The idea of a personality "type" is fairly widespread. Many people associate a "Type A" personality with a more organized, rigid, competitive, and anxious person, for example. Yet there’s little empirical support for the idea. The personality types supplied by the popular Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) have also been challenged by scientists.
Psychologists who study personality believe such typologies are generally too simplistic to account for the ways people differ. Instead, they tend to rely on frameworks like the Big Five model of trait dimensions. In the Big Five model, each individual falls somewhere on a continuum for each trait—compared to the rest of the population, a person may rate relatively high or low on a trait such as extraversion or agreeableness, or on more specific facets of each (such as assertiveness or compassion). The combination of these varying trait levels describes one's personality.
To assess these individual differences, a variety of personality tests have been created. These tests commonly prompt people to indicate the extent to which various descriptions of thinking or behavior reflect their own tendencies. Based on a person’s responses, the test yields a “personality type” description (in the case of a test like the MBTI) or indicates how one compares to other respondents on a number of traits (in the case of the Big Five Inventory or similar measures).
To learn more, see Personality Traits and Personality Tests.