Page 50 - DMGT519_Conflict Management and Negotiation Skills

Conflict Management and Negotiation Skills

Notes 9. The theory of Personality Types contends that each of us has a natural preference which
falls into one category or the other in each of these four areas.
10. The twelve personality types which we use in our assessment are based on the well-
known research of Carl Jung.

3.2.3 Example/Application – Columbine

Dr. Bishop and the Columbine shooters Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, would appear to have
much in common. Both shot their victims in a premeditated fashion. Both had goals that they
wanted to achieve by any means necessary. In fact one could argue that Eric Harris might have
had Type A personality. Type As are defined by hard-driving and competitive characteristics, a
high degree of time urgency, and a high level of hostility and overt aggression (Baron &
Richardson, 1994). Harris was described as a smart and a voracious reader and received good
grades when he tried. He was polite around adults and told them want they wanted to hear. He
displayed his aggression and hostility in his bomb-making activities and violent video games.
His main goal was to become more infamous that Timothy McVeigh, which was supported by
his superiority God complex described in his journals (Toppo, 2009). In the end he tried to kill
several of his schoolmates and attempted to blow up his high school in order to achieve his goal.
The main difference has to do with the history of the three killers. Dr. Bishop fit the traditional
criteria for a Type A personality; she was smart, an over achiever, and was known for her overt
hostile tendencies. Her aggression was mainly directed at those that she felt were in her way of
her academic and career achievements.
Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were not known to be consistently overachieving students and
the killings were not targeting one specific group. The main reason for the Columbine shooting
has more to do with Harris’s god-complex, Klebold’s depression, and creating chaos than the
achievement of an academic or career driven goal. Therefore, one can conclude that the Columbine
shootings cannot be attributed to aggression due to Type A personality patterns.

Type B Personality

Type “B” Personality - Represents highly extroverted people who love the spotlight. Because of
this, they are very entertaining and possess strong charisma (everyone likes to be around them).
Small wonder these people are sales and marketing types. They thrive on entertaining people
and are easily hurt if they cannot sway someone some of the most important recent work done
in the field on Personality Typing has been done by David Keirsey, who has created the theory
of temperament associated with type. In his research, he has made observations that have
allowed him to combine two of the four sets of preferences, into four distinct temperament
categories. Each of the sixteen personality types fits into one of these temperament categories.
The titles used here for the temperament types, and the individual personality types listed
within each temperament, are Keirsey’s own descriptions. You’ll notice that they do not match
our labels for the types.

3.2.4 Four Main Alternative Preferences and Temperaments

SJ – “The Guardians”

Keirsey describes the SJ group’s primary objective as “Security Seeking”. The SJ grouping includes
the types:
 ESTJ - “The Supervisors”

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