Surrounded By Idiots

As author Thomas Erikson observes in Surrounded by Idiots, the subject of personality has long fascinated people of different time periods and cultures. Throughout history, thinkers have debated the concept of temperament or personality, and created systems of categorization in an effort to understand different facets of human behavior. Erikson cites Hippocrates as one of the first intellectuals to form a theory of personality. In his view, people’s temperaments were determined by their physical “humors,” which also played a large role in their physical health. Hippocrates conceived of four humors, and therefore believed that there were four corresponding personality types. For instance, a “choleric” person’s behavior would be influenced by their abundance of yellow bile, causing them to be “fiery and temperamental” (Location 3336).

In modern times, psychologists and social scientists have continued to study personality through more modern means. One popular approach to personality is the Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator, which was developed by Isabel Briggs Meyer and Katharine Briggs. The methodology is based on psychologist C. G. Jung’s theories on “psychological types” which he described in a book of the same name. According to Jung, there are 16 possible personality types, based on different combinations of four major traits: Extroversion or Introversion, Sensing or Feeling, Thinking or Intuiting, and Judging or Perceiving. Meyer and Briggs created their type indicator tool in an effort to make Jung’s ideas more easily understandable and accessible to the general public. While this approach is based on a psychologist’s theories, many contemporary psychologists do not consider it to be a reliable or scientific measure of human behavior.

Another popular system of interpreting personality is the Enneagram system, which offers nine different personalities, or enneatypes, each with a number and name assigned to them. For instance, the Number 1 Enneagram is “The Reformer” type, while Number 2 is known as “The Helper,” and so on. This method is based on Oscar Ichazo and Claudio Naranjo’s teachings and is not based in modern psychological science; most people use this typology as a tool for self-reflection.

In Surrounded by Idiots, Thomas Erikson bases his arguments on William Moulton Marston’s DISC theory of personality. In Marston’s 1928 book The Emotions of Normal People, he argues that there are four major personality groups based on four key traits: Dominance, Inspiration, Stability, and Compliance. Marston also differentiated between extroversion and introversion, considering people to either be motivated primarily by relationships, or by achieving certain results. Erikson assigns each type a color, calling Dominant people “Red,” Inspiring people “Yellow,” Stable people “Green,” and Compliant people “Blue.”

Erikson draws parallels between Marston’s theory and Hippocrates’s views, leaving out the theories about physical humors and emphasizing the major traits that each thinker assigned to their four types. The author claims that personality systems with four categories are a kind of human universal. He cites the Aztecs’ four labels for people which corresponded with the four elements: Earth, Water, Fire, and Air. He again makes connections between these types and the four DISC categories, claiming that Earth people are equivalent to Green personalities, while Water people are Blue, the Fire type is Red, and Air people are Yellow.

Like the Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator and Enneagrams, Marston’s DISC method has also been dismissed by some as subjective and unscientific: The Swedish Skeptics Society has dismissed Erikson’s work as pseudoscience. This group has also pointed out that the author is not a qualified psychologist. They argue that, lacking academic qualifications, he does not have the right to advertise himself as a behavioral expert.

Today, many scientists agree that people’s personalities consist of five major traits: Openness, Agreeableness, Neuroticism, Extraversion, and Conscientiousness. This model, which is also called the “Five-Factor Model,” stems from the work of several psychologists over multiple decades. This approach offers a more nuanced view of personality. For example, rather than identifying as either “Open” or “Closed” to new experiences, people’s results can range from anywhere between those two extremes. People’s personalities in the Five-Factor Model are generally determined through self-reporting questionnaires.