Back in February our Staff Writers and editors opened up about our Enneagram types and now we’re here to talk about our Myers-Briggs personality types. The MBTI test was developed by Katharine Cook Briggs and her daughter Isabel Briggs Myers, and it’s based on Jungian philosophy. Basically, it’s supposed to tell you what your desires and motivations are, and how those two things manifest themselves in the way you interact with the world around you. There are 16 MTBI types and they’re anchored in four dichotomies: extroverted/introverted; sensing/intuition; thinking/feeling; judging/perception. You can take a free version of this test right here and let us know your feelings about your type and your feelings about our feelings in the comments!
Alaina, Staff Writer, INTP
I feel pretty closely aligned with INTP, even though I’ve gotten INFJ on unofficial tests and that one also makes some sense. Am I an introvert? Yes. Do I think abstractly, and sometimes too big for real life? Yes. I’m super objective and logical, sometimes to a fault, and I, like Aaron Burr, prefer to “wait for it,” instead of going for things when I’m not sure what the outcome will be. Also, INTPs are witty and charming, and I am both of those things – please invite me to your next dinner party. INTPs are also terrified by the prospect of failure. Haha, no comment!!!!
Creatrix Tiara, Staff Writer, ENFP
Every time I’ve taken the test across my life I’ve gotten ENFP — the E/I can go 50/50 but the rest are pretty solid. The part I’m most vocal about is the extroversion, mostly that I’m very annoyed at the assumption that extroverts are all overly gregarious party people to the point that people contort themselves to avoid calling themselves “extroverts!” I keep seeing “extroverted introvert” in dating profiles or articles that are all “You May Be An Extroverted Introvert If” and they all hinge on the assumption that extroverts never want to be alone or have quiet time, ever. I know I function better around company, hence the extroversion, but I am super socially awkward and prefer smaller gatherings where people generally know each other to large parties (which actually feel much more isolating). And sometimes I get overstimulated and need to be by myself for a bit! I’m frustrated that “extrovert” has become some kind of dirty word because it carries the connotation of “too much” or “overbearing” — which gets even worse when it’s gendered and racialised. It’s OK to admit you’re an extrovert, really, no one’s going to force you to go to a rave if you don’t wanna.
Mey, Staff Writer, ENFP
Sometimes I’ve gotten ENFJ, but I think this is where I’m at right now. I’m guessing I’m going to be one of the few extroverts on the staff, most writers and queer women that I see online tend to be introverts. But I love being an extrovert and I feel like it guides the rest of who I am. The way I interact with others and the world and every decision I make is based on me wanting to be around other people and have a good time with them. People give me energy and make me happy and I want to make them happy too. The profile says I’m very popular, which I love, and that I’m extremely emotional, which I both love and hate. It also says I’m like Michael Scott from The Office which is very true.
Cee, Tech Director, INTJ-A
I’m definitely an INTJ. The “A” letter is new — it says I’m 92% assertive which sounds about right. Reading the description of some of the traits of an INTJ is a little sobering and has reminded me to chill out a little.
A.E. Osworth, Staff Writer, ENFJ
I have been an ENFJ since high school and wowie, is that ever accurate. One of my friends looked at me once, cocked her head to the side and rattled off all the letters she thought I was and yup, ENFJ. I definitely get energy from being around people and I will happily talk to just about anyone. The one that sometimes surprises people is judging until you realize that I have a list of my six favorite sandwiches I have ever eaten, ranked. The J starts to make sense after that.
Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya, Staff Writer, ENTJ/INTJ
I was much more extroverted in my youth than I am now, so I tend to gravitate more toward INTJ these days, but I still have my ENTJ moments. Also I remember I got ESTJ the very first time I took the test? I’m all over the place I guess! Idk, I don’t love MBTI as much as I do enneagram, and I think it’s because I feel kind of disconnected from a lot of aspects of INTJ. And I didn’t like when I was an ENTJ because my mom is an ENTJ!
Heather Hogan, Senior Editor, INFP
Unlike the enneagram test, I’ve never learned (or been forced to confront) surprising things about myself from Myers-Briggs. Idealist? Check. Searching for ways to make things better? Check. Inner flame and passion? Check. A lot of writers are INFPs because it means they get to stay home and be by themselves a lot, for one thing; but also because they’re just naturally good at communicating, at pulling on different threads of dozens of ideas and weaving them into a tidy narrative or metaphor or parable. I don’t really care what famous people share my personality type but I love talking about what fictional characters might share my personality type (the most INFP thing ever). All the tests say it’s Anne Shirley and Bilbo Baggins, which is a hoot because I’m absolutely in the center of that Venn diagram with its gentle overwrought sense of noble purpose and inability to not take everything just so super seriously.
“Yes, this is Anne Shirley,” said Marilla.
“Spelled with an e,” gasped Anne, who tremulous and excited as she was, was determined there should be no misunderstanding on that important point.
Laura M, Staff Writer, ENTJ
I emailed these results to myself on July 5, 2015:
ENTJ Extravert(9%) iNtuitive(78%) Thinking(6%) Judging(12%)
You have slight preference of Extraversion over Introversion (9%)
You have strong preference of Intuition over Sensing (78%)
You have slight preference of Thinking over Feeling (6%)
You have slight preference of Judging over Perceiving (12%)
I feel like everyone is always asking this and I can never remember the answer, nor do I want to retake the quiz. (Which is why I emailed it to myself so I can just give them an efficient answer and move on. I assume this is because I’m a Capricorn Ravenclaw.)
Now you know all of the things about me. And no I do not agree with the test that I’m an extrovert; I just play one at work, sometimes, because it’s expedient to getting what I want.
I strongly prefer enneagram type.
Erin, Staff Writer, INFJ
According to Wikipedia I share this introversion, intuition, feeling, and judgement combo with Nicole Kidman, Adam Sandler, and Nelson Mandela. What a dynamic trio! Honestly not what I was expecting, but then again I had to look up what INFJ meant, so I imagine if I shared this MBTI with the Barefoot Contessa, Shaquille O’Neal, and Paul from the Bible I’d be as surprised.
Apparently INFJs operate more off feeling, and I would say that intuition very much commands my brain/heart ship, so it’s an accurate assessment. How’d this bitch know that I’m soft-spoken though? Also got a real read in the weakness department: a leaning toward perfectionism and extreme privacy which lead to an inevitable burn out!!! We have fun.
Valerie Anne, Staff Writer, INFP
“The Mediator.” If I was writing a memoir, I could have a whole chapter called The Mediator and I could fill it with tales of times I was a literal mediator and it would only be a fraction of the stories I could tell. Between my parents, between friends; even now sometimes between coworkers. I’m the one people use to pass messages between each other and I do my best to filter out the words spoken from a place of anger to get to the root of the problem, attempting to diffuse any conflict. INFPs are rumoredly rare, apparently only 4% of the population, and maybe because it’s harder than it seems. On the one hand, I’m very empathetic and can express my feelings or explain someone else’s feelings using (often extensive) metaphors, or channel through fictional characters. I’m relentlessly optimistic, very go-with-the-flow, and I’m always willing to give people the benefit of the doubt. On the downside, I can sometimes overlook the practical for the idealistic, I can take things extremely personally even when I logically know it wasn’t a direct reflection on me, and despite my generally cheerful disposition, I have a lot more walls up than people realize, and once they start to run into them, I imagine it can be extremely frustrating. Especially since I’m the type of person the cab driver tells their whole life story to, and people often say they feel comfortable opening up to me very quickly; the feeling isn’t usually mutual. This also means the few people who DO get past those walls have to carry the whole burden of my inner turmoil; congratulations?
Molly Priddy, Staff Writer, INFP
Oh god, of course it’s the Mediator. I’m the middle of five girls in my family, and all I’ve done my whole life is talk to people older and younger and madder and nicer than I am. I’ve been a communicator my whole life, and people have always opened up to me, whether I wanted that or not. As a kid, other kids would tell me terrible secrets about their families, and I didn’t know how to deal. It kept happening to me all through my life, finally culminating in some serious depression in college because I didn’t know how to deal with people always wanting to drop their worst and darkest and hardest on me. But! Through therapy, I figured out how to make people keep their own monkeys on their own backs, and now, as a journalist, people wanting to talk to me on a deep level very quickly works very much to my advantage. Another funny thing about INFP is that people talk to me, but I will rarely, if ever, open up to others. That takes a long time, and trust and effort. But the part about being an INFP I feel the most is the fascination with fantasy worlds — I’m pretty sure I’ll end up with the Elves from Lord of the Rings.
Alexis, Staff Writer, INFP/INFJ
So we took this test in high school, and I just carried around INFP forever. I took it a couple of years ago and had a mini existential crisis because I was INFJ? So I just claim them both but INFP like 9% more.
So according to 16Personalities, INFP is “The Mediator”, and means I look for the good in every situation and hope for the best in people and fits with me being a Hufflepuff (I want you to know how badly I want to be Slytherin (SO BAD) but I’m too scared of the dark). I’m guided by principles rather than logic, and move forward because of my intent not because of repercussions or consequences (which as someone who applies to any and everything that makes my heart skip a beat, is extremely true.) I talk in parables and metaphors which makes me great fun at parties and creative work is where I live. I don’t talk to a lot of people, I can hermit with the best of them, but no matter my imbalance, I always end up coming back to myself (usually with a little help from my friends). Mediators like me are Alicia Keys who I’m claiming for my younger self, Amelie Poutain, Mr. Rogers, Luna Lovegood, Virginia Woolf, Fiona Apple, Dr. J, Luke Skywalker, Chloe Sevigny, Emily Blunt, and the fire dragon queen Emilia Clarke.
Vanessa, Community Editor, ENFP
My girlfriend always remembers what my Myers-Briggs personality is and I never do, so before I wrote this answer I said, “Babe, what am I again?” and she said, “Are you ENFP?” and I was pretty sure she was right, because she always remembers it right, but I took the test just to be sure and yep, sure enough, here I am: ENFP, reporting for duty! The thing is, it’s not that I think this answer is wrong (it checks out pretty well actually) but whenever I take these kinds of tests I can always tell the questions that are pulling me from one extreme to the other (embodying the E vs. the I, for example) and sometimes I want to yell at my computer “ACTUALLY IT IS BOTH!” Like, hanging out with people can be energizing, and it can also be fucking tiring! Of course sometimes I want to stay in with a good book BUT I ALSO LIKE GOING TO THEME PARTIES. I dunno, what if these personality tests lack nuance?! WHAT IF I CONTAIN MULTITUDES?! On the other hand yeah, duh, I fucking love community and making social and emotional connections with others and sure, if you want to call me “charming, independent, energetic, and compassionate” I will both accept and agree so FINE, I guess even without the special snowflake nuance I desire, this test is pretty on point.
Reneice, Staff Writer, ENFJ
I found out my Myers Briggs type when I was in high school and my mom sent me to get a battery of psychological assessments. I’ve always felt it’s an accurate depiction of me and the way I work. I’m very extroverted and intuition and feelings are the way I make and approach pretty much every decision. This drives a lot of people in my life nuts, especially my mom. She bought me a book for christmas once called “unglued” that is about how to navigate life as an overly emotional person that can’t make decisions without putting feelings aside. So there’s that.
Carolyn, NSFW Editor and Literary Editor, INTJ-T
Okay so “The Architect.” “Imaginative yet decisive, ambitious yet private, amazingly curious, but they do not squander their energy”? You flatter me. I am a little hesitant to embrace the “I” part of this, because I learned last year that I actually really like being around people (I scored introverted but only at 56%), but a tendency to apply strategic thinking to interpersonal relationship building is unfortunately dead-on. I’m also not sure I “radiate self-confidence and an aura of mystery” but I’m working on it.
KaeLyn, Staff Writer, ENFP
Dang, there’s more of us ENFP’s on staff than I anticipated. According to 16 Personalities, only 7% of the population is ENFP, so I feel like we have an oversample here at AS, for sure. I think these personality tests are fun but not very serious, like when I took the tests in Seventeen mag about what my favorite lip gloss says about whether my crush likes me or not. I also like that Myers-Briggs was designed by women. That’s extra fun! I’m not gonna’ live my life by it, though. Then again, it ain’t wrong. I am a creative thinker who likes to come up with original solutions and values freedom and is often put into leadership positions because of my big personality. I do dislike administrivia or things that don’t exercise the creative or compassionate parts of my brain. I do value social relationships and spend a lot of time exploring them at all levels. So, like, yeah, ENFP. It me.
Stef, Vapid Fluff Editor, INFJ
Says here that INFJs are very rare? Apparently I’m the Advocate, which means I get very passionate about things and have a kind of all-or-nothing approach guided mostly by my moral code. I can definitely err towards perfectionism (with the occasional burnout) and am far, far too sensitive for my own good. I define myself by the work I do, usually to a fault, and always like to know that what I’m doing has some degree of meaning or purpose. The description also says that my eloquence and persuasiveness can lead to a lot of unwanted popularity, which I cannot say has been my experience, but let’s pretend. I have a feeling if you asked anybody who knows any of us to pick which two of us would have the same personality type, Erin and I would be a very unlikely combination. It’s a true honor, pal. This test also said that I was 88% turbulent, which seems rude.
Riese, Editor-in-Chief, INFJ
It’s funny that INFJs are supposed to be so rare ‘cause I seem to know a lot of ‘em… but… here’s a theory! So far on this roundtable, Stef and Erin have both identified solely as INFJs. The other hotspot of INFJs in my life are people in the Runagays/Blackhearts cabins at A-Camp, which is composed entirely of people who ranked their relationship to Autostraddle.com very high when filling out their camp registration forms. Stef and Erin are both humans who read my blog back in the day, as are many Runaways, but even those who never read my blog are people who are huge fans of the website in general. Also Yvonne is an INFJ even though she hasn’t done this roundtable yet, and she’s obviously also a pretty big fan of Autostraddle. So it makes sense that this rare type of human seems to be everywhere in my life, because my INFJ nature probably has some kind of underlying impact on a lot of what Autostraddle started out as and still is sometimes underneath it all. Eh? How’s that? Anyhow I wish “advocates find it easy to make connections with others” was true, but wow who knew that me and Alanis Morissette had so much in common. Also, it’s true that I only wanna bother with friendships.
Abeni Jones, Staff Writer, INFP
I just took the test for the first time in a few years, and my type changed! I’ve always been an INFJ but this test told me I’m an INFP, which is fascinating. It doesn’t seem that different, to be honest? Apparently INFPs are almost as rare as INFJs. I’m hypersensitive and empathetic and like to just think about things a lot. I have a hard time sleeping because I just lay in bed thinking about some idea, or having a conversation in my head, for hours.
This describes me too well: “If they are not careful, Mediators can lose themselves in their quest for good and neglect the day-to-day upkeep that life demands… Mediators often drift into deep thought, enjoying contemplating the hypothetical and the philosophical… Left unchecked, Mediators may start to lose touch, withdrawing into “hermit mode”, and it can take a great deal of energy from their friends or partner to bring them back to the real world.”
Myers-Briggs is my personal favourite of the pseudoscientific ways we can group ourselves, so this was GREAT and explains SO MUCH to me. (So many Ps, with a couple of Js in charge of some things!)
The overconcentration of INFJs in my life is among my fellow librarians, who seem to be a pile of connection-building advocates who then want to go home and be ALONE for a while. Fortunately, INFJs also seem to be the people most likely to befriend/put up with my feelings-averse, never-chill INTJ self.
I’m an ISFJ librarian. I is yhe only thing I’ve been consistently when I’ve taken the MBTI over the years. I’m fairly close to the middle on the other 3
Yo. INFJ/Librarian here too. Apparently INFJ’s are only 1% of the population and all of them are librarians because almost every one of my fellow librarian friends is also an INFJ.
Deadass an INTP, it’s probably one of the spires on my ridiculous special snowflake crown.
Was given the Myers-Briggs in a high school civics class, but honestly all I’d have to do is read the description of Strengths and Weaknesses because that’s 100% me right there.
However I have learned to be more considerate of the feelings of others. Just because I don’t understand why a person feels a certain way doesn’t mean their feelings are not valid. And you can see my brain circling back the Open Mindedness part.
There’s a billion and one ways to exist, can’t just sort and filter them into neat little boxes. But still I may might not know how to comfort someone the right way and go all Error 404 or something unhelpful. Baby animal gifs do not help with everything.
PS I think it is highly likely some people who feel they match their Gemini sign would test INTP or feel they match it.
PSPS It’s like my brain is never done thinking and everything I write or say has an also or some sort of addendum. This is why I fail English Comp, you’d think be a wordy-thinky lil shit would help but nope it is opposite of helpful. Too many thoughts not enough time, space or processing power to get them out in an organized fashion. Also small children probably have a better grasp of punctuation rules than me. A matter of fact I had to google how to spell punctuation.
The End.
CREATRIX and VANESSA I feel so seen!!! Oddly enough I feel like almost all of the fellow NFP’s I’ve ever spoken to about our type also have some concerns about the E vs I distinction and how it relates to them. I wonder if that’s just a common thing for this specific personality type??
I think it’s because there’s just been so much more attention given to extroversion vs introversion in contemporary culture, and I feel like ENFPs, in particular, get heralded as Archetypal Extrovert – chatty! gregarious! loud! overbearing! lacking boundaries!
that’s so interesting! i’m just always so befuddled when people feel a very binary way about the E vs I — for me it is so hard to categorize and honestly feels inauthentic to pretend to be just one or the other. anyway, yay for us! <3
I am also an INFJ though my extroversion/introversion is pretty 50/50.
I am an INFP and the oldest child so I have am very familiar with the Mediator role. Whether or not I actually want it.
(I think one of the MANY reasons I have been drawn to Alex Danvers’ story is the moment when she’s coming out to Maggie and she says she’s “always felt so responsible”… ME TOO, DANVERS.)
Hi Beth. Another INFP, oldest child. I hear you. Mediator whether you want it or not.
INTP and the oldest, I get txt messages from my siblings venting about each other all the time! I don’t think they do this to each other about me?
I am no fan of Myers-Briggs, because depending on the test I get wildly different results, from ISFJ to ENTJ. The only thing that’s consistent is that I’m “judging”.
Some tests provide percentage scores, and I’m always pretty much 50-50 Extraverted/Introverted, Intuitive/Sensing and Thinking/Feeling, leaning a few percentage points either way depending on the questions asked.
I have been INTP for life, but I took the test linked above and it spat out INFP. I am devastated. Where has this “feeling” come from? It’s ruining my personal brand.
MBTI and other personality tests are a hot-button issue for me, especially in discussing how minorities test on them. Like Creatrix, I know I skew extroverted and hate the stereotypes that have gotten wrapped up in that as of late in internet discussions. When did extrovert start meaning overbearing alcoholic consent-ignoring frat bro and introvert start meaning cat person/book lover/person with social anxiety or mental health concerns? (No offense to cat people, book lovers, or people with social anxiety or mental health concerns, obviously; full offense, for unrelated reasons, to overbearing consent-ignoring frat bros.) It’s become such a stereotype of I/E discussions on the internet that it’s almost become a personified Everyman and his anti-MPDG trope.
And aside from the implicit gendering and racializing that Creatrix mentioned–or maybe directly linked to those–it’s become incredibly shitty to people with mental health concerns and minorities in unsafe life situations of one type or another. I’m looking at this test, and the questions “You find it difficult to introduce yourself to other people,” “You do not usually initiate conversations,” “You often feel as if you have to justify yourself to other people,” “You do not mind being at the center of attention,” “People can rarely upset you,” “It is often difficult for you to relate to other people’s feelings,” “In a discussion, truth should be more important than people’s sensitivities,” “You rarely worry about how your actions affect other people,” “You do not let other people influence your actions,” “It does not take you much time to start getting involved in social activities at your new workplace,” “You rarely feel insecure,” and “You think that everyone’s views should be respected regardless of whether they are supported by facts or not” jump out at me right away, because all of those (and arguably a lot of these others) are often going to be directly influenced by someone’s minority status.
And the fact that MBTI claims to be measuring something that’s natural and innate in human brain chemistry is really messed up when it comes to minorities taking the test. Is small talk with that random person on the bus next to you who was just ranting about how homosexuality is the work of the devil because something something Catholic priests molesting young boys easy and mentally recharging for a queer person? Or that average innocuous-seeming person on the bus next to you who could start ranting about that at any second if you start a conversation with them? Does it make you a natural, innate introvert if not? How about small talk with the invasive grocery cashier dude who wants to know where you live around here and what your plans are for the weekend and if you have a boyfriend or not? Any minority knows that it’s a privilege to get to not worry about what other people think of you or not let other people influence your actions. Is it a natural, innate part of your personality to think that everyone’s views should be respected regardless of whether they’re substantiated by fact or not when the kind of exposure most of us have to that attitude is someone’s view on whether we should be allowed to continue being alive or not based on our skin color, gender, or who we partner with in relationships?
I think there are interesting ideas in Carl Jung and Myers and Briggs’ work regarding personality and cognition (anyone interested in MBTI should read up on cognitive function theory, because proper MBTI theory actually has nothing to do whatsoever with E = extrovert, J = judging), but until we can unentangle it from gendered and racialized stereotypes (xxFJs are motherly, xSTPs are freewheeling athletic men, xNTJs make six figures, etc.) and test questions automatically working from an assumption of certain societal privileges, I’m not sure how minorities are ever going to get accurate test results, not test results that are mostly confirmations of how comfortable or uncomfortable they are in their broader surroundings related to their minority status.
Thank you for articulating what I felt while taking this test. Especially this:
“Any minority knows that it’s a privilege to get to not worry about what other people think of you or not let other people influence your actions.”
Thanks. As I said, it’s a hot-button topic for me, so I could go on for days about all this, but the main issue I see in personality sorting tests–and MBTI is the worst offender among them–is that they’re rooted in a nature-over-nurture approach to personality. I’m not someone who ascribes to a fully blank-slate theory with regard to personality, but MBTI’s rhetoric is working with some really strong implicit biases right out of the gate. I’m not 100% certain on the factual validity of the often-repeated claim that MBTI was initially born out of Katharine Cook Briggs’ desire to psychoanalyze her son-in-law, but nevertheless it still has to be taken into account that the test was created by a pair of straight, affluent early-20th-century white women working with a passing observer’s knowledge of Carl Jung’s cognitive function work and attempting to create a system for determining how people would best be put to employment in career fields associated with and governed by the colonialist, capitalist, patriarchal Western career world. And not that all personality sorting systems don’t have issues with nature-over-nurture attitudes, but the HR cult that’s arisen around MBTI has only amplified that it’s the loudest of the bunch in asserting that everything it tests is innate and inborn.
Or in other words, Myers and Briggs were archetypes of everything we call out as toxic white feminism in social justice conversations today, and their social theory as it’s applied today is working with the same ideas of oppression predestination as Indian caste system appropriations of Buddhist ideas of karma or modern American religions influenced by Calvinism that spout rapture/End Times/children of Cain/etc. rhetoric. And with the advent of internet listicle/quiz culture and the stereotypes it’s perpetuated about I/E, we are doing the work for the oppressor ourselves in clinging to systems like MBTI as innate, unchangeable aspects of our personality, when what most of them are measuring is much more rooted in our mainstream privilege or lack thereof, our trauma responses and mental health concerns, and our ability or willingness to conform with the Western intellectual, economic, and social hegemony.
I get the rationality behind it. Of course I do. As members of the queer community in particular, born-this-way rhetoric is often a tempting, if not outright necessary, defense against conversion-therapy types and people literally out to murder us on a daily basis. But even Carl Jung didn’t believe that introversion and extroversion were as fixed and innate as MBTI purports, which isn’t even getting into cognitive functions theory and how it actually works off a basis of alternating qualities about ourselves, some being introverted and others being extroverted. If I/E at its most baseline state is like a human cell phone battery analogy, and cognitive functions theory at its most baseline state is a machine structure blueprint that maps the way that battery charge travels through you (that’s a really rough analogy, but it works as an introductory point), then MBTI assumes that the machine is functioning perfectly at all times, and if it’s not, then it’s your fault and something you need to work on about yourself to get yourself back up to its ideal.
I was reading a great thinkpiece the other day about resistance in the African-American community to seek out mental health treatment, working off the underlying point of: why should the onus be put on oppressed people experiencing ongoing trauma to mark their trauma as their shortcoming, when it’s the flawed system that fails to recognize their humanity and creates the trauma in the first place? And of course I certainly don’t mean to co-opt that specific discussion in service of talking about MBTI, but the underlying point is valid–all of MBTI’s archetypes are based off of specific sorts of white men and women that fuel (or hinder, in some cases) the business and domestic practices of Western society.
And we pretend this is all innate, and we plaster it all over ourselves and our online profiles as a pride badge, and we use it to weaponize our outwardly-destructive mental health concerns as justified ways of perpetuating abuse cycles because of the abuse done to us, and we internalize that our self-destructive and maladaptive-because-you-have-to-be-for-basic-self-preservation-in-this-society mental health concerns are an inherent and fixed part of our mind-body-dualist essences as humans, and we do the work for the oppressor ourselves.
Right, so these tests make it seem like the outcome is a natural state for the one taking the test, whereas it is likely learned behavior (nurture). And even worse, the outcomes are based on outdated/narrow-minded assumptions about behavior in general. It seems like a lot of people in the comments actually experience this, as they get different results each time.
Trying to summarize in my own words, let me know if I misunderstood.
Yep, exactly.
OH MY FUCKING GOD THANK YOU
To kinda answer Remy’s question too – I was much more naturally extroverted as a kid, had no qualms about going up to people and trying to befriend them. But very soon I was punished for it. I basically had the extroversion beaten out of me. I was too loud, I was the wrong race, I was taking up space where I shouldn’t, my existence was breaking a boundary, yadda yadda.
I’ve basically had to learn how to BE an introvert because my extroversion gets punished over and over. I get extremely annoyed at people who are all “the world is made for extroverts! nobody loves introverts!” because no, if you are a queer immigrant woman of colour, if you are any flavour “crazy”, if you are not part of the Dominant culture (even within subcultures), you’re not “extroverted”, you’re “overbearing”. You’re an “energy vampire”.
So I spend a lot of time alone, I live alone, even though part of me knows that it’s not really the best idea for me. I don’t make the first move in social situations unless I have a real good reason to do so. I have been told I’m too much even when I don’t say or do anything, so sometimes it feels just a lot safer to be small, because people are going to read me as big anyway. Or sometimes I just go “fuck it” and go big – but I usually only do that when I’m performing, because then I can get away with it.
And yeah, so many of the questions that these tests pose don’t necessarily determine what I like or don’t like. The approaches I take really depend on the situation, especially how far I can get with them.
Every. Single. Thing. You said here. YES.
I don’t have the same racial pressures in my cocktail as you (though I’m not of the socioeconomic class or ethnic background associated with the WASP-ish whiteness of MBTI stereotypes), but every single other thing you’re saying here about having the extroversion punished out of you is my exact experience as well. I could tl;dr a ton with you about everything in another conversation context, but “don’t talk to her, she’s so shy/quiet/passive” was used as a direct abuse tactic for me growing up to jump the gun and accomplish the sort of thing you’re describing here. And like you, I’ve had to train myself to be a pseudo-introvert, which I can sort of pull off in limited settings given my training (read: more punishment-into-submission) as a Good and Smart Kid in school. And I’m absolutely atrocious at it, and it’s actively fed my anxiety and mental health concerns over the years, so, you know, “good at pulling it off” is relative.
“I get extremely annoyed at people who are all “the world is made for extroverts! nobody loves introverts!” because no, if you are a queer immigrant woman of colour, if you are any flavour “crazy”, if you are not part of the Dominant culture (even within subcultures), you’re not “extroverted”, you’re “overbearing”. You’re an “energy vampire”.”
YES YES YES THIS YES OH MY GOD. My partner is a self-professed social introvert–she’s really skilled at social interaction, but ask her about I/E and she’ll sigh heavily and say that how she feels about prolonged socialization is like how she feels about driving, in that she’ll do it if she needs to for broader safety or convenience reasons without batting an eye, except for how sometimes you get off work after a stressful day or you have a headache and then the thought of even driving the ten blocks home makes you want to sob your eyes out. And both of us have agreed for a long time that the myth that the world is made for extroverts is a giant fucking myth–the (white, Western, 9-5 business-oriented and approved forms of after-work socialization) world is made for a very specific type of social introvert skilled in very specific types of pre-approved social skills. We have both long said that if you’re of the “nobody loves introverts” camp, you probably really need to recognize that you have abusive extroverts (or even more likely, abusive privileged white social introverts) in your life who aren’t respecting your boundaries and your social and cultural needs and your unique qualities–WHICH IS NOT AN INHERENT QUALITY OF EXTROVERSION. You have abusers in your life who don’t respect you as a human, and you need to label that as such rather than pretending it’s a fundamental Extroverts Are From Mars, Introverts Are From Venus divide of innate personality, you know?
I’ve gotten the same as you all the time–overbearing, an energy vampire, or my personal favorite flavor, a control-freak narcissist who tells people what to think and how to think it and talks over people and doesn’t let them get a word in edgewise, even as I am often in situations where I’m literally begging people to talk to me, to add their perspective, to call me out if they need to if mine is fundamentally flawed somehow, and to at any moment’s notice tell me to shut up and stop talking if I’m making them uncomfortable. My life feels like it’s been one giant game of putting on a sheepskin of pseudo-introversion, being called shy and quiet and passive because I’m holding myself in so hard I can barely breathe, finally letting it out when in danger of completely suffocating myself, “[being] told I’m too much even when I don’t say or do anything,” being called some variant on crushingly overbearing/an energy vampire/a control-freak narcissist, and rinse and repeat.
And especially as someone who’s in the process of reconciling and trying to find the right words for a genderqueer identity (why can’t I just fucking be me? Why do I have to come up with the right words to make myself marketable to subcultures within subcultures so they can be packaged right for middle America’s sensibilities?), that is HELL when it comes to the overbearingly gendered slant that I/E is taking on as of late in the face of recent internet discourse. Extroversion is becoming equated as a facet of toxic masculinity (or of women “selling out to the boys’ club”/slut-shaming attitudes) more and more with every listicle that blends in every possible offensive stereotype of the feminist-as-anti-MPDG with mumblemumble something about cats and books mumblemumble something about being afraid to call and order a pizza and calls it a manifesto about how the world doesn’t recognize the power of introverts. I’m the first person to loudly and proudly recognize the (actual) power of introverts–I’ve been in a relationship with one for almost a decade now and fought a lot battles on her behalf when she hasn’t been up for it–but current discussions about I/E are taking on such a heavy slant of extrovert = male, introvert = female, extrovert = white, and so on, to the extent that they’re just repackaging the same old kyriarchical stereotypes of privilege and oppression and pretending they apply blanketly and innately to I/E, not that our societal perceptions of I/E and people’s learned maladaptive behaviors dealing with societal interaction in the Western world aren’t the underlying factors causing 75% of the behavior being identified as supposedly “innate” I/E behavior.
And to see social-justice-minded minorities embrace all that so passionately and vocally without seeming to recognize at all that they’ve been sold a repackaged version of war-of-the-binary-genders rhetoric honestly makes me want to rip my hair out half the time I get on the internet anymore, and adding “your extroversion probably makes you the equivalent of the Frat Bro Who Won’t Take No For An Answer” (or whoops, is that literal and not equivalent, what is gender, how does it apply to me, I don’t fucking know) to my beating-the-extroversion-out-of-me cocktail leaves me feeling like we’ve rebranded “energy vampire” as “energy rapist,” too.
You are amazing and I love you.
Also boundaries!! I feel like the reason people start calling themselves “extroverted introverts” is that they (rightly) recognise that they have boundaries and somehow think boundaries are antithetical to extroversion. There’s this assumption that extroverts don’t respect other people’s boundaries, but there’s also this weird expectation that extroverts don’t HAVE boundaries – they like people! so therefore they must be open to people all the damn time! And if you DON’T want to be that accessible 24/7 then you MUST be an introvert!
it’s like, you’re too much and overbearing, but we will make demands on your emotional labour too because you’re the people person, you can handle it anytime.
(cat extrovert here :D)
You are also amazing and it’s great to commiserate with someone who’s experienced similar things in this regard.
Hard yes to everything there re: boundaries. There’s also an extra layer of messiness on all that for me personally, because I’m an abuse survivor and not becoming that, not perpetuating the cycle, is really important to me, so for a long time it was really important to me to head things off with an “I will be your best friend” attitude in a direct “I will not be the thing I hate” way, which, protip, wow, don’t do that, as it inevitably ends with insecure people latching onto you as their manic pixie dreamperson. But the boundaries and 24/7-accessibility-demanding-while-simultaneously-shaming thing is a common complaint I hear from extroverts–and there’s definitely a lot of argument to be made that we’re doing it to ourselves loudly and proudly positing ourselves as extroverts, I suppose, which brings us back to the whole discussion of whether claiming hard-and-fast labels re: personality is a positive thing at all. On the topic of extroverted introversion, that’s similar to how I used to identify as an ambivert for the same reasons you mention. Also, don’t even get me started on how extroversion clearly means you like ALL people, equally, at all times, always…
(dog-skewing extrovert with a general “some people are shitty owners of all varieties of pets and that shouldn’t be excused for a supposed Dogs Are From Mars, Cats Are From Venus creepy implicit gendering of animal species” caveat)
Isn’t there a distinction to be made between the theory of MBTI and its interpretation though? I mean, the test you took, these questions you very accurately point out as being biased and misleading, they were constructed by someone who had their own idea of how this typing worked and how it could be evaluated through a simple questionnaire. Someone else could do it differently, taking into account the influence of nurture, minority status, any factor they’d deem impactful.
It’s not my intention to defend this theory, it’s plenty flawed alright, I just don’t think we can blame it for the weird way in which people now separate introverts and extroverts, among other things. That’s people. Not always bothering to look into the stuff they use, taking any shortcuts they can think of. So, the Myers-Briggs supposes we are innately wired to use certain functions, in a precise order, if we overlook the fact that this has no scientific basis whatsoever, it doesn’t actually mean that our predominant function is going to be the one we use most for all of our life. There’s an influence of nurture in that we might tend to ignore our natural tendencies and bring out other functions that are more adapted to the constraints of our environment. The point is, we won’t feel as good when doing so.
In this perspective, the erasure or sobering of certain behaviors in members of minorities, which is obviously real, could be seen as forcing them to call upon minor functions constantly, and seeing as how this makes people feel like shit, it would be yet another form of violence.
I think we’re on the same page here, and I apologize if my original comment came across as heavily conflating and blaming the issues with MBTI’s construction (which I do feel are valid to discuss in their own right) for the bastardization of I/E stereotypes in pop psychology, particularly internet pop psych. They’re two completely different issues–except for the times when, in the eyes of the majority of pop-psych personality sorters, they’re not, because outside of licensed practitioners and similar devotees, little significant distinction is made between Myers and Briggs’ original work and the cultural climate and biases it was created in, the $135 billion corporate industry of MBTI, and free online tests like 16personalities and the way their results are spread. And that’s an issue of critiques of pop psych as a whole, which is its own beast (if we started down the road of American bootstrap mentality and New Thought religion’s influence on pop psych, we’d be here all day), except for how MBTI is primarily applied as pop psych in one way or another, be it online quizzes like this one or be it the way that MBTI and CAPT are in bed with big-business HR.
On the note of MBTI itself, I’d point to this article, which discusses pyramid scheme issues in MBTI’s official administration, racism and sexism in Myers and Briggs’ original work, and issues with the company dismissing the concerns of minorities during seminars. Again, I think there are really valid and interesting ideas in the discussion of cognitive functions–though it’s far from settled that MBTI is correct in the way it assesses their order and operation in human personality. The most fundamental issue I see with MBTI is that it was specifically created to analyze and tell people how they would best function as capitalist workers, which makes its popularity in social-justice-minded internet discourse ironic given that most of us are trying to critique and dismantle capitalist and colonialist social structures in one way or another. And when it gets blurred into pop psych, it just furthers the idea that your trained business mode of thinking and operation IS your identity–that you have no life or personality outside of being a worker bee within the system. Then there’s the issue that it’s frequently used in business settings as a convenient way to reject people from jobs or corporations because they test as the wrong type for the business’ atmosphere or current employee makeup, which doesn’t necessarily have any basis in reality (the book that article mentions is by a conservative Christian author attempting to claim that Jung’s interest in the metaphysical means that personality testing is Satanic and humanity’s attempt to play God, fyi, but the overall point being made in the article still stands). Other issues include how it’s gained a cult-like following among its practitioners and devotees, and the circular and strawman logic employed sometimes to defend it from fundamental critiques can be intense. (There are also a lot of negative critiques of MBTI out there from psychology dudebros discounting it on face value because Myers and Briggs were women who weren’t trained psychologists–including discounting from Jung himself, per that first article–which is obviously its own beast and should rightly be called out as misogyny and strawmanning.)
My issue with I/E stereotypes is a different issue, and again, apologies if that all came across as conflated in the original post. It is and it isn’t the same issue, if that makes sense. The best I can make of things after a lot of study of cognitive functions and other personality sorting measures is that what’s popularly considered I/E in modern internet pop psychology probably has a lot to do with Fe/Fi clashes and high Se types clashing with everyone else, along with a hell of a lot to do with gender, race, and other stereotypes and oppressions in society. And that’s where the violence against minorities thing comes in, obviously, and the forcing of lower functions, or the easy misreads on tests that lead to self-affirmation that identification as a type that isn’t even how you’re operating mentally at all means you’re predestined to not get along with certain kinds of people/not do well at certain jobs/not belong in certain social and economic spheres.
My issue with personality as innate in the way that MBTI presents it is that it doesn’t allow for room for growth or for adaptability of behavior, whether it’s the violence against minorities we’re discussing here or more positive growth and adaptability. There are a lot of comments on here from people saying they frequently test as multiple types, that the type they test as has changed over the years, or that they’re aware they display different type-related behaviors in different situations. Sometimes that can be negative, as in the functionality forcing/mistyping of minorities due to biased questions–but what about when it’s positive? What if your partner or your job or a similar factor make you a better person not because they make you feel like you’ve found your place in life and everything clicks, but because they break you out of your comfort zone in how you usually think and operate? I guess that’s where I’m at with MBTI–a measure of mental comfort zone seems more apt than a measure of an innate, inborn, fixed way of thinking, especially when that predestination element lends itself so heavily to mind-body dualist thinking, problematic religious or social caste justifications for oppression factors, and justification that abusive or problematic personal behaviors can’t be helped because that’s just your type.
On the issue of biased questions, I hear you, and I guess my counter to that is, then how does one come up with entirely unbiased questions to ask to get past nurture factors and get at something supposedly innate? Can that even be done? Can you say the mechanism is innate rather than learned if you can’t measure it by objective means? All of that goes into a lot of general philosophy-of-science questions, but the more pragmatic point is that though I’ve never taken the proper MBTI instrument, given all the known issues with the company, it’s unlikely that its questions are unbiased and taking function forcing because of negative life situations or oppressions into account. (Or, alternately, that they just don’t care about function forcing, because what it’s trying to accomplish in its modern application is feeding workers into the corporate system.) So if the issue of how to make test questions entirely unbiased, or at least minimally biased, is a messy one in terms of not just MBTI’s modern application but also its development, then we’re back at cognitive functions and the idea that MBTI’s most notable contribution to sociology is likely its hypothesis about the attitude of the inferior functions, particularly the tertiary function.
Wow, that’s a detailed answer if there ever was one. Thank you so much for that, I’m actually very happy to have engaged you on that point because I’ve just learned a lot. You were indeed tackling multiple issues at the same time and it got a bit confusing for me, but really I cannot but agree with you, and most points you raise I wouldn’t dare comment because, well, they’re pretty much perfect.
The dangers of its use in HR were always the most obvious to me, although reading about cognitive functions and certain behaviours associated to them had helped me understand and most importantly accept,in retrospect, why I was dissatisfied with my performance in some work environments (non-corporate, in leftist organisations, which is even worse because the results actually mattered). I’m glad you helped enlarge my concern to its role in oppressing minorities, and its dubious leanings towards a dualist approach.
Unbiased testing seems out of the question, I guess it wouldn’t be as hurtful if it had only been a personnal tool, if there was no testing at all, only the theory and our desire to explore how well it could fit with our psyche and experience. Wanting someone or something to read us perfectly and tell us who we are is nothing new, the wider and quite recent problem is that corporations get as interested in the answer as we.
The first article’s bit about Myers’s history was a lot of fun because I had no idea she was a writer, and my main use of the MBTI is typing my own fictitious characters and put them through their respective hells. But then she got all “wouldn’t it be nice to have everyone at their right place?” and her picture switched to Cruella De Vil in my head. Anyway, thanks again!
THIS IS SO INTERESTING
Am I the only one who is now hankering for an astrology roundtable pretty please with a cherry on top
we did one!
https://www.autostraddle.com/whats-our-sign-344770/
The linked test got me WAY wrong, for several of the reasons mentioned above here – I am now, and have always been, INTJ-A with a near-F, but this spat out ISFJ… what? Not even close. My analytical architect brain is displeased.
But I also noticed when taking the test how some of my answers are shaped by my current relationship, job, or other context… e.g. when somebody is upset do I give advice or just listen? My instinct is all advice all the time, but because my partner has told me over and over again that advice is not what he needs, I’ve learned how to keep that inside and just listen… so I guess the test doesn’t account for the idea that behavior might be different than “self” (hello gender, race, etc…)
I definitely find that my relationship with my wife, who has very different strengths than me, to have pushed me more in certain directions. I lean towards caretaking of our home and of the kids.
I came out as below and it is pretty accurate for me. I’m very much a go with your gut type person. Those logic puzzle grid problems literally give me a migraine! My brain just doesn’t twist that way. Likewise, numbers are not my thing. And as I recently completed a therapy course on managing worry, I wasn’t surprised by the results at all.
Personality type: “The Advocate” (INFJ-T)
Individual traits: Introverted – 100%, Intuitive – 71%, Feeling – 78%, Judging – 72%, Turbulent – 90%
Role: Diplomat
Strategy: Constant Improvement
When I first learned about MBTI in college years ago I would always test as ENFJ, and it never quite fit me. I have a really hard time understanding the J/P piece, but I found a really good breakdown somewhere and realized I am DEFINITELY on the P side of that line. So like y’all I’ve considered myself ENFP for the last like… decade?? And it fit me perfectly.
But now that I’ve been on anxiety medication for nearly a year, I am seriously starting to think I may actually be ENTP. One site calls this type “the debater” and anybody who knows me knows I LOVE a good argument. I’ve lived my entire life thinking in terms of emotion because of my anxiety, and I still tend to test as ENFP, but honestly… the T makes sense. Going with EN*P for now, until I figure it out for sure.
INTJs, I see you, I am you, we would get along so well, based on our over-representation within the selection of people I consider some of my favourite in the world. yes this is alllll very highly scientific and I don’t even care, I need my form of astrology too ok.
Heeeeey haha
Tested as ENFJ…and most interested in the discussions about how tests skew according to personal/cultural position.
Irt extroversion…Creatrix Tiara, I’m wondering if it’s the same for you in that I feel what I would call very responsive to others? I gain creative energy from interacting with others, especially one on one or in small groups, but need space to myself after or I get overloaded.
Vanessa!!! Wanna read great books and then plan theme parties around them?? Bc yes that is also 100% my jam combo flavour DO NOT MAKE ME CHOOSE….how about Malinda Lo’s “Huntress” or Grace Ellis’ “Moonstruck”???
Ooooo that’s a really good way to put it, especially creatively. Yes! I get a lot more creative things accomplished in groups – even if I’m working on my own thing, just their presence is helpful (coworking with friends is SO GOOD). And when I get overloaded it’s not necessarily “too many people” but more “too much input also why the fuck are there strobe lights”.
Exact same here on all counts, and just jumping in to say that I have both synesthesia and sensory processing disorder, for whatever that’s worth in this conversation. I’ve looked into the concept of HSPs as well, and found it equal parts relatable and not at all relatable in large part due to the “most HSPs are also stereotypical introverts” party line common to those discussions.
Long time INTJ personality. When I took this in college it really helped to know my type so that I could communicate more effectively with all those “feelers” that didn’t quite understand me emotionally because I tend to process at a different speed/style.
I am also the special type that likes to put this in my dating profile, moreso as a warning than a way to match with folks. :)
That’s a great idea! Now if I could only get around to writing the rest of my dating profile… or maybe INTJ is enough to explain me anyway
I would assume only another INTJ would understand. It’s kind of like saying “Scorpio”- there are plenty of assumptions.
so i really really like Myers-Briggs and am always trying to convince my friends to find out their types ?
needless to say, my INFJ self was super excited to see this roundtable on this beautiful Monday!
I’m an INFP too! We seem to be very common in the sort of fandom-y/lefty circles I swim in online even though we’re supposedly one of the rarer types.
One thing I’ve noticed about MBTI types is groups tend to all click best when no one person is more than two letters away from any other – that might sound v specific but I noticed it when a bunch of us at uni took the test, and me and my housemates at the time (we clicked immediately which tends to be pretty rare) were INFP, INFJ, ISFP, INTP, and a friend of mine and his housemates (again, all super close) were ESTP, ESFP, ISFP. Maybe that’s just common sense though? I found it interesting anyway!
I’m an INFP (lots of us in here, apparently!), and I struggle with it because it always describes us as lovely, kind, idealists who want everyone to get along and see the bright side of everything. I’m also a Scorpio and a Slytherin and am decidedly NOT that positive about things, tending more towards dark humor and sarcasm. But I do tend to be a mediator, people love to tell me their problems, and I work in a creative field, so perhaps it’s not totally off-base?
Okay so Myers-Briggs. I have gotten historically usually INTJ or ENTJ, sometimes INTP, rarely ENTP. I just took a version of it now and it gave me ENFP (though this test gave me percentages and this version I was basically 50-50 on everything except T/P).
I got issues with something that gives such wildly varying results and I know that some of the questions were skewing my answers about the T/P because…yeah, I HAVE TO IMPROVISE EVERYTHING thanks to chronic illness and not being able to predict flares and I genuinely would love to be able to plan more but plans are “tentatively doing [activity with friends] on [day] so I am going to Rest The Fuck Up like three days leading up to that and block out a day or two afterwards for the crash” but like sometimes still those plans fall through bc the bod goes “lol NOPE”. I mean. I’ve never been one for super detailed plans because I’m a Hot Mess but also not being able to have more than vague ideas of plans is genuinely distressing to me both because I want to know that stuff but also with chronic illness stuff I need to know that sort of stuff so I can prep as much as possible and/or suggest alternate plans if the suggested plans are not a good idea for my bod.
I almost always get INTJ when I take these tests, which feels very fitting. I was curious if it had changed and took a few last week and again got INTJ but also ISFJ, which makes some sense my sensing/intuition and thinking/feeling are pretty much tied and closely linked to each other so it can kind of fluctuate based on whatever is going on in my life. But I guess I am always introvertedly judging, which is pretty true. I love that so many Autostraddle people are also I..J
“Especially since I’m the type of person the cab driver tells their whole life story to, and people often say they feel comfortable opening up to me very quickly; the feeling isn’t usually mutual. This also means the few people who DO get past those walls have to carry the whole burden of my inner turmoil; congratulations?”
I feel very seen right now. Please stop.
I love all the MBTI stuff and find it fascinating. I was so happy to see it as a topic. Especially because it randomly came up this weekend. I think AS is now tapping in to my brain:P I’m an ISFP.
For those of you who didn’t get the result that best fit them, I did find a while ago a website that showed common mistypings from online tests. I wish I could remember where it was… Something about the way they have to formulate the online tests because of copyright issues can sway some of the results. I often come up as an N because I like to read (which is used as a signifier for N because Ns TEND to read more than Ss). Sure enough, INFP popped up in my common mistyping results.
Mine was ISFJ, defender, which focused on family and friends. It fits. I love being helpful, especially to family and friends. I do worry sometimes about it being gendered, but being a parent is what I’ve always wanted and foster parenting, and flexible jobs, allow me to do just that.
Okay, so I thoroughly enjoyed this round table. I’m not sure how I feel about the Myers-Briggs of it all. I’ve taken this test so many times and it always comes out to INTJ or INFJ. The F/T is usually split nearly 50/50. I’m not exactly sure what to do with that. Does that mean I’m a mediator and an advocate? I could honestly see both. Also, I always get turbulent, and I find it rude.
Me too! I straddle the F/T.
I’m usually some crazy outlier. Somehow it’s comforting to see those same letters in this list.
I work in Human Resources in a large Public Service Department and have therefore done this test a lot. We use it in our self development and leadership courses. I always get INFJ. The first time I did the MBTI and got INFJ it was as if a light had been shone on who I really was as a person. It helped me understand myself a lot better.
That being said much like everything in life it’s not for everybody and as passionately as I swear by MBTI others in my section prefer the Enneagram or Big Five Personality Tests.
I have always, every single time I’ve taken this test come out as an INFJ. According to this one I’m an INFJ-T, which yes.
INFJ describes me so perfectly it’s rude. I can be outspoken but only about things I’m passionate about. I’m a perfectionist to the core. I have a lot of feelings, but I’m super picky about who I spend my time with.
Oh MBTI. You just get me.
I don’t mean to party poop or anything, but I’m surprised that so many people here (everyone?) define the Myers-Briggs as dichotomic. That’s only the tests you find on the web, because it’s so much easier to program, but the actual method doesn’t work with oppositions (at least not these ones). For a long time I thought it did and it felt wildly unprofessional and gave fairly unstable results so I never brought it up, but if you start looking at how the theory was built… well, it gets much more interesting for one thing, like everything you dig into, but it’ll also begin to feel trustworthy, like a well-balanced tool.
From what I learned, although I’m no specialist, the sensible question is not “are you an E over an I?” but “in which preferential order do you use your cognitive functions?”. The creators of this particular typing determined there were 8 functions, combining the extroverted or introverted trait with either a perceiving or judging process. Supposedly, everyone would use 4 of them, one of each possible combination (extroverted/perceiving, introverted/perceiving, extroverted/judging, introverted/judging) and your 4-letter typing would be infered from the functions you use predominantly, not the other way around. Although we are still able to call upon all other functions, they tend to make us feel out of our element and possibly sweat heavily.
Funny thing I’ve come across! All other letters identical, a ***P and a ***J share no common function, at all. An INFP for example (lots of them in here!) would read like this : 1. Introverted Feeling 2. Extroverted Intuition 3. Introverted Sensing 4. Extroverted Thinking, while his INFJ counterpart would be : 1. Introverted Intuition 2. Extroverted Feeling 3. Introverted Thinking 4. Extroverted Sensing
So if you were confused between the two of them, no I’m not looking at anyone in particular, you just have to read what Introverted Feeling and Introverted Intuition represent as methods of apprehension and action in the world. thoughtcatalog has a LOT of articles detailing this if anyone’s curious!
In a way, I feel that any kind of typing isn’t worth much until you can type yourself. Like, we made do without the actual Sorting Hat, didn’t we?
Is it weird to anyone that literally none of you (the writers) are Sensing types (as opposed to iNtuitive types)??? Like, why TF is that? Do any Myers-Briggs aficionados have any theories?
Also can I just say that being the same type as Creatrix Tiara, Mey, Vanessa, and KaeLyn makes me feel very affirmed in my life situation :P
I don’t think it feels too weird considering that intuitive functions, both extroverted and introverted, focus on the more abstract aspect of things; concepts, connections, possibilities, when sensitive ones are more about direct, and often material, surroundings. Creative types can be found among intuitive and sensitive dominants alike, but those who choose words to convey their thoughts or emotions ? Generally N.
Also, it may sound silly but sensitive dominants especially extroverted usually don’t spend too much time on the internet discussing stuff like the MBTI.
Ah, that makes sense. The consistency amazing, though!
This was my thought too!
not a single S in the entire roundtable???? those odds are extremely small!
also, i am apparently an ISFP-A, but every time i take this test it changes any or all of the letters except I. not sure what this means about me!
I got INFJ-T
My score was:
88% Introverted
64% Intuitive
65% Feeling
81% Judging
79% Turbulent
ISFJ “The Defender” here
It’s funny that everyone on the round table is an “N” or intuition as opposed to an “S” or sensing/observant .
just noticed that literally everyone else noticed that too, nvm!
Hi fellow Defender. We seem to be the only ones at home. Nice to see you here, things were looking very Spartan.
Yo! Where all my S’s at! #notatthewriterstable ?
Yo! Where all my S’s at! #notstraddlingthetable ?
INFP here. I could see where the questions could be answered in a number of ways depending on the situation, but some of the explanations were spot-on for me.
What really stood out was something Abeni wrote: “I have a hard time sleeping because I just lay in bed thinking about some idea, or having a conversation in my head, for hours.” SAME.
I also thought this statement in my breakdown was interesting: “The best car in the world will not take you to the right place if you do not know where you want to go.”
INTJ-T, And apparently very rare for women. .08% of the population. Explains a lot, and why I have felt out of out place and such a weirdo my whole life.
INTJ-T Explains a lot as to why I have felt so out of place and like a alien my whole life. It says only .08% of the population are INTJ-T and female.
Oh boy, just came back to this after actually taking the test myself. I’ve taken it like 7 times and gotten a different result each time, so I’ve always felt very confused and not super connected to Meyers-Briggs in general. But! I got INFP, which feels extremely accurate. I have a lot of feelings and want everyone to be friends and understand and like each other!! I actually think that maybe the reason I’ve gotten so many different results over the years is because I’m *such* a “mediator” type that for every question I’m like, well, I could see either side! (Working on a project alone could be good, but also there are so many good ideas that people have and it’s so interesting to hear about them, so working in groups could be good too!) And then there’s also the misandry/queer angle, so that for most of the questions I strongly agree with everyone feeling heard being the most important thing in a discussion, but then when they ask if it’s ok for some people to ignore facts, I’m like STRONG DISAGREE to bigots though!! I think these answers seem v contradictory and confusing to the poor Meyers-Briggs computer.
Also/but Heather! I don’t think I’ve ever identified with anything more: “I don’t really care what famous people share my personality type but I love talking about what fictional characters might share my personality type (the most INFP thing ever). All the tests say it’s Anne Shirley and Bilbo Baggins, which is a hoot because I’m absolutely in the center of that Venn diagram with its gentle overwrought sense of noble purpose and inability to not take everything just so super seriously.” I think I sort of forced myself to learn a sense of humor after being a very serious and very-easily-teased kid, and I *do* love to laugh now (as long as it is a very gentle good-natured type of humor that isn’t too mean to anybody!!), but aside from that: extremely yes.