Guardians tend to be dutiful, cautious, humble, and focused on credentials and traditions. Guardians are concerned citizens who trust authority, join groups, seek security, prize gratitude, and dream of meting out justice. Guardians are the cornerstone of society, for they are the temperament given to serving and preserving our most important social institutions. Guardians can have a lot of fun with their friends, but they are quite serious about their duties and responsibilities. Guardians also believe in law and order, and sometimes worry that respect for authority, even a fundamental sense of right and wrong, is being lost.
Guardians are meticulous about schedules and have a sharp eye for proper procedures.
They are cautious about change, even though they know that change can be healthy for an institution. Better to go slowly, they say, and look before you leap. Guardians make up as much as 40 to 45 percent of the population, and a good thing, because they usually end up doing all the indispensible but thankless jobs the rest of us take for granted. A full description of the Guardian can be found in Please Understand Me II and various other publications by Dr. David Keirsey.