Personality Test

In Monday's meeting the class took a personality test that placed us in one of the four (or two of the four) Greek temperaments. The temperaments or humors were proposed by Hippocrates and classify people as either a sanguine, choleric, melancholic, or phlegmatic.

Sanguines tend to be very excited, bubbly, and social. Cholerics tend to be authoritative and natural leaders. Melancholics tend to be reserved and thoughtful. Phlegmatics tend to be easy-going and peaceful.
I ended up being overwhelmingly melancholy.

I thought the personality test was really cool as we didn't know what we would come out as or even what temperaments were before we found out. I think it's also really cool that the test is based off of something so archaic but seemingly accurate. When I found out I was melancholy I was a little weirded out by it since the modern usage of the term is mostly associated with depression. However as I looked at the strengths and weaknesses associated with the temperament I began to realize how much I had in common with it.

The melancholic is reserved and thoughtful. They are less social and a lot of the time are misunderstood as loners. Melancholics usually have a few strong relationships with people rather than a lot of acquaintances. Melancholics have minds that wander off onto tangents. Paths that their minds take often lead them into depression or even mania and results in them being very moody. They strongly critique themselves and a perfectionists, feeling like failures when they feel to live up to the images in their head. Most of those associated with art fell into the melancholic category.

These are the strengths and weaknesses I found myself to be most associated with. There were some attributes like being vengeful and afraid of public that I felt really didn't describe me. However, for the most part I felt the test was very accurate and surprising. I enjoyed it a lot and even got some of my friends to take it (I even guessed exactly what they would turn out to be).