(Excerpt from The Four Quadrants of Conformism by Paul Graham and Diagram by Joscha Bach)
The kids in the upper left quadrant, the aggressively conventional-minded ones, are the tattletales. They believe not only that rules must be obeyed, but that those who disobey them must be punished.
The kids in the lower left quadrant, the passively conventional-minded, are the sheep. They’re careful to obey the rules, but when other kids break them, their impulse is to worry that those kids will be punished, not to ensure that they will.
The kids in the lower right quadrant, the passively independent-minded, are the dreamy ones. They don’t care much about rules and probably aren’t 100% sure what the rules even are.
And the kids in the upper right quadrant, the aggressively independent-minded, are the naughty ones. When they see a rule, their first impulse is to question it. Merely being told what to do makes them inclined to do the opposite.
… The call of the aggressively conventional-minded is “Crush <outgroup>!” (It’s rather alarming to see an exclamation point after a variable, but that’s the whole problem with the aggressively conventional-minded.) The call of the passively conventional-minded is “What will the neighbors think?” The call of the passively independent-minded is “To each his own.” And the call of the aggressively independent-minded is “Eppur si muove.”
The four types are not equally common. There are more passive people than aggressive ones, and far more conventional-minded people than independent-minded ones. So the passively conventional-minded are the largest group, and the aggressively independent-minded the smallest.