Book: The Personality Compass

Subtle, introverted colour choices. Is the publisher a little shy of promoting this weak thesis?

Over-simplistic theory milked ad absurdum without any redeeming comic value.
Like turning Tic-Tac-Toe into a religion.
304 pages, ★

I pity this book. Its oversimplified thesis won’t teach you anything worth knowing about psychology. Worse than that, this book might even make you dumber. So don’t read it.

The premise is simple: there are four types of people, which can be labelled as ‘north’, ‘south’, ‘east’ and ‘west’ personality types. The premise is then inflated to a level of detail it doesn’t deserve, with 300 pages of quizzes, quotes, checklists and puzzles in the style of a typical self-help book.

Just imagine taking the thesis to heart and sharing it with some friends. You’ll first have to explain the four types of personality (north, south, east and west), which is tedious in itself, but you’ll then start giving lifestyle advice to people based on arbitrarily-allocated compass-points. You’d look crazy and lose your audience’s interest in doing so. So don’t.

The Personality Compass might make an interesting picture, diagram, or maybe a bedroom poster. But this throwaway thesis should never have been inflated into a 300-page book. It sells second-hand for $1—even at that price, you should leave it on the shelf. ★