Self-Awareness
Books on Self-Awareness and Wellbeing
Five books, two very different levels of backing This article transparently lists the books that have served as sources for Personaramic's…
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Work and Productivity
Books on leadership and teamwork
Five management books, five angles on leadership and work This article transparently lists the leadership and productivity books that have…
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Business and Decisions
Books on Business and Decisions
Five business books, five different test results This article gathers, transparently, the business books that have genuinely served as sour…
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Work and Productivity
Organizing Leader: clear structure and well-defined expectations
You lead with clear structure: welldefined expectations, rules, and rewards that leave little room for ambiguity. Your team knows, at all t…
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Work and Productivity
Inspirational leadership and avoidant procrastination: when the speech convinces before the plan exists
Two lines of research that rarely cross Transformational leadership (Burns, 1978; Bass) and avoidant procrastination (Ferrari; Steel, 2007)…
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Lifestyle and Attitudes
Fixed Mindset and Nostalgic Perspective: When Looking Back Confirms You Can't Change
Two ways of looking back that aren't the same thing A fixed mindset (Dweck) describes a belief about talent: that it's a fairly stable trai…
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Work and Productivity
Extrinsic motivation and results driving: what happens when the team's engine depends on outside incentive
A role that depends, without realizing it, on a single engine The results driver role (Bales, 1950) brings the team its push toward action…
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Emotional Intelligence
Personal Motivation: Using Your Emotions to Pursue Goals
Personal motivation: persisting without letting failure stall your momentum Motivation in the emotional intelligence model isn't fleeting e…
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Business and Decisions
Accommodating Negotiator: Prioritizing the Relationship Over the Outcome
The accommodating negotiator style prioritizes the relationship over the outcome: it yields easily to keep the peace with the other party.…
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Big Five
Neuroticism: The Personality Trait Behind Emotional Reactivity
Emotional instability, or neuroticism, is the personality dimension that defines how prone someone is to experiencing negatively valenced e…
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Big Five
Openness: The Personality Trait Behind Curiosity and Imagination
Openness to Experience is one of the five Big Five dimensions: the one that defines originality, mental depth, and tolerance for the unknow…
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Lifestyle and Attitudes
Optimism and the Need for Structure: When a Plan Sustains Confidence, and When It Replaces It
Two lines of research that, together, raise a concrete question Dispositional optimism (Scheier and Carver) is the stable tendency to expec…
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Love Languages
Words of Affirmation: Loving Out Loud
Words of affirmation: when love is said out loud For people whose main language is words of affirmation, explicitly hearing what's valued a…
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Self-Awareness
Self-Oriented Perfectionism: When You Set the Bar Yourself
Selforiented perfectionism: exigency pointed inward Selforiented perfectionism describes people who set themselves a considerably higher ba…
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Business and Decisions
Analytical Profile: Needing Information Before Taking On Risk
The analytical profile doesn't shy away from risk: it needs to understand it before taking it on, and only decides once the picture is reas…
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Lifestyle and Attitudes
The Balanced Profile: You Adapt Equally Well to a Plan or to Improvising
The balanced profile: you know when a plan helps and when it gets in the way You don't need to pick a side. The balanced profile describes…
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Lifestyle and Attitudes
Leaning Toward Spontaneity: Why You Perform Better Without a Closed Plan
The spontaneous profile: uncertainty doesn't paralyze you For many people, leaving a decision open causes anxiety. Not for you.
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Lifestyle and Attitudes
Leaning Toward Structure: Why You Need a Plan to Feel Settled
The structured profile: calm arrives after the plan If there's a clear plan on the table, you breathe easy. If there isn't, the first thing…
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Lifestyle and Attitudes
The Optimistic Profile: Expecting Things to Work Out, Without Naivety
The optimistic profile: the stable expectation that you'll manage It isn't denying problems. It's the stable expectation that, in general,…
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Lifestyle and Attitudes
Leaning Toward Realism: Building Expectations From the Data
Leaning toward realism: letting the data decide the expectation You don't decide ahead of time whether something will go well or badly. You…
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Lifestyle and Attitudes
Future-Oriented Perspective: You Organize Your Present Around Your Goals
Futureoriented perspective: what you do today looks ahead Almost nothing you do today lacks a reason that points further down the road. The…
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Lifestyle and Attitudes
Past-Positive Perspective: When the Past Keeps Shaping Your Present
Pastpositive perspective: the past as an active source of meaning For you, the past isn't a closed file you check every once in a while. It…
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Lifestyle and Attitudes
Present-Focused Perspective: Living the Now With Intensity
Presentfocused perspective: where life actually happens For many people, the present is just an obligatory step toward something else: the…
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Lifestyle and Attitudes
Past-Negative Reflective Perspective: Learning From the Past Without Letting It Hold You Back
Pastnegative reflective perspective: the past informs you, it doesn't hold you back There's a subtle but important difference between stayi…
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Love Languages
Why 69% of Relationship Conflicts Never Really Get Solved
Two types of conflict, not one John Gottman, after years of tracking real couples in his research at the University of Washington, arrived…
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Attachment Style
Why Is Oxytocin Called the 'Cuddle Hormone'?
The Hormone That Turned Physical Touch Into a Biological Data Point Spanish psychiatrist Marian Rojas Estapé devotes the first chapter of h…
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Work and Productivity
Arousal Procrastinator: why you perform better under pressure
The arousal procrastinator needs to feel the deadline getting close for their attention and energy to actually kick in. It isn't that you a…
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Work and Productivity
Avoidant Procrastinator: when postponing protects you from the fear of failing
The avoidant procrastinator doesn't postpone out of laziness, but as a way of protecting themselves from the fear of failing or being judge…
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Enneagram
What Is the Enneagram?
The enneagram is a personality classification system that identifies nine patterns of thought, feeling, and behavior. Psychologists, counse…
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Love Languages
What Is John Gottman's 'Love Lab'?
A lab apartment for observing real couples John Gottman, psychologist and researcher at the University of Washington, spent several decades…
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Big Five
What Is the Big Five Test and What Is It For?
The Big Five model is a classification system that groups human behavioral differences into five core dimensions. Psychology professionals,…
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Big Five
What Is Big Five Personality?
Personality is the relatively stable configuration of traits and tendencies that shapes how a person adjusts to their surroundings and resp…
2 min readRead
Love Languages
What Is Gottman's 'Positive vs. Negative Sentiment Override'?
John Gottman, an American psychologist who spent several decades observing real couples in his University of Washington lab, describes a me…
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16 Personalities
What Is Myers-Briggs Theory?
MyersBriggs psychological type theory is a personality assessment model designed to explain variations in human behavior through innate pre…
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Enneagram
What Is an Enneagram Type, and How Many Are There?
The enneagram is a map of human behavior that classifies the psyche into nine fundamental patterns, known as types. This selfdiscovery tool…
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Enneagram
What Is a Psychometric Test?
A psychometric test is an objective, standardized measurement procedure used to quantify unobservable psychological phenomena based on a sa…
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Enneagram
What Does 'Enneagram' Mean?
The enneagram is a psychological classification system that describes nine fundamental personality types and how they interrelate. Mental h…
2 min readRead
Love Languages
What Are the 'Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse' in Relationships?
John Gottman, after analyzing thousands of hours of real couples' interactions in his research at the University of Washington, identified…
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Love Languages
What Are Gottman's 'Bids for Connection'?
Within his research on couples at the University of Washington's "Love Lab," John Gottman noticed something that happens dozens of times a…
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16 Personalities
Who Created the 16 Personalities Test?
The typological indicator now popularly known as the "16 personalities test," or the MBTI, was created by two women with no formal academic…
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Big Five
Who invented the Big Five model?
The Big Five Model is a taxonomy that groups individual differences in human personality into five fundamental dimensions. This theoretical…
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Love Languages
Gifts as a Love Language: The Detail That Says 'I Was Thinking of You'
Gifts: when an object proves you were thought of For people whose main language is gifts, what matters isn't the price, it's the tangible p…
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Self-Awareness
Vulnerable, Self-Aware Resilience: Being Aware of Your Vulnerability Is Already Self-Knowledge
Vulnerable, selfaware resilience: a moment, not a sentence This result indicates that, right now, difficulties are hitting you especially h…
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16 Personalities
Is the 16 Personalities Test Based on Carl Jung's Theory?
The MyersBriggs Type Indicator (MBTI) has its roots directly in the theory of psychological types put forward by the Swiss psychiatrist Car…
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Love Languages
Quality Time: Being Truly Present
Quality time: truly being present For people whose main language is quality time, affection is measured in attention, not total time spent…
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Character Strengths
The Virtue of Humanity: Love, Kindness, and Social Intelligence
The Virtue of Humanity: Caring for Others' WellBeing Caring for the people close to you, not just the community at large, is the thread tha…
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Character Strengths
The Virtue of Justice: Fairness and a Sense of Community
The Virtue of Justice: Building Community Some strengths only make sense in the company of others. Of the six virtues Christopher Peterson…
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Character Strengths
The Virtue of Wisdom: Curiosity, Judgment, and Creativity
The Virtue of Wisdom: The Pleasure of Understanding Piling up facts isn't the same as genuinely enjoying understanding something. That seco…
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Character Strengths
The Virtue of Temperance: Restraint and Self-Regulation
The Virtue of Temperance: Restraint in the Face of Excess Acting with restraint when impulse pushes toward excess, without that meaning rep…
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Character Strengths
The Virtue of Transcendence: Gratitude, Hope, and Meaning
The Virtue of Transcendence: Connecting to Something Bigger Connecting to something beyond the immediate is, according to Christopher Peter…
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