The interpersonal circle is a map of how people tend to act around each other. It uses two lines: how much of the talking a person tends to do, and how much they tend to check in on others.
Psychologists have used this map for more than sixty years, under the name interpersonal circumplex. The idea is simple. Put one line from top to bottom and one from side to side, draw a circle around them, and every way of acting around people has a place on it.
A person who speaks up and checks in on everyone lands in one part of the circle. A person who listens and keeps to themselves lands in the opposite part. Many people land somewhere in between, and the center of the circle is a place of its own.
The circle describes habits, not character. It says nothing about whether someone is kind or honest or good at their job. It describes what a person tends to do when other people are in the room.
Curious where you land on the circle? Take the free assessment and find out.
32 questions · about 5 min · free
Start your free assessmentEvery style on the circle is a mix of two separate habits. Each line has a name at both ends, and neither end is the one to aim for.
The circle is cut into eight equal wedges, like slices of a pie, with a small disc in the center. Each wedge is a style, and the center is a ninth. A result lands in a zone, not on an exact point, so two people in the same zone can still differ.
Neighboring styles share one habit. Assertive and Extraverted both speak up early; they differ on how much they check in on people. Styles on opposite sides of the circle are the most different from each other.
No style on the circle is healthier, smarter, or more likable than another. Speaking up gets decisions made, and listening makes people feel heard. Checking in on people helps them feel cared for, and directness helps them solve the problem.
Every style has a version that works well and a version that goes too far. A person who speaks up can get a stalled meeting moving, and the same habit can talk over a quieter coworker. Each style page names both.
The circle was first drawn in the 1950s by a group of psychologists working with Timothy Leary, who arranged sixteen ways of acting around people on two lines. In the late 1970s, Jerry Wiggins rebuilt it with eight sections and the two lines most researchers use today.
In 2009, Patrick Markey and Charlotte Markey published a short set of questions for the eight sections, drawn from the International Personality Item Pool. Those questions are public domain, and they are the ones our assessment uses, unchanged.
The two lines also connect to the Big Five. The Leading or Listening line is close to Extraversion, and the Warmth or Directness line is close to Agreeableness. The circle looks at those two traits together, as they show up between people.
Several workplace assessments sort people into four styles using two lines much like these. The best known are DISC assessments, which are sold by a number of different companies, each with its own questions and its own reports.
The interpersonal circle is the research map that sits closest to that family. It differs in three ways. It uses eight styles and a center instead of four boxes. It places people in zones on a circle, not at a single letter. And the questions behind it are public domain, with published research on how well they hold together.
Our assessment is not a DISC assessment, and its results do not convert into DISC styles. The two describe similar ground in different ways.
A place on the circle only means something next to a reference point. Here the reference point is a group of adults who answered the same questions in a public research dataset from the International Personality Item Pool. The center of the circle is where a typical adult in that group lands.
No reference group is everyone, so a result is shown as a zone on the circle rather than an exact point. Two people in the same zone can still differ a little, and that is expected.
It does not measure skill. Being in the Assertive zone does not mean someone leads well, and being in the Warm zone does not mean someone is a good friend.
It does not say who gets along with whom. Two people in any two zones can work well together, and a paired result describes how their habits meet, not whether they match.
It does not fix a person in place. Habits shift with the setting, and a person can act differently at work than at home.
And it is not a clinical tool. It describes ordinary differences between ordinary people, and nothing in it screens for anything.
The questions are the Markey and Markey set from the International Personality Item Pool. They are public domain, and we use them unmodified, so the published research on them applies to the questions we ask.
What is ours is the reading: the names for the two lines and nine zones, the plain-English write-ups, and the paired and group reports. The full sourcing is below.
Thirty-two questions, about five minutes. You get your place on the circle, a plain read on both lines, and what your style tends to bring to the people around you, free.
32 questions · about 5 min · free
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