10 Melancholic Personality Type Traits

When stressful or hurtful events happen to you, how do you cope with them?

People have different comfort zones when choosing the coping mechanisms they prefer. Each situation has the potential to create a different reaction in every person involved. Some people react with anger when a difficult situation arises. Others push forward headstrong, resolute in finding a solution.

The reason why people have different reactions to stressful events is because they have different personalities, temperaments, and behavioral tendencies.

Various influences help to shape our personalities. A person’s environment, societal pressures, personal preferences, and even gender or sexual preference all create a basic temperament and personality type.

People who are of the melancholic personality type tend to be pessimistic, conscientious, and logical.

List of the Melancholic Personality Type Traits

1. You are a person who values loyalty.
When someone with the melancholic personality type forms a relationship with another person, it is not a casual event. Relationships create a foundation of loyalty with this personality type. They stick by the people to whom they have formed bonds, even in the most difficult of situations. These are the people who also stay in jobs over the long-term, have patience to see things through, and manage their own emotions in such a way that they are able to stay true to themselves.

2. You are calm and confident.
Some of the melancholic personality type traits may be due to a natural suppression of serotonin levels. Serotonin is associated with aggressive tendencies in individuals when exposed to stressful situations. People with this personality type tends to be very attached to their family, identify with their community, and prefer routines that are structured to get them through their day. It is through these routines where confidence tends to rise.

3. You pay attention to the closest details.
People with these personality traits feel that social ties are based on their personal ability to remember specific details. They remember special dates, like an anniversary, birthday, or some other important event. They’ll also remember important details about their co-workers and neighbors, which helps them to form closer relationships over time. These social connections make life feel more important, since most of the day tends to involve the routine completion of specific tasks.

4. You require everything to be in a specific order.
If you walk into the home of the average person with melancholic personality type traits, then you will find it to be immaculately organized. People with these traits depend heavily on order. You’ll even find it in the way they write or speak. Every word involves accuracy and precision, ensuring that the information they are passing along is received correctly the first time. If someone with this personality type is interrupted, the disruption in order is personally offensive to them.

5. You hate distractions.
People with the melancholic personality type prefer to stay focused on one task at a time. They don’t like conversations which involve big ideas or unfounded opinions. They want precise information. They want specificity in the details that are given to them. Social media, email, and smartphones are often viewed as a necessary evil, used only when every other task is completed for the day.

6. You set high standards for yourself and others.
The reason why people with melancholic personality traits prefer an orderly life is because they have set very high standards for themselves. They prefer to stick with processes to pursue their goals. Even before a task is started, people with this personality type have outlined specific steps they feel must be taken to reach their goal. They’ll also look at others and say, “If I can set high goals for myself and achieve them, then you can do the same thing.” Every goal is created with precision. All details are known and based on fact before anything begins.

7. You don’t get bored very easily.
People with the melancholic personality type are able to handle repetition with ease. They are patient in virtually all circumstances, able to excel as they set a high level of attention to the details around them. This creates a level of patience that is not seen in other personality types. It also means that when someone with these personality traits feels anxious, they tend to replicate one bad habit, like chewing on their nails or eating an entire quart of ice cream. It can also cause some to avoid using a coping mechanism because they’re locked in a rumination cycle, replaying their mistakes over and over again.

8. You prefer predictability in design.
It has been said that if you gave someone who has melancholic personality traits 99 shirts with asymmetrical patterns and 1 shirt with a symmetrical design, you’d know exactly which shirt they would put on every day. Things that are asymmetrical in any way make people with these personality traits feel uncomfortable. If there was one shape that had to be chosen, melancholics tend to prefer pyramids because of the precision and uniqueness of the shape.

9. You like to stick to the rules.
For people with the melancholic personality traits, rules and regulations are in place for a specific reason. They are not meant to be bent or broken. In the workplace, that means people with these personality traits can be trusted to follow expectations when they are laid out for them. These people maintain their social ties, stick to facts, and do so because they have an intense longing to belong with their preferred social group. They like it when other people see them as being respectable, reliable, or even charitable.

10. You take a lot of pride in your work.
People with these personality traits tend to be proud of their accomplishments. You’ll find them displaying all of their certificates, diplomas, and awards in their office and home. They also take pride in the accomplishments of their family as well, with a “trophy area” designated in the home which displays all the good stuff that happened over the years. People with melancholic traits prefer to perform in ways that are already accepted, working to perfect their skills to dominate their chosen craft. They anticipate accurately and know how they’ll respond in almost any given situation.

Although these traits are usually positive, they can take a negative turn. People with melancholic personality trait can become very stubborn. They can be dogmatic and even closed-minded. Their pessimism can turn into fatalism, criticism, and condemnation. Some even fixate on the past, lost in a world of “what might have been” instead of dealing with the present.

Many people, however, use the melancholic personality traits to create positive impacts for themselves and those around them, even in stressful situations.