Grow Your Potential

Grow Your Potential With The Personality Tree

Introduction
Grow Your Potential is a study of how personality type affects a students grades and extra curricular activities.
The personality survey used is based off the book The Personality Tree .
The four personality types studied were first recognized by Hippocrates in 400 BC.

The Personalities
For the study purposes there are 4 personality types:
The Popular Sanguine
The Powerful Choleric
The Perfect Melancholy
The Peaceful Phlegmatic

The Popular Sanguine
Labeled “The Talker,” the sanguine lives to have fun!
Sanguines love color, acting, and telling stories, so these are good ways to help remember things.
Studying out loud helps to process information, but record for later playback.
Always keep a calendar; living in the moment can make one forgetful.

The Powerful Choleric
“The Worker” is very goal oriented and tends to jump straight to the bottom line.
Take notes to become an active learner. Later, create a game to learn details.
Studying with friends can help you to see the big picture.
The innate drive to complete something makes one restless, so study while walking to increase focus.

The Perfect Melancholy
“ The Thinker” spends more time analyzing than actually getting things done.
The deep need for perfection can inhibit one’s drive, so prioritize, make a calendar, and stick to it.
Learns well by rote memory, so flash cards are a good study technique.
Pictures and graphs help in understanding a concept at a higher level.
Use creativity to drive meaning home: a poem, song, dance, etc.

The Peaceful Phlegmatic
“ The Watcher,” who always sees the best in others, needs a practical application to what they are learning in order to focus.
A big picture person, looking for connections can help you to retain details.
A vivid imagination can be a distraction, but taking notes and free writing helps you to solidify what you learn.
Always looking for the easy way out, discipline for deadlines, and even expressing opinions is a must.

The Study
We completed a descriptive and correlational study.
45 High School Students were surveyed using the personality profile and were asked three survey questions.
What extra-curricular activities do you participate in?
What is your favorite subject?
Do you think personality affects grades?

The Survey
Results of personality test was compared with the student’s grades.
Numbers were assigned to tests and grades, to ensure student confidentiality.
Charts were created to compare grades and activities by personality.
Personality types were also analyzed by gender.
While cause and effect cannot be determined, we will hypothesize about some of the results based on personality descriptions.

Academic Results
Sanguine
Mostly “B” & “C” students.
Excelled in Languages, especially foreign languages, perhaps due to their love of talking and acting.
Choleric
Primarily “B” students. While goal oriented, they can have challenges multi-tasking.

Academic Results
Melancholy
Students seemed to excel or be middle of the road. Some perfectionists have difficulty completing assignments, because they can’t reach their perfectionist goals.
Did well in science, English, and foreign languages.
Phlegmatic
Mostly “A” students. Despite lazy tendencies, they would rather do the work than have conflict over it.

Extra-Curricular Activities
Results are based on surveying students current activities.
They were divided into 4 categories:
Performing Arts:
Band, theatre
Individual Sports
Tennis, swimming, track
Team Sports
Basketball, football, softball
Leadership Activities
Honor Society, Student Council

Activity Results
Sanguine
Over 75% participated in team sports, while less than 5% played individual sports probably due to their social nature.
Also, high in performing arts.
Choleric
Considered leaders, cholerics surveyed surprisingly did not participate in any leadership activities.
Most participation was evenly split between performing arts and team sports.

Activity Results
Melancholy
Highest in performing arts followed by team sports.
Individual sports and leadership also relatively high at over 25% each.
Phlegmatic
Sports were the highest with individual and team about equal.
Also had about 30% participation in performing arts and leadership.

Student Opinion
Does Personality Matter?
100% of Phlegmatics said YES!
Under 25% of controlling Cholerics said YES.
Favorite Subjects
Sanguine
Math
Choleric
Band
Melancholy
English
Phlegmatic
History

Gender
Females had almost twice as many talkative Sanguines as males.
Males had more than 7 times as many powerful Cholerics than females, and nearly 4 times as many Phlegmatics.
Percentage of Melancholy personalities were similar for both male and female.

Conclusion
While trends were weak compared to larger studies, there were definite differences in each personality style.
Teaching students how to use their strengths to compensate for their weaknesses can help students to improve in school.
These techniques can also be used for students with exceptionalities.

Grow Your Potential

by Kellie Demmler

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