Surrounded by Idiots

The Four Type of Human Behaviour (or, How To Understand Those Who Cannot Be Understood)

By Thomas Erikson

The subtitle tells you what the book is about. The main title is to get it off the shelves. Do you feel people just don’t understand you? You have an amazing idea and people don’t listen, or bat it away? Sometimes you feel you’re fighting the world? Or everyone else just don’t understand? That you are surrounded by idiots?

I was guilty of this all throughout high school! It was a combination of listening to my ego, self-diagnosing as narcissistic. I hope I can be forgiven, as I was just a teenager, growing up, going through puberty and trying to understand how to interact with the world. Admittedly, and almost all of my friends will concur, I was rather insensitive towards my peers, would seek to be alone when overloaded by people around me and was somewhat socially awkward. I lacked any ability to express my ideas aloud. Preferring to always write it down in the form of a letter to communicate to the teachers. I couldn’t understand why other people just couldn’t grasp concepts learnt in school. I did only drop one mark in my Maths A level exam…. But, when I didn’t pass the interview stage to get accepted to Oxford University, I had a bit of a reality check and realised I wasn’t all that smart.

‘Surrounded by Idiots’ categorises people into four: Red, Yellow, Green and Blue. The book is split in each chapter by subheadings of each personality trait and discusses how they react in different situations, how they interact with the world, how they understand others and importantly how YOU should deal with each personality. Whilst reading , I couldn’t help but have certain friends, colleagues and family members come to mind.

Imagine you are in a lift full of people. What would you do:

RED – You’d be the one to shut the lift doors repeatedly to “make it close faster”

YELLOW – Use it as an opportunity to make small talk with everyone inside

GREEN – Politely move around, allowing people to stand comfortably. And not invading anyone’s space too much

BLUE – Read all the writing on the wall. See the maximum weight limit is 800kg, and do a quick calculation based to see if we are at a safe weight for the lift to function.

I’m a defiant blue, with a hint of green. I’m the kid that knew what Riboflavin was way before learning about it in first year metabolism because I read the back of cereal boxes from age 6. The written word means more than what is spoken. If someone gets a fact wrong, they must be corrected. And I will often have the dates and facts to hand. But also, the bit of green in me means I don’t naturally like change (I’ve had to nurture myself into embracing changes), and I hate conflict and will actively do anything to avoid it. I wish I had red in me, I want the traits of being competitive and determined, so on the outside I try and portray those things, but only I know who I am when noone is looking (and I guess you do too from my description). But one thing I can’t stand is yellow people, they’re noisy, self-centred and always changing their mind.

Whichever trait you are most strongly, you tend not to get on with the diagonal opposite type. Hence why I find yellows the most annoying people on Earth. Don’t get me wrong. I have yellow friends, I appreciate their bubbly personality, can always rely on them to be Down For Whatever. But, I see them in doses. Too much, and my introverted side gets overwhelmed.

Normally your partner IS NOT the same as you. Opposites do attract. My partner is a definitely a red with some yellow. Which I only notice when we are arguing, because that’s when we see the worst side of someone. I find him to be aggressive, controlling, overbearing and pretty intolerant, with the yellow in him making him rash, hasty and gets upset with me when I don’t talk much at parties. Obviously, I love and respect him very much, and that’s because I’m attracted to his doggedness, the attitude to just do things, his high self-esteem and creativity. This makes us an excellent team. He comes up with the ideas, has the initial spurt of inspiration and drive to get it started, and I do all the fact checking, proofreading and play the devils advocate and finish the job (before a new idea appears). It’s about understanding each others strengths, and knowing when not to take things personally. And honesty, after reading this book I think I understand him much better. Sadly, him being a red, won’t read the book to try and understand me…

I’m a blue. We established that. So, I had to check the facts of what Erikson was writing. Nothing he writes is any new science, it actually dates back to Hippocrates in 400BC. He separated the human body into the four main fluids: Blood, Yellow Bile, Mucous/Phlegm and Black Bile. This mathces the Aztec’s four elements, Air, Fire, Earth and Water. And over years as you can see in the above image, it adapts into a common personality test seen today: Myers-Briggs. Maybe, after all, human’s aren’t all that complicated. These four personality traits have been seen in Western society for over 2000 years, and despite the advancement in society and technology, our fundamental “human-ness” is unchanged. That’s pretty fascinating!

On the other hand. . .

The book does seem to fact pick parts of history which suits the argument of the author. In Chinese society, they believe their are five elements and personality types: Water, Wood, Metal, Earth, Fire. It fits into their 60 year zodiac: 12 Earthly Branches each corresponding to one of the twelve animals, and the 10 Celestial Stems, split into the 5 elements (alternating every two years), one with Yin the other Yang, or male/female. The below image might help that make sense?

In addition, in India, according to the writings of Ayurveda, which is 5000 years old, they see seven personality types. They believe the universe consists of three energies or doshas: Kapha (binding energy), Pitta (energy of transformation) and Vata (energy of movement). And each energy is associated with one of the five elements, fire, water, air, ether and earth. You can combine these three personalities to have a total of SEVEN personality types. (The maths confused me too, see caption).

“It is both easy and dangerous to categorise someone who behaves differently from you as ignorant, wrong or even thickheaded”

I think that the accolade they use to sell the book “Most sold book in Sweden”, says a lot more about Swedes supporting their native authors more than the information being revolutionary. But I think the reviews are a little bit unfair, so I’m here to shed more positive light onto it.

I would read this book with a pinch of salt. It was definitely a good laugh reading the scenarios of different personality types and comparing it to very similar scenarios I have encountered. The information is not wrong. In Western society the concept has been around for thousands of years. And it is interesting to read how easily one can categorise people. However, it is not scientific, it is not historically all encompassing and it is not revolutionary knowledge. Anyone with a psychology degree, or experts in the field, would probably find this book a bit of a bore and the author too goofy in his writing style. However, for someone who has never come across Hippocrates four bodily fluids before, but has done a Myers-Briggs test, I’d recommend this book for you.

I ended up giving my copy to my direct line manager at the sales company I worked. I consistently thought about her whilst reading it. So I hope she takes pleasure in it. She is a red-green, which is a very interesting mix, as they tend to be opposites. I think, as a manager, it may help her understand her colleagues and employees better, and now has supporting evidence that not everyone will think the way she does, and that’s okay. Everyone can still excel in the team, if you give them the right tasks and responsibilities. For any potential leader or supervisor, the book provides an excellent analysis of behavioural differences between people.

Surrounded by Idiots is an entertaining read, but it does rely on overly simplistic stereotypes. People are rarely just one colour, normally a mix, sometimes all 3. And all in varying degrees. Don’t take the words written here (blues) too literally, it is written jovially and not for the scientific community.