A Post With Personality
September 20th, 2007I’ve been interested in personality tests ever since the third grade, when I took a test to see if I was left-or right-brained. (The test said I was left-brained. Shocker, I know.) The problem is, most of the tests seemed like pseudoscience gobbledygook to me back then, so for years I never paid them any mind.
Then one day, a couple years back, my friend Bob sent me a link to one of those free MBTI personality tests. I remembered taking one once upon a time, and it seemed intriguing, so I gave it another shot. This time, the results really resonated with me, prompting my inner third grader to return with a vengeance.
In case you’re not familiar with MBTI, here’s a primer. MBTI stands for Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. There are two variants: the one originally developed by Myers and Briggs, and the temperament version developed by David Keirsey. As that Keirsey link states, his work is more dependent on behavior, rather than thoughts (as with Myers and Briggs). Such an empirical approach is near and dear to my heart, and thus I’ll be focusing on the Keirsey variant in this post (and any subsequent ones).
Regardless of which variant you choose, the basic facts are the same. Briefly, people are ordered according to 4 elements of personality: Extroversion/Introversion, Sensing/iNtuition, Thinking/Feeling, and Perceiving/Judging.
1. Extroversion/Introversion (E/I). Extroverts are externally oriented and introverts are internally oriented. It’s like the life-of-the-party vs. the bookworm.
2. Sensing/iNtuition (S/N). Sensing types are into concrete things, intuitive types prefer the abstract. Think of a stern dad (concrete) yelling at his idealist hippie son (abstract) to get a job. Or a race car driver (concrete) vs. someone racing that same car in a video game (abstract).
3. Thinking/Feeling (T/F). Thinkers listen to their head, feelers listen to their heart. The thinking/feeling contrast is often seen in gender stereotypes: Men are good at math and science (thinking), women are good at writing and liberal arts (feeling). (Except in our family, I guess, because my sister and my mom were programmers and my older brother is a Human Resources manager. Go figure!)
4. Perceiving/Judging (P/J). Perceivers are flexible, judgers make up their mind quickly. A good example is a man (perceiver) not wanting to set a wedding date, while his fiance (judger) can’t get married fast enough. In fact, she probably already has the whole wedding day planned out!
These 4 elements can combine in 4 x 4 = 16 ways for 16 different personality types. I usually don’t feel the need to get that specific, though, and prefer to talk about the 4 groups those 16 types fall into. Those four groups are as follows:
SP (Sensing and Perceiving) - Artisans
SJ (Sensing and Judging) - Guardians
NF (Intuitive and Feeling) - Idealists
NT (Intuitive and Thinking) - Rationals
Those four groups each have four members each, according to the two elements of personality they encompass. For example, anyone who scores as both Sensing and Perceiving is labeled an Artisan, someone who is into concrete things and avoids judgment.
What do those four groups mean, then? The best way to illustrate this is by example, I think. As it happens, People Patterns, an excellent introduction to Keirsey’s temperaments, has a couple of excellent examples. (Fun Fact: The book was written by Keirsey’s son-in-law.)
The best example in People Patterns is from The Wizard of Oz. The Cowardly Lion is the Artisan looking for courage, Dorothy is the Guardian looking to go home, the Tin Man is an Idealist looking for a heart, and the Scarecrow is a Rational looking for a brain. Whichever character you identify with most (if any) is probably your Keirsey temperament.
If you need a more contemporary example, you can use the houses in Harry Potter. Slytherin are Artisans, Hufflepuff are Guardians, Gryffindor are Idealists, and Ravenclaw are Rationals. (If you identify with Voldemort, I think you just need help.)
With the basics out of the way, let’s move on to some MBTI data (the whole purpose of this blog, after all). For example, the MBTI wikipedia link that I linked to earlier has a U.S.A. population breakdown, by type. Here are the totals, summed by temperament:
Keirsey’s own statistics are somewhat different. However, as Keirsey says in his faq, these statistics might suffer from self-selection bias. In Keirsey’s own words, “The estimated distribution of temperaments of US general population are 40-45% Guardian, 35-40% Artisan, 5-10% Idealist, 5-10% Rational.”
Either way you look at it, if you believe in temperament theory, most people in the U.S. are Artisans or Guardians. Artisans (SPs) and Guardians (SJs) share Sensing (S), so they’re more concrete, leading to a strong concrete basis for life in the U.S.
Considerably less people (a third or less, probably) are Idealists or Rationals. As Keirsey’s statistics attest, though, they are probably more common online. Idealists (NF) and Rationals (NT) share Intuition (N), thus they’re more abstract.
This means that the S/N distinction is pretty important. Important enough that People Patterns (and the companion book, Please Understand Me II) suggests your ideal dating match is your S/N “opposite”. That is, if you want the best chance of things working out, Guardians should date Artisans, and Idealists should date Rationals (and vice versa). Of course, there’s plenty of exceptions to these rules, like Han Solo (Artisan) and Princess Leia (Rational). These are simply guidelines, though - lots of other factors play a part too. (Like money. Kidding, folks, only kidding.)
The other thing I can say about the S/N distinction is that in my experience it separates you into one of two general categories. On one hand are the majority of concrete, “regular” S folks. On the other are the minority of abstract, “nerdy” N people.
In case you couldn’t tell, I’m squarely in the nerdy camp. (So when I call people like me “nerdy” and “irregular”, I mean it as a compliment, heh heh.) I have taken several versions of the MBTI test several times, and now I almost always score as INTJ, an NT Rational known as “The Mastermind”. Just the kind of person to write a post like this, huh?
Further Reading:
Breakdown of the Four Temperaments
More on the difference between MBTI and Keirsey types
A great series of articles written by David Keirsey, on applied uses of temperament theory with kids
MBTI Step 2 Testing, for the truly hardcore
A Semi-critical Malcolm Gladwell article on personality testing, especially MBTI
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January 27th, 2008 at 10:59 pm
Hello Dave,
Nice post. I find the MBTI and Kersey’s temperaments theory fascinating…and very very useful… It’s taught me, for example, that all of my friends are NTs. It’s also helped me understand why I’ve always felt like an alien in my family. I have an SJ mother, SP father and brother. In case you’re wondering, I’m an NF - an INFP, to be precise -
cheers
Nadine, perhaps you already know this, but having an SJ mother and SP father is probably the most common parental personality combination (they get along quite well usually). It’s also no surprise that you have a lot of NT friends (almost certainly men) being an INFP. I know a really cool girl that’s an INFP, and she has a ton of NT Rational friends like me. It is no surprise either that if you can’t share your N side with anyone in your family (arguably the most important dimension of personality) that you’d feel like an alien to them. Thankfully, being an NF, you should be able to get along with them most of the time. My brother says he deals with the situation by shapeshifting and mirroring their personalities for the time being. In my more NF moments, I think I just tried to listen and talk about them as much as possible. Either way seemed to work fine, really.
Lastly, NF types supposedly love personality tests/theories, so it makes sense you’d find them fascinating. I probably took my first Keirsey Temperament Sorter in a very NF mood, in fact.
If you want to know more, I absolutely recommend reading the three “Pygmalion Project” books (scroll to the recommended books at the bottom) written by the same guy who wrote “People Patterns” about each specific personality type. (Sadly he never made it to the Rationals.) They are a font of applied MBTI wisdom, usually basing examples off famous literature.
One day I’ll shell out the cash for the MBTI Step II online test and write a post about it. I just haven’t gotten around to it yet. It should be fun, though.
- Dave
January 28th, 2008 at 11:20 pm
Thanks Dave. I’ve actually read the pygmalion project books already. They are a lot of fun!
I went through a phase where I was completely obssessed with the MBTI/temperament theory - in case you haven’t already noticed - and read everything I could find on the subject. When something interests me, I sort of go overboard…
cheers,
Nadine
Wow, that’s a lot of reading! You probably know as much or more than I do about MBTI stuff, then. And I hear you about these reading “memes”. When I get into something, I am often not satisfied until I know everything out there on a topic (within reason).
- Dave
January 29th, 2008 at 3:13 pm
Within reason?
Not sure what that is. I love reading… always have… I will read anything I can find. My mom says I don’t read books, I devour them. I even used to read while walking to work/school… I even actually bumped into a stop sign once! I was - and still am - a very silly child 
February 18th, 2008 at 6:26 pm
Good post. Just one minor correction: In the world of Harry Potter, the Gryffindors would be the Artisans (SPs) and the Slytherins would be the Idealists (NFs).
I know, I know, it sounds counter-intuitive. But the Slytherins represent the negative aspects of the NF personality type.
JK Rowling is widely quoted to have based her four houses on the four archetypal elements:
Gryffindor: Fire
Ravenclaw: Air
Hufflepuff: Earth
Slytherin: Water
The four elements are generally associated to Keirsey as follows:
SP: Fire
NT: Air
SJ: Earth
NF: Water
There are exceptions, of course. Dumbledore is a Gryffindor Rational. Hermione is a Gryffindor Guardian.
But Slytherin actually exhibits most of the idealist qualities, assuming you look at the more negative, unhealthy manifestations of the idealist personality types. Master manipulators, driven by emotions, choosing to make decisions based on emotional rather than rational thoughts, and sometimes better at understanding people and concepts than those people are at understanding themselves.
For more info on this subject, see here:
http://www.the-pensieve.org/editorials/archives/000352.html
I think you have an interesting take on the situation. You’ve found a roundabout way to use Keirsey’s own words to aid in your classification. I think it’s cool that you have your own theory on things.
Honestly, all I was doing is quoting that book “People Patterns”. In there, the author lists the schools as belonging to the temperaments I described. Interestingly, the author also suggests that Hermione is a Rational. As I mentioned before, the book is written by Stephen Montgomery, who is Keirsey’s son-in-law. Montgomery says he’s been “working closely with Dr. Keirsey for more than 20 years, as both his editor and research assistant”, so I figured he’d be a good source to quote.
Now have Montgomery and Keirsey spoken about Harry Potter directly? I can’t answer that. Therefore, it’s possible Keirsey and Montgomery might differ on the classification of the schools. However, I know from reading Montgomery’s other books that Keirsey takes an active role in editing them, going as far as to write introductions and blurbs for Montgomery’s books. In fact, on the back of “People Patterns” is the following blurb:
“Brilliant! Offers a clear and entertaining explanation of my ideas, while adding a wealth of Montgomery’s own remarkable insights. — David Keirsey”
Are the classifications of the HP schools one of “Montgomery’s own remarkable insights” or did he discuss them with Keirsey? I don’t know. I’ll leave that to you to decide. Either way, thanks for the link, the kind words, and your alternate perspective!
- Dave
April 21st, 2008 at 11:58 am
I have been aware of my personality type, INFJ, for about 25 years. It is the rarest of all subtypes (less than 1%), so the reason I’ve felt alone most of my life is because I am. I wanted to comment on your excellent post and to give you something to think about. The Keirsey/MBTI are fun, and it’s great to have some objective insight about who you are. Now that you know you’re an intuitive type, what does it mean? Why are we here? We are clearly in their world - the sensate world, and why? What is our purpose on this planet? I’m always eager to discuss the possibilities. geekai53@aol.com
I hear you. Even though growing up I identified strongly as INTJ, there was probably a period of a few years there where I might have drifted over to INFJ, due to health problems with both me and my father. These days everything is mostly back to normal, and thus I think I’m solidly INTJ again.
But during that time I read a tremendous amount about INFJs. I joined the INFJ mailing list, which I read for months. Even now I still read the emails every now and then. (They send hundreds a month!) Those INFJs are now too “touchy-feely” for me (maybe it’s because they’re so concentrated on the list), but there’s still some part of my that kind of sympathizes.
As far as being intuitive, maybe at some point I was unhappy about it. But these days I have a tremendous focus on being optimistic. So what I tell myself is that computers are abstract, and me and millions of other intuitives are making a mint hand holding others through technology and using it to the fullest. People say it’s only older people that have trouble picking up how to use computers, but I see 70 year olds emailing away no problem. I don’t think this technophobia is going away, and in the meantime I will profit.
I’m always happy to discuss personality tests. I’ll send you an email sometime soon!
- Dave
April 24th, 2008 at 11:20 pm
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