In about 1980, my friend Larry told me that he had been attending some presentations that he thought I too would like. That was the beginning of my familiarity with and use of what came to be called "True Colors" http://true-colors.com/TCSite/index.html The label can stand for several things but the link goes to one of some competing organizations that are attempting to use, spread, and train people in a simple notion of what sort of people there are.
The idea is similar to the ancient idea of the four "humors": black bile, yellow bile, phlegm and blood. A person's basic personality was a result of the proportions of these four elements in that person's body.
As a result of the training and thinking we did in 1980 and on, we used in our teaching at UW-SP, a scheme that assumed four basic human personalities. They are based on a fundamental, first look that a person uses in living life. Basically, the scheme says we all tend to start from one of four bases: duty and obligation (Gold), feelings/emotions (Blue), action/movement (Orange) and thinking/questioning (Green). In my reading and teaching, I came to use a rough estimate of % of the American population that tends to start each day with each of the four lenses:
| Gold | 50% |
| Blue | 25% |
| Orange | 15% |
| Green | 10% |
Golds tend to be very conscious of their obligations and whatever rules and laws apply to their lives. Further, they tend to have a certain pride in how closely they obey the rules and a certain disdain for the many who don't reach their level of adherence.
Blues tend to be very conscious of their feelings and those of others. Further, they tend to have a certain animosity toward the many who seem to be unconscious of the feelings of others or to ride roughshod over others' emotions.
Oranges tend to be very conscious of obstacles in their path toward fun, games including physical games and physical action. They tend to be impatient with calls for self-revelation through speaking or writing.
Greens tend to be nerdy, to ponder everything and its brother to an extent way beyond the general norm. They tend to be somewhat oblivious to the opinions and fashions of others.
Over the last few years, Lynn and I have not referred to these ideas as much as we used to. We both realize that every individual is unique and displays somewhat different tendencies depending on surroundings, settings, moods, situation, etc. Still, our lives have been strongly affected by these ideas.
These ideas stem from work by Carl Jung, the mother/daughter team of Myers and Briggs and David Keirsey. More information is available on this web page:
