In ancient times, people used to believe that their emotional attitudes are caused by the four humours, or bodily juices. Blood makes one cheerful and outgoing; phlegm makes one meek and submissive; black bile makes one cynical and depressive; and yellow bile makes one forceful and dominant. They believed that the balance of these four bodily juices determined the emotional attitude and outlook of a person. Of course, this idea is scientifically not correct, but the psychological concept behind it is valid and quite interesting. The four temperaments, falsely believed to be caused by the four humours, can describe the emotional attitude of a person to a limited degree of accuracy.
A Flash game developer named Pseudolonewolf wrote a thorough analysis on temperaments. He suggested that every person has two temperaments, one primary and one secondary; the primary temperament indicates the person's main outlooks, while the secondary provides additional details. The analysis can be found here:
http://temperaments.fighunter.com/?page=introThe article is very long, so if you don't want to read the detailed explanations, I'll briefly summarise the four temperaments here:
Choleric people are dominant. They instinctively want to be in control, so they will bluntly and forcefully impose their opinions on others.
Melancholic people are reclusive. They have abnormally high standards for everything, and they shut themselves off from others because they think they aren't good enough for themselves.
Phlegmatic people are submissive. They fear displeasing others, and they always try to follow orders and seek the path of least resistance.
Sanguine people are outgoing. They enjoy socialising, and they require to be in the company of others to function properly.
As I said above, each person has two temperaments, one primary and one secondary; a single temperament is not enough to describe someone. Pseudolonewolf has a detailed description for each of the temperamental blends in his article, about halfway down the page. There are 12 possible blends.
The purpose of this thread, for those with enough attention span to read parts of the article, is for you to try to figure out your temperamental blend and post it here. Keep in mind that temperaments are not your personalities; they merely describe your emotional attitudes and outlooks. They are not temporary moods either; you may suppress or refine some of your temperamental traits, but your overall temperamental blend does not change. Also, each person has traits of all four temperaments inside him/her (I, for example, can clearly feel all four temperaments in me), but some of these traits are more pronounced than others. If you think none of the blends fit you, or all four temperaments fit you, then you might be one of the four balanced blends (C/P, P/C, M/S, S/M).
I'll start with myself. I'm quite sure that I am a
melancholic/
phlegmatic blend, because my overall personality fit almost everything the article says about that blend. I seek to analyse and understand everything, I am a perfectionist. I don't like to demand things from others or just walk all over them, but I will stubbornly hold my ground for something I believe to be right.
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