Keirsey Temperament Classifier: What it is and What Categories it Contains

The Keirsey Temperament Classifier It is a tool used in the field of personal growth and Human Resources. It allows you to know what type of personality you have, and relate it to a useful role in daily life.

This questionnaire is interesting because it is based on the ancestral idea of ​​temperament, already described by the classical Greeks, although reformulated from a modern perspective. Let’s take a closer look at this interesting and complex model.

Keirsey Temperament Classifier – What is it?

The Keirsey Temperament Classifier is a model and questionnaire designed to help people understand themselves. It was developed by the American psychologist David Keirsey who was inspired by such ancient concepts of temperament as the proposals of Hippocrates and Plato, as well as some more recent ones, such as that of Myers-Higgs and Ernst Kretschmer.

In this model, Keirsey has a somewhat particular vision of what temperament would be. Although temperament is traditionally seen as a personality style, relating it to the emotional reaction that a subject can face different types of events, Keirsey’s conception also includes aspects related to intelligence and preferences something related to the dimension of openness to experience of the big five factors model.

The questionnaire used consists of 70 questions, each with two answer options in which the person’s preferences are measured. Although it is related to the concept of intelligence, it does not measure it, nor does it measure how well we are given specific skills.

Upon completing it, the subject who has done it will have feedback on what their most performed behaviors are These behaviors allow us to know what one is like, in addition to understanding first-hand how one behaves. It also shows what the strengths are, not in terms of measured capabilities, but what oneself believes is strongest.

This questionnaire is normally used individually, and is very easy to use. Some organizations, such as the United States government, educational centers, and even large corporations such as Coca-Cola or Bank of America, use it to have an elaborate profile of the person who applies for a job offer.

The Keirsey Rings

Before going into more detail about the temperaments proposed by Keirsey, it is necessary to explain his proposal based on four levels, which he calls rings as if they were those of the trunk of a tree. These structure and configure each of the temperaments, roles and variant roles that make them up

1. Outer ring: abstract and concrete

According to Keirsey, everyone has knowledge of the world constituted by two processes that are not necessarily mutually exclusive: observation and introspection.

Within the model, observation is understood as the collection of information from outside, objectively and captured by the senses. For example, when we are looking at a painting, eating an apple or listening to a melody, we would be observing according to the model.

Introspection would be the subject sharing his internal world, his ideas That is, he creates something that does not exist, to give it shape in the real world himself.

There are people who turn more to the outside world, which is more objective and concrete, while others choose to turn more to its abstraction.

The most concrete people would be those who would have their feet on the ground focused on concepts that refer to very specific elements of their environment, while those that are more abstract, would be those with their heads in the clouds, focused on general and broad concepts.

2. Second ring: cooperative and pragmatic

The most cooperative people are those who are concerned about the opinions and thoughts of others, taking special interest in their emotions and concerns.

Pragmatic people, on the other hand, focus more on their own thinking and they focus all their efforts on using methods that really work rather than knowing the opinion of others when taking a certain action.

They are the first and second rings of this tree proposed by Keirsey which make up the four temperaments of the model: rational (pragmatic and abstract), artisans (pragmatic and concrete), idealists (cooperative and abstract) and guardians (cooperative and concrete).

3. Third ring: proactive and reactive

In the third ring, a distinction is made between those who communicate with others by informing them about an action to be carried out, the proactive ones, and those who give orders and direct to inform, the reactive ones. Each of the four temperaments has these two roles. This makes there up to 8 main roles in the model.

4. Fourth ring: expressive and attentive

Finally we have the fourth ring, in which we can find the variant roles, which are two for each general role of the model which makes a total of sixteen of them.

The expressive role refers to those who choose to express, that is, clearly show their intentions, while those who are attentive choose to work more covertly.

The 4 temperaments of the model

Once we have seen the structure of the temperaments, we proceed to explain each of them in more detail:

1. Artisan

From Keirsey’s model, the “craftsman” temperament is defined as that of a person who tends to adapt to the situation and is aimed at carrying out a specific action They are pragmatic and concrete. Artisans require constant stimulation, and want to improve their abilities to become virtuous in what they like. They want to stand out for what they like to do.

They tend to be good at working with their hands, in addition to having good mental agility to adapt to changing environments and situations. They are good at problem solving.

The proactive artisan role is that of the operators, whose most notable skill is exploration and its two variant roles are the ‘crafters’ or artisans (attentive) and promoters (expressive.)

The reactive artisan role is that of the artists or ‘entertainers’, who are good at improvisation. Its two variant roles would be that of composers (attentive) and that of performers (expressive).

2. Guardian

Their behavior is organized rather than intuitive, and they seek security They are cooperative and concrete. They feel a great need to belong to someone, to be linked to another person. Responsibility and duty are extremely important to guardians. They are very good at organizing, checking and are a good source of confidence for others. They need to have their schedules well organized. Its greatest strength is logistics.

The proactive proactive guardian role is that of administrators, who are very good at regulating and organizing. Within this role we have inspectors (attentive) and supervisors (expressive).

The guardian reactive role is that of conservatives, whose most developed ability is to support others The roles within it are the protectors (attentive) and the providers (expressive).

3. Idealist

Idealists are cooperative and abstract. For them, the most important thing is the meaning of oneself. They seek their personal identity, their growth as individuals His most developed natural ability is diplomacy. This temperament is typical of people who inspire confidence, who inspire.

In an idealistic proactive role we have mentors, who are in charge of helping others develop. Among them would be counselors (attentive) and teachers (expressive).

In the idealistic reactive role we have the promoters, who are very good at mediation. Within them we have the healers (attentive) and the champions (expressive).

4. Rational

Rational people are pragmatic and abstract. For them, what is important is knowledge and competence They want to be good at what they are doing, and they work to master what they would like without needing to receive pressure from others. They are good at strategy, theorizing, coordinating projects, developing concepts and are good with engineering.

In a rational proactive role we have the coordinators, who are good at ordering. Within them we have the master minds (attentive) and the field marshals or commanders (expressive).

In a reactive role we have engineers, whose most developed ability is to build. Inside we have the architects (attentive) and the inventors (expressive).