The Myer’s-Briggs Type Indicator is a questionnaire about one’s preferred ways of perceiving the world and making decisions.
Each preference’s strength or weakness is assigned to one of four scales or ranges:
1. introversion (I) — extroversion (E)
2. sensing (S) — intuition (N)
3. thinking (T) — feeling, (F)
4. judging (J) — perceiving (P).
The indicator is rooted in a speculation of Jungian psychology that people experience the world using four principal functions (sensation, intuition, feeling, and thinking) and that one of them is dominant for a person most of the time.
The Myers-Briggs indicator classifies people according to their dominant preferences on the four scales into one of 16 different personality categories.
I remember the first time I filled out a Myers-Briggs questionnaire and received the results. My preferences classified me as a INTJ type, When I read a description of this type, I was amazed by how well it seemed to describe me. Here’s a sample description of an INTJ personality:
INTJs are introverts who are comfortable being by themselves. They avoid socializing as it drains their energy. They excel at developing plans and strategies. As analytical problem solvers, this personality type is strategic and innovative.
Their dominant cognitive function is introverted intuition which they use to read between the lines and unravel patterns. Their auxiliary function is extroverted thinking which makes them deliberate about solutions and highly organized.
The INTJ thrives in jobs that require logical systems and innovative solutions. They usually prefer to work alone. In relationships, they are loyal and are great at encouraging their partners.
Regrading introversion — extroversion, I was classified as “I” (introversion), but it was near the midpoint of the scale—in other words, my preference was not very strong. But, I recognized myself in the description.
For example, for me, too much socializing is exhausting, not energizing, and I’m pretty comfortable being left alone much of the time.
Anyway, in practice what does it all mean? There’s no right or wrong, good or bad, in these personality type classifications—just differences.
And, they are differences in preferences, not capabilities! Anybody is more or less capable of anything if they put their mind to it. It’s similar to many other ways we tend to classify people—e.g., by appearance, strength, accent, social status, popularity.
Discovering that everyone fits into a standard category can be somewhat reassuring. It’s like the story of the ugly duckling. Just because someone doesn’t fit into the expectations of some others doesn’t mean that person is deficient, just different.
There is another great lesson to be learned from the Myers-Briggs personality types: how better to understand people whose preferences, whose preferred way of thinking and doing things, are significantly different than our own.
They are not necessarily, e.g., better or worse, smarter or dumber, more or less insightful, more or less loving. They’re just different. They have different preferences, different comfort levels, different ways of coping, different ways of communicating.
Thank God for the differences. How awful it would be to live in a world where everybody was just like me!
30 November 2021