I am GU!
I recently took this personality test called the “insights discovery profile”. Basically it’s a test that is designed to determine to what extent you favor four of Jung’s psychological types each of which is assigned a color. The colors are arranged in a pie grid shape and you are assigned a position on the grid depending on to what extent you manifest each of the colors.
Here is the description of the colors:
Blue – Observer – Introverted Thinking – cautious, precise, deliberate, questioning, formal
Red – Director – Extroverted Thinking – purposeful, determined, strong-willed, competitive, demanding
Yellow – Inspirer – Extroverted Feeling – enthusiastic, sociable, dynamic, demonstrative, persuasive
Green – Supporter – Introverted Feeling – caring, encouraging, sharing, patient, relaxed
Each two part pair of adjacent colors also has special meaning. I don’t have as involved a description for them though. But here are the basic terms:
BlueRed – Reformer
RedYellow – Motivator
YellowGreen – Helper
GreenBlue – Coordinator
From my profile I can see that the Motivator is described as the “Extraverted Intuitive” but I’m not sure what the others are. Reasonable guesses would be that the Coordinator is “Introverted Sensing”, the Helper is “Intuitive Feeling” and the Reformer is “Sensing Thinking”. My cheat sheet doesn’t mention the crossovers so I might be totally off on those.
There’s one other dimension to the profile which is how close to the center of the pie grid chart you are. Apparently there are three concentric circles, one of which I think stand for accommodating, classic, and focused from inside to outisde. I have no idea what those terms or circles mean though because it isn’t talked about on my cheat sheet at all.
Lastly each section is then cut into pie slices that describe how close one is to its neighbor. For example if you are firmly in the red you’d be a Director, but even then you might be a little closer to the blue or a little closer to the yellow and you’d get the appropriate adjective as a result. If you are closer to the blue you’d be described as a “Reforming Director” and if you were closer to the yellow a “Motivating Director” and so on.
The thing that struck me about this system was how remarkably similar the colors are to Magic: The Gathering. In Magic:
Blue is the color of reason and science and analysis. It is the cautious patient wait and see what your opponent does and react color.
Red is the direct and aggressive color. It attacks in the most straight forward fashion of all colors seeking to gain control quickly.
Green is the color of creatures and nature. It is the calm and tranquil and peaceful color too. It’s the color of elves and treefolk and forest spirits and the likes.
White is the ‘people’ color’. The color of angels and hobbits (aka kithkin). IT is the color of things getting along together, banding together, allies and comraderie. It also has a fierceness to it as represented by effects like ‘wrath of god’ and ‘armageddon’. It’s not so much tranquil as in your face about its collectivism.
As you can see it’s almost identical! If we think of creatures as people in the green description, and think of white as yellow, they all fit.
Hmmm… I wonder if these psychologists were playing Magic when they came up with this color scheme? Maybe they switched white to yellow at the last minute to avoid lawsuit! 
But then the question that immediately arises is…. where’s Black? Black is the fifth color in Magic and it seems wholly unrepresented in this insights personality profile system. That hardly seems fair!
Well if you think about it, that makes some sense. They are trying to sell this system to people after all and so they want it to be palatable to most people. There probably is a real black analog personality type, but nobody would want to be told that they favor ‘black’. Can you imagine what such a profile would sound like? I can. It might go something like this:
Nephyo prefers to live his life in an entirely self oriented fashion. He gains satisfaction when he is able to crush his enemies and lord it over them. He is likely to seek wealth and fame only for the power it gives him over others. He will not avoid interactions with others, but will only seek them out of he can be in a position of dominance over those with whom he interacts. He can become impatient with people he considers to be “goody two-shoes” and will tend to avoid interaction with those with a strong moral compass, principles, or integrity. He is likely to highly motivated by activities involving cheating, stealing, deceiving, or general corruption and will enjoy observing the suffering of others. A hard worker, Nephyo is likely to bring a dedication and singleness of purpose to whatever activities he engages in should they ultimately benefit him. He will be willing to make great sacrifices for his goals, but will prefer to sacrifice others before himself. Nephyo is not at all loyal and is likely to see fairness as a waste of time and energy. At times he may come off as vindictive, petty, cruel, and sadistic and will show little interest in the collective or the greater good. When working with Nephyo, try to flatter his sense of superiority and be willing to follow his lead on all things. DO NOT try to impose your morality upon him as that will likely lead to conflict that may ultimately lead to your untimely demise.
Yep. That’s how it would probably go. You can imagine why they wouldn’t want to put that in somebody’s profile! Plus if you add black you have to have a hemisphere shape and a 2D pie grid is just waay easier to deal with.
The language in this system also reminds me of Magic. They don’t talk about “yellow personality” or “red personality” instead they use the term “Energy”. So when you act in a manner that is caring, encouraging, sharing, patient, or relaxed you are manifesting “the green energy”. Haha. It sounds kinda silly. But come on it’s obviously what they mean is that you are tapping your “green mana”. Mana = Energy. They just changed the term again!
Even when you describe pairs of colors you get into the Magic lingo. You say that such and such has a “Strong Green Preference and a yellow secondary” or you can say somebody is almost entirely green or equal parts green and yellow. This is exactly the same as in Magic where you can have a mono-Green deck, a Green/White deck or a Green deck with a White splash. We can even adopt the Magic shorthand if we want. GW, Gw, or G.
In fact for the rest of this post let’s do that. I’ll use Magic letters so W stands for Yellow and U stands for Blue and the others are obvious.
So where do I fall in this system?
Well when I guessed what I would be just from the descriptions I knew for a fact that I was not Red and I was far far from Yellow. I’m probably one of the least yellow people in the world and in the past I haven’t gotten along too well with people who have a strong yellow preference. I know a lot of people who lean toward red but I find them and their motivations somewhat mysterious. They are quite the antithesis of my perception of the world. So judging from that all alone I can conclude that I was either Mono-G, Mono-U, GU, Gu or Ug. I was leaning toward Ug. My friend guessed I was GU. My friend turned out to be correct.
So on the chart I appear well into the “Coordinator” section, “Introverted Sensing” I think would be the description. It’s strange though, because I don’t think of myself as very “coordinating”. In fact I’m really really disorganized. I can see how observational skills combined with assisting and supporting skills would lead to a person who makes a good coordinator but it sort of falls apart if you just have a piss poor memory, a poor sense of direction and time, and a hatred for deadlines. Rather than being a blend of U and G, I think I sort of oscillate back and forth between the two, taking the components of U and the components of G that I prefer.
But that’s just my objection to the term. Most of the descriptive components of my profile made a lot of sense to me. It seemed to pick up on personality quirks that I didn’t think could easily be determined from such a small set of questions.
Here are some of the points that seemed particularly appropriate to me:
“can become intent upon doing things his own way in order to ensure his high standards of operating are met.”
“gains satisfaction from attending to or performing functions that others require, and which he recognizes he can provide”
“believes people should say what they mean and mean what they say”
“written communications are most effective with him”
“finds stress and chaos tough to handle”
“content to work by himself without much control or supervision”
“does not take readily to “up-front” leadership”
“prefers to act behind the scenes”
“a trustworthy confidante who accepts a wide range of behavioral differences in others”
“A good mediator or peace keeper because he can agree while not being fully drawn to any one view.”
“Non-judgemental and accepting of others’ behavior in a rather factual way, he notices things around him and will generally find the deeper meanings within most situations.”
“He usually delays decision making until all the facts and details are available”
“Above all, he is concerned with what is “right” and because of this may appear slow in the decision making process.”
“May get bogged down in the details”
“Can resist by being passive yet stubborn simultaneously”
“can be hypersensitive to criticism of his work”
“good at tasks which require accuracy and attention to detail and has a highly developed ability for critical perception, which may make him appear rather distant at times”
“sometimes seems detached from the real world, involved in complex thought”
“appears rather indecisive to some people”
“because of his well developed tolerance of himself and other people, he may appear detached and disinterested”
“motivated by an internal desire “to do the right thing in the right way”"
“may tend to over-complicate issues by trying to solve too many things at once”
There’s lots more of course this was just a sampling. There’s a entire section on areas for improvement that almost all seemed relevant to me and lots of stuff about how to communicate with me and how I should communicate with others that is interesting.
One section that surprised me is this section:
“Occasionally, his private reactions can be intense, even unpredictable and out of character, but they may not be visible to others. Despite his matter-of-factness, he will sometimes experience a private reaction to something he senses is wrong and if he articulates this, it can come as a surprise to those around him.”
This certainly strikes me as true about me but I would never have thought the test would pick that up. I’ve observed frequently that I have much stronger opinions than others tend to think that I have. I care a lot more about a lot of things than even my close friends sometimes realize. Instead I appear somewhat distant and extremely neutral when I feel anything but. It has created some awkward situations and misunderstandings in the past.
The most interesting part of the profile is the end though. There they display three characters that make clear where one stands color-wise with relation to one another. The left hand chart shows how one projects themselves to be, ie the personality they actively present to others when they have a choice. The right hand chart shows a less conscious personality profile. It displays how you are likely to behave whenever you have less control over your reactions such as when you are under great pressure
For mine they are quite different. Consciously, I project more G than U and I project almost no W at all, significantly more R but not above the midpoint (31%). The less conscious me is quite the opposite. I have a much higher U than G and more W than R though still insignificant in both (neither about 30%). Because I am dominant G but only just barely on the conscious chart, I am described as a “Supporting Coordinator”. And because I am slightly more U than G less consciously, I am described as an “Observing Coordinator” unconsciously. Both are “Classic”, whatever that means.
The central chart is the ‘preference flow’ and it seems to indicate something resembling the degree of difference between one’s conscious and less conscious selves. So it’ll show above zero in a color if you project yourself more in that direction than you would ordinarily be and it will show below zero if you are suppressing that aspect of your personality.
The idea of this chart is to identify potential problems. So if you were to have all four significantly above zero it would indicate a tendency like you are trying to be everything to all people and if you were all four significantly below zero it might indicate that you are trying to suppress your psyche too much. Similarly if you had one that was really really high that would indicate that that color was something you were trying to project that was really unsustainable because it is so far against your natural tendencies. Similarly for going the other direction or if there were two colors or three colors all in one direction. But apparently forces going in opposite directions can cancel each other out reducing the overall risk of an effect.
For me I end up with blue a little below, Green a little more above, yellow about twice that much below and red three times green’s above.
This is quite odd to me. It suggests that I am striving toward being more direct, purposeful, and strong-willed, as well as trying to be even more supportive than is my natural tendency. And on the other side I am slightly dampening the degree to which people see me as as objective and analytical and significantly suppressing my inclination toward outwardness.
I guess I can see some of that in me to some extent. I certainly get frustrated with my own weakness of will at times and my tendency not to act. And I always wish that I can be more helpful to others, but I don’t see how I could unconsciously be more sociable or enthusiastic. I really am not very much either of those things as far as I can tell. And likewise for my cautious and deliberate nature. I can’t see how I could possibly be more that than I in fact appear to be.
Looking at it in terms of how I would likely act under pressure is somewhat informative though. If I read the graphs correctly, when the going gets tough I am likely to retreat into my objective analysis, to become more withdrawn and detached from the problems at hands, not trying to assist so much and focusing more on the dry analysis and clear understanding of the issues at hand. Similarly what determination and dedication I have evaporates under stressful scenarios. I tend to become much less forceful and less demanding, hence the big drop in R. Only the yellow doesn’t quite lend itself to easy comprehension. Under a stressful situation how would I become more enthusiastic, demonstrative, and persuasive? How could I be more sociable when I find social situations to be amongst the most stressful to me? It doesn’t make much sense. The only anecdotal experiences I can think of that sort of explain it is my experiences during college wherein the more behind I became academically, the greater the pressure, the more likely I was to goof off and procrastinate more, rather than rise to the challenge. I’d be more likely to hang out with friends, gaming, anime, or just chatting and the likes. So maybe that’s what it is talking about.
Yeah I think I can see all that in me and I don’t much like it. It seems like then when the going gets tough I am likely to give up and abandon people. I retreat into trivial social endeavors and detached dry analytics. That’s screwed up and borders on evil in my book. No wonder I am trying to be otherwise.
Anyway, so that’s my personality profile for you. It is definitely useful to read and understand such things about myself. I’m naturally pretty skeptical about things like this. I always find them fascinating but I often wonder about the truth of them. How objectively verifiable are they? Are they just telling you what you want to hear? But this one seemed to ring more true to my ears than most of the others I’ve taken. There’s also the kind of OCEAN style personality tests and I’ve done two of those. I always score rediculously high Openness, ok agreeableness and super low everything else.
Well if nothing else, studying this report makes me think about things in new ways so even if its total bullshit I think it’s worthwhile and I can get a lot out of it. Plus I like how it is similar to Magic. I like talking about Colors and Energies like Mana and deck types. That brings great amusement to me. So it’s money well wasted just for that.
You know it’s funny UG decks are amongst my favorite decks in Magic too! Really I love this deck style because blue and green pretty much have all the most interesting cards in the entire game. All the weird effects seem to belong to one color or the other. Further, I love winning through overwhelming card advantage that just takes over the game in the long run whether or not you actually have better or more powerful cards than your opponent. And blue and green are the masters of card advantage. Blue and Green also have the mot interesting and powerful creatures. Blue’s devastating tricky creatures and flyers. Greens big monsters on the ground and mana generators. Really UG is just the best. Period. Maybe that’s why my personality profile turned out that way.
Then again one of my other favorite decks is Mono-W and that’s almost the exact opposite of my personality profile. So I guess personality isn’t all Magic.
