 So, thanks everyone for coming. Our next speaker is... I'm sorry. Oh, I'm Jens Petersen. Okay, oh sorry. Jens Petersen. So yeah, please, you can start. I'm sorry, my battery's gone. Alright, thank you. So, welcome to this talk about human temperaments. My name is Jens Petersen. This is a non-technical talk, so anyway. About 10, 15 years ago, I read this lecture by Rudolf Steiner about the four temperaments and became rather fascinated in this topic. I feel it's helped me a lot in understanding different types of people and it helped me to understand people better. So, I wanted to share a bit about it here at FOSS Asia and I hope that it might help some of you. So, let's talk a little bit about types, first of all. Personality types, not the software types. So, probably the most obvious type is the gender type or the sex type, male or female. But obviously this is far too coarse to really understand people. So, psychologists have, I guess, developed lots of other types. Some are very complicated ones, things like enneagrams or other much more complex classifications. Temperament is rather simple. There are only basically four types. Of course, it is important to understand from the beginning that this is not like a completely black and white thing and that everyone has some of all the temperaments. But usually one type of temperament is dominant in people, in a particular person. And then sometimes personality types are kind of composed of different factors. So, one factor might be things like active or passive or more common, maybe it's introvert, extrovert kind of polarity. Another, well, we'll come to this in a moment, but another one is about interests and tasks of people. Anyway, I thought we'd do a very simple exercise. If you could all stand up and kind of come slightly more into the centre of the room because I want to use the sides of the room a little bit. So, this is a little bit subjective and sometimes these factors also depend on context and so on. But if you think you're an extrovert and come to the front of the room, if you're more of an introvert, go to the back of the room. That makes sense. Everyone's going to the back. Not everyone, but alright. So, you can come more forward if you want. And then, I wanted to do a second split within this splitting. So, again, this is a bit contextual, but if you think you're a more of a people-oriented person, go to the right side of the room. If you're more of a task-oriented person, sort of like to solve sort of fixed things and go to the left side of the room. Okay, that's interesting. You need more input for this one. Alright, sorry. Well, maybe it'll become clearer. I don't know whether we have time to do this a second time later, but anyway, it's not so serious. It's just interesting to see how things spread out. That's great. Yeah, you can probably sit down again. Thank you very much. Okay, yeah, it all comes out now. Sorry, I'll actually let you stand up. So, here we have these two factors in action here. So, there's the introvert, extravert on this axis and then the task-people orientation horizontally. Yeah, how does this relate to temperaments? I think this split kind of roughly corresponds to temperaments, especially in these psychological factors. But before talking a little bit more, does anyone know the names of any of the temperaments before we get more into them? Sorry? No, they're different actually. They're a bit different. Sorry, someone had some... Coloric? Ah, yes, coloric, yes, that's right. That's sanguine, yes, that's right. Any more ideas? Coloric? Yes. Perfect. Yes, perfect. Great, well done. So, these are all... Well, these are all each represented in this little thing I stole off the internet somewhere, but I'm not sure I'm even allowed to show it, but anyway. So, I'm using colors here to also kind of label the different temperaments. And they're positioned in this kind of order. Well, so basically... Okay, I should have put them both, but... Okay. So yeah, there's melancholic, uh, phlegmatic, sanguine and coloric, and I'm using red for coloric, yellow for sanguine, green for phlegmatic, and melancholic in blue. Okay. And I probably should have superimposed them on the next slide too, but... So basically, this extra vert, the split we just did sort of correspond... This way, but the actual diagonal... The temperaments live on the diagonals, if you like. So the factor is kind of... Well, it's not completely binary, but it's a roughly binary in a sense. Yeah, leaving those four kind of colors or types there. Okay. So, I've got various slides to explain more about... Okay, we've got just jump training. So, these temperaments have various kind of characteristics. For example, maybe melancholic tends to be kind of more serious, internally focused, maybe sometimes you call shy, or they understand, maybe suffering, or maybe they're more kind of understanding of suffering. Whereas the phlegmatic tends to be... Well, maybe quiet, but more people oriented, maybe more friendly in some sense, or concerned about people. And then the sanguine is a rather lively type, very social, likes to interact with people very much. And then the choleric is rather more determined, a bit forceful, action-oriented. So, also, Spina talks about this, but the interesting thing about this chart is that the phlegmatic is kind of left out of this. So, these two temperaments are kind of internally active, meaning they're more active externally. But the choleric is also internally active, like the melancholic. The melancholic is only, but internally active, whereas the choleric is both internally and externally active, whereas the sanguine is basically purely externally active, well, purely, yeah. It's almost like sanguine things just sort of bounce off them, they don't really process them that much, they're kind of naturally just kind of react or respond to things. Some more characteristics. So, my colleagues may have more sort of rich inner-life phlegmatics, or maybe not so easily stimulated, they need maybe to be pushed a bit, or sanguines tend to sort of have quite short attention spans, they get interested in something, then they get interested in something else. So, these are sort of pros and cons, in some sense maybe more weaknesses in some sense, and cholerics can often get a bit hot tempered or excited about things easily. So, and Stan also talks about this in the context of education and so on, how teachers can sort of work with children and so on to kind of try to, I mean the problem is that these things can get kind of extreme, so if the temperance, actually the ideal place to be is actually here in the middle in a sense, but that's kind of not, well, very difficult, because we each have these temperaments that we kind of were born with. So, but still one can do things to kind of reduce, to avoid getting kind of in a, well, kind of extreme cases of these things. Another, well this one gets a bit controversial, but another very interesting aspect is that actually the temperament affects the appearance of people. So, well, and cholerics often, I mean these are good trends, it's obviously not the absolute thing, but well, and cholerics tend to be sort of a bit tall, thin, blanky, phlegmatics maybe a bit more chubby, sanguine, tend to have a larger features, maybe females often have so long, fine straight hair. And cholerics tend to be a little short, maybe they often get bald, well, yeah, or males anyway, and they'll move on. So, this is a little story or a little verse I had to say, so the temperament basically run into an obstacle or a wall or sort of a large collection of stones and so on. And then, so, the melancholic sort of breaks down and crying and gives up and sort of despair and just sort of sits in front of the obstacle. The phlegmatic takes a detour, just sort of flows around the... just... the sanguine just sort of lightly jumps over the wall or the stones and proceeds happily and the choleric just sort of kicks down the stones and laughs happily and moves on. So, quite different kinds of reactions to, well, problems. Then I want to turn a little bit to the disc profile, which is completely independently, well, invented or discovered or psychological personality types. But basically, this can be... well, this is an instrument used, I think even, well, it's also used in a lot of industry and so on, when just... Basically, you can take an online questionnaire, it's basically this various situational, multiple choice questions like, in this situation, would you do this or this or this and after about 30, 40, 50 questions and it will give you sort of charts which is a dominant type. And they have different names from the temperaments, but basically, they correspond exactly with the temperaments. The names are a little bit... some different places have slightly different names, but they're all D-I-S-C, which is where the disc comes from. So they call this red type dominant and I think that this has different names, interactive, interpersonal, influential, or this has a steady and conscientious effect. So it's quite interesting that this sort of psychological type really corresponds exactly with the temperaments. And they talk about... I think one thing I'm using they brought the discs people for the fundamental question for these different types. So melancholic really want to know... So when you're about to say do something, melancholic really want to know why you're going to do something. And phlegmatic really want to know how to do it. The sanguine wants to know who's going to do it or help which people are involved and the caloric is basically concerned with what sort of the outcome. Then back to temperaments again, a few more details. So there's also a kind of correspondence with the classical elements, the earth, water, air and fire. Like before I said how the phlegmatic just sort of flows around the obstacle, a bit like water, whereas the sanguine just floats over. So that's also quite interesting. These colors are also related to that. I may skip over this one, but the chubbiness of the phlegmatic is probably related to the strong kind of life force and glands that they tend to have. I'll finish off a little bit talking about polarities. So in the first step they tend to understand the temperaments themselves, but then a further step is the interactions between these which is a bit more complicated. One of the reasons why the disc people, disc training is to try to understand how to handle, deal with people in the work space or other contexts. But basically there are kind of attractions or polarities diagonally across here. So the modern colleagues and sanguins are kind of attracted to each other. And similarly the coloric and phlegmatic is also a kind of polarity between these types. Quite interesting in terms of compatibility. I don't have much more to say actually. But I've found that these temperaments really helped me a lot in various people relationships in both at home, at work, friends. After a while it can predict temperaments when meeting people partly from their parents or how they react in various situations and so on. And based on that one has a better idea about how to interact with them rather than just doing things in a different way maybe. So that is really most of what I wanted to say. So then if anyone has any questions or comments. Yes. Do you admit yourself or do you admit it? Right. So actually we had some disc training in Red Hat and we were spread but at least some people did when I was in Australia anyway. And people can't share the disc profiles and stuff. But I haven't really shared it very openly in that sense. But yeah, maybe I should. That's an interesting question. I mean there's one problem with this kind of stuff. Some people react to it in a kind of negative way like it's been pigeonholing and so on. And also another aspect which is more clear from disc is that there are kind of secondary. So there's a primary temperament, a main temperament in any disc at least there are sort of secondary type. So they can actually have slants. So someone can be colouring but more melancholic or they can be colouring and a bit more sanguine say. Even potentially they can be colouring but I think that's usually secondary, pragmatic. But yeah. People who change, maybe in the course of the day or in the course of the night? Well yeah, so that's another thing. I think the influence is like, I think some people might be somewhat different say in the work or at home. So I think the kind of context or space that they're in does have an effect. It's quite an interesting question. Yeah, so I think it's great interesting to think more about why and how that takes place. But yeah. I still think the overall temperament maybe is, I mean I think some people like in a workspace I'm actually a melancholic but I think my disc profile is slightly more tending towards colouring maybe because I'm a manager or something, I don't know, certainly. So I think when you're doing the disc profile and answering the questions the context you're thinking the questions in also impacts the result I think in some way. So it's a very good question. Well, yeah, that's a very good question. I don't have any numbers. I can only really guess, but right. We could try again if you want. I think we're running out of time. But I think there's quite a good spread. But yeah, it's true. I mean in a particular profession there might be like in something like a salespeople they might be more sanguine or it might be over him or people oriented. Whereas, well, people might be more task oriented so there might be a slight slant to one side but overall I don't think it's very extreme. I mean I could imagine that I could make it. So it's a good, interesting question too. It would be interesting to have such numbers. Well, that's a good question. I mean I personally sometimes find it easier sometimes to interact with certain types and it also depends maybe what a particular project is about someone person might be more suited like someone who's more people oriented might be more interested in doing some kind of community related work whereas someone who's very task focused might be good at getting results in some project and temperaments or these types in the context of who might be the best person to do a job and so on. So yeah, I think it's a good point. Yes. What is the relationship between temperaments and personality? Well, personality, okay. So personality's got a broad thing but I think that temperaments are maybe more fundamental than personality in some sense. They're kind of inborn traits so with personality I'm a bit broader and maybe a bit more fluid than temperament in some ways I think. But yeah, it's not easy to give a very precise answer. In nature or literature? Or is it like... Sorry, could you ask a question? So yeah, I mean is it like innate or is it developed with time? Oh, I think it's innate. I think basically temperaments are kind of required at birth. I think in some sense they're kind of part of our individual uniqueness I think and they're kind of not really genetic so I don't think they're very inherited from so much from our parents. I mean if you look at people in the family and so on the temperaments aren't necessarily related to the... It's not like you get to... I don't know, I say to parents and then you get the same temperament for the children or something. It's not as simple as that I think so. Yeah, that's a very good question. I think I'm running out of time. Have you seen any natural control theories on the spectrum of these orders? What is the law of this? Oh, that's very complicated. But what's the cause and effect of thinking through it? I mean there are some psychological... If these things get out of order then there are various sort of tendencies that Dinah talks about but maybe we can talk after I think I'm out of time so thank you very much for the question. It's very interesting too. Oh, okay. Unless there's... No, I'm fine. I'm happy to talk more. Which temperament? Okay, right. Okay. Okay. Okay, that's very interesting. No, I could imagine that there should be some kind of mappings I suppose. I think the MBTI types are rather more sophisticated or more detailed so I guess some of them should fall within certain temperaments I suppose. I'm not so familiar with them. I have read a little bit about them but I'm not really expert on those types but it's a good point. I think it's quite interesting to have these different personality type systems kind of relate to each other and so on. I guess they're kind of slightly different ways of slicing things and maybe there could be various overlaps and so on. It's interesting. Thank you very much.