How to Identify Your Child's Personality

part 4 of a series

Earlier we said that the best way to learn is by choosing methods and materials that match learner's personality. It follows that an important technique of accelerated learning is knowing how to identify people's personalities. In this article we will look at the five dominant personalities and explain how to identify which personality a person has.

I am aware that there are many theories of personalities and behavior. Many psychologists, including Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, to mention only two among many, have tried to explain how individuals arrive at different personalities. I will not do that here. I will also not talk about all theoretical types of personalities. My interest is not psychology itself but in using practical portions of psychology to help you optimize your learning power.

First let us identify the five personalities. If you observe people's choice of words, reflex reaction to things or other people, and their preferences on what to do, have, or get, you will be able to group them into five personalities, namely:

• logical
• creative
• organized
• emotional
• square

The Logical Personality

Logical persons think in terms of quantities and relative position. To them the shortest process is the best process, if the result is the same anyway. Stronger is better than weak. Farther is better than near. Bigger is better than small. Wide is better than narrow. Longer distance is better than short. Winning is better than losing. They love challenge and enjoy contests.

Logical persons are often described as competitive, driven, goal-oriented, and serious. They want everything to make sense or else everything is a waste of time. They are the ones who ask the questions, "What are we doing it for?", "Why are we doing this?" and "What is the sense in this?" If not satisfied they say, "This does not make sense!"

When a logical person watches a movies, he wants to see who is the strongest, bravest, smartest, weakest, most disgusting, and who won the fight. He also wants to know what the point of the movie was and whether the time spent on watching it was worth it.

The Creative Personality

Creative persons think in terms of shape, color, and movement. Because these three things are what we see, they are called "visually oriented" people. Because motion or movement appeals to them, they like changing anything and everything. When reacting they use expressions like "That looks good!", "That's not looking good," That looks great, and that looks bad. They love art and enjoy doing things.

Creative persons are often described as big picture oriented, weaver ,motivated by change, outgoing and disorganized. Because they like things that move and grow, they tend to like studying people and animals. They enjoy watching movies. They like doing things and have little problem mixing with people.

The Organized Personality

Organized persons think in terms of list, sequence, and pattern. They collect things and ideas and try to preserve them. They like orderliness, cleanliness, and predictability. They are very analytical, wanting to compare and contrast almost everything. They love science and enjoy gathering facts.

Organized persons are often described as detail oriented, analyst, troubleshooter, and problem solver. They can easily see what's missing in a set of things. Sometimes they are considered negative thinkers because they have to power to quickly see a gap in a process. They like defining procedures and clarifying definitions.

Organized persons are sound oriented. When they watch a movie, they are more interested in the dialogue than the action. They remember who said what. They enjoy analyzing the choice of words as well as the way the words were spoken. They use expressions like "that sounds good", "that sounds bad", and "that sounds right".

The Emotional Personality

Emotional persons think in terms of relations, harmony, and status quo. They trust their feelings more than their reasoning. When you talk to them, they judge the tone of your voice more than your words. They are very particular about making everybody happy and not hurting others.

To emotional persons, winning is not everything, detail is not everything, and change is not everything. To them people is everything. They are interested in things other people are interested in. They like what other people like. And they tend to believe what their loved ones believe. They tend to be very loyal.

Emotional persons are often described as touchy-feely, soft-hearted, cares for people, and mindful of others. When they watch a movie they take note of how each character is encouraged by another, or offended by someone. The one who offends is the bad guy, the one who is meek and gentle is the good guy. When they talk about a movie, they can talk at length about what someone in the movie should not have done.

The Square Personality

Square persons think in terms of being balanced. To them a little creativity, plus a little logic, plus a little order, plus a little harmony, is a perfect condition. To them too much of anything is bad. A compromise solution is the best solution.

To square persons, compromising is everything. Nothing is complete until everyone has made an input, and nobody's input must not be allowed to dominate the others. They are often described as cool guy, diplomatic, good administrator, and moderator.

When a square person watches a movie, he analyzes how the movie was carefully edited. He looks at the beginning, the middle, and the end, and comments on whether they are proportionately made or not.

There is no absolute personality

Nobody is all creative and zero percent logical. Nobody is all logical and zero percent organized. Nobody is all orderly and zero percent emotional. Every person, however, has a dominant personality which falls into one of these five.

In the next articles we will look into how you, if you know your personality, can double your learning ability without increasing your learning hardship and learning time.

posted August 8, 2006