The best personality books to read come in a variety of topics and subtopics within the study of personality. In this list, you’ll find a book for just about every subfield, interest, and fascination you might have in the science of personality. From the Enneagram to Myers-Briggs, from the development of personality to personality disorders, there’s someone for everyone interested in learning more about personality. So get your TBR ready to add some of the best books for personality.
This list is organized into seven categories. You can jump to what you’re looking for, or just scroll through.
LIVING YOUR BEST LIFE WITH YOUR PERSONALITY
MYERS-BRIGGS PERSONALITY TYPES
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LIVING YOUR BEST LIFE WITH YOUR PERSONALITY
The best personality books in this section are all about how to live and thrive with your personality.
The Book of Personality Tests by Haulwen Nicholas
There’s nothing more fun than taking personality quizzes, whether it’s Myers-Briggs or something more fun, like a quiz you’ll take in a magazine or on BuzzFeed. We have an irresistible desire to answer a few questions and learn some deep truth about ourselves, even if it’s just “What dog breed are you?”. If you love personality quizzes, be sure to pick up Haulwen Nicholas’ The Book of Personalty Tests. This fun book includes 25 easy-to-score quizzes that help explain who you really are. Some of the tests include “What’s Your Communication Type?” and “What Type of Rule Breaker Are You?” and “What Is Your Stress Type?”. If you love taking quizzes, this low-stress, high-fun book will keep you entertained while on a journey of self-discovery. Within no time, you’ll have gone through one of the best books for personality.
How to read it: Purchase The Book of Personality Tests on Amazon
Do What You Are by Paul D. Tieger, Barbara Barron, and Kelly Tieger
This helpful book promises to help you discover your perfect career based on your personality type. If you feel stuck in your current job wishing it felt like a better fit, or you’re in a situation where you have the option to re-imagine what your career might look like, this book is for you. The book’s opening section helps you find your personality using a Myers-Briggs test. Then Do What You Are digs in with a few more personality quizzes, like the four different temperaments. Finally, the book looks at each Myers-Briggs personality in detail, exploring which careers are good and bad fits. For a way to quickly harness the power of personality, Do What You Are gets you on the correct path.
How to read it: Purchase Do What You Are on Amazon
The Introvert’s Edge to Networking by Matthew Owen Pollard
If you’re an introvert like me, the very idea of networking makes me want to go into a cave and never come out. True, networking seems like a natural talent that only extroverts are born with. In The Introvert’s Edge to Networking, Matthew Pollard argues a different side of the story; to Pollard, introverts can not only tolerate networking but actually survive and thrive in networking situations. I wish this introvert-empowering book had come along when I was younger. Still, the wisdom imparted here is useful no matter where you are in your career.
How to read it: Purchase The Introvert’s Edge to Networking
Personality Isn’t Permanent by Benjamin Hardy
In Personality Isn’t Permanent, therapist Benjamin Hardy rips up everything we thought was true: that personalities are forever fixed, that you can’t evolve or change your personality type. Instead, Hardy argues that personality types can be fluid, dissing the conventional models of personality like Myers-Briggs and the Enneagram and showing how they can be more destructive than good. Hardy’s book seeks to help you rewrite your own life story, identify your life’s purpose, and overcome trauma that has to-date defined your personality and life. This provocative book has a message worth listening to.
How to read it: Purchase Personality Isn’t Permanent on Amazon
Quiet by Susan Caine
Perhaps the most influential personality book from the last two decades is Susan Cain’s Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking. One of the best personality books, Quiet radically reframed introversion, helping us to understand that introversion has its power, too, just like extroverts. Before Quiet, introversion was seen as a setback or something that needed to be overcome. Instead, in Quiet, Cain celebrates the gifts, skills, and powers that the introverted possess, including a deep dive into why introverts are needed more than ever. Quiet is a crucial, needed entry in the best books for personality about introverts.
How to read it: Purchase Quiet on Amazon
THE ENNEAGRAM
The Enneagram personality types is of interest for anyone looking to understand personality. These best personality books are must-haves for learning the Enneagram model.
The Enneagram Made Easy by Renee Baron and Elizabeth Wagele
The Enneagram—an ancient method of devising nine different personalities—can be complex and mysterious. It might seem overwhelming to sort through all the information about Enneagram personality types, but in The Enneagram Made Easy the test and its wisdom is distilled into fun, humorous, and easy to grasp language so that you can cut through the boring rules and get right into how it’s going to impact your life. There are a lot of books about the Enneagram, but this is the one I recommend most for beginners or those who need a solid introduction to the Enneagram.
How to read it: Purchase The Enneagram Made Easy on Amazon
The Enneagram Guide to Waking Up by Beatrice Chestnut and Uranio Paes
I love the no-nonsense feel of this book. Using your Enneagram personality type, the authors help you find direction in your life when your compass is spinning. If you feel lost or adrift, this book will help you harness the best of your Enneagram type to aright the ship and push you back in the right direction. In this book, each type has a “path,” for example: Type 1’s path is “The Path from Anger to Serenity.” You’ll come away with a better understanding of your strengths, weaknesses, and your core personal journey.
How to read it: Purchase The Enneagram Guide to Waking Up on Amazon
The Enneagram for Relationships by Ashton Whitmoyer-Ober
If you know your Enneagram type, you can unpack the optimal conditions for your relationships with your family, friends, colleagues, and lovers. In The Enneagram for Relationships, you’ll learn how to capitalize on the strengths and work through the limits of your Enneagram type in your interactions and relationships with others, making this book deserve a spot on any list of the best books on personality types and relationships.
How to read it: Purchase The Enneagram for Relationships on Amazon
The Road Back to You by Ian Morgan Cron and Suzanne Stabile
In The Road Back to You, the authors help you find your path towards self-discovery using the Enneagram model. To be clear: the authors are Christian, and spirituality plays a big part of this book. But I think its insights into the nine Enneagram types and their strengths, weaknesses, and potential paths towards self-discovery make it a good read for everyone.
How to read it: Purchase The Road Back to You on Amazon
MYERS-BRIGGS PERSONALITY TYPES
Some of the best books on personality deal with the hugely influential Myers-Briggs Personality Indicator, the MBTI. In this section, we’ll look at different books about personality types.
Gifts Differing: Understanding Personality Type by Isabel Briggs Myers with Peter B. Myers
Co-authored with Isabel Briggs Myers—yes, one half of the famous Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)—this book has sold hundreds of thousands of copies and is still going strong even now. Why? Because the wisdom in Gifts Differing offers essential truths about how understanding our personality can help us better wade through the waters of life. No book will offer you better guidance into the MBTI than Gifts Differing. Organized by the Effects of the Preferences on Personality, the book also explores the practical implication of type and the dynamics of type development. Gifts Differing could be seen as the unofficial companion to the MBTI test and is definitely one of the best personality books.
How to read it: Purchase Gifts Differing on Amazon
My True Type by A.J. Drenth
What sets this book about the Myers-Briggs personality model apart is its in-depth look at people who straddle more than one type, as in you’re an ENFP-J. Dr. A.J. Drenth’s My True Type will help readers really find the full truth of their personality when their type isn’t as straightforward as the original 16 options. Drenth includes the so-called “Type Clarifier Assessment” to really drill down and help you find your true type. Part 1 clarifies your personality preferences while Part 2 clarifies your functions. This book is for anyone who’s ever felt like their MBTI type doesn’t quite describe your unique personality. This book picks up where MBTI drops off, making it among the best personality books.
How to read it: Purchase My True Type on Amazon
The Personality Brokers by Merve Emre
In this book, Merve Emre exposes the murky history of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. Emre explores the dynamics between the mother-daughter team at the heart of the assessment and then charts its remarkable ascent to become the gold-standard personality test. Emre scrutinizes the test, which helps fuel the $2 billion dollar psychometric testing industry even though its actual merits are debatable. If you’re looking for more history and background of the MBTI, this is the book for you.
How to read it: Purchase The Personality Brokers on Amazon
Personality Hacker by Joel Mark Witt and Antonia Dodge
The co-anchors of the “Personality Hacker” podcast, the authors have demystified the 16 MBTI types in this book adaptation of the hit show and accompanying website. This book includes an in-depth personality test, journaling prompts, a full explainer of the MBTI, chapters devoted to each type, techniques for personal growth, a breakdown of the cognitive functions, and insights for your personality and its manifestation in relationships and your career. In other words, a way to “hack” your personality with all its strengths, weaknesses, and tendencies.
How to read it: Purchase Personality Hacker on Amazon
Please Understand Me II by David Keirsey
David Keirsey published Please Understand Me, an explainer about the 16 MBTI types, 1978, a successful book that sold nearly 2 million copies. That book has since gone out of print, but Keirsey’s work is still in publication today through the book’s sequel, Please Understand Me II, which concerns itself with temperament, character, and intelligence traits for each of the 16 MBTI types. Kerisey breaks down each of types into four categories: “Artisans,” “Guardians,” “Idealists,” and “Rationals,” and then illuminates how the MBTI types impact courtship and romance, how they come into play when parenting, and how they affect leadership styles. At 350 pages, this book is one of the best personality books and an extra thorough read that really pulls some unique meanings that will have you going beyond the basics of your type.
How to read it: Purchase Please Understand Me II on Amazon
Your Secret Self by Barbara G. Cox
If you need for a quick guide to the Myers-Briggs Personality Test, pick up Barbara G. Cox’s Your Secret Self. This just-the-essentials guide to the MBTI includes a full-length test and accompanying chapters that explain each type. You’ll be up to speed on the basics of the MBTI by the end of this short-but-sweet introduction to the assessment with modern descriptions.
How to read it: Purchase Your Secret Self on Amazon
OTHER PERSONALITY MODELS
The MBTI and the Enneagram are not the only method of modeling personality types. In this section of the best personality books, we’ll get introduced to other personality tests and their corresponding analyses.
The 5 Personality Patterns by Steven Kessler
In this intriguing book on personality traits, Steven Kessler proposes a new way to test and explain personalities. Specifically, Kessler believes there are five major personality patterns by assessing our motivations and behavior. Kessler describes five “survival” patterns: The Leaving Pattern, The Merging Pattern, The Enduring Pattern, The Aggressive Pattern, and The Rigid Pattern. The result is a unique take on personality type that offers insight that goes beyonds the limits of the MBTI, Enneagram, and other well-known personality tests.
How to read it: Purchase The 5 Personality Patterns on Amazon
The Four Tendencies by Gretchen Rubin
Gretchen Rubin is best known for her book The Happiness Project, but here she branches out into personality psychology in this required reading about 4 personality types books. According to Rubin’s model, there are four “tendencies” that sorts everyone. After you take a quiz to determine your tendency, you’ll read all about your new type: there’s the “Upholder,” the “Questioner,” the “Obliger,” and the “Rebel.” Rubin offers not just an explanation for each type, but also a section on “dealing” with someone of each profile, knowledge we all need to survive in our interpersonal relationships. Among the top books about personality types, The Four Tendencies is a refreshingly modern book on personality traits.
How to read it: Purchase The Four Tendencies on Amazon
The Oxford Handbook of the Five Factor Model edited by Thomas A. Widiger
The Five-Factor Model of Personality contain “super traits” that help explain the variations of personalties. You can learn more about the so-called “Big 5” model online here. But if you want to do a really deep dive and understand the theory behind and application of this model, pick up The Oxford Handbook of the Five Factor Model, which belongs on any ranking of the best books about personality types. This comprehensive guide to the five-factor model goes over each factor (OCEAN or: Openness to experience; Conscientiousness; Extraversion; Agreeableness; and Neuroticism), analyzes the validity of the construct, and ends with applications for using the five factor model in the real world. Each chapter is packed with interesting essays by scholars and psychologists, making this a good book you can pop in and out of and one of the best personality books.
How to read it: Purchase The Oxford Handbook of the Five Factor Model on Amazon
Surrounded by Idiots by Thomas Erikson
According to Thomas Erikson’s book on personality traits, there are four types of human behavior: Red Behavior, Yellow Behavior, Green Behavior, and Blue Behavior. The goal is to understand how to interact and communicate with each type of behavior. Erikson then goes further, offering his thoughts on how to manage group dynamics across different behaviors, ways to manage different behaviors, and how to overcome behavioral roadblocks. We all know how interpersonal relationships at work can become problematic, so you’ll definitely want to check out Surrounded by Idiots, one of those books on personality types and relationships.
How to read it: Purchase Surrounded by Idiots on Amazon
Psychological Types by Carl Jung
Psychiatrist Carl Jung had many psychological interests, including personality theory books. From symbolism (which we included here on the blog in our roundup of the best books on symbols and their meaning) to archetypes and everything in between, Jung published widely on many subjects, including personality psychology. In Psychological Types, Jung goes in depth in his discussion of introversion and extraversion as the two types, but Jung also explores the problem of “type,” meaning types of personality, across time, religions, cultures, and other sources., making it among the best psychology books about personality. This isn’t exactly a Jung 101 book—the material is dense yet rewarding to work through—but any serious student of personality psychology should make this read, which is definitely on any list of the essential best personality books.
How to read it: Purchase Psychological Types on Amazon
The Magic Diamond by Dario Nardi
In The Magic Diamond, Dari Nardi adapts Carl Jung’s eight ways people function for the modern world. According to Jung, we develop preferences or “cognitive processes,” and their unique gifts. These tendencies have been organized into eight different types, including the “Active Adapters,” “Cautious Protectors,” “Excited Brainstormers,” and more. Nardi offers guidance on finding your type and learning how to harness it for personal growth and self-development.
How to read it: Purchase The Magic Diamond on Amazon
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PERSONALITY
It’s fascinating to learn the ins and outs of personality tests, but sometimes you want to dig a little into the cognitive and psychological basis for personality. In this set of the best personality books, you’ll find several books about personality psychology.
The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology edited by Philip J. Corr and Gerald Matthews
The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology is one of the must-read books about personality psychology. This is the definitive book about personality psychology, and it’s designed as a textbook. That means you’ll get the latest and greatest cutting edge research that would get you up to speed to right alongside psychologists in training. You’ll learn cognitive and motivational factors of personality and social and cultural considerations, among other things. With thoughtful contributions from a range of professionals, you’ll get the best of the best in the psychology of personality in this entry on the list of the best personality theory books.
How to read it: Purchase The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology on Amazon
Personality Psychology: Domains of Knowledge About Human Nature by Randy J. Larson and David M. Buss
For an accessible textbook on the psychology of personality, try Personality Psychology: Domains of Knowledge about Human Nature. A key entry on this list of the best books about personality psychology is good for students and armchair psychologists alike. Your authors will lead you through the major research areas that scientists study in six domains, such as Dispositional, Cognitive/Experimental, and Adjustment, to name a few. If you’re looking to up your psych knowledge, this textbook will be a valuable tool to help you with that goal and one of the key best psychology books about personality.
How to read it: Purchase Personality Psychology on Amazon
PERSONALITY DEVELOPMENT
It’s fascinating to think how our personality developed. Were we always introverted? Were we extroverted during childhood and then switch directions? And is personality permanent? In this section of our list of the best personality books, we look at books about the science of personality development with the best books about personality development.
The Art and Science of Personality Development by Dan P. McAdams
If you have an interest in books about personality development, check out Dan P. McAdams for an in-depth introduction to the approach. This book has a unique structure organized by the development of three layers of personality: the social actor, the motivated agent, and the autobiographical author. McAdams walks you through how your personality develops across your lifetime, such as the crucial shift from ages 5-7. McAdams’s comprehensive yet highly readable book tells you all you need to know about how our personalities emerge.
How to read it: Purchase The Art and Science of Personality Development on Amazon
The Development of Personality by Carl Jung
Yes, this list of the best personality books can include a second book by Carl Jung. Because he is so influential, Jung deserves a spot here, too. In The Development of Personality, among the premier books about personality development, Jung explores the ways that our personalities are developed, with a heavy focus on how parents, teachers, and other adults shape our personality during childhood for better or for worse. This critical and world-shaking volume is atop the best psychology books about personality. Jung argues that many of our emotional and cognitive disorders develop during our childhood as a result of unhealthy and unhelpful relationships with thee adults in our lives. Though it was written many years ago now, The Development of Personality is as relevant today as when it first came out and definitively belongs on any list of the best personality theory books.
How to read it: Purchase The Development of Personality on Amazon
PERSONALITY DISORDERS
And finally we wrap up this epic list of the best personality books with a look at personality disorders. We’ll hear about how to manage personality disorders, look at sociopaths in more detail, and take a trip through the world of psychological personality disorders in these stellar books about personality disorders.
The Borderline Personality Disorder Survival Guide by Alex L. Chapman and Kim L. Gratz
As someone with a borderline personality disorder diagnosis, I know there’s a ton of stigma out there about the illness. For this list, I decided to include this book, The Borderline Personality Disorder Survival Guide rather than books that stigmatize people with this complex, emotional, and painful disorder. This means treating the illness with compassion, which is what this guide to surviving life with borderline personality disorder aims to do. Definitely among the best personality books, The Borderline Personality Disorder Survival Guide.
How to read it: Purchase The Borderline Personality Disorder Survival Guide on Amazon
Handbook of Diagnosis and Treatment of DSM-5 Personality Disorders by Len Sperry
Looking for a deep dive into the diagnosis and treatment of personality disorders? Seeking the best books about personality disorders? Enter this handbook in diagnosing and treating people with personality disorders. Updated with the latest DSM-5 diagnostic and treatment guidelines, this book is the quintessential comprehensive guide to understanding personality disorders and one of the best personality books.
How to read it: Purchase Handbook of Diagnosis and Treatment of DSM-5 Personality Disorders on Amazon
The Psychopath Test by Jon Ronson
According to many diagnostic criteria, psychopathology is a personality disorder. One of my all-time favorites books, The Psychopath Test is an entertaining romp through the treatment and industry of psychopathology. On an ordinary day, a jailed psychopath calls journalist Jon Ronson and asks him to investigate his case. And so Ronson is launched on an at times hilarious at other times sobering journey into the world of psychopaths. This book is highly readable and asks provocative questions about the ethics of treating psychopaths and profiting off them.
How to read it: Purchase The Psychopath Test on Amazon
The Sociopath Next Door by Martha Stout
Sociopaths have their own personality disorder diagnosis, according to the DSM-5, which characterizes the condition as “Antisocial Personality Disorder,” a.k.a. “ASPD.” It appears at first like this is a rare diagnosis, but in The Sociopath Next Door, we learn there are plenty of sociopaths hiding in plain sight. In fact, according to author Martha Stout, Ph.D, around 4% of the population are sociopaths. So how do you recognize and deal with sociopaths? This book has everything you need to know about identifying and interacting with sociopaths.
How to read it: Purchase The Sociopath Next Door on Amazon
Understanding Personality Disorders by Duane L. Dobbert
Last but not least in this list of the best personality books, Understanding Personality Disorders is your one-stop book for learning about the diagnosis and treatment of all the major personality disorders. Each personality disorder is given its own chapter, meaning you get a deep look at whatever personality you’re interested in learning about further. This basic guide to the personality disorders belongs on a shelf in your home library that holds the best books about personality disorders.
