Cognitive Biblical
Therapy Coursework
Counseling Through God’s
Transformative Word
Course 3, Chapter 8
Chapter 8
Identifying the Four Personality Types Through Questionnaire Analysis
Four Types of Personalities
Statistical Analysis of Agape Questionnaire
Using Questionnaire Scores to Derive Personality
Deriving Patterns for Passive-Active Personalities
Essay Questions: Answering the section questions (red buttons) is a great way to prepare for the end of the Chapter Quiz. You may notice, to gain full credit for the answers in Course 3 will require more details. Yet remember, these questions are for your review, not for grading purposes. The section questions will provide Dr. Wilkinson’s feedback to your answers.
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Course 3 Chapter 8
Identifying the Four Personality Types Through Questionnaire Analysis
Four Types of Personalities
Question 1. Now that we've finished the word studies, we're going to go to the next phase in Course Three which is learning the different personalities. The humanness of your client is not eradicated or eliminated by their relationship to God. Each part of humanness has to come under God’s control. Understanding the client’s personality will help him or her to know how and when to ask God for help. The outgoing person needs help to rein in himself through God’s grace and to not respond too quickly. The quiet person has to ask God to help him or her speak up rather than assume things, run on emotions, get hurt silently, but never share. The person that's a combination or in the middle of the road of these, just doesn’t know what type of personality they have.
In this next phase we will learn about types of personality traits, and show patterns of responses to specific questions by how they were answered. Using the composite graph on page one of the Agape Love Analysis Profile, I'll show you the patterns of responses graph that identify the spiritual difficulties and the personality type of your client. This is especially interesting in a marriage relationship, because with the overlaid patterns, clients will see that they're both behaving in the same ways as rudeness, pride and so on. They each use different vehicles of their personality type with unique strengths and weaknesses.
Using this analysis questionnaire of 75 questions over the years, revealed specific patterns that fall into these categories of personality. A fourth pattern that showed up later is Sincere or the person who is a Christian who wants help. We clearly have seen some variations, but there'll be definite ways to pick out the major personality types.
These personalities are: 1) active, 2) passive, 3) passive-active, and 4) active-sincere is a person who needs help with his/her extreme behavior.
Active Personality
The first personality type is an active, sometimes an active individual, commonly referred to as a bully, while most people are primarily “reactive”. This person can be physically active, such as pounding tables, throwing or breaking things, speaking or yelling in a loud voice, and often tears of remorse with anger close behind. Others can speak before they think, be the life of the party, emotionally react or lack boundaries. The scores on the analysis questionnaire reveal a key spiritual truth about the active person. Their score on the sub-scale of pride is not low, which indicates a sincere desire to do what is right, but a profound lack of knowledge as to how to do it. It seems that pride is the key in analyzing these personality types. Remember pride means hatred, an enmity towards the authority of God over a person's life, will, actions, and emotions. The active person gives an impression of being mad, controlling, and dictatorial. But the aggression doesn't come from any type of desire to be controlling or manipulative. It comes from frustration or anxiety, not a willful decision to disobey God.
Passive-Active Personality
The second personality type is the passive-active person, or just passive-active. Another name for this person might be a sneak. This person will sit on the fence, depending on the situation. He may be an aggressive bully, or a meek and demure victim. This person may pound the table at times, or appear to be helpless, harmless at others. The analysis reveals that this individual has the same spiritual problems as the active or active person. He tends to exhibit a lesser degree of the same type of behavior that the passive or active person does. In other words, they are not as obvious as either of the other two personality types. As we get into the score patterns, you can see a narrower spread of scores clustering between 18 and 12. Their behaviors will be less extreme that the other two personality types. They will exhibit the same behaviors, but tend use those around them to temper the energy of their behavior. They're more like a chameleon. They're always looking around to see what someone else wants them to do.
Passive Personality
The third type of personality is that of the passive person, or of a victim, who exhibits such behaviors as a soft voice, helplessness, low self-concept or low self-esteem, and inappropriate meekness. At times, there's a surprising amount of bitterness, rage and anger, underneath that passivity. The passive person (victim) seems to be the least to blame in any situation. The analysis questionnaire of the victim reveals the opposite. This might surprise you, but the passive person’s score on pride indicates that the person is very prideful. This person is in willful rebellion against God, and the victim role is a means of manipulation, a shield to hide behind that is very destructive to this person and to others around him or her. For example, in the case with an individual who had been trying to reconcile, but after a couple of years a decision was made to not reconcile. The spouse who had a prior divorce decided to accept Christ and thought the other spouse was already a Christian. The new Christian, after seeing no spiritual change in the other, decided not to reconcile. I expected to see tears, hear promises for change, and pleas for more time. But at some point, the person said, “No, this is what I perceive I should do.” The interesting thing was, the meek willing to change person said in a very level calm voice, “Then I don't have to pretend anymore.” Startled, the other spouse asked for an explanation. To which the other spouse explained, “I put on an act for a long, long time, and apparently, it's not going to work. So, if you're not going to come back, then don't expect me to cooperate with you again; not over the kids, not over finances, not in anything, because if it's not going to work, then I'm not going to continue to cooperate!”
It's important that you understand how this works in the sense of a victim. At this point in our discussion, we are not attributing any spiritual motives or values to these personality types. They don't have any. This is humanness. This is flesh and blood. This is the emotional makeup and such that God has given any given individual what they've been born with. But the personality type, if not checked by the Holy Spirit and willfully submitted to him, will control the person, almost as if there is a second entity or individual living within the person. So, you have to understand that when you first meet the person, if he or she has never come under the submission to God so that this personality is guided by the Holy Spirit, you are seeing an individual that's in this war between the soul and the self. The soul is made up of three parts: the will, emotions and personality.
Active-Sincere Personality
The fourth type is the fourth personality type I call active-sincere. It's a peculiar pattern of scores, because this is a person who genuinely wants help, and usually a Christian. A lot of times he or she has been a Christian for a long time, but they have a couple of odd characteristics to the way that their scores look. Their scores will show a large range between their highest score and lowest scores. They may have high scores (least problems) in kindness and boastfulness, but very low scores on being easily angered or other attributes. This indicates a level of knowledge in some areas, but a severe lack of ability to apply this knowledge to personal relationships in everyday life. You will also notice a fairly low on pride which makes this person appear to be very rebellious. This contrast shows a dichotomy or a hypocrite, who appears to be phony with a desire to be obedient and submissive to God. Often this sincere person appears, in many ways, to be a highly emotional, activated person, even more aggressive than the desk pounder, the passive-active fence sitter, or the emotional victim. This sincere person may appear to be a very dictatorial, emotionally reactive, willful or destructive individual. That same person could be singing in the choir, sitting on the front row, or teaching the Sunday school class. It is an odd thing, that the Christian, who should do the best job of showing people what Jesus is like, actually appears to be the most prideful and the most erratic of the other types of personalities.
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List and describe briefly each of the four personalities that can be derived from the Agape Love Profile Questionnaire.
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Dr. Dan's Answer:
1. Active (Aggressive) Personality
The Active personality is a "take charge" problem solver who wants to address issues head-on and get things resolved quickly. They tend to be physically expressive in frustration — pounding tables, speaking loudly, or breaking things — followed by remorse. While they appear controlling and dictatorial, their aggression comes from frustration and an intense need to solve problems, not from willful rebellion against God. Their score on pride is not low, indicating their behavior is often a defense mechanism rooted in poor treatment by an authority figure.
2. Passive (Victim) Personality
The Passive personality appears quiet, soft-spoken, and helpless — seemingly the least to blame. However, the questionnaire reveals the opposite: a very low pride score indicating a high degree of willful rebellion against God's authority. The victim role is not genuine helplessness but a carefully maintained facade covering a strong, determined will that seeks to control through pity, silence, and emotional withdrawal. Underneath is often surprising bitterness and rage, and the shift from victim to aggressor can be lightning-quick when the facade is challenged.
3. Passive-Active (Fence-Sitter) Personality
The Passive-Active personality is a blend of the first two types — neither extremely aggressive nor deeply passive, adapting behavior based on who they are with. Their questionnaire scores show a very narrow band of variation across all attributes, revealing someone who lacks a clear sense of identity, values, or will. Often the product of heavy control, abandonment, or inadequate parental guidance, this person easily adopts the opinions of others. Most in this category eventually emerge toward the Active personality as they grow in self-awareness.
4. Sincere (Active-Sincere) Personality
The Sincere personality is usually a genuine Christian who wants help but presents a confusing profile — very high scores in some areas and severely low scores in others, indicating real knowledge of God's love in certain areas but an inability to apply it consistently. Their low pride score makes them appear rebellious or hypocritical. This creates a striking dichotomy: a person deeply committed to their faith who may respond to relational conflict in ways that seem utterly inconsistent with it — more aggressive, erratic, and emotionally explosive than any other type.
Statistical Analysis of the Questionnaire
Question 2. In the early years of developing the Analysis Questionnaire for Agape Love (AQAL) the initial sampling for my initial study used 200 people. Many more of these questionnaires have been given since this study. But the number of people (statistical sample) that you use gives a measure that directly affects the reliability and validity of the measure. Validity measures the accuracy of the instrument to measure what you want to measure. Reliability means that this instrument will provide the same results and not depend on who or when it is taken. At a minimum 200 people took the questionnaire. The statistical mean is the average of all of the scores. Clients took this at the initial session (pretest) to learn how people score before they go through the treatment (counseling sessions).
The number of individuals (sample) who contribute to the data gathering impacts the validity (correlates to what is measured) and reliability (measurement consistency) of a study. It simply means that the larger your number of individuals (sample), the greater the variance you get in the scores because you get a wider variety. If you sample only 10 people, you might get eight scores that are very high, and two that are low. If you sample 200 people, you will probably get scores that are high, medium and low. With a small sample size, you would not have that much difference. So always go for as large a sample as possible in order to test validity.
Further AQAL data (477 scoresheets) were collected from Biblical Christian Counseling Ministries, Inc. counselor’s in 1994 and 1995. Descriptive statistics were computer analyzed, finding some significant differences and correlations were found in four counselor’s AQAL element scores between gender and age. Further correlations were found between the elements or qualities of Agape Love, giving counselors further guidance in the CBT phases of counseling. See abbreviated report for further study.
In the late1990s, longitudinal data from AQAL results was collected from 2000 total cases, demonstrating validity accuracy in measuring growth in Agape Love and reliability throughout different populations, counselor administration, and office contexts. Test-retest confirmed clients being counseled exhibited “God dependence maturity”, as an indicator of reliability. Throughout this time, refinement of the AQAL was completed to improve client understanding. Patterns of personality types and the application of the elements or qualities of Agape Love were reinforced by this data, leading to interactive personality patterns and indicators of the client’s growth in Agape Love.
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Describe the statistical analysis of the Agape Love Profile Questionnaire.
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Dr. Dan's Answer:
Sample Size and Purpose
The initial statistical analysis was conducted using a minimum of 200 individuals who completed the questionnaire at the beginning of their first counseling session — serving as a pretest to establish baseline scores before any counseling treatment began.
Validity and Reliability
The two key measures of any psychological instrument are validity and reliability. Validity refers to whether the instrument accurately measures what it is designed to measure — in this case, a person's understanding and practice of the 15 elements of Agape love from 1 Corinthians 13:4–8. Reliability means the instrument produces consistent results regardless of who administers it or when it is taken. A sample of 200 captures the full range of high, medium, and low scores, giving a much more accurate and reliable picture than a small sample would provide.
The Statistical Mean
The statistical mean is the average of all scores across the sample — the midpoint representing the typical person who takes the questionnaire. Mean scores for each of the 15 sub-scales are plotted on a composite graph on page one of the Profile Analysis document, establishing the baseline reference point against which individual client scores are compared. Analysis of mean scores reveals predictable patterns: most people score higher on envy, boastfulness, and pride, and significantly lower on patience, easily angered, trust, perseverance, and love never fails.
Sub-Scales and Score Categories
Each of the 15 elements of Agape love is a sub-scale measured by five questions (75 questions total). Individual sub-scale scores range from 5 (lowest) to 25 (highest). High scores indicate areas of greatest understanding; medium scores indicate some awareness with residual struggle; low scores — typically 8–12 — indicate the primary targets for counseling intervention. When presenting results, the counselor begins with high scores to affirm the client, then moves to medium and low scores to identify areas of growth.
Using Questionnaire Scores to Derive Personality Type
The first set of scores we'll look at will be the mean scores. The mean sores don't indicate any information other than the average score on each attribute. They simply indicate to you what the average scores were like of the 200 who first completed the questionnaires. The question reads, “In analyzing the patterns of responses that evidence themselves within the mean scores, which of the elements of agape love would you perceive to fit into the category of positive or high scores.” When you show the results of the questionnaire to your client, you show the client his high scores, medium scores and then low scores. Showing the high scores shows them what they understand and have the least amount of difficulty with. You want to be positive with them, so they know what they understand about God’s Agape love. Point out those high scores of each element that is high on the graph. Looking at the graph of means, you can see C is the highest, next is D which is the second highest. The third highest is I, with E, F, and G also higher than the others on the graph. You are finding the peaks or the highest scores. As you move across the graph, put the number 0 next to each of these high scores. You will need to memorize what element each letter represents. Now this doesn't have to be scientific super precise, because you're giving them sort of an overview of their tendencies. But you're also explaining that high scores show the things that give you the least number of problems.
Identifying the median or neutral scores follows much the same pattern. These will fall between the highest and lowest scores. We are looking for a breakdown in the personality side. Those middle scores are B or kindness, L which is protects, and N which is hopes. If you'll notice, B (kindness) has a score of 17, G (self-seeking) has a score of 15, L (protects) has a score of 14, and N (hopes) has a score of 13. These are close and show that the client has more trouble understanding kindness, protection, and hopes. You may not struggle as much with these elements of love, but have a sense of right and wrong and can see others struggle with these.
The next step is to identify the lowest scores. These are the areas of greatest difficulty and will need more attention. These elements of love are A (patience), H (keeps no record of wrong), J-K (does not delight in evil), M (trusts), O (perseveres), and P (never fails). You explain to your client that these elements are where they struggle most and which cause the most difficulty in the relationships. The client needs to understand patience, so that the other areas can be improved such as being easily angered, doesn't delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth. These results show that the client focuses more on the negative. That means that he also will have trouble with trust, perseverance, and love never fails. You explain that these are the reasons that your relationship is difficult. Often you will see a light of understanding turn on in the client. If a married couple, they will recognize what they have been doing to each other that has caused so much difficulty. Basically, when the client walks in the door, there is a fair chance that he or she will have some degree of these tendencies, impatience, easily angered, troubles with trust, perseverance, and never fails. Those benchmarks are seen in troubled relationships.
Within the initial session the person is going to be quick to respond emotionally as well as intellectually. He will be impatient and prone to antagonize others and easily angered. Our focus is on the negative, or evil being the negative rather than truth. He will be prone to give up quickly, which is a problem with perseverance, and conclude that he is a failure. Being impatient and quick to respond can make other people mad. He gives up, and accepts blame for the relationship trouble thinking that he can’t have good relationships. This will directly relate also to the person's concept of God.
What you'll find is that most people have a poor concept of God. Because of their own tendencies, the client will see God as quick to judge in a negative manner, to be impatient with them, and to antagonize rather than to help. He also will be somewhat negative in his attitude thinking that he can't change, maybe God doesn't care. The client also will lack a sense of trust. So, when you first start to talk to them about talking to God during self-confrontation, it doesn’t make sense, because he doesn’t know the true God. In their false view of God, their trust level is very low and he will be prone to give up. Instead, they see God saying, “Get it right or else. I don't trust you. You're never going to change.” That faulty concept of God is a big part of what you have to work on, and it will be tied to the personality type he has.
Some of the problems with this type of individual with low scores come from their poor coping skills, especially within the areas of communication. He doesn't understand why people react like they do, or even understand himself. He will have a lot of frustration and a heartache within intimate relationships. He will see himself as just no good or failure. Everybody's against me. Life never gets any better. Because of the poor manner he deals with life, he suffers frustration, heartache, anger, and confusion.
Deriving the Score Pattern for the Active Personality
Question 3. Now what I just took you through was discussion of means just the means no personality. Now let's turn a corner and talk about the first personality type which is “active”. I don't use the word aggressive with people very much because it's got a negative connotation. You can use the word active” and communicate the same thing. This is a take charge person; talk to me; let's get it right. The active person is the one that's usually painted as the bad guy, desk pounder. To find this personality type we will follow the same pattern as above looking at high, medium, and low scores. Rather than move forward, try to predict what those three sets of scores would be: high, medium and low. Write those down and make some notes to practice. Over time you will get more accurate in reading scores for information. But the practice is good for you. When you are ready, review the following.
The highest scores will be C (envy), D (boastful), E (pride), and I (keeps no record of wrong). Use a ruler underneath the lowest of scores, which is E or I to see the upper third of this personality pattern. Don’t be fooled by the high score on E (Pride). The desk banger, the table pounder, doesn't seem to be doing that out of a desire to control, or malice in any way. Remember my client Larry, who was called Dumbo by his brothers and sisters. He was an active personality, but there was no willful, uncaring intent to harm there. When the client gets information and knowledge, they realize why they're pounding the desk, and with God's help, they can stop. Another indication of this idea of motive is this person's score in pride. This person may have experienced an authority who had been very cruel, mean, openly so or subtle, undercover, and manipulative. This experience distorts God’s nature to be similar to what they experienced rather than the fairness, nurturing, unconditional acceptance, love and proper accountability of God. To others he would be doing these things on purpose, seeking to control and to manipulate, but that is an illusion. But this is not a willful rebellion against God, but a reactive defense against the wrong he has suffered. He doesn’t realize why he was treated poorly. But God can heal that wound, repent of wrong actions in order to find a new way to relate to others that's balanced. You can use your good mind, organizational skills, and good discernment to your advantage in a proper way to help others. Living in surrender to the Lord, with God in control will produce a reflection of Jesus that is balanced, stable, realistic, safe, and secure.
In contrast, you will find that the passive person will score low on pride like 10-12. The passive person shows a willful decision to rebel against authority. The sincere personality will score in the middle range of their scores or lower, from their lack of understanding of how to solve problems. Even as a Christian, the sincere person can express reactive emotions out of being frustrated with an unsolved problem while having to do what's right and not feeling able to.
Beneath the top third of the graph of scores will be the mid-range scores. These scores show where the person has some degree of a problem. The client may see these attributes in others, but be blind to their own actions. These concepts may also affect how the client views God, feeling a sense of emptiness due to the authority he was raised with, the unfairness endured, or the lack of any authority. These scores show the areas where the person has problems, didn't realize it, and didn't necessarily know what to do. Often the client will accept this type of treatment from others, because of an intense desire to be loved and accepted. The elements in this mid-range for the active personality are in the neutral area, such as: B (kindness), F (rude), G (self-seeking), L (protect), and N (hope).
We will continue our analysis, looking at the active personality’s lowest scores. These scores are in the range of 8-12. The first one is A (patience), then H (not easily angered), J-K (Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth, M (trusts), O (perseveres) and last is, P (never fails). It shouldn't surprise you to see things like impatience, and no method for problem solving. This person is a problem solver. The attitude is, if we got a problem, let's get it out on the table. Let's not avoid things. Let's talk about it. Get the problem out in the open. Say what's on your mind. Don't hold back. This type of person is going to tend to be confused, angry, and disappointed with less black and white issues and people who are less open and forthright.
For example, a friend of mine is like this. The other day he said, “Yeah, I see problems, and I know what we should do. And I sit down with my wife, Carol, and I tell her, now you need to talk to me. It’s perfectly clear to me that she should talk to me. And for the life of me, I can't understand why she has a problem, gets teary, and doesn't want to talk.” This active problem solver tends to do everything on his or her own strength. There is a tendency for him to go from a perception to a solution or a perception to a reaction. Not realizing what he is doing, he bypasses God and jumps right to the solution. The active person thinks that God's too busy, or not interested in my petty problems. It's not willful, but the pattern of behavior comes from a personality that is black and white, do it now, it's clear to me. Spiritually, they may appear to be rebellious, headstrong, and not listening to God. I've got a phrase I use with this type of person: bone crusher. They tend to steamroller over people, and don’t realize what they're doing.
Those lowest scores will be a new revelation to them; they've never thought about it. Most often they're shocked and chagrined that they may be doing those things. As you can imagine, this person’s concept of God is not very good. Usually, God is seen through a legalistic lens of good and bad, right and wrong that are absolutely clear cut with no room for mistakes. Because there is little compassion in their concept of God, repentance is an agonizing event. There's not much room for just being human, not knowing something and learning. There's a lot of performance when they think about God. Learning is painful because of a poor background with parents who have mocked, yelled at, screamed, or harassed. Sometimes the opposite but still poor treatment is through silence and manipulation. Or having no parent at all, abandonment. Parents may have been over-working and left the children to take care of themselves.
Because of the poor communication skills, the active person in frustration can be loud, pushy and sometimes violent. This does not mean spouse abuse, fist fights or attacking people. This frustration comes about because of the black and white nature of the personality and the inability to communicate ideas and solve problems. Often a venting of emotions in anger, throwing things, breaking things, driving fast, and appearing to be reckless. This also comes about because the active person is often the pawn of another person, and feel very confused and frustrated. If he or she is married to a manipulator disguised as a victim, then her or she is the pawn of this person. Even when the active person starts to see he is being a pawn, he doesn't know how to get God to help. He just goes on but acts out feeling confused. An active person can be frustrated at work for many of the same reasons. All of this unresolved pain within the active personality is purposefully covered up, and is translated into aggression, which isn't necessarily willful. They will appear to be the main problem.
For example, you hear he did this, or this happened, or she did that. It's more often men that will have this attitude of violence. And what you will see often, in the spirit of an active woman is her frustration, because she feels frightened and insecure in a marriage where the husband is not providing security, and taking spiritual leadership. Because she's a problem solver, she takes charge of parenting, discipline, budgeting, buys the cars, whatever decisions have to be made. Because she has to do all of that work, she feels bitter, angry, and resentful.
In the answer to Question 3, you will find a chart that may bring more clarity to your understanding and identification of a personality type through the element scores from a ALQA. Keep in mind, when assessing their personality type (active, passive, passive-active and active-sincere) also observe their mannerisms, non-verbal communication, descriptions of their problem(s), how others describe their behaviors and your sense from the Holy Spirit. Plus, their personality style may be based upon their type or role in the relationship involved in the presenting problem. Also, to their problematic situation and/or the person involved in their problem, maybe from a learned means to cope in conflict (reactive, avoidant, appease, freeze, etc.). Determining their personality type will take several sessions so take your time.
In the answer to Question 3, you will find a chart that may bring more clarity to your understanding and identification of a personality type through the element scores from a ALQA. Keep in mind to not only use this chart when assessing their personality type (active, passive, passive-active and active-sincere), be sure to observe and identify personality traits through:
Client’s mannerisms, non-verbal communication, gender;
Their relationship to a person(s) who is involved in their presenting problem;
Their description of the problem (their innocence, as the victim, memory of details, use of extremes, etc.);
How others describe the client’s role in the presenting problem, including child/teen role in family of origin;
Their ISI and IDI information;
Your sense from the Holy Spirit.
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Explain how to derive the score pattern for the Active Personality Type and include the elements of Agape Love for each high, medium, and low score category.
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Dr. Dan's Answer:
How to Derive the Score Pattern
To derive the score pattern for the Active personality type, the counselor examines the composite graph on page one of the Profile Analysis document and identifies the distribution of scores across the 15 sub-scales (labeled A through P). The graph is read from left to right, using a ruler to identify the highest peaks, the middle range, and the lowest valleys — assigning each cluster to a high, medium, or low category.
An important interpretive note: the Active person's score on Pride (E) is not low. This distinguishes the Active person from the Passive person, whose pride score is low and whose rebellion is willful. A high score on pride in the Active personality indicates a sincere desire to do what is right combined with a lack of knowledge about how to do it — not willful rebellion against God.
Score Categories for the Active Personality
| Score Category | Elements of Agape Love |
|---|---|
| HIGH SCORES (Least Difficulty) |
C — Envy D — Boastful E — Pride I — Keeps No Record of Wrong The high score on Pride indicates a genuine desire to do right. The high score on Keeps No Record of Wrong suggests the Active person tends not to hold grudges and wants to move forward to solutions. |
| MEDIUM SCORES (Some Difficulty) |
B — Kindness F — Rude G — Self-Seeking L — Protect N — Hope Areas where the Active person has some awareness but may be blind to their own behavior. They can see these issues in others but often do not recognize when they are doing them themselves. |
| LOW SCORES (Greatest Difficulty) |
A — Patience H — Easily Angered J-K — Does Not Delight in Evil / Rejoices in Truth M — Trust O — Perseveres P — Never Fails The low score on patience is especially significant — without patience, none of the other areas can improve. These low scores reveal that the Active person has no reliable problem-solving mechanism rooted in God. They go directly from perception to reaction, bypassing God entirely. |
Spiritual and Relational Profile
The Active person tends to view God through a legalistic lens — right and wrong, black and white, with no room for mistakes. God is seen as a performance-based authority rather than a compassionate Father. In counseling, the Active person will likely want immediate answers and direct confrontation. They bypass God automatically — not willfully — and jump straight to solutions. As they receive knowledge and understanding of why they behave as they do, most Active personalities respond with genuine change, because their core motivation was never to harm anyone, but to solve problems they did not know how to solve.
Deriving the Score Pattern for the Passive Personality
Question 4. We are going to go through the same process we just went through with the active person. We're going to answer the same questions for the passive personality. We're going to look for high, medium or neutral and low scores, only this time, we're going to see a whole different reality. The types of things that fit into the categories, patience, kindness and so on will change. we'll see different thinking and reasoning behind this personality type. Finding the highest scores will show us the things that are least difficult for this individual. We will follow the same pattern of highest, mid-range and lowest scores moving left to right across the graph. The passive person’s highest score is only one C (envy). You may remember that I mentioned earlier that the passive person appears to be a victim, which is an illusion. In the initial session you may hear a lot about being mistreated. While that is awful, the underlying reality is basically that it's a facade or a mask. There is a very intense, strong will underneath the outward passive appearance. There's a rebelliousness, an anger toward God, and an unwillingness to be submissive to him. There are a lot of undercurrents, and the initial session doesn't necessarily reveal them. But you will see the victim mode, with sad eyes, tears, and an attitude of helplessness. And the high score only being envy simply means envy is the one thing that is not a problem. And you can go back to our studies about what envy is to refresh your memory.
There are a lot of mid-range scores, the neutral scores: B (kindness), D (boast), F (rude), G (self-seeking), I (keeps no record of wrong), J- K (does not delight in evil, but rejoices in the truth), L (protects), and M (hopes). This passive person doesn't help themselves or anybody else, which is a lack of kindness, and may actually be controlling and manipulative. It is unusual to think of a quiet, withdrawn individual as a controller. Acting like a victim, a passive person can get others to cooperate with them out of pity. Things are so difficult I just can't change. Life is so hard! That kind of thinking leads to being rude by pretending I can't change things, when some part of what I do, I do in order to stay in this mode, so that I can control easier. Self-seeking is the plotting against my own life, or someone else's life. Destructive living focuses on the negative like keeping the record of wrong and using the past like a club. These are the tendencies the person has to the point where they're noticeable. These tendencies work against anything changing, success, maturity, problem solving, the most difficult problems that they have.
The lowest scores are: A (patience), E (pride), H (not easily angered), M (trust), O (perseveres), and P (love never fails). This shows a lack of problem-solving skills and patience. The direct confrontation of a problem doesn't tend to happen. Skip over pride and not easily angered. This victim mode of the passive personality provokes in themselves or others false pity, anger or frustration. The level of trust toward God, others, or even within self is low. Because of this lack of trust, the passive person has difficulty finding any sense of strength or hope and perseverance. They basically don't have strength, so they give up and they feel like a failure. They think they can't do anything. Let’s go back to pride which means hatred against the authority of God over my life, or the word enmity was used in the Scripture. This might sound accusatory, but what I've found is that the victim is a very prideful person. And what that means is that this whole thing is an act, the tone of voice, the facial expression, the whole thing is an orchestrated act.
I’ve also seen lightning quick changes. Starting out with “Poor me. I am so upset.” My asking about this saying, “Well, it doesn't seem like that. It seems like maybe you're putting on an act here, or you're not really as upset as you seem to be, or you may be trying to manipulate me.” The quick change becomes, “Well, if you think that's the way it is, that's just fine. Get out of here. I don't want to talk to you!” It can change from tears to screaming and violence. There's a tissue paper thin facade covering a will that's determined to have its own way. And this can be with Christians or non-Christians. A lot of times, Christians don't understand the basics of submission of the will, the leading of the Holy Spirit. So, while an outer appearance pleads for help, they only want to feel better rather than change. What we know is through the process of God's love, He always brings us to accountability. You will be helping people come to their own accountability. One by one you will help them solve a difficult situation, address a person who treats them poorly, if they want to change. The redeemed human side of this personality is usually tender emotionally, very discerning, and lives for things that are exciting, fun, and enjoyable. Because of the broken spiritual side, this issue of pride has gotten in the way of this fun side. They send double messages, and cause themselves lots of trouble.
When you present these low scores, you will identify the reason for their difficulty. Potentially, you will get stiff resistance. They may call you stupid, and refuse to continue counseling. They may call their pastor and say, “You sent me to a quack.” They may threaten you with a lawsuit, or a lot of things, but it doesn't alter the fact that the real problem is their pride. Comparing the passive personality with the active personality you will see many similarities, except in the score on Pride. There's a large gap between the active person’s score, and the passive person’s score in that one category. You need to be aware that the whole issue of pride makes this person out to be different than what they seem to be. They're a chameleon, and when you see that low score on Pride. That tells you that you have somebody in a passive mode, who tends to be impatient, so they don't talk or solve problems. They tend to provoke others into hopelessness and fear. They don't have a sense of trust in God or others. Others don't trust them because of their tendencies. They give up because they are unwilling to ask God for help to do what's right. They're very determined to do what's wrong. They want to generate the feeling in others of being at fault while they are the victim. They also use the tools of boastfulness, rudeness, self-seeking, and keeping a record of wrong as fuel to focus on the negative. They don't offer people protection, and they have no sense of hope. The knowledge you have about the personality tendencies will give insight about the problems that brought them to counseling.
The main spiritual difficulty that we've been discussing is pride, or the willful decision to rebel against the authority of God. This leads to the negative manifestations of the person's behavior, impatience, pride, easily angered, not being trustworthy, giving up and communicating a sense of accusations or that others fail to live up to what is right or correct in this person's eyes. This will be communicated through their complaints of everybody hates me, type of behavior. It's also reflected in emotions such as a solicitation of self-pity, body posture and language and manipulative tactics. In the spiritual realm, they have a sense of anger towards God. Don't know God. Don't allow him in. They're afraid of him. Something's happened so that God has been misrepresented. This person has not come to grips with the reality that from birth, we all are in opposition to God. At some point you will need to address this. It can be when you go through the results, or as you work on application. It's not uncommon to go through all the knowledge of what love's about, and the clients still do not know how to apply this knowledge to their own actions. You remember the situation I described earlier about the checkbook and the slamming pen at the end of a session. As you demonstrate the process of patience, you will be able to hold them accountable for.
Well, the concept of God is generally poor in the passive person. He's seen as a victim or a manipulator who doesn't care. He lets babies die. He's got a big stick, and when you goof up, he whacks you to get your attention. Most of all, God 's doing to this victim, the very things that he or she is doing to others. To this person it could be an undeniable reality in the soul, that God's really not like that. One of two things may explain this. It is either a willful decision to deny God's true character, or experiencing deep wounds that make the thought of trusting God very frightening. Both can be overcome. The counselor has to know that these two realities exist for the victim, so that you can work with the Holy Spirit as your counselor to help the individual discover those realities and make a decision about what to do from that point. They must choose how to resolve this misunderstanding so that pride ceases to be a controlling factor in the individual's life.
Well, this person avoids reality, tends to feel sorry for himself or herself, avoids problem solving and is controlled by this mixture of emotions. This person complains about another's behavior, but overlooks their own behavior in throwing hamburger wrappers on the floor of the car for the 59th million time. This person also struggles to be consistent within their Christian life, because of a lack of submission to God. This pride causes the victim to seem ignorant of how he or she is appearing to others. The knowledge gained through counseling will remedy the problem, but the victim tends to fight with emotions, and will have difficulty with the process of patience. They avoid confrontation and prefer using other coping mechanisms. This passive person has made this decision to be rebellious. So, in most cases, the predominant problem in this pattern of scores is willfulness or sinfulness. Rather than assume that, be aware of the general indicators that help you understand people fairly quickly. In this case of a prideful person, the general tendency is that this passive or prideful person is fighting with submission to God. You can have an active person that's prideful, too, and you need to look for irregularities in their scores, to find the exact sense of who the person is. Because you know these tendencies, you can look at the scores, after after several sessions (even though you may see their personality tendencies in the first session), give people feedback on what you perceive, and the individuals then will be amazed that you have understood them that well.
In the answer to Question 4, you will find a chart for passive personality types that may bring more clarity to your understanding and identification of a personality type through the element scores from a ALQA. Like I said before Question 3, when assessing their personality type (active, passive, passive-active and active-sincere) also observe their mannerisms, non-verbal communication, descriptions of their problem(s), how others describe their behaviors and your sense from the Holy Spirit. Plus, their personality style may be based upon to their problematic situation and/or the person involved in their problem, maybe from a learned means to cope in their relationships, including child/teen early years of development.
Fully answer the following question from the content you just read and submit your answer to find your score and Dr. Dan's answer to the question.
Explain how to derive the score pattern for the Passive Personality Type and include the elements of Agape Love for each high, medium, and low score category.
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Dr. Dan's Answer:
How to Derive the Score Pattern
The score pattern for the Passive personality is derived using the same method as the Active — reading the composite graph from left to right, identifying peaks and valleys, and assigning each sub-scale to a high, medium, or low category. The most important diagnostic marker is the score on Pride (E): where the Active person scores high on pride, the Passive person scores very low — in the range of 10–12. This low pride score signals willful rebellion against God's authority, and tells the counselor that the victim presentation is a facade covering a determined, strong will.
The Passive person's overall scores are compressed toward the low end of the graph with very few genuine high scores. The initial session will present helplessness, tears, and victimhood — but the counselor must understand that this presentation does not match the score pattern.
Score Categories for the Passive Personality
| Score Category | Elements of Agape Love |
|---|---|
| HIGH SCORES (Least Difficulty) |
C — Envy Envy is the only element that registers as high for the Passive person. Every other element registers at medium or low — a significant signal that this person's overall understanding and practice of love is severely limited. |
| MEDIUM SCORES (Some Difficulty) |
B — Kindness D — Boastful F — Rude G — Self-Seeking I — Keeps No Record of Wrong J-K — Does Not Delight in Evil / Rejoices in Truth L — Protect N — Hope The victim mode is itself a form of rudeness (feigned ignorance), self-seeking (passive control), keeping a record of wrong, and failing to protect. These medium scores show tendencies working against change, success, and maturity. |
| LOW SCORES (Greatest Difficulty) |
A — Patience E — Pride H — Easily Angered M — Trust O — Perseveres P — Never Fails The critically low score on Pride (E) is the defining marker — it signals willful rebellion, not genuine weakness. Low patience means the Passive person refuses to work through problems directly. Low trust, perseverance, and never fails reveal a person who gives up easily, generates hopelessness in others, and sees themselves (and God) as a failure. |
Spiritual and Relational Profile
The Passive person's concept of God is generally poor — God is seen as a manipulator who lets bad things happen and uses a "big stick" to punish. In the initial session they will present through the victim mode: complaints, solicitation of sympathy, and emotional manipulation. Their low pride score reveals little genuine interest in changing — they want to feel better, not to be accountable. When the counselor names this reality gently but honestly, the response can be swift and aggressive: accusations, threats, or abrupt withdrawal.
Comparing the Passive and Active personalities, scores are similar across most sub-scales — with one crucial difference: the score on Pride. That single gap tells the counselor everything about the difference in spiritual motive. The Active person struggles and wants to change; the Passive person resists and wants to control.
Deriving the Score Pattern for the Passive-Active Personality
The next personality type for discussion is the passive-active. And we'll start the same pattern. We're looking at a blend or mixture of those two personalities. There are some characteristics of this personality that are very interesting and unique to this personality type. The most predominant feature is the compression or narrowing of the tendencies, neither the extremes of the active nor the withdrawn of the passive. This person has been in a situation where they were extremely controlled and sensitive, or abandoned, orphaned or raised by a relative who didn’t really want them. They may have raised themselves. Because of these experiences, they have become a fence sitter. They don't make any decisions unless someone else is leading them. They use their surroundings to determine their behavior by being sensitive to the situation they are in. If they are around someone that's extremely strong willed, they stay quiet or say what the person wants to hear. Later, in another setting, with others who are passive or weak, they become outwardly reactive, even domineering to some degree. When you look at their scores, you will find a low score on patience, a very high score on kindness, and everything from that point is downhill, literally. It keeps getting lower as you move to the right with the lowest score at P (never fails).
It reminds me of compressed computer files (Zip files) that appear to be a little file that keeps expanding once the computer starts to work with it, unfolding piece after piece after piece. This person’s personality is compressed like that. They don't know what they believe. They don't know what they think. They're very prone to adopt the opinions of others. They're all caught up in their own emotions, thoughts, feelings that are hidden inside. It's almost like you're working with this shell of a person. There's no sense of depth, maturity, strength, or any sense of direction, will, opinions, beliefs, values or anything. They live within this very tiny world, and you'll notice a very narrow band of expression. Their scores don't vary much. You may have a difference of five to eight points between pride and rudeness, self-seeking and easily angered. Keeping a record of wrong, delighting and evil, protects trust, hopes are all about the same score. Their main struggle is to try to break out of that to find a sense of peace, direction, values. Sometimes you'll see an emerging personality. Another pattern you may see is occasional outliers. You'll have maybe a real high score on one, or a real low score. For example, maybe a high score on rudeness of 22 or real low score on protects of 10. That may mean you will see an emerging personality; somebody breaking out of this personality. Most people emerge from this toward an active personality. You don't often see them withdraw to become passive. As they learn about themselves, they decide they don’t like being this, get sick of it and want to change. Going back to that first question of finding the highest scores, B (kindness) will be the highest. Next will be C (envy), D (boastfulness), E (pride), G (self-seeking). This person doesn't intend to be willful or manipulative, doesn't use tactics like boastfulness or self-seeking. They basically want to do what's right, but they're not really sure how to do that. Remember, these scores are so sort of flat. We're not getting a lot of variation in the high, middle and lows.
The neutral scores will be F (rudeness), I (keeps no record of wrong), and M (trusts). This tendency to sit the fence can be perceived as rudeness, manipulation, or a way of bringing up the past, imputing motive. When somebody doesn’t answer, but just looks at you, you can think that they're accusing me, which is an issue of trust. When the person begins to trust in God, they realize this isn't the way to act. Many of these actions the passive-active person is not necessarily aware of.
Looking at the lowest scores within this personality type show these as the lowest: A (patience), H (not easily angered), J-K (does not delight in evil, but rejoices in the truth), M (trusts), O (perseveres), and P (never fails). On the graph in front of you, you can find the very lowest of the scores at the bottom. The basic characteristic is they are pretty much controlled by the strongest individual around them, controlled by the strong emotions or hostility. They also have the ability to exert control when they are the strongest person in the room. At times, they make their own decisions, but this is difficult, because of the tension between their passivity and bullishness within them. They're either the bull or they're the hopeless victim much like a chameleon which changes to blend in to its surroundings. Their spiritual strength will wax and wane in the same manner. This person may appear to be obedient and committed to God at times, and yet other times see God as mean, cruel, legalistic, and harsh or uncaring. Do not let their confusion over their thoughts, feelings and behaviors mislead you in your assessment. Their ambivalence identifies their passive-passive style of living life, dependent upon who is in the room and their situation. When applied to their concept and relationship with God, a parallel comparison can be applied to how they act around people.
Basically, they have a poor concept of God, because they have a passive-active God who shifts, not dependable and is inconsistent. When life matters don’t go their way, God will seem to be disinterested in their well-being, since they are dependent upon being loved when they get what they want. The thought of a caring God in their suffering, isn't very meaningful to this person, because they've never perceived God as being consistent. They see God as a fence sitter; a somewhat disinterested Heavenly Father.
Most human relationships will be difficult, because there's a lack of commitment which makes them appear spineless, and without effort to contribute to the relationship. In a marriage relationship especially, this person seems disrespectful to the other. For example, men who feel cheated by their wife (lack of intimacy, buying a new truck, etc.) they can tend to withhold love and won't follow through with commitments, but when they do, it may be at inappropriate times or be an inappropriate commitment. This may be a mismanaged attempt to make up for something that's been done wrong. At times women do well with confrontation, and at other times be angry and nagging, or well balanced and respectful. This type of inconsistency creates a lot of stress, anxiety and pessimism within people. When in conflict with people, the passive-active person builds a reputation of being undependable around people, because they don’t follow through or do what they promised.
Copyright 1987, 1990, 1993 by Daniel D. Wilkinson. All rights reserved. For more information concerning this material, write to:
The Biblical Christian Counseling Ministries, Inc., 2730 Radcliffe Dr., Florissant, MO 63031.
Any reproduction of this material without the express written consent of the author is prohibited. Printed in the U.S.A..
Fully answer the following question from the content you just read and submit your answer to find your score and Dr. Dan's answer to the question.
Explain how to derive the score pattern for the Passive-Active Personality Type and include the elements of Agape Love for each high, medium, and low score category.
Pasting is disabled for this answer box. Please type your answer in your own words.
Dr. Dan's Answer:
How to Derive the Score Pattern
The Passive-Active score pattern is derived using the same method as the other personality types -- reading the composite graph from left to right and grouping sub-scales into high, medium, and low categories. The most defining characteristic is the compression of scores: unlike the Active or Passive personalities which show dramatic peaks and valleys, the Passive-Active personality shows a very flat, narrow band of scores clustering closely together, typically ranging between 12 and 18 points with little variation.
The graph begins with a relatively high score in Kindness (B) on the left, then keeps getting progressively lower as it moves to the right -- with the lowest scores at Never Fails (P). This downward slope is a signature feature of the profile. It resembles a compressed computer file that keeps expanding once the computer works with it: the Passive-Active person's inner life is compressed and hidden, and once counseling begins, layers of suppressed emotion, opinion, and conflict gradually emerge.
Score Categories for the Passive-Active Personality
| Score Category | Elements of Agape Love |
|---|---|
| HIGH SCORES (Least Difficulty) |
B -- Kindness C -- Envy D -- Boastful E -- Pride G -- Self-Seeking The Passive-Active person does not intend to be willful or manipulative. However, because these scores are compressed -- not dramatically high -- these are the least problematic elements relative to the rest of the profile, not areas of strong, consistent strength. The high score on Pride indicates this person is not in deliberate rebellion against God, distinguishing them from the Passive person. |
| MEDIUM SCORES (Some Difficulty) |
F -- Rude I -- Keeps No Record of Wrong M -- Trust Silence and fence-sitting can be perceived by others as rudeness (feigned ignorance). Not taking a clear position can look like imputing motives (keeping a record of wrong). And the inconsistency of the fence-sitter undermines trust -- others cannot depend on them because no one knows where they really stand. |
| LOW SCORES (Greatest Difficulty) |
A -- Patience H -- Easily Angered J-K -- Does Not Delight in Evil / Rejoices in Truth O -- Perseveres P -- Never Fails Without patience, there is no problem-solving process. Easily angered and focusing on the negative reflects emotional instability. The low scores on perseverance and never fails reveal a person who gives up when they hit difficulty, because they have never developed an independent source of strength in God. Their courage waxes and wanes depending on who is in the room. |
Spiritual and Relational Profile
The Passive-Active person has a poor concept of God -- specifically, a fence-sitting, disinterested, inconsistent God who is sometimes frighteningly close and other times utterly absent. This mirrors their own experience of being abandoned, orphaned, or raised without consistent, engaged authority. In relationships they appear spineless and undependable, promising things and then failing to follow through. They are controlled by the strongest person in the room, making them easy pawns for manipulative partners. The hardest aspect of counseling this personality is that you have virtually nothing to build on spiritually -- you must construct their concept of God from the ground up.
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