In psychology, personality refers to the emotion, thought, behavior patterns unique to the individual. Our personalities influence one’s tendencies such as a preference for introversion or extroversion. The True Colors assessment educated me about myself; I understand my personality in many different means. I now know what my personality lacks and I can work on those elements to be able to understand/read people better in my everyday life.
In 1921, Carl Jung published the book “Psychological Types,” which proposed a concept of psychological types based on introversion versus extraversion, thinking versus feeling as rational functions, sensation versus intuition as irrational functions, and the coexistence of principal and auxiliary functions. Jung was part of a test made for sixteen personality types, called the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. In a two-page chart, all of the sixteen types were described briefly.
David West Keirsey is an internationally renowned psychologist, a former professor at California State University, Fullerton, and the author of several books. David Keirsey recognized these very brief sixteen descriptions as being accurate, mirroring his observations as a school psychologist, and used these descriptions as a basis in a greatly expanded and modified form of his own. Keirsey’s critical innovation was organizing these types into four temperaments (Apollonian, Promethean, Epimethean, and Dionysian) and describing observable behavior rather than speculation about unobservable thoughts and feelings.
Keirsey provided his own definitions of the sixteen types, and related them to the four temperaments based on his studies of five behavioral sciences: anthropology, biology, ethology, psychology, and sociology. In 1978, Don Lowry became aware of the work of David Keirsey. Don Lowry believed there were fundamental and universal applications of Keirsys work. “But… to remember it, it needed to be FUN! ” True Colors was born in 1978 consisting of four personality colors orange, gold, blue, and green.
The true colors assessment requires you to look very carefully over the four different colors of cards. After looking over the cards you are to select, the cards in order from left to right that resemble you the most to the least. After that, you can read the back of the card and it will tell you about that personality in the color you selected and how they are described. There is a form to be filled out by selecting words that resemble you. You will conclude what order your personality is by the results of the test and you can compare them to what you considered your personality to be.
My colors I selected were the exact same colors as my results from the test. My first card was Orange, and my second was green with my last card being blue. I knew I was going to be an orange because I was raised in a competitive family were sports were always involved. In my family, I would argue with my siblings and parents about who has more state championships and what competition was like in a good-sized city compared to where my parents were from in a small town of about 4,000 people. I also knew I was orange because I love to take risks, even when it is not necessary.
The green card brings out my love for numbers and organization I have in my life. What I learned from this assessment is that I need to work on different aspects of my personality. My emotional side needs improvement. I am the type of person to brush off any emotions that I feel and move forward. However, sometimes I tend to forget that emotions do not just affect one person. By improving this, I will be able to understand different types of personalities that can help me in the work field to become successful at what I do.
