Why Personality?

Subscribe to get full access to the newsletter and publication archives.

Let’s face it: if you really wanted to hide something, inside a goose almost certainly wouldn’t be your first choice. And if the thing you wished to hide was a carbuncle, surely some skillfully applied makeup or a concealing scarf might be a better bet?

But hold on—the carbuncle we’re talking about was actually a spectacular gemstone, and a blue one at that: the subject of the Sherlock Holmes story The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle.

The story tells the tale of this valuable gem being stolen from a London hotel, only to turn up hidden—yes—in a goose. Don’t ask. After a thorough investigation, the ace detective confronts the suspect, James Ryder, and deduces (because that’s what ace detectives do) that he is the culprit.

Here’s where it gets interesting. When Holmes observes Ryder’s nervousness and desperation, he judges him not as a hardened criminal but as a weak and opportunistic man, driven by fear and greed. So, rather than turning him over to the police, Holmes concludes Ryder is unlikely to re-offend and decides his terror and shame will be punishment enough.

When Arthur Conan Doyle wrote his Sherlock Holmes stories during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, he repeatedly demonstrated Holmes’s impeccable gift for judging character and understanding people, often at a glance.

In short, Sherlock was like a Rorschach inkblot test with legs.

Personality, of course, is the recipe that makes you you. It’s a mix of all the things that make you unique: how you think, feel, and act; how you make new friends; how you react to stress—and so much more.

Just imagine how powerful it would be to know yourself as well as Sherlock Holmes could know you.

You could understand your strengths, weaknesses, and motivations. It could help you make better decisions. And it could enable you to accept yourself as you truly are, embracing your unique qualities with humor and grace.

Understanding yourself is a bit like cleaning a smudged mirror—it helps you see who you are more clearly.

Now, having introduced Sherlock Holmes as an example of someone who, though fictional, embodied the art of perfectly judging others’ characters, you might expect me to pivot to someone who clearly understood themselves.

Instead, let’s pay a visit to the brilliant TV comedy The Office.

Depending on where you’re from, you might know the manager as either Michael Scott or David Brent.

Were either of them self-aware? Absolutely not. Whether they spoke in an American or a British accent, they spectacularly overestimated their own abilities. They lacked insight into how others perceived them, leading to frequent awkward and misguided actions.

In short, Brent and Scott were perfect examples of people who did not understand their own personalities.

So, don’t be a David Brent or a Michael Scott.

Instead, use the scientific methods detailed in the Charactergram books (I’m working on them) to assess your personality and discover what it means for you: how to make the most of it and even how to mitigate any of its less helpful aspects.

I’ve been fascinated by the idea of personality—and how it can be assessed—for 40 years, ever since my early 20s.

Back then, someone introduced me to a (very) loose personality test known as A Walk in the Woods.

This person claimed they’d learned about it during training for the Samaritans, a British charity providing emotional support to those in distress. I’m now fairly sure this “walk in the woods” had little scientific grounding, but for years it was my party piece.

The test asked participants to imagine walking through the woods and encountering things like a bear, a wall, and a body of water. “How would you react to the bear? What’s the wall like? Describe the body of water.”

The theory was that these encounters corresponded to real-world issues: the bear represented problems and how you deal with them, the wall symbolized death, and the body of water reflected your attitudes toward sex.

By the way, I still remember responses to the water question ranging from “a noisy, gushing waterfall” to “a dark, stagnant pond.” Hmm, I’ll let you draw your own conclusions.

If my introduction to personality assessment began as a party game or a magazine quiz, I saw the light later in life when I worked with—and became good friends with—Dr. Glenn Wilson, who at the time was Reader in Personality at the University of London’s Institute of Psychiatry.

Glenn is a fount of knowledge on nearly every aspect of psychology, but none more so than personality. Originally from New Zealand, he earned his PhD under the supervision of Hans Eysenck, best remembered for his work on intelligence and personality. In fact, Hans and Glenn co-authored the bestselling 1976 Penguin book Know Your Own Personality, among many other works.

Although Glenn hasn’t played an active role in my current work, his influence shines over every word. I hope my experience and creativity as an ex-advertising man can help transform the psychology he embodies into an accessible tool that allows you to uncover the secrets of your own personality.

Before we close, let me share my own personality traits.

Using the “Big Five” framework, I score high in Openness to Experience, high in Conscientiousness, low in Extraversion, medium in Agreeableness, and high in Neuroticism.

What will you learn about yourself? I wish you all the best in your exploration.

Even with my high score in Openness to Experience, though, I still think “inside a goose” is a really weird place to hide anything.