Keirsey Temperament Sorter

The Keirsey Temperament Sorter (KTS) is a self-assessed personality questionnaire designed to help people better understand themselves and others. It was first introduced in the book Please Understand Me. It is one of the most widely used personality assessments in the world, and its user base consists of major employers including Bank of America, Allstate, the U.S. Air Force, IBM, 7-Eleven, Safeco, AT&T, and Coca-Cola. The KTS is closely associated with the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI); however, there are significant practical and theoretical differences between the two personality questionnaires and their associated different descriptions.

David Keirsey expanded on the ancient study of temperament by Hippocrates and Plato. In his works, Keirsey used the names suggested by Plato: Artisan (iconic), Guardian (pistic), Idealist (noetic), and Rational (dianoetic). Keirsey divided the four temperaments into two categories (roles), each with two types (role variants). The resulting 16 types correlate with the 16 personality types described by Briggs and Myers.

Although the descriptions of the individual temperaments and role variants were written as a whole, temperament itself can be understood by comparing it to the rings of a tree:

Each of the eight categories can be subdivided by this distinction, for a total of 16 role variants. These 16 role variants correlate but do not correspond to the 16 Myers-Briggs types.

In his book Brains and Careers (2008), Keirsey divided the role variants into groupings that he called "four differing roles that people play in face-to-face interaction with one another."

There are two Proactive Enterprising Roles:

There are two Reactive Inquiring Roles:

The roles were implied in the informing/directing factor introduced in Portraits of Temperament. In his 2010 follow-up book, Personology, "Coworkers" is renamed "Collaborators", and "Responders" is renamed "Accomodators"

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