An Eye for Personality

How does one perceive the world and make decisions? 

The largest project that I have been working on this year is gaining a thorough understanding of the Myer-Briggs Type Indicator, and to be able to quickly identify patterns and interconnecting links between interests, needs, values, careers, motivation, decisions and even down to the way people dress, walk and their facial expressions and movements. 

The Myer-Briggs is a four functional psychological functions which were extrapolated upon Carl Gustav Jung's typological theories in his book Psychological types.  

The four main function that we have are:

1. Extraversion vs. Introversion 

2. Sensing vs. Intuition 

3. Feeling vs. Thinking

4. Perceiving vs. Judging

Individuals are born, and develop certain ways of perceiving and deciding. Here are the summary of each function:

Why is it important?

It is frequently used in pedagogy (education), career counselling, team building, group dynamics, professional development, marketing, family business, leadership training, executive coaching, life coaching, personal development and marriage counselling. 

Extraversion vs. Introversion

Extraversion:

• Operate in the external world of behaviour, action, people and things
• Draw energy from action (Prefers to act, reflect, then act further)
• Inactivity leads to decline in motivation
• Flow directed outward toward people and objects
• Action oriented
• Breadth of knowledge and influence
• Frequent interaction
• Initiating, expressive, gregarious, active, enthusiastic 
• Outgoing or people's person
• Comfortable in groups
• Wide range of friends and know lots of people
• Jump too quickly into activity without thinking it over

Introversion 

• Internal world of ideas and reflection
• Expend energy through action (Prefer to reflect, then act, then reflect)
• Energy gained through quiet time alone, away from activity 
• Directed inward towards concepts and ideas
• Thought oriented
• Depth of knowledge and influence
• Receiving, contained, intimate, reflective, quiet
• Reflective, reserved
• Prefer just to know a few people well

Sensing vs. Intuition 

The gathering of information, how that information is understood and intepreted.

Sensing

• Trust information that is in present, tangible and concrete
• Understood by five senses
• Distrust hunches
• Details and facts
• Concrete, realistic, practical, experiential, traditional
• Remember events as snapshots
• Solve problem by working through facts
• Pragmatic and look at bottom line
• Facts to bigger picture

Intuition 

• Trust information that is more abstract and theoretical
• Association with other information (wider context or pattern)
• Interested in future possibilities 
• Underlying theory and principles
• Abstract, imaginative, conceptual, theoretical, original
• Solve problem by leaping between different ideas and possibilities
• Interested in doing things new and different
• See big picture, then find out facts

Thinking vs. Feeling

The decision-making preferences. 

Thinking

• Decides things from more detached standpoint
• Reasonable, logical, casual, consistent decisions following rules 
• Logical, reasonable, questioning, critical, tough
• Objective truth, natural at deductive reasoning 
• Technical or scientific fields with logic
• Task-oriented, uncaring and indifferent

Feeling 

• Come to decision by association or empathizing with situation
• Looking from "inside" to achieve, greatest harmony, consensus and fit
• Consider the needs of the people involved
• Empathetic, compassionate, accommodating, accepting, tender
• Place an emphasis on issues and causes that can be personalized 
• People or communications orientation
• Tactful vs. Cold Truth
• Idealistic, mushy or indirect

Judging and Perceiving

Extraverts (E) have a dominant function when paired with (J) or (P). Introverts (I) have an auxiliary function. 

Perceiving

• Keep decision open, staying open to final decision in order to get more information 
• Flourish in flexible learning environment stimulated by new and exciting ideas
• Flexible and adaptable lifestyle
• Open to new experiences and information 
• Stay open to respond to whatever happens
• Loose and casual, minimal plans
• Work in bursts of energy
• Stimulated by approaching deadline
• Adaptable, relaxed, disorganized, carefree, spontaneous, changes tracks midway, procrastinates

Judging

• Planned, orderly way of life
• Information gathered is organized and structured
• Motivated to complete assignments to gain closure
• Structure and decided lifestyle
• Things must be settled and organized
• Task oriented, things to do, get work done before playing
• Decisive, controlled, finishing, organised, scheduled, quick at tasks, closure

What is interesting is that Isabel Myers was working on an more advanced scoring system before her death and includes more subscales of which includes:

Comfort-Discomfort (Links to neuroticism)
Guarded-Optimistic (also T/F)

Defiant-Compliant (T/F)

Carefree-Worried (T/F)

Decisive-Ambivalent (J/P)

Intepreid-Inhibited (E/I)

Leader-follower (E/I)

Proactive-Distractible (J/P)

What I've may have missed in my research is that the the best judge is ourselves, in that a Reported Type may not be representative of the truth. People often mistake that a type is also a trait, in that Person A is 'thinking' person, therefore he is good at 'thinking', which is irrespective of the truth. It is preference rather than aptitude that is being explored here. What many people mistake is that one type is better or worse than the other, but in reality, they are all gifts that are differing. 

I have treaded dangerously on ethical grounds in that I may have been unethically compelling people to take the Myer-Briggs Type Indicator test, when it should always be taken voluntarily. I have also unethically been experimenting and intentionally interrogating individuals by exploring and testing their functions without their consent. I am deeply sorry for the people that I have experimented with in the past given year. However given this, if I were to tell others about this test as I previously have to some individuals, they may become guarded, paranoid or suspicious of your motives, intentions and actions. I am not a trained administrator, so I have also given very dodgy and possibly incorrect feedback. 

What I also need to dwell into is the type dynamics. In accordance to my main source, Wikipedia, there has been little empirical support to substantiate its viability as a scientific theory. In the early stages of life, there is one function that is the most dominant. The secondary of auxiliary function is evident during teenage years. The tertiary function during midlife, and the inferior function remains least consciously developed. The inferior being the most associated with the unconscious (most evident in situation such as high stress).

However, it has been criticise that type dynamics has persistent logical problems, and relies more on anecdotal problems, and fails most efficacy tests. It does not reveal the real behaviour of people. I have yet to explore the functions from dominant, auxiliary, tertiary and inferior in detail. 

Functions

1. Dominant 
2. Auxillary
3. Tetiary
4. Inferior

There are some correlations to other instruments which include:

Keirsey temperament (SP, SJ, NF and NT) and the Big Five (extraversion, openness, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and emotional stability)

• Extraversion correlates with E-I (0.74)
• Openness correlates with S-N (0.72)
• Agreeableness correlates with T-F (0.44)
• Conscientiousness correlates J-P (0.49)

Another interesting result is that personality disorders correlates modestly with INTP and ISTJ (OCD). 

Criticism

Statistical validity has been the major issue. There has been inconsistent findings between type preferences and managerial effectiveness. The reliability of the test is quite low, and the test is subject to falsifiability in that a statement, hypothesis or theory has inherent possibility to prove it false which results in confirmation bias when interpreting the results. I have fallen victim to this as many of the things make rational sense or describe me, but at the same time it can also describe the majority of other people as it is inherently difficult to prove false.

Summary and Conclusion 

Hopefully, I am able to devise a better test that will explain things in clearer, I have been exploring many different personalities and finding patterns and consistencies. 

More to come... from this, I'd like to extrapolate some theories that I have come up with that may link with certain personality types such as interests, style of walking, handwriting, preferred dress-styles, ease-of-influence, music preference, romanticism, worldviews, political preference, muscle structure... the list goes on.

INTP out.

Note: I purposely titled this article as an INFP would, using metaphor and hidden meanings, but given the discussion and pondering with some logical inconsistencies, this article may seem to be written by an INFP trying to gain a better understanding of the world. Given my close T and F preferences, and E and I preferences, I believe that this creates a complex character that is difficult to interpret and understand.