Influence or Adaptation? Personality Types and Their Relationships According to R. Ackoff and F. Emery
Imagine you’re in a room with an open window and you start to feel chilly. What do you do: close the window, leave the room, or consider seeing a doctor because you sometimes feel cold? According to researchers Russell Ackoff and Fred Emery, even such a simple scenario can reveal a lot about your behavioral patterns. In this article, we’ll explore the personality typology they proposed, discuss why not every classification is about strict labeling, and examine what an individual’s sensitivity to their environment and their tendency to influence or adapt to it can say about them. We’ll also look at how people with different behavioral models interact and whether it’s possible to approach the ideal of a balanced, integrated personality—one that is equally attentive to both self and surroundings and can effectively change either in response to challenges.
Understanding Personality: Beyond Labels
“Who am I?” is a question almost everyone asks themselves. While answers vary, it’s long been recognized that people, despite their uniqueness, share similarities. Philosophers and psychologists have always sought to classify personality, using different criteria. One of the most famous typologies is Carl Gustav Jung’s psychological classification. However, the system developed by Russell Ackoff and Fred Emery is less well-known, though its practical value becomes clear upon closer study of their work.
Like Jung, who warned against using typologies to “label” people, Ackoff and Emery also cautioned that trying to create a program to approximate a “personality function” is a risky endeavor. Their “personality space” should not be seen as static or absolute. While their classification echoes Jung’s in some ways, it is fundamentally different. Jung’s system, based on two criteria and eight types, focused on how people perceive and understand the world. Ackoff and Emery’s typology, on the other hand, clarifies behavioral models.
Their personality types emerged from two separate studies: one on the causes of alcohol use (Emery) and another on understanding consumers of products, especially alcoholic beverages (Ackoff, Churchman, and others).
The Two Main Dimensions of Personality Space
The “personality space” is based on two measures (criteria):
- Response to the environment—objectiversion and subjectiversion (sometimes translated as “objectification” and “subjectification”). Objectiversion means high sensitivity to the environment and low sensitivity to the inner world; subjectiversion is the opposite.
- Influence on the environment—externalization and internalization. Externalizers tend to change their environment to suit their needs, while internalizers adapt themselves to the environment.
Objectivers are more attuned to what’s happening around them and are influenced by external events, while subjectivers are more influenced by their own thoughts and feelings. However, Ackoff and Emery note that these tendencies are not absolute—circumstances can cause an objectiver to act like a subjectiver and vice versa.
Combining these two measures creates four personality types or “spaces”:
- Objective Externalizer (OE) – Extraverted type
- Subjective Internalizer (SI) – Introverted type
- Objective Internalizer (OI) – Mixed type
- Subjective Externalizer (SE) – Mixed type
They also introduce the concept of “centroversion”—a point in personality space characterized by the ability to respond to both the inner world and the environment, and to strive to change both. This is seen as a point of psychological maturity and strength, though they do not describe a separate “centrovert” type.
Adaptation Types
The researchers suggest that most people are not pure types but fall into one of the two mixed categories. Pure types have more difficulty adapting to themselves, their environment, and especially to others. As pure types age, they become more entrenched in their type and move further from centroversion, while mixed types tend to move closer to it.
Using the concept of “adaptability” (the ability of an individual or system to modify itself or its environment in response to adverse changes to at least partially restore effectiveness), Ackoff and Emery define four types of adaptation:
- External-External: The individual or system responds to external change by modifying the environment (e.g., turning on the air conditioner when it’s too hot to work—typical for objective externalizers).
- External-Internal: The individual or system responds to external change by modifying themselves (e.g., moving to a cooler room when it’s too hot—typical for objective internalizers).
- Internal-External: The individual or system responds to internal change by modifying the environment (e.g., turning on the heat when feeling cold—typical for subjective externalizers).
- Internal-Internal: The individual or system responds to internal change by modifying themselves (e.g., seeking medical treatment for chills—typical for subjective internalizers).
Relationships Between Types
Ackoff and Emery also analyzed group behavior, including pairs, trios, families, and cultures. They used two criteria to describe relationships: “imbalance” and “asymmetry.” Their studies found that “successful” pairs were rare. Cooperative and stable pairs included OI-SE and SI-OE. Others were either passive (SI-SI, OI-OI, OI-SI), misunderstood (OI-OE, SI-SE), or competitive (OE-SE, OE-OE, SE-SE).
In families and larger groups, they found greater stability. Certain combinations of parent types tend to produce certain types of children. A child is more likely to resemble the parent closer to centroversion, and the more stable the parental pair, the closer the child will be to centroversion. If parents are in adjacent corners of the personality space, the arrival of a first child can make the trio more stable than the parental pair, but the trio cannot be fully balanced. Adding two more members can bring the group into balance. Thus, children born later in a family tend to have different personalities and move closer to centroversion.
Personality Types and Culture
When analyzing cultures, the researchers made the following associations:
- England – OI (Objective Internalizer)
- India and France – SI (Subjective Internalizer)
- USSR – OE (Objective Externalizer)
- USA – SE (Subjective Externalizer)
They concluded that “Britain and the USSR are more sensitive to the needs and requests of the nations they help than the USA or France.”
Practical Applications and Final Thoughts
Ackoff and Emery did not provide detailed tools or methods for determining an individual’s place in the personality space. They repeatedly emphasized that their personality space describes changing tendencies, and their years of research are just an approach to understanding human behavior as a system of purposeful (teleological) events.
Their comprehensive research is applicable in many areas of life. Familiarity with their work can offer new perspectives on understanding, cooperation, conflict resolution, and personal change. Despite the challenges of self-diagnosis, readers can gain insights for self-understanding and adjusting their life paths.
A key idea in their research is the formation of a balanced, integrated personality—one that is equally attentive to both self and environment and can effectively change either in response to any challenges. Ackoff aptly notes:
“Knowledge is power, and understanding enables control; together, they form a double-edged sword. To know and understand human behavior is to gain the ability to manage the behavior of others more effectively, whether in their interests or your own. Like any tool, knowledge and understanding can be used for good or for harm.”