‘Me, Myself, and Us,’ by Brian R. Little

The New York Times:

There are two types of people in the world, a wit once said: The type who likes to divide people into two types, and the type who doesn’t.

Brian R. Little, author of “Me, Myself, and Us,” is a two-typer. But — and this is at the heart of his endeavor — he believes there are many ways in which people can be divided. So his readers learn that there are “person specialists” and “thing specialists”; “high self-monitors” and “low self-monitors”; “internals” and “externals” (that is, people who locate a sense of control within themselves versus those who follow an outside authority). Little, a researcher and lecturer on personality and motivational psychology, even goes beyond familiar classifications like “introvert” and “extrovert” (although he prefers the spelling favored mostly by psychologists, “extravert”) to insist that there are “pseudo-introverts” and ­“pseudo-extroverts.” His aim is to go beyond our often one-­dimensional thinking about personality. “I am resolutely opposed,” he insists, “to putting people in pigeonholes.” Yet at times it can seem as if he’s simply designing a more elaborate birdhouse.

Read the whole story: The New York Times