Only Rumors - Personality & Attraction
Below are charts coordinating the works of Myers-Briggs, David Keirsey, and Helen Fisher, PhD.
Before I discovered the work of Dr. Helen Fisher, the Myers-Briggs system made limited sense to me in that I knew my own type and one or two other types and had some sense that the few other people I knew from my same type processed information in a similar way to how I did, and that was about it. I wasn't even sure that the Myers-Briggs classifications measured anything really tangible (except for the introvert/extrovert scale).
After I discovered the work of Dr. Fisher and watched every video I could find of hers on you tube. Here are my favorites:
watch?v=HMaPZstvvaE
watch?v=Wthc5hdzU1s
watch?v=DsuFRr0Fl-0
I realized that she had given me a handle to understanding the Keirsey types in a way that helped me to be able to identify most people's types from conversation and visual observation. Dr. Fisher's work also helped me make sense of the Keirsey types. I find the labels that Fisher and Kiersey have provided for these types to be confusing. Once I understood the types from the perspective of body chemistry (which is Fisher's contribution), they suddenly made sense to me.
In general, Dr. Fisher's description of the types matches my experience a lot better than Kiersey's description of the types, which also made them easier for me to understand. However, once I was able to identify many people by their type, I realized that Keirsey's description of how people behave under stress could be very helpful to me in knowing what to expect at a workplace.
| HORMONE / NEUROTRANSMITTER DOMINANCE |
H. FISHER TYPE | KEIRSEY TYPE | MYERS-BRIGGS TYPE |
|---|---|---|---|
| (my colors) | (Fisher colors) | (Keirsey colors) | |
| Serotonin | Builder | Guardian | _S_J Sensing Judging |
| Dopamine | Explorer | Artisan | _S_P Sensing Perceiving |
| Estrogen | Negotiator | Idealist | _NF_ Intuition Feeling |
| Testosterone | Director | Rational | _NT_ Intuition Thinking |
In Chronological Order:
First there was Doctor of Psychiatry and founder of Analytical Psychology, C.G. Jung, who created a theory of personality types.
The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator was developed by Isabel Briggs Myers, and her mother, Katharine Briggs; for the purpose of making the theory of psychological types described by C. G. Jung understandable and useful in people’s lives. They developed a system of 16 personality types based on 2 opposites on 4 different scales.
David Kiersey took the Myers-Briggs Types and determined that the third indicator (Thinking/Feeling) was more significant for Intuition types in determining personality; and the fourth indicator (Judging/Perceiving) was more significant for Sensory types in determining personality.
So Kiersey repackaged Myers-Briggs Type Indicators into 4 basic personality types, which could be subdivided: the Kiersey Temperment Sorter.
More recently and independently, biological anthropologist Helen Fisher, while working on a theory of romantic attraction based on brain activity and hormones discovered that 4 bodily secretions play the greatest part in forming our personalities. By studying romantic attraction, which had previously been neglected in personality studies of psychologically healthy people, Helen Fisher filled in an important missing piece: which types will have the best "chemistry" between them. After developing her theories about attraction and personality types, Fisher discovered that her types could be matched with the Kiersey types.
| HORMONE / NEUROTRANSMITTER DOMINANT TYPE |
ATTRACTED TO |
|---|---|
| Serotonin HF - Builder DK - Guardian |
Serotonin HF - Builder DK - Guardian |
| Dopamine HF - Explorer DK - Artisan |
Dopamine HF - Explorer DK - Artisan |
| Estrogren HF - Negotiator DK - Idealist |
Testosterone HF - Director DK - Rational |
| Testosterone HF - Director DK - Rational |
Estrogren HF - Negotiator DK - Idealist |
Important Points to Remember in the Helen Fisher System:
Every person has all four of these chemicals in their body. Some people will express a particular type more strongly than others of the same type. In other words, some people express these secretions in greater balance than others, so their types may be less defined. Hormones and body chemistry change over the course of a lifetime and those changes can result in personality changes.
Borrowing a phrase from computer programming, the people who identify strongly with their type, those who score distinctly in the Myers-Briggs tests, can be said to be "strongly typed". Those who score close to the middle on the pairs of opposites, are less strongly typed. People who are less strongly typed have greater ease at expressing themselves in ways that aren't typical of their dominant type. In other words, it is both a skill and a function of being less strongly typed that permits some people to adapt their personality to complement the people or person they want to please in a relationship or at the workplace.
Women can have testosterone as their dominant chemistry. Men (including heterosexual men) can have estrogen as their dominant chemistry. It is possible for someone with high testosterone to have estrogen as his second most dominant brain personality chemical.
The percentage of women who have testosterone as their dominant brain chemistry is much smaller than the percentage of women who have estrogen as their dominant brain chemistry. A person cannot have serotonin as his/her dominant brain chemistry and dopamine as as secondary (nor vice-versa) because serotonin suppresses dopamine. But the sex hormones are not complimentary in the sense that having a high amount of one does not suppress the other.
Attraction principles work exactly the same for both heterosexuals and homosexuals: the only difference being which sex the person has romantic attractions for.
Friendships also tend to form on the same attraction principals.
On the chemistry.com website, Helen Fisher provides a personality test to identify a person's primary and secondary chemistry type, and then matches them to their complement. Example below:
| PRIMARY TYPE | SECONDARY TYPE | COMPLEMENT PRIME | COMPLEMENT Second | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Serotonin | Estrogen | Serotonin | Testosterone | |
| Serotonin | Testosterone | Serotonin | Estrogen | |
| Dopamine | Estrogen | Dopamine | Testosterone | |
| Dopamine | Testosterone | Dopamine | Estrogen | |
| Estrogen | Dopamine | Testosterone | Dopamine | |
| Estrogen | Serotonin | Testosterone | Serotonin | |
| Testosterone | Dopamine | Estrogen | Dopamine | |
| Testosterone | Serotonin | Estrogen | Serotonin | |
| Estrogen | Testosterone | Testosterone | Estrogen | |
| Testosterone | Estrogen | Estrogen | Testosterone |
Here is a good comparison of Dopamine and Serotonin. Cocaine keeps dopamine active in the body; while ecstasy keeps serotonin active in the body.
Unanswered Questions
There is plenty of room for speculation and theorizing since this is personality psychology and each answer suggests more questions.
For example:
I'm curious about if there is any correlation between girls who are first in birth order becoming testosterone-dominant adults? I tend to think there might be, but my sample is small.
Can a person intentionally modify his/her personality type? And, if so, under what kinds of circumstances, and which morphs are more common?
As we age, what percentage of people who were either estrogen or testosterone-dominant become serotonin or dopamine-dominant as the sex hormone production subsides? Do women tend to become dopamine-dominant and men tend to become serotonin-dominant?
Created: June 4, 2009
Updated: January 2, 2017