21, 2016
Messages
5,851
MBTI Type
EVLF
Enneagram
739
Instinctual Variant
so/sp
To quote The Four Temperaments - About "The temperaments are a way of classifying peoples' emotional attitudes, the foundations of their personality. They apply in a very broad strokes way - that is, they are vague rather than specific and detailed - and make no attempt to identify every detail of a person's personality." as well as later saying "As humans, we all have access to a wide spectrum of different emotions. We all get angry, happy, sad, and so on. We all wish at times to be around others, or to be alone. The temperaments are determined by the balance of these emotions."

So the four temperaments of people is like classifying different places climates. For example like Mark has a mostly phlegmatic temperament Moscow has a mostly cold climate. They both will have traits of other types. Mark will have some sanguine traits during parties while Moscow will have some tropical traits during summer
 

Eric B

ⒺⓉⒷ
Joined
Mar 29, 2008
Messages
3,621
MBTI Type
INTP
Enneagram
548
Instinctual Variant
sp/sx
Classic temperament is a measurement of "Expressiveness" and "responsiveness". Expressiveness is how much we are inclined to approach others for interaction, and responsiveness is how much we want or allow others to approach us (according to certain criteria).
Anciently, this was recognized in terms of the temperature and texture of four body fluids assumed to cause the temperament behaviors. "Hot" or "warm" is expressive, "cold" is reserved, "moist" is responsive, and "dry" is reluctant or resistant.

When they realized the four body "humours" didn't cause the behaviors, and that it was likely apart of personality, expressiveness came to be termed as long or short "response time delay" (basically, how quick you are to react toward others), while responsiveness was "response time sustain" (how long you held on to these reactions).
Eventually, expressiveness became introversion and extroversion (later realized to be connected with how over- or under- stimulateable you are to the environment), and responsiveness became "people" vs "task" focus.

This often manifests through outward behavior, but it's about the "underlying needs" of the temperaments driving those behaviors (which could be masked by other behaviors for various reasons, and that's why you can't always go by behavior).

In the type system, Keirsey first tried to map the four temperaments to the types, but he filtered them through other systems such as Kretschmer's character styles. This version was ultimately derived from Plato's "four types of men", which are the final names he used, rather than the Hippocrates/Galen "humour"-based ones. So rather than using expressiveness and responsiveness, he found they mapped to MBTI's S/N, and another dimension (derived from another factor he derived from someone else), which he called "Cooperative/Pragmatic".
His temperaments however, were totally "blind" to the original temperament factor of I/E. (Each temperament consists evenly of two I's and two E's. Meanwhile, S/N actually tied together what corresponded to opposite temperaments like Sanguine and Melancholy; e.g. the SP and SJ). What he had not realized right away, were that there are TWO levels of temperament in type. A "social" level, and a "taking action" level, called "conative". His temperaments were actually the conative ones. So Linda Berens discovered where the social temperaments fit in type, and called them the "Interaction Styles" (which Keirsey actually later adopted under the generic "roles of interaction" in his two last books). These now are based on I/E, and people/task (renamed "informing"/"directing"), which tie, in a sort of alternating fashion, to both T/F and J/P. On the conative level, Keirsey's "cooperative/pragmatic" would actually be the "expressiveness" of that area, while another informal dimension he called "contagious" vs" annoying", and by Berens, "motive" vs "structure", would be responsiveness.

http://www.erictb.info/temperament1s.html
 

Thalassa

Permabanned
Joined
May 3, 2009
Messages
25,183
MBTI Type
ISFP
Enneagram
6w7
Instinctual Variant
sx
It's either based on Keirsey or True Colors, which both group people into temperaments.

In one of my classes, we took the MBTI, and later were separated into small groups for an activity based on True Colors. My group was Orange, which is most similar to Keirsey SPs. We decided that we most hated to be micromanaged, to remain inactive, and to be trapped by schedules or too much structure. Our top three picks for professions were outdoor jobs, politics and business/marketing. We decided we shared openness to "putting ourselves out there," that we were accepting or easy to talk to, and that we liked practical or factual knowledge we could apply to our real lives.

I kid you not, when we went around the room, the Greens (most similar to Keirsey's NT), and Golds (similar to SJ or Guardians) were like ....jaw dropping stereotypes of those profiles, like the Golds decided they made great managers and accountants, hated to have their things moved (that even if their desk looked messy, they memorize their own "system") and were responsible people. Only the Blues (similar to NF Idealists) could have been cross-overs to SFJs, as they emphasized caring professions and being helpful over being creative or imaginative.

Within my own group, two members had Green as their second color, and one of the Orange-Greens said she got 0% F on MBTI lol...and someone had Orange-Blue like me, and she and I both agreed that we liked to go outside everyday, and that we were interested in people or liked to be around people without necessarily wanting to talk to or socialize with those people.

I don't think the temperaments are terrible, but some of the stereotypes get a little rigid, like some of the Guardian stuff in PUMII especially seems biased towards white middle America from the 1950's-60's culturally speaking, than towards SJs as a whole, but yeah.
 
Top