Modern Personality Typologies Between Scientific and Folk Psychology

The project examines the history and philosophy of typological approaches to what in different times and contexts has been called temperament, character, or personality. In particular, the focus is on how such notions of human nature are grouped, arranged, and systematized into typologies. Going beyond the standard portrayal of typologies as useful tools in areas such as education, business, clinical diagnosis, and the humanities/social sciences, or as telling historical material of many a dark chapter of pre- or pseudoscientific ways of thinking about human beings, this interdisciplinary project considers typologies of human nature as a unique window into the complex and dynamic interplay between scientific and folk psychologies. The project comprises three interrelated studies.

First, a genealogical-historical study looks at a series of specific practices of problematization along three shifts: from ancient practices of divination and healing (expert intuition) to early modern methods of introspection and measurement (common sense); from types (hermeneutics) to traits (statistics) in the course of the 20^th century; and from individual differences (variables) to folk psychology (biases) over the last few decades. It will be shown how various typologies related to the body (zodiac, humorism, physiognomy, phrenology), the psyche (worldviews, psychoanalysis, archetypes, Enneagram), and cognition (MBTI, intelligence, mindset, styles) emerge as a highly productive technology of power/knowledge. Modern personality typologies are shown to run parallel both to the diagnostic practice of clinical psychiatry and the scientific discourse on biological taxonomy and, rather than being undermined by professional or academic criticism, gain cultural authority in folk psychological practices.

Second, an empirical-psychological study provides a review of relevant empirical findings in areas such as folk psychology, social cognition, prototypicality, and experimental philosophy, and conducts a series of experimental studies specifically designed to examine how the folk use and think about typologies of human nature. Three research constructs associated with psychological essentialism, namely, natural kinds concepts (temperament), thick concepts (character), and dual-character concepts (personality), are employed to test and refine the guiding hypothesis that typologies in folk psychological practice help elucidate the relations among essences in an essentialist manner.

Third, a normative-philosophical study develops a pragmatic understanding of typological approaches to human nature in general and modern personality typologies in particular. The aim is not to inform the folk or reform science, but to explore alternative ways to form the self between academia and the public sphere by taking up intuition, types, and individual differences not in their historical problematizations (divination/healing, hermeneutics, or variables, respectively) or scientific reductions (psychological essentialism), but in their potential as both technologies of the self and representations of self-knowledge.

The project is funded by the Nomis Foundation.