I first became interested in the MBTI personality types after taking an online quiz from David Kiersey’s website in probably 10th grade. I read the description and was floored. How could they know this about me? The first book I ever purchased with my own money was in fact Please Understand Me II by David Keirsey. His specialty is temperament… but don’t ask me what the difference is.
After reading the book I don’t know how many times and taking the test I agreed that I was indeed an INTJ. To me the whole concept of being able to sort something so amorphous and complex into 16 bins was revolutionary and I tried to get everyone I knew to take the test and talk about the results. Not many people took me up on this at the time and, like most things with me, it fell to the way side. I’d read it again every six months or so, and even bought Gifts Differing by Isabel Briggs Myers. About sophomore year I started noticing that the INFJ personality type fit me better and I feel that I have now grown fully into that type. This is an excellent example of how environment can effect personality and why it is so important to choose your friends wisely 😀 Oh how lucky I was in both high school and college.
The point is that I have thought about this for some time and, true to my type, have developed an intuitive understanding of the subject that I am rarely prepared to talk about when the subject comes up. So, here you go:
Origen of Type:
Practice, practice, practice… Every process described here is a neurological function that grows stronger with use and atrophies with neglect. Sure, inborn genetically determined brain structures might make one process easier then another but ultimately it is use it or lose it.
I(N)tuitive Vs. (S)ensing:
If anyone were purely sensing or intuitive they could not function. Our stream of consciousness is a limited resource for which certain processes must fight for “air time”. One mode is the experience of our senses and emotions. The other involves, essentially, day dreaming. There is a distinct difference between daydreaming and reminiscing. Remembering something already sensed is reliving a sensory experiance. Daydreaming involves letting the mind run free to experiance whatever it can create. A totally sensing person then would be increadibly boring, essentially a robot with knee-jerk reactions to its enviroment. An intuitive by contest would be a vegitable or would perhaps even appear psycotic as their actions would bear no relationship to the enviroment. A mix then allows for the optimal being, attentive and responsive yet creative and flexable.
Inevitibly people will “error on the side of caution” and rely on the mode which is most comfertable to them. When this preference arrises and for what reasons I don’t know. I speculate that this is largely inborn in the structure of the brain. We learned in Physiological Psychology of people who sense can sense color when they see a certain letter. There is a short, or a connection between seperate areas of the brain. These people are disproportionally artests who tend to be disperportionally intuitives. It is thought that similar shorts and connections between various regions of the brain are what have made us the excelent creative problem solvers we are. The degree to which these connections occure could easily be genetic and as a result somewhat set from birth. Of course, the brain is quite plastic and changible but if something is easier you are more likely to do it, strengthening it further in a positive feedback loop. Parents, of course, can wreck havok upon this process 🙂
If this process is introverted or extroverted then the focus is on the external or the internal: current sensations vs. memories and a psychotic vs. vegitable persona. Fairly simple. It is of note however that the internal world of ideas and the external world of perception need not opperate in exactly the same manner. I could easily deal with ideas in a very intuitive fashion yet be relatively concrete when dealing with the outside world. Again, it depends upon the comfert level in using each process in each setting.
Thinking vs. Feeling:
The mainstream perception of these processes is my pet-peeve. Thinkers are cold and calculating while Feeling types are walking talking warm fuzzies. The Thinking/Feeling process is called the judging process for a reason, it is what is used to choose amongst a range of possibilities. There are not multiple ways to make a choice. Logic is something learned and thus can not be the basis of a personality. But the degree to which control is maintained over the process is variable. Thinkers require more or less conscience control over the entire process. To accomplish this things must be ordered and organized in such a way as to make this possible. Thus, thinking types will tend to be very ordered with clear and consice reasons for what they do because they have access to that information. Feeling types in contrast will make decisions based on what their gut tells them. Everyone has these gut feelings and for some they are more reliable then others. I am sure everyone has “slept on a decision”. In other words they put off making a decision till the next day. Quite often they will wake up and even if the decision isn’t clear their gut tells them that one way might be better then another. I can’t think of a physiological reason for this but being able to use it effectively is deffinately due to practice.
Why the names Feeling and Thinking? Well, emotions and the queues that indicate them are beastly complex. Maintaing concious control over a decision in such areas is nearly impossible. Hence the tendency for thinking types to be difficient in dealing with areas of the heart. Feeling types however are more willing to give such decisions over to the subconscience which is likely less restrained by the linear requirements of consciences and can act in parallel. Ask a feeling type why they choose something though and they are likely to shrug and say gut feeling because they don’t know why they choose it. They have no access to the decision making process and its steps. Also, note how each description parallels the stereotypes for each of the sexes which could be the cause or result of over 60% of Feeling types being female.
The main point is a Feeling type may not necessarily be a people person, it is just easier for them so they are more inclined to do it.
How is this process introverted or extroverted? It is alot tougher to say. The internal world is the one in which actual decisions are made while the external world tends to be full of decisions on how to react to stimuli. These are two, relatively seperate things and both do not have to be the same. Like the perceptive processes (N vs. S) making decisions and interacting are different skill sets that can be practiced independently.
My conclusion:
Most personality type tests are bunk. Since they test based on things such as, “Do you deal better with people or equations?” they miss the fundementals of each process and thus miss lable a great many people. Intuition and Sensing are also often miss labled expecually in a college enviroment. There you are taught, whether you like it or not, to be a good problem solver. So if a test asks such things as if you are comfertable and able with problems you are more likely then not to be judged Intuitive in college even if you are not. As a result of this I have very little faith in any personality test I have come across. I can typic
ally find at least one letter which is incorrectly labled with every person I meet.
Additionally it is often assumed that given the four letters an entier hierachy of processes can be constructed. Lets assume that my dominant process (the one I enjoy using the most… remember the limited time nature of conscienceness) is introverted intuition. If this is the case then my 4th most prefered process must be externalized sensing. In all honesty I can find no rational reason for this. Using Ockham’s Razor these postulates must be thrown out as they are unneccessary and complicate the picture. A usefull analogy can be drawn to engineering… In many cases to make a usefull model things are neglected if small enough. If there are 8 process (N S T F and each can be introverted and extroverted) and one is dominant you would expect it to take up at least half, and probably much more, of the conscience stream. The second most used process very likely the complement of the primary so if one’s prefered process is Intuition then a judging process such as Thinking or Feeling is needed to accomplish anything. These two processes are likely to take up the majority of the time of the conscienceness so who cares about everything else. This is why people can theorize to their hearts content and no one can tell if they are right or wrong.
I think I am going to try to make a quiz based on congitive processes that perhaps is more accurate then other thing out there. Like any good scientific theory this can’t just explain it has to predict so a useful project would be to develop type descriptions. We will see…