MBTI

[hermionesviolin]

A while back, Cat was bugging me about Myers-Briggs. Prompted by dorrie6 posting a link to this profile page I finally took one. Of course the binary options often frustrated me (especially when it was hard to discern a "best fit"). [And okay, we know me; I totally took three different ones -- in which process I learned that the questions are almost identical though there is one which actually lets you select within a range rather than just Yes/No -- though what's up with it asking you for Gender right off the bat?]

When people mention their MBTI it always sounds like gobbledygook to me. I mean, it's four letters none of which mean anything to me. The link from Melinda says at the top "As you probably already know, the Myers-Briggs Personality Sorter is intended to be a general, universal personality ID that divides people into one of sixteen distinct personality types, along axes if introverted (I) or extroverted (E), Sensing (S) or Intuitive (N), Thinking (T) or Feeling (F), and Judging (J) or Perceiving (P)."

Okay, so let's guess what I am? Definitely more Introverted than Extroverted. Definitely more Thinking than Feeling. Definitely not Intuitive. What the heck is the difference between "judging" and "perceiving?" [personalitytest.net says of Judger/Perceiver: "This category deals with how we orient our lives. Judgers are structured, ordered, scheduled, and on-time. They are the list makers. Judgers wake up every morning with a definite plan for the day, and become very upset when the plan becomes unraveled." So that would definitely be a Judger for me.] So without even taking a quiz I feel confident in declaring myself an ISTJ.

I feel like it would make more sense for people to just say that they're more an extrovert than an introvert, or that they're heavily rational in making decisions or whatever, instead of just throwing around acronyms which I then have to go look up. But maybe that's just me.

The two binary tests tell me I'm an ISFJ while the gradated one tells me ISTJ. [Entertainingly, by xeromag definitions that means I'm either a Martyr or the Thought Police :) ] personalitytest.net says of the Thinker/Feeler category: "This category deals with how we make decisions," so I think T is definitely the accurate one.

Comments

[hermionesviolin.livejournal.com]

In recent years I have less and less posited Introvert as a dominant personality characteristic for myself as I have become both more comfortable in social settings and also more outspoken generally. [Plus, knowing some people who are VERY introverted has made me feel VERY extroverted.] I am still more comfortable alone or with small groups of people with whom I am close than I am in large groups, though, and I definitely tend to wait before speaking more than I speak up immediately. And you mentioned "people-oriented" and we know I am (almost) always me-oriented :) So yeah, Introvert still feels more accurate than Extrovert but less accurate than it used to. Which brings us back to my original "Why can't we just use descriptive words and phrases rather than acronyms?" Labels can be useful but also problematic. Because they are basically shorthand, and everyone is complicated.