I think it's partly the influence of tests like Myers-Briggs that just divide people into two categories. And they do it with yes/no questions, which are extra unhelpful -- I never know how to answer those, because my answers always depend on the situation, but only providing a binary answer scheme makes it more likely that people will cluster towards one end of the spectrum or the other.
It's true, though, people do seem to like to create clear-cut personality types, despite most personalities being much more nuanced. There's type A vs. type B, right-brained vs. left-brained, men are from mars vs. women are from venus, and so on and so forth. It's not surprising, since categorization is one of the major ways that human cognition and reasoning deal with the world, but I wonder if it's really that useful as applied to personalities in general.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ninetydegrees
no subject
on 2011-09-25 06:22 pm (UTC)It's true, though, people do seem to like to create clear-cut personality types, despite most personalities being much more nuanced. There's type A vs. type B, right-brained vs. left-brained, men are from mars vs. women are from venus, and so on and so forth. It's not surprising, since categorization is one of the major ways that human cognition and reasoning deal with the world, but I wonder if it's really that useful as applied to personalities in general.