Dyadic types reflect our natural social roles.
Other personality systems assume that living in modern societies is normal for us humans. The Dyadic Type Framework™, by contrast, recognizes that modern life is a very recent development. That’s why its types reflect the social roles we took in hunter-gatherer bands.
For a million years, we humans evolved to live in those bands, and that made us who we are. We may have central air and smartphones now, but we’re still essentially the same creatures that hunted and gathered on prehistoric plains. That’s why the framework’s 16 types correspond to the social roles in a Late Stone Age tribal band.
For example, let’s say you’ve assembled a group of 10 men to cooperate closely and use speed, strength, and strategy to hit a target with projectiles. Will they be hunting mammoths, or playing lacrosse? When it comes to human nature, the activities are the same.
Dyadic types describe our deep-level nature.
Because the types in the Dyadic Type Framework are based on a million years of human evolution, they describe our deep-level nature. When you know your Dyadic type, you know your core character. You know your natural, inborn strengths and inclinations.
This makes the framework more useful than other personality systems. By showing managers who’s naturally good at what, it helps them build high-performing teams. By showing people who they naturally “click” with, it helps them find romance.
Legacy type systems have significant flaws.
Many personality type systems are based on the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. The MTBI’s either/or dichotomies (Introvert/Extrovert, Intuitive/Sensing, Thinking/Feeling, Judging/Perceiving) can’t represent real-life human qualities, which exist on a spectrum. This fundamental flaw renders it useless, which is why it has been described as “totally meaningless,” and “the fad that won’t die.”
As for the other legacy type systems in use today, they’re not much better:
- The DISC specifies four styles of human behavior that include Dominance and Submission. It can tell you who prefers to give or receive orders, and not much else.
- The Enneagram of Personality comes from the world of esoteric spirituality. Based on the work of a very strange mystic, it’s vague, complicated, and confusing.
- The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) was originally used for diagnosing mental illness, and while it has been repurposed, that’s what it’s good for.
Legacy assessment systems are very limited.
Seeing the flaws in type systems like the MTBI, psychologists began devising systems to assess personality not with types, but through traits. They identified five traits that they considered to be important, then measured them using surveys. Most of the personality assessment systems used by assessment firms focus on these “big five” traits.
These traits—Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism—reflect a person’s cultural conditioning more than their innate tendencies. As a result, big five-based systems measure someone’s surface-level qualities, not their deep-level nature.
Psychologists have a track record of coming up with ideas and programs that fail in the real world, but big five-based systems such as the NEO-PI and the 16PF aren’t total failures. They work, just in a limited way. They’re mainly useful for answering simple questions like, “Is this job applicant likely to show up on time and follow instructions?”
