New Personality Self-Portrait Introduction

Fourteen personality styles motivated by Heart, Action, or Mind

About the author of 3DPersonality.com

In their book New Personality Self-Portrait: Why You Think, Work, Love, and Act the Way You Do, Dr. John M. Oldham and Lois B. Morris developed a unique and useful approach for characterizing personality types. Some of the New Personality Self-Portrait (NPSP) features are extremely helpful in building a better understanding of a psychological profile.

First, Oldham and Morris point out that people do not fall into only one personality style description. Each of us has a little bit of all the personality types. It is merely a matter of degree and where we tend to function most of the time. Second, the authors recognized that there is a continuum of mental health that affects our personalities. For example, a healthy skepticism and concern about future dangers is at one extreme, and a paranoid personality disorder would be at the other. This perspective is a fundamental tool to understanding how to transform what might be a personality liability into a target for personal growth.

The Fourteen NPSP Styles

Four Heart Styles Sharing the core focus of a connection with others.	Five Action Styles Orchestrating how they perform tasks in the world.	Five Mind Styles Listening to their own inner compass and direction.

The NPSP system developed by Oldham and Morris describes 14 personality types. These 14 types have been grouped into our interactive NPSP Matrix composed of three major divisions: Heart, Action, and Mind. Oldham and Morris do not formally separate their styles into these three groups; however, the system they developed easily lends itself to this extension.

The Six Domains

Oldham and Morris develop a number of categories that they use to characterize the 14 styles' identities. They call these groupings the six domains of functioning. The following is a short summary of these six concepts:

1. Self — relates to how people see themselves and how they perceive they fit in with others and within the structure of their daily lives. Do they have a high degree of self esteem and self confidence, or do they feel they must look to outside authorities for affirmation and security?
   
2. Relationships — indicates how important it is for people to form and keep connections with other people. This feature also forms a continuum that can be extremely important for some of the styles, such as the Heart styles, and much less important for some of the others.
3. Work — reflects on the way people spend their time and how they approach the tasks they face every day. Some people are laid back and make only a minimal effort while others are workaholics, being driven and focused even when they are involved with their hobbies.
4. Emotions — describes the moods and typical range of emotional demeanors that people exhibit. Some people are typically cool and aloof while others are exuberant and fun loving. Some styles exhibit hardly any feelings at all. Each has a unique mix of emotions that indicates how he or she approaches the world.
5. Self-Control — captures people's skill at impulse control. Some of the styles don't want to dampen their spontaneity and instead feel that reacting in the moment makes them authentic. Others pride themselves in their self discipline and follow-through, being where they said they would be when they said they would be there.
6. Real World — indicates how they interact with reality. Do they see life as hard and full of danger or as a party just waiting for them to jump in? Are they willing to reframe their experiences in a positive light (optimists) or are they constantly worrying that the worst is about ready to happen (pessimists)?

Oldham and Morris use these six domains to help describe the features and traits of the 14 NPSP styles. The four Heart Styles rely most on the Relationships domain: Devoted, Mercurial, Self-Sacrificing, and Sensitive. The Action Styles are mainly concerned both with the Work and Real World domains: Adventurous, Aggressive, Dramatic, Leisurely, and Self-Confident. Emotions, Self, and Self-Control domains all contribute to the Mind division, which includes the remaining five styles: Conscientious, Idiosyncratic, Serious, Solitary, and Vigilant.

The Self-Test

One of the useful features of the NPSP system is the book's 107-question test that allows a reader to identify the degree to which he or she fits into each of the styles. No individual is only one of the styles; each of us is a mix of all of them, some contributing a greater share to our personality than others. The test ranks the results to show a score for each style on a scale between 0 and 18. By inspecting the test results, a person can identify which of the styles reflect his predominant personality and which of the styles he tends to represent most of the time.

The NPSP system developed very differently from the other systems (for example, Myers-Briggs and Enneagram). Dr. Oldham created this set of styles as an extension of his work on the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. DSM-III-R and DSM-IV, as versions of the manuals became known, were collaborative projects of members of the American Psychiatric Association. Their purpose was to provide a consistent classification scheme for mental pathologies that would allow different psychologists to evaluate the same patient and arrive at the same diagnosis. Oldham realized that the DSM-III-R and DSM-IV descriptions were the extreme, disordered versions of what were otherwise common, normal and in fact, typical personality types.

In order to identify which NPSP personality type best describes you or someone you care about, you can use our free New Personality Self-Portrait Matrix to see the characteristics of all the styles, and then choose the one that seems to fit best.

Reference:

Oldham, John M. and Lois B. Morris. New Personality Self-Portrait: Why You Think, Work, Love, and Act the Way You Do. New York: Bantam Books, 1995. 449 pp.

More on the New Personality Self-Portrait System:
Use our Interactive Matrix to find your NPSP personality type.
     Four personality styles motivated by Heart
     Five personality styles driven by Action
     Five personality styles centered on Mind

About the primary author of 3DPersonality.com: Dr. R. Jean Maddigan is a professional social scientist who has been interested in personality systems for over a decade. Read more on her background.