Types of Personality: Definition, Examples, & Theories

By Charlie Huntington, M. A., Ph. D. Candidate
​Reviewed by Tchiki Davis, M.A., Ph.D.
Personality traits that occur frequently in combination can be said to constitute types of personality. Let’s look at where different types of personality come from and look at examples of personality types.​
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Have you ever watched a family member behave just as you expected and thought to yourself, “That’s just the type of person she is”? Or gone on a date and just instinctively known, “This person is not my type”? If so, you were probably reacting to the combination of personality traits you see in that person, the way those characteristics combine to make them behave in certain – perhaps humorously predictable – ways.​
Our ability to look at a new situation and know just how we, or somebody we know, will react to it, speaks to our ability to recognize that people’s personalities are consistent across contexts. More than that – there seem to be personality types that we can reliably identify and count on to behave in certain ways. What are these types? Where do they come from? And what does the psychological research tells us about personality types? Let’s take a look.​
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What Are Types of Personality? (A Definition)

Personalities are the collections of traits that determine how each individual understands their experiences and behaves (Asendorpf, 2002). When we can recognize that certain people can be grouped together, based on sharing a handful of personality traits, we call this a personality type (Asendorpf, 2002).
 
For a long time, psychological research was mostly interested in understanding the components of personality (Laursen & Hoff, 2006). The thinking was that if we know what all the pieces are that go together to make up all personalities, then we can theoretically draw conclusions about how people will behave based on which traits they have or don’t have. However, more recently, psychologists have become more interested in what is called a person-centered perspective: what does it mean for a particular person that they have a particular grouping of personality traits?
 
It seems likely that a combination of both approaches is important. For example, it is definitely useful information to know that somebody is very extroverted or introverted. However, it is the combination of their traits that will make it easier to predict things about them. Two people high in extroversion may want different things depending on how high they are in another personality trait, such as openness to experience. A person high in both traits might get most excited about trying a new activity, while a person high in extraversion but low in openness might strongly prefer doing a familiar activity with their friends over trying something new.​

Why Are Types of Personality Important?

There are many reasons why identifying personality types can be important, although psychologists are divided about how meaningful these efforts are (Donnellan & Robins, 2010). Some general reasons that having personality types is helpful include being able to organize our information about other people; being able to quickly know what to expect from others; seeing people as complex entities, rather than just clusters of traits; and having a simple framework that can guide more research (Donnellan & Robins, 2010).
 
I know that thinking about people in terms of their Enneagram personality types has been very helpful for me. When I know the Enneagram type (this is a system of personalities where you identify yourself which type of personality fits you best) that a friend has assigned themselves, I know a lot about what they want from the world and what their strengths and weaknesses will be. Knowing my own Enneagram type helps me remember that I have my own tendencies – both helpful and unhelpful – that are based in my personality.
 
On the more research-oriented side of things, psychologists have wondered whether classifying people into types provides more helpful information than just noting what their different traits are. There is some evidence to suggest that having personality types gives us additional information. For example, some studies that classified people into personality types when they were children – as young as four to six years old – have shown that their personality types were related to the different outcomes they experienced as young adults (Asendorpf & Denissen, 2006; Hart et al., 2003). Research has also been done to see which combinations of personality traits are most and least helpful for dealing with mental health challenges (Vollrath & Torgersen, 2000). In fact, research of this sort has shown that different personality types show different patterns of thinking and behaving and even different biological processes (Hart et al., 2005). In other words, knowing personality types can help us make predictions about people’s well-being.​

Types of Personality in Psychology

Psychologists have tried many times over to group people into personality types; here, I will share the research on the most popular groupings of personality types. The first grouping I will discuss is into three personality types: resilients, overcontrollers, and undercontrollers (Donnellan & Robins, 2010). Believe it or not, these personality types have been identified across many cultures and many age groups, even children as young as three years old (Caspi, 1998).
 
Resilient people are high in extraversion and conscientiousness and low in neuroticism. They tend to be flexible, productive, experience few negative emotions, and rarely get into serious conflict with others. The people who readily come to mind when I think about this personality type are the people that everyone likes, whom everyone wants as a friend. They are friendly, easygoing, and able to handle setbacks or unexpected changes without getting too upset. They welcome social interaction and are generally emotionally stable.
 
By contrast, overcontrollers are people who are more introverted, highly self-controlled, and liable to experience lots of negative emotions (in other words, they are high in neuroticism). They tend to doubt themselves more, and they tend to turn their negative emotions inward. They are more likely to get depressed or be anxious than the other two personality types. They may be very productive at school or at work, but they tend to experience lots of stress related to these aspects of their lives. If you can think of somebody in your life who seems very tense by nature, or who gets easily upset by events in their lives, they may be an overcontroller.
 
Finally, undercontrollers are people who are very impulsive and more likely to be aggressive. They may not do as well at school or at work, in part because their impulsiveness leads to mistakes and impairs their performance. They are more likely to get into trouble with the law and have more interpersonal conflicts than other people. This is because they are low in the personality traits of agreeableness and conscientiousness (Schnabel et al., 2002).
 
4 Personality Types
While these three personality types have been consistently studied and found to exist across many different samples (Donnellan & Robins, 2010; Schnabel et al., 2002), there have been many other attempts to classify people into personality types. For example, Gerlach and colleagues (2018) analyzed over a million people’s personality traits, finding that four different types existed, and that their levels of neuroticism and extraversion were the most important traits for classification. One group they called the “average” type, because their scores on all measures were close to the mean. Another group they called the “role model”; all these people were low in neuroticism and high in conscientiousness, openness, agreeableness, and extraversion – kind of like the resilients from the previous personality typology. The last two groups they called “self-centered” and “reserved”, and they noted similarities between these groups and the undercontrollers and overcontrollers, respectively.
 
The similarities between these two systems of personality, or personality typologies, suggests that while we may never have a perfect system of classifying personality types, there are certain patterns that we might be able to reliably identify. And as we will see in the next two sections, there is a likely reason why these groupings come to pass.​

Theories on Types of Personality

The theoretical foundation behind most personality typologies is the Five-Factor Model or the Big Five Personality model (Costa & McCrae, 1992). While some research has tried to use other personality models, it does not seem to work as well as the Big Five (Ashton & Lee, 2009). This makes lots of sense to me as a researcher. If there is one theory of personality that works better than all the others, it seems likely that a personality typology will be most successful if it is based on this theory.

Where Do Types of Personality Come From?

A person’s personality is determined by all the experiences they have had in their lives as well as their genes (Barlow et al., 2014). For example, I know I inherited a medium amount of openness to experience – my mother is high in this trait and my father is relatively low – but I also know that the experiences I have had as an adult have increased the levels of this trait in me.
 
That said, our experiences with attachment figures as we grow up may be the most powerful determinants of our personalities. People who develop a secure attachment style because of their early relationships tend to be classified as resilients, while people who are avoidantly attached look like the undercontrolled type and people who are anxiously attached look like the overcontrolled personality type (Cooper et al., 1998).​

Types of Personality: Disorders and Symptoms

Personality disorders exist when people’s personality traits are so inflexible and unhelpful that they cause great suffering or struggles in their lives (Widiger & Rojas, 2015). According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (American Psychiatric Association, 2013), there are ten distinct personality disorders. I will summarize them into three clusters here, to make them easier to understand:
 
Cluster A: Odd or Eccentric: This group is characterized by beliefs that range from odd to utterly delusional. People with these personality disorders are often paranoid because they hold very strongly to their own beliefs, but nobody else seems to agree with them. These personality disorders share some traits with the psychiatric disorder called schizophrenia. Because people with these personality disorders see the world so differently from others, it is often hard for them to connect with others.
 
Cluster B: Emotionally Explosive and Labile: These people engage in highly emotional, impulsive, and often self-destructive behavior. They have a very hard time regulating themselves and therefore try to manipulate their environments to regain a sense of stability. People with borderline personality disorder, narcissistic personality disorder, and antisocial personality disorder fit into this category.
 
Cluster C: Fearful and Anxious: These people avoid experiences, often to a very debilitating degree, that they fear they will not be able to handle. They may keep their lives extremely organized or rely heavily on other people. An example of this cluster is obsessive-compulsive personality disorder, which is different from obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).​

Types of Personality: Type A, B, C, and D

There is another grouping of personality types, into types A, B, C, and D. These people have the following characteristics (Denollet, 2000; Hagihara et al., 1997; Steca et al., 2016):
 
  • Type A people are competitive, achievement-oriented, aggressive, impatient, and susceptible to stress. Perhaps you remember somebody from high school who was obsessed with their grades and wanted to know everybody else’s so they could assure themselves they were doing the best.
  • Type B people are the opposite of Type A. They tend to have low levels of stress, are easygoing and patient, and are more focused on creative pursuits than on achievement.
  • Type C people tend to be angry. They repress their emotions, except for hostility towards others, and see the world with suspicion.
  • Type D people tend to be socially anxious, experience lots of negative emotions, and tend to hold back their feelings and needs.

More Examples of Types of Personality

Another personality typology that has received lots of popular attention, but is not very scientifically validated, is the Myers-Briggs personality inventory (Donnellan & Robins, 2010). While I will not discuss this typology here, I suggest watching this video if you want to know more about the Myers-Briggs:

Video: What's Your Personality Type?

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Books Related to Types of Personality

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Final Thoughts on Types of Personality

Personality types are a helpful shorthand for understanding people. While they can’t predict everything about us, they do provide useful information and an easy way to classify people. If you find personality types informative and interesting, I encourage you to pick a personality classification system that makes sense to you, and then use it to better understand yourself, others, and the interactions you have.

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