The Next Step, Part Two
May 25th, 2008(This post is part two of two on the MBTI Step II test. Part one provided a quick review of MBTI personality theory and my experience with taking the test. Part two will be an in-depth post on the test itself.)
After a lengthy trip to China with my brother (and editor) Ed, I’m back. (You know I never noticed the eerie similarity there. Ed the editor? Wow.) (Ed. note - I always knew I was a natural for this job.) One thing I discovered in the meantime is that long trips and blogging do not go together. Since I got back a week ago, I’ve been seriously jetlagged. I even fell asleep (again) trying to write this post last night, which I’d already postponed from Thursday. Since I had to cancel the post I made before I left due to trip preparations, it’s been over a month since I’ve blogged. For the loyal readers out there, sorry about that. Never realized that leaving the country for two weeks could have that kind of effect on me.
But now I’m back and ready to write, so enough about that. I’m going to go ahead and assume you read part one of this series before I continue, since what I’m going to say depends heavily on that. Please take a few minutes to do so, if you haven’t.
OK, ready? So when we last left off, I’d finished taking the MBTI Step II test and wanted to get into specifics about the test and the results. Surprisingly enough, I tested as an ISTP, what Keirsey calls “The Crafter”.
But how much of a crafter was I? Well, the Step II test measures the “clarity of preferences” on each dimension of your personality. I scored a moderate preference for introversion (I), a slight preference for sensing (S), a clear preference for thinking (T), and a slight-to-moderate preference for perceiving (P). Which is just another way of saying that I’m clearly a introvert and a thinker, but that my tendencies towards sensing and perceiving are more ambiguous.
The clarity of your preferences is derived from a rough average of each dimensions’ five sub-types. Here are the sub-types again, for reference:
As you can tell from the sub-types, each represents one facet of the overall dimension. Let’s take extraversion, for example. Extraverts can be initiating, expressive, gregarious, active, and enthusiastic. The most “well-rounded” and stereotypical extravert would be all of these things, to some extent. Of course, every person is different. If you take the test, you’ll see on your report a list of ranges for each sub-type that people (in the U.S.) who share your personality type usually score in, as well as the average score.
That leads to some interesting observations. If you look at, say, introversion, you’ll see that the spread of each of the five sub-types is roughly the same for ISTPs. However, ISTPs are typically (i.e. on average) less intimate and reflective, and more receiving and quiet. (Turns out I’m more reflective than most. Not too surprising for a blogger, I guess.)
You’ll even see that the range on many specific sub-types crosses over “to the other side”, revealing the opposite dimension of personality. In fact, a lot (the majority) of U.S. ISTPs are apparently accomodating (a feeling sub-type) and early starting (a judging sub-type). Thus, there’s plenty of room in the test for variability.
Even taking this into account, though, my results are still all over the map. Sometimes I line right up in the range of most ISTPs (sometimes even right on the average), but other times I’m out of the range completely. One especially interesting example is for sensing. Three of my sensing results were off the charts for intuition. In fact, on two of those sub-types, conceptual and original, I’m five and four standard deviations away from the mean, respectively. I guess I’m still considered a senser because I scored highly on concrete vs. abstract (3 standard deviations).
That made me wonder: is the test accurate? When I read the description of ISTPs, it seemed fairly correct to me. And when I read what kinds of jobs they’re good at, they’re all jobs I’d probably enjoy. In fact, I’m an analyst at my current job (and I do some programming as well). Plus, I briefly studied to be an electrician in school (which I really enjoyed), and apparently ISTPs are very common in such construction-type jobs.
So everything is OK, right? Well, not so fast. Of the five sub-types I had that were out of the range for ISTPs (-1 to +1 standard deviation away from the average of other ISTPs), four suggested I should’ve been scored differently (mainly the three for intuition that I mentioned). In fact, I’m so far out of whack on the intution side of things that it seemed like a farce. I showed a tendency toward intuition that was well above average for every sensing sub-type except one, namely concrete (which I had a fairly typical score for).
I can’t tell you exactly how the test averages out each of the five sub-types for each dimension of personality, but it seems to place a tremendous weight on the first sub-type for each. In my case, almost every dimension I have lines up fairly closely with the first sub-type, with the exception of sensing (where my results were so atypical).
However, I have a strong reason to believe that I’m intuitive rather than sensing. That is, I should be a rational (NT), not an artisan (SP). First of all, most artisans don’t like taking personality tests. And here I am paying money and writing in-depth posts about them. That doesn’t seem right.
Second, most artisans don’t like reading much. Yet I’ve likely read more in this year than I have in my entire life. Probably a hundred books or more. That also doesn’t seem right. (I think it’d be a little tough to write a blog without reading, anyway.)
Third, every other time I take a personality test, I score N instead of S. And fourth, in my in-depth reading about personality tests, I also agree more with the description of intuition over sensing.
Lastly, my favorite movie is “Lord of the Rings: Return of the King”, a rational (nerd) touchstone if ever there was one. In fact, my artisan buddy Dan despises the movie. So chances are good the Step II test was wrong on this dimension.
Or should I say, it probably averages the sub-types wrong. I agree with my scores on all the sub-types, it just seems the overall result might be off. Maybe the averaging algorithm needs tweaking? Anyway, I don’t think the Step II test was off by much. I was close to the borderline in my scores sensing and perceiving, which are the two dimensions I normally score the opposite on (intuition and judging).
In defense of the Step II test, I should probably mention one other thing. I had a low “polarity index”. The polarity index is a measure of how consistent your answers are, and whether you’ve been doing something like “christmas tree-ing” the answers or intentionally trying to mislead the test. The polarity index goes from 0 to 100, but most adults apparently score within 50 and 65 (with a bias toward indices even higher than this). I scored a 53, which is low, but still within the average. They say a polarity index below 45 means that you have many scores in the midzone. This shows that you might you know too much about the test (my problem), that you answered the questions randomly, that you lack self-knowledge, or that you’re ambivalent about that dimension of your personality. “Some such profiles may be invalid.”
In truth, with a 53 I wasn’t that far off the minimum. (Though this observation is tempered by the fact that I don’t know how the polarity index is calculated.) Perhaps I knew too much about the test. Maybe I was in a funny mood the day I took the test. Maybe I felt too railroaded by the black-or-white questions on the test and rebelled some. Maybe I just have a lot of contradictions in my personality. (I was one of the only kids I knew who would skip school to do homework.) Or maybe an index of 53 doesn’t mean anything. I’m not sure. But it might explain those weird midzone scores of mine in sensing and perceiving.
Keirsey and others don’t make room for these kind of concerns, like your test-taking mood. They say you have one personality type that you stick with for the rest of your life. Maybe it gets tempered a bit with age, but you should still stay the same personality. Any other changes in the test should be due to the accuracy of the test itself, they say. Me? I’m not so sure.
However, when I read the description of the Mastermind (INTJ), the type I normally test as, I felt like I was looking in the mirror. That site says INTJs strive for maximum efficiency, and at one time I was studying to be a Ph.D. in Economics. Statements like this one practically embody the spirit of this blog: “Masterminds are highly theoretical, but they insist on looking at all available data before they embrace an idea, and they are suspicious of any statement that is based on shoddy research, or that is not checked against reality.”
The real kicker is when I look at the types of jobs INTJs are good at. It says right there that they’re good as business analysts (which is my exact job title). Can’t argue with that. They quote another INTJ as saying, “I am constantly teaching myself something new in order to solve the problems that I encounter,” but it may as well have been me saying that.
Like Keirsey says, then, have I always been an INTJ? I don’t know. Maybe? I could probably use some more data on that.
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May 27th, 2008 at 9:09 pm
The facets of the MBTI Step II don’t average out to create your overall preference. What each facet contains is a subset of the questions, using factor analysis, that seem to naturally group. It is possible to score N in a majority of the facets and still remain an S, because of the different ways in which the scores are derived. If you are scoring consistently borderline between dichotomies, and those are the ones that have facet scores in OOPS (out of preference skill) sides, then I’d suggest looking at the root of why you personally would pick the opposite side of the scale, but seem to pick the other consistently enough to show up as the opposite. (hint: it’s not how the indicator is scored - simple majority wins in the overall score)
I hear you. I guess it’s just a little misleading. It’s hard to tell how much each facet factors in as a whole. And those Step II questions seemed a lot different than what I’m used to, and I think my score reflects that.
Wish I knew why I was picking answers on the opposite side of those scales. Maybe that’s why I’m taking personality tests!
- Dave
June 14th, 2008 at 3:25 pm
Nice job, as always.
Thanks, Dan.
–Dave