About the four temperaments
A short, honest account of what this site is, where the model comes from, and how the test actually works.
4 Temperaments is a calm, modern guide to an old idea. The four temperaments, sanguine, choleric, melancholic, and phlegmatic, are a simple map of human character that has survived for more than two thousand years because it keeps describing people well.
This site does two things. It lets you take a short, private test to find your own blend of the four natures, and it explains each type in plain language, without jargon and without hype.
How the test works
The test asks twelve everyday questions. Your answers do not map directly onto a temperament. Instead they place you on two scales the classical physicians knew well: warm to cold, and dry to moist.
From those two measures the four temperaments fall out naturally. Warm and moist is sanguine, warm and dry is choleric, cold and dry is melancholic, and cold and moist is phlegmatic. You get a full percentage breakdown of all four, with your leading and supporting nature named and explained.
Warm and cold
How outward and quick you are, against how inward and steady. Warm natures reach out and act; cold natures reflect and hold back.
Dry and moist
How firm and fixed you are, against how soft and adaptable. Dry natures hold their line; moist natures bend and blend.
The sources
Hippocrates
c. 460 to 370 BC
The Greek physician whose school tied health to four bodily fluids, laying the ground for the whole tradition.
Galen
AD 129 to c. 216
The physician of Rome who turned the four fluids into four character types, the temperaments we still use.
Avicenna
AD 980 to 1037
Known in the East as Ibn Sina, he gathered the humoral tradition into his Canon of Medicine and carried it through the medieval world.
An honest note
The four temperaments are a tradition for self reflection, not a scientific instrument or a medical tool. Modern psychology no longer explains character through bodily fluids. Take your result as a mirror to think with, a way to notice your own patterns, and never as a diagnosis or a limit on who you can become.