Wired That Way Personality Profile

UNDERSTANDING YOUR PERSONALITY PROFILE SCORES

Normal Healthy Patterns

Natural combinations of birth Personalities are: Popular Sanguine/Powerful Choleric, Powerful Choleric/Perfect Melancholy, Perfect Melancholy/Peaceful Phlegmatic and Peaceful Phlegmatic/ Popular Sanguine. One of the two will be your dominant Personality and the other will be your secondary Personality. Most everyone has a dominant and a secondary Personality, but the numbers may vary greatly. For example, if you scored 32 Powerful Choleric, and 8 Perfect Melancholy, you would be described as a very strong Powerful Choleric with some Perfect Melancholy traits. However, it is also quite possible to have more evenly balanced scores in two columns. A few checks in the remaining two columns can generally be ignored as insignificant. Any test such as this can be assumed to have a10 percent margin of error, for the words simply represent how you perceive yourself. Normal healthy patterns are usually characterized by similar and balancing scores of strengths and weaknesses in any single column.

 

Unnatural Combinations

There are two combinations that are not natural (although often seen): Popular Sanguine/ Perfect Melancholy and Powerful Choleric/Peaceful Phlegmatic. Either of these two combinations is evidence of either a misunderstanding or a personality mask, as they are diametrically opposed to each other and are not natural birth Personality combinations. To determine your true Personality, review the profile again. First, make sure that you used the word definitions for each and every selection, and be sure that you selected the words that represent your true, natural self before you worked at becoming a more mature, better person. For example, if you are organized—but it is something that you have made a conscious effort to achieve rather than something you have been all your life—do not check organized. Basically, if you have “learned” it, do not check it. Second, go back over each grouping of words. If you had a difficult time choosing between two words, check both words. If none of the words seemed appropriate, skip that line. While this approach will adjust the totals so that they do not add up to the usual 40, it will give a more accurate profile and usually clears up any confusion on the Personality pattern. If this approach still produces an unnatural combination, it may be indicative of a personality mask. Personality masks are typically the result of outside forces working in a person’s life to make him or her conform to someone else’s concept of who he or she should be, or they could be something the individual put on in childhood to survive in a difficult or dysfunctional family living situation. For more information on “misunderstandings,” and/or “masking” read Wired that Way.

 

Causes of Masking

  1. A domineering parent or one with unrealistic expectations can cause masking when he or she constantly requires the child to conform to Personality traits that are not natural to the child.
  2. Living in a home with alcoholism, severe illness, or extreme dysfunction may cause unnatural pressures on a minor, dependent child to perform or contribute to the household, often assuming a parental role.
  3. Strong feelings of rejection from childhood might result in masking when a child does not feel the love of one parent or both parents. The child will often try to become whatever it takes to win attention and approval.
  4. Some forms of emotional or physical abuse may lead to the child conforming to the demands of the abusing parent in hopes of stopping the harsh treatment.
  5. Childhood sexual interference or violation, particularly when perpetrated by a parent or person in a parental role, may cause the child to adopt behaviors not natural to his/her Personality.
  6. Growing up in a single-parent home might result in some form of Personality masking, especially if the child is firstborn, in which case the child may fulfill some of the roles of the absent parent.
  7. Legalistic religious homes or those with intense regulatory standards can stifle a child’s natural Personality.
  8. A domineering or overly controlling spouse/partner or someone in a position of authority in adult life can also result in Personality masking as a form of coping or survival.
  9. Adult abuse or rejection in marriage (or significant relationships) will often have some effect in distorting the natural Personality, as the lonely or hurting person simply gives up.

 

Combination of Three

For the reasons described above, any combination of three Personalities indicates that one must be a mask. Generally, the center of the three is the natural Personality, and one of the ends is the mask. For example, for a person scoring relatively evenly in Popular Sanguine/Powerful Choleric/Perfect Melancholy, the Powerful Choleric is generally the natural Personality, while either the Popular Sanguine or the Perfect Melancholy is the mask, as you were not born with both. Try to determine which is the mask. Frequently, a person who knows you well can objectively review your two columns in question and help you select the word that they feel describes you best. Or, you can think back to how you would have answered before life’s experiences distorted your perception of yourself, or at a time when you are your most comfortable with yourself. Such a review of the words you selected will frequently transfer enough of them to another column to clearly define your correct and natural birth Personalities.

 

Combination of Four

If your profile scores are fairly even across all four categories, there are two possibilities as to why this has occurred. The first is that you really don’t know yourself, don’t care, or you may be a Peaceful Phlegmatic who simply has trouble making choices. The second possibility (very rare) is that you are double-masked—the way that you perceive yourself has been so distorted by your life experiences that you don’t really know who you are. Remember, it takes a great deal of energy to wear masks and live in Personality roles that are not naturally yours. The goal should be to take off the masks and live your life in the manner in which you were created.