Sources & methodology

This map is built from your answers to 32 questions about how you act around other people. The line from top to bottom runs from Leading to Listening: how much of the talking you tend to do. The line from side to side runs from Directness to Warmth: how much you tend to check in on people. Your answers were compared with those of 570 adults who answered the same questions, so the center of the map is where a typical adult in that group lands.

The circle is split into eight equal wedges, one for each style: Extraverted, Assertive, Outspoken, Direct, Introverted, Soft-spoken, Easygoing, Warm. A ninth style, In the middle, is the disc at the center. Each wedge has an inner ring and an outer ring. Landing in the outer ring means you lean that way strongly; the inner ring means you lean that way more mildly.

You sit in a zone, never at an exact point. Your answers can’t place you more precisely than that, so the map doesn’t pretend to.

• Leading or Listening: from Leading at the top to Listening at the bottom. Whether you tend to speak up first and take the attention in a group, or listen first and let other people carry the conversation.
• Warmth or Directness: from Directness on the left to Warmth on the right. Whether you tend to look after how other people are doing, or expect them to handle their own problems and give them room to do it.
• Neither end of either line is the better end. Every style has things that come easily and things that take effort.

• 32 questions, 4 for each of the 8 sections of the circle, from the International Personality Item Pool, a public collection of questions researchers share freely. This set was published by the researchers Patrick Markey and Charlotte Markey in 2009, and is used here word for word.
• Each one is answered on a 1 to 5 scale, from "Very inaccurate" to "Very accurate".
• The questions are asked in their published order, which already mixes the eight sections, so you never answer two from the same section in a row.

Each of the eight sections gets an average from its 4 questions. Each average is compared with how the comparison group answered the same questions, and the eight comparisons are combined into two scores: one for Leading or Listening and one for Warmth or Directness.

• Each line is cut into five bands that each hold about a fifth of the comparison group. The middle band names both behaviors, like "Talks and listens", because people there do both.
• Your style comes from the direction you lean on the circle. If you lean only slightly, less than half the typical spread of answers in the comparison group, you land In the middle.
• The outer ring starts at one and a half times that typical spread from the center.
• If you land within 7.5 degrees of the edge of a wedge, your report says which neighboring style you also lean toward.

Your place on the map comes from comparing your answers with 570 adults from one community in Oregon. That's a real group of people, but it isn't everyone, so treat your spot as a close estimate rather than an exact one.

In numbers: 570 adults who answered all 32 questions, from a public research dataset that anyone can download and check.

With only 4 questions per section, each section on its own is a rough measure. In the original studies, the sections’ reliability ranged from .46 to .77, with typical values of .60 to .64. That’s why your result is reported on two lines built from all 32 questions together, and never from one section alone.

You may notice related results. Leading or Listening overlaps with Extraversion, and Warmth or Directness overlaps with Agreeableness. They’re related, not the same: the Big Five describes broad traits, and this assessment looks only at how you act around other people. Where the two agree, they’re telling you the same thing from two angles. Where they differ, the difference is worth thinking about.

If you gave nearly the same answer to every question, the scoring can’t tell which way you lean, so we don’t place you on the map at all. Your report says so instead of showing a style that would really be a product of the scoring. Retaking it and using more of the answer scale fixes this.

The two-person and group reports describe what tends to happen when styles meet. There is no compatibility score, and no pairing or group mix is better than another.