Personality Plus Book

I thought this book was pretty gimmicky. The conceit of it is that there are four basic "temperaments": Popular Sanguine, Peaceful Phlegmatic, Powerful Choleric, and Perfect Melancholy. The idea is that you can identify your own tendencies and those of the people you interact with, and adapt suitably. For example, Popular Sanguines are fun, talkative, outgoing, have great ideas & get fired up about them, but they are flaky, self-centered, & lack organization & follow through. So maybe they could lead the meeting and get everyone excited, but then delegate so that others will get the details properly taken care of. Perfect Melancholies are introverted and analytical, organized, easily depressed, and pessimistic. Powerful Cholerics are extroverted optimistic "doers" who make good leaders, but can be controlling, bossy, and stubborn, & don't have much use for friends. Peaceful Phlegmatics are easy-going, happy, relaxed, but unexciting, resistant to change, & can seem wishy-washy or lazy because they are laid-back.
My first "problem" with this book is the test one can take to identify their type. There were forty rows of words, four across, and you must select which one of each row of four best applies to you. The thing that I found weird was that each set of four words had nothing necessarily in common other than starting with the same letter, which to me seems like an odd contrivance. For example, instead of deciding where you are on a continuum, like "shy, reserved, outgoing, or bold" you must decide if you are:
persistent, playful, persuasive, or peaceful
refreshing, reserved, respectful, or resourceful
orderly, obliging, outspoken, or optimistic
impatient, insecure, indecisive, or interrupts
worrier, withdrawn, workaholic, or wants credit

I think that you can get a murky idea at best, as several or none of the words from each row might fit you. Then on top of that, you can end up with a fairly even distribution between two or more types, so you are, say, a sanguine with choleric tendencies, or whatever.
So basically, it comes down to: There are all different types of people out there who think and behave differently, have different strengths & weaknesses, get along well or not well with certain other personalities or situations, and respond well to different types of communication & behavior. Gee, thanks! I never knew that different people are, um, different from one another.
The take-away from this book, I guess, is to pay attention to yourself & others, and try to play to your own & one another's strengths, and try to mitigate weaknesses. Which is good advice, of course. But although there are some good (if seemingly overstated) examples, it is not rocket science, or really, any kind of science.