Prior to the widespread adoption of the internet (thinking late 90s) this idea that people's personalities could easily be grouped into distinctive categories w

Prior to the widespread adoption of the internet (thinking late 90s) this idea that people's personalities could easily be grouped into distinctive categories was not a widespread idea yet. Buzzfeed "which star wars character are you" quizzes probably grew out of this, but that's tangential. Knowing the category exists is not nearly as beneficial as understanding what makes that category separate and how to interact with those types of people. Most of the value of loosely grouping people together into groups is understanding how to interact with those people, namely how to approach them about an idea, or how to handle their reaction to negative news, or, why they reacted to something differently than you expected. In school we studied "True Colors" which breaks personality types down into four primary types, or colors, with strong or weak secondary types. Most people on this forum would be classified as "Green". Then it breaks down how and why those four groups respond to things. This has been hugely helpful in my professional as well as personal life. Another example of this sort of personality categorization is "The five love languages" by Gary Chapman which breaks down how people share and receive intimacy, which breaks down common things like why some women don't care about getting flowers but for others it's crucially important, and more importantly, why.