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Personality theory has two common theories of type. One still uses Hippocrates' four names, and is generally based on two different behavioral dimensions. The four temperaments were originally measured in terms of a person's "response-time delay" and "response-time sustain". Long delay became what we know as introversion, and short delay became extroversion. Sustain is often referred to in terms of people vs. task-orientation or "responsiveness". This tells us how "responsive" a person is to others. So this model identified Sanguine and Choleric as extroverts, Melancholic and Phlegmatic as introverts; Sanguine and Phlegmatic as people-focused, and Choleric and Melancholic as task-focused. Here, we had our original temperament matrix.

If we look at the Consulting Psychologists Publications Inc. (CPP Inc.) organization, which owns several personality instruments, we see two in particular that stand out. One is the popular Myers-Briggs Type Indicator®, created by Dr. Isabel Myers and Catherine Briggs. There is also the Fundamental Interpersonal Relationship Orientation-Behavior®, created by Dr. William Schutz around the same time Myers introduced MBTI®.

The two instruments appear vastly different. FIRO® uses three matrices measuring "expressed" and "wanted" behavior, which are how much a person tends to approach others for interaction, and how much they want to be approached by others. The three areas of interaction are Inclusion (social skills), Control (leadership and responsibilities) and Affection (deep personal relationships). MBTI® has its four dimensions of Extroversion vs. Introversion, Sensing vs. iNtuition, Feeling vs. Thinking, and Judgment vs. Perception.

While not originally dealing in "temperament" (inborn behavioral dispositions), both systems have had variations of temperament theory "mapped" to them. David Keirsey mapped four temperaments, loosely comparing them to the ancient ones: SJ=Melancholic; SP=Sanguine; NT=Phlegmatic; NF=Choleric.s. My proposal is that, the Interaction Styles are FIRO's Inclusion, and Keirsey's temperaments are Control.

The purpose of correlating the two systems together is that it gives an additional perspective in type behavior, and shows the blends of temperaments in each. If you see each type as a blend of temperaments, rather than two separate groups of renamed "temperaments" and "styles", it gives you a sense of the mix of behaviors in the types. This is one way of unifying different, useful versions of personality theory.

Eric Bolden is a free-lance type hobbyist. For more information on the premise of this article, see http://www.erictb.info/erica.html, or contact him at bdmnqr2@aol.com