FA+
Shop
Personality types and tests (thoughts)
5 years ago
Since my last Journal about personality types didn't give any actual information about different specific personality typing systems, this Journal exists to provide some information about a few of the systems that I am familiar with and some of my thoughts about them. This Journal is a work in progress that will eventually cover Enneagram, Western Jungian Systems (e.g. Myers-Briggs Type Indicator® (MBTI), Keirsey Temperament Sorter (KTS)), Socionics, 16personalities/NERIS Type Explorer®, 'Big Five' (OCEAN) and HEXACO.
The main spheres of application for most of these personality typing systems has a lot of overlap: Career Guidance, Education (teaching), and Family Consulting. Socionics also deals more extensively with intertype compatibility and Enneagram offers spiritual or personal development advice while the Big Five is more academic and better suited to research projects.
Before I discuss specific systems I want to address a few common criticisms about personality typing systems and their associate psychometric tests (the tests that assign the type or ratings) as well as their supporters/adherents that are not specific to any one system but are commonly raised by detractors of a system or of the concept of personality typing in general.
- Regarding my qualifications: I don't have a university degree in Psychology or any of the Social Sciences. My knowledge of the various personality typing systems and their psychometric testing methods is that of a well-read layperson. I'm acutely aware that I'm not a specialist and that I am not necessarily using words in the same manner an academic psychologist would. I am familiar with technical writing and engineering specifications and the importance of writing with precision, but this Journal is not attempting to be academic or precise in how it uses language and terminology.
- Regarding social psychology in general. I am aware of the difficulty in repeating social psychology research. People have the right to be skeptical about these sorts of systems.
- Regarding criticism of 'self-report' personality tests (including not only Enneagram, MBTI, KTS, Socionics, 16 personalities/NERIS, and all of the tests that measure the 'Big Five', but also psychometric tests that help identify personality disorders like the NPI or PNI)... I think any serious scientist recognizes the problems inherent in self-reporting but for those who are going to wield this issue specifically as a criticism of any personality testing/typing system then I think it is incumbent upon THEM to suggest something better that is actually practical!!! You'd have a difficult time even performing a scientific study (e.g. of 1000 people) if all the participants needed to be independently evaluated by a single researcher (or better, a single panel of researchers/analysts) to achieve independence from self-reporting and even that would not solve the subjectivity issue since multiple researchers/analysts/therapists would likely interpret the criteria differently (a criticism of the Personality Disorders in the DSM). Having everyone visit a qualified psychological professional to receive their type and personalized advice sounds exceptionally costly and rather like an impractical dream, although perhaps someday there will be an AI with that level of complexity. There are already apps that provide some amount of therapy.
- Regarding criticism of the stability of personality factors or type over time in an individual... well some stability over time is part of the definition of 'personality' but if you're expecting complete consistency across different physical/mental states (normal, tired, hungry, drunk, angry, sad, etc.) then you may have unreasonable expectations and if you're expecting complete consistency over time (e.g. in a 'longitudinal study') then you're into the realm of the philosophy of personal identity and theory of mind and you're going to need to deal with metaphysical issues like the Platonistic/Christian concept of a 'soul' (a permanent and unchanging 'thing' that defines 'self') and the Buddhist concept of 'anatta' (there is no permanent and unchanging 'self' or soul). I think it is incumbent upon anyone who criticizes a personality test that yields different results for the same person at different times to not only suggest something better but also to demonstrate that the 'thing' that they are trying to measure is not itself changing over time!
My thoughts on Enneagram:
I'm much more familiar with the Jungian-based systems and the 'Big Five'. I've read a thin book on the Enneagram ("the essential enneagram" by David Daniels, M.D. and Virginia Price, Ph.D.) but I don't really know that much about it and although I know my own type I don't know the other 8 Enneagram types well enough to bring any pictures to mind if someone told me their 'number' nor do I know how to effectively interact with those types based on what my own type is. I like the idea that Enneagram doesn't imply that any of their 9 types is any better or worse than any other type, so it is like Myers-Briggs in that regard. I also like the idea of seeing at least one system that doesn't use multiple different independent factors (e.g. the various 2 factor systems, the 4 factors of MBTI, or the 5 factors of the 'Big Five' or NERIS) which are rated separately then combined into types but rather just has a group of types (or 'stereotypes' or even 'archetypes' if you prefer). Not having multiple factors eliminates the problem of people complaining about the rating system for each factor (e.g. whether it is a binary dichotomy, trinary, quartiles, etc. and whether it is referenced with regard to some objective standard or only referenced with regard to the average and standard deviation of a group of test samples), the downside is that not having those things makes it seem less scientific. Enneagram claims to have some research that supports their types and testing method but I don't know if there is independent validation of it. The Enneagram testing system that I saw just narrows down your choices and ultimately you need to read the descriptions of the types you are most likely to be and decide for yourself which one fits you the best. There is some correlation between the Enneagram types and the Jungian types but it isn't a one-to-one relationship, but rather based on your MBTI type you're probably going to be one of three or so Enneagram types.
The spiritual self-improvement advice for each type is an interesting touch that you don't get in most of the other typing systems I've seen. While the advice it gave me seems appropriate I couldn't help thinking that the advice Enneagram would probably give the Buddha is essentially "you're too detached from the physical world, you need to give into your desires and let loose more often" LOL, thanks Mara! That just shows that different personality types tend to pursue different spiritual paths; I wouldn't presume to try to tell the Buddha that he was on the wrong path and that Nirvana was not a worthy goal. That opinion of the Enneagram system's spiritual advice may simply reflect my limited knowledge of the system.
Personally, I wouldn't want to use Enneagram as a primary/first typing system but it is different enough from the Jungian systems that it makes a good way to differentiate between people who have the same Jungian type or it may provide a better fit for some people who don't think they fit well into the Jungian types.
My thoughts on Jungian systems:
I'm familiar with two main systems that are based on the work of Carl Jung, Myers-Briggs Type Theory (MBTT) and Socionics, as well as two variations/derivatives of MBTT, the Keirsey Temperament Sorter (KTS) and the NERIS Type Explorer®, which are similar to but distinct from MBTT due to the proprietary nature of the MBTI® test. 'Eastern' European Socionics is similar to but not identical to the 'Western' Myers-Briggs Type Theory (MBTT), with the last of the four 'letters' being defined somewhat differently. They are all developed from the (somewhat unscientific) ideas that Carl Jung published in the 1920's, but MBTT and KTS were developed in the West (USA) from more of a perspective of psychology and appropriateness for careers (by some people without formal degrees or training) while Socionics was developed in East Europe (USSR) from more of a perspective of sociology and interpersonal interaction. Both are criticized by their detractors as being rather unscientific or pseudoscience because of how they were developed, but in my opinion that is not necessarily a reason to condemn them... somebody using an Ouija board or Tarot cards might propose a theory that actually turns out to be correct (either by random chance or divine/supernatural inspiration), the role of logic and science is to prove or disprove any theory regardless of the origin of the theory. IMHO, comparing MBTT to Socionics is helpful because it discourages relying too much on one particular model and because each has a slightly different perspective and these sorts of dialectical comparisons are both how the truth is arrived at and how new ideas are created (c.f. Socrates to the Scientific Method). From a more pragmatic standpoint, it is difficult for proponents of either MBTT or Socionics to 'point at' the other one and call it pseudoscience without having to face how the same criticisms apply to their own preferred system, and hopefully seek to prove or improve their own.
- I haven't actually read Jung's works so I can't comment on the issues about how well people have developed and implemented them. MBTT, Socionics, and other Jungian systems have some very vocal detractors/haters, but I'd prefer it if they produced some good research rather than just complaining. I'm willing to read a peer-reviewed scientific critique, but the complaints I've seen tend to be a 'laundry list' that include issues that would not meet the muster for a peer reviewed scientific journal, including ad-hominem attacks against the developers of the system and complaints that are probably going to be common to anything in the 'soft' social sciences.
- Regarding naming and acronyms, MBTT = Myers-Briggs Type Theory, MBTI = Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (the actual test, which is proprietary and controlled), KTS = Keirsey Temperament Sorter (another test, which is different from MBTI and is also proprietary and controlled). IMHO the systems that are proprietary and tightly controlled tend to develop both adherents/supporters and 'haters', it can become as bad as philosophy, politics, or religion.
My thoughts on MBTT, and MBTI:
- I'm very familiar with MBTT and I've taken the full official MBTI several times over the last 30 years and I tend to get the same result which seems to fit me quite well. I like Keirsey's Temperament theory from the book "Please Understand Me" and how it groups the 16 Jungian types into 4 groups called temperaments (SP, SJ, NT, NF). My current preference of Jungian systems is the one at www.16personalities.com, since it incorporates Keirsey's four groupings of the 16 types and also adds a fifth letter that corresponds to Neuroticism in the 'Big Five', which brings a Jungian-based system into better alignment with the more thoroughly researched 'Big Five'.
- Regarding dichotomies and factors: Jung's idea of dichotomies and the specific 8 items organized into pairs of two 'opposite' dichotomies that he picked may or may not be 'correct' (an accurate model of objective reality), however even if the factors of 'personality' are not treated as 4 dichotomies as Jung did (with 4 binary scales as in the Myers-Briggs, e.g. Intuition vs. Sensing, Thinking vs. Feeling) but are considered to be 4 independent factors that are measured on a continuum it is still helpful to give both extremes of any individual factor their own names. For instance, some version of an Extraversion to Introversion continuum appears in many personality factor systems (e.g. Big Five, aka OCEAN) but it is easier to discuss the words 'Extroverted' and 'Introverted' rather than say "High Extroversion" and "Low Extroversion"... and possibly "Average Extroversion" aka 'Ambiversion', or even "Medium-High Extroversion" and "Medium-Low Extroversion", see the next item.
- Regarding discretized rating systems (particularly binary/dichotomy systems): Using and discussing binary ratings for any particular personality factor may not be particularly helpful, but it does make presentation and understanding easier and it can be helpful in not stigmatizing either the high or low end of that factor. IMHO, the main reason for binary ratings in literature and studies is to keep the total number of options to a managable number. It is easy to deal with a two-factor system with binary results for each factor that yields (2^2=4) four personalities (e.g. the Hippocrates four classical Greek personalities) but a two factor system with three results (including an intermediate or 'average' result for each factor) would yield (3^2=9) nine personalities, and a two-factor system with five results for each factor (e.g. very low, low, average, high, very high) would yield (5^2=25) over two dozen possibilities. Comparatively, while a four factor system with binary results yields (2^4=16) sixteen types like MBTI but including three results would make that (3^4=81) an unmanageable 81 types, and a five factor system (like the Big Five) with binary results yields (2^5=32) a barely tolerable thirty-two types but including three results would make (3^5=243) over two hundred types which would require huge studies to validate and encyclopedia-sized books to describe. Alternatively, using the 8 Jungian factors like Socionics (i.e. Te, Fe, Se, Ne, Ti, Fi, Si, Ni) but allowing them to be arranged in any order rather than using Model-A would yield (8x7x6x5x4x3x2x1 or 8! or 8 factorial = 40,320) over forty thousand types. Thus the number of factors used and how many ratings each factor is discretized into and whether the priority of the other factors becomes a factor itself effectively becomes limited simply by the practicalities of conducting research on them or discussing them in a book-length work. IMHO, I think it is incumbent upon anyone who criticizes the idea of binary ratings to suggest something better that is actually practical!!!
-- Here is my own suggestion regarding rating the factors: The binary capital letters commonly used for the MBTI types fail to show how strong the various preferences were, although the full MBTI results do indicate how strong the reported preference is. I actually prefer to show MBTI/Jung types using five letters for each different factor (dichotomy), using the small font letter 'x' to indicate someone with little preference and small font letters to indicate minor preference (e.g. e/i, s/n, t/f, j/p - a/t) and reserving the capital letters (E/I, S/N, T/F, J/P - A/T) to indicate someone with a strong preference. There is a very big difference between an ixxj and an INTj; MBTT theory probably won't be as helpful or applicable to someone who has a lot of x's and small letters compared to someone with a lot of capital letters (e.g. an ixxj compared to an INTj). It is important to remember that the stereotypes of the various 16 MBTI personalities are just that, STEREOTYPES, and I haven't encountered a serious book about MBTT that didn't stress that in the introduction to the 16 types.
- Regarding the number of factors that make up 'personality': According to current research, the number of individual factors of personality that underlie or make up the 'Big Five' is probably on the order of two to three dozen (e.g. the SPI-27), which can be grouped into five major groupings, the 'Big Five'. However it is the two to three dozen individual factors that are more important to determining personality, not how those average into the 'Big Five' groupings. Thus if there were 27 factors and each factor was rated simply as 'low', 'average', or 'high' then there would be 3^27 = 7.6 TRILLION possible combinations, or a thousand times more than there are currently humans alive on planet Earth; that level of complexity is partially why psychiatry seems more like art than science and why each person on Earth can essentially be considered their own 'unique' personality type (even without considering other factors like culture and personal history).
- Placing the 'average' for a factor: Regardless of how many factors are chosen (whether 2, 3, 4, 5 or some other number of factors), there is a fundamental question for each factor of what to make the reference scale for that factor (the same choice is typically applied to all factors). For instance a researcher could create a set of questions (or other method) to evaluate a particular factor, get a large number of people to take that evaluation, check that the distribution of results matches a 'standard' or normal distribution (a statistics thing) and then assign a scale that rates a particular individual's results compared to the average result and the standard deviation; this is how IQ scores are created. The Jungian types as used in MBTT take a different approach, they assume an objective scale between each 'dichotomy' exists and is independent of how many humans tend to pick one or the other of a given pair of dichotomies; thus when a large number of people take the MBTI the results show that humans tend on average to have a unequal preference for one side of some of the diachotomies (because the measuring scale was determined independently of the actual results of testing a large sample), in particular S (sensing) and J (Judging). IMHO, this becomes more relevant when you use a non-binary rating system, for instance (using my 5 result system of S/s/x/n/N and J/j/x/p/P) a person who tested as an EsTj in MBTI would be ExTx if the results were 'normalized' to the 'average human' results, whereas a person who tested as an IxTx on MBTI would become InTj when the results are normalized. When you look the two MBTT factors that testing shows to be not evenly distributed, which are S/N and J/P, and compare them to the closest equivalents in the 'Big Five' system, which does present results in relation to the 'average', it shows that the 'average' human is both not particularly Open to new ideas and somewhat Conscientious in the viewpoint of MBTT.
-- Treating all the 'factors' as continuum that likely have a 'normal distribution' (like Big Five) means that there will be people that are 'average' on all of the factors! These people are obviously not identical, LOL. This just means that the particular 'factors' that were chosen cannot be used to differentiate between these people and that either the sub-factors (e.g. the 'Big Five' are called 'big' because they each have ~6 sub-factors) or other characteristics/traits/etc need to be used to differentiate these people; this isn't any different from any of the categories/stereotypes, e.g. all INTJ's are not identical, but it does point out that most systems don't have an 'average' or 'no preference' category/stereotype. The closest that most 3+ factor systems (like MBTT or Socionics) tend to come to having an 'average' category/stereotype is having those things for various pairs of factors that ignores the preferences in any other factor, e.g. NT's, or NJ's, or IN's; these things go by various names like Keirsey Temperaments, Socionics Clubs, Socionics Temperaments. From a practical standpoint all of the factors that an individual has an 'average' value in aren’t very useful for stereotyping or creating names for groups, so any system that allows and then ignores average values will need to deal with all possible groupings of two, three, or four significant factors, e.g. for INTJ-A there are the combinations IN, IT, IJ, IA, NT, NJ, NA, TJ, TA, JA, INT, INJ, INA, NTJ, NTA, TJA, INTJ, INTA, INJA, ITJA, NTJA. Yeah there are too many combinations to write sterotypes for all of them so some sort of analysis would need to be done to determine which groupings were significant enough to name (e.g. Keirsey deciding the four groups SJ, SP, NT, and NF are significant).
-- Note: The corrolation of MBTI to Big Five is approximately: E/I --> Extraversion [-.74] (and some inverse neuroticism), S/N --> Openness [.72], T/F --> Agreeableness[.44], J/P --> Conscientiousness [-.49]. Reversing that, the Big Five to MBTI correlation would be: O --> N [.72], C --> J [.49], E --> E [.74], A --> F [.44], N --> none (or T of A/T on 16types and some I), so someone high in all five OCEAN factors would probably be a MTBI ENFJ-T (note, that is the third most uncommon 4 letter MBTI type) and someone low in OCEAN would be a ISTP-A, however since the distribution of the MBTI types is not uniform, the average/mean person in OCEAN would be an XSXJ in MBTT and thus anyone who was not a SJ (e.g. an NT or SP) would be identified as 'not typical' or deviating from XXXXX in OCEAN and someone who was an XXXX in MBTT would be OcXXX in Big Five (where the uppercase 'O' indicates higher than average openness and the lowercase 'c' indicates lower than average conscientiousness).
-- There do appear to be some technical 'issues' with exactly how the MBTI letters are defined and separated. Several of the letters are probably interrelated, something which can be noted by amateurs by the uneven distribution of the types (e.g. ENFP's outnumber all the other 3 xNFx types combined and INFJ's are almost non-existent at <1%). The JP and the SN scales appear to correlate with one another, and Extraversion seems to have some relation to N, F, and P, as well as the inverse of Neuroticism on the Big Five.
-- Additionally, the TF scale may be somewhat poorly defined (mostly correlating moderately to Agreeableness in the Big Five). It may turn out to be an attempt to characterize what is the dichotomy between the two modes of thought described in Thinking, Fast and Slow: "System 1" is fast, instinctive and emotional; "System 2" is slower, more deliberative, and more logical.
-- I am less familiar with the ideas regarding a unique "cognitive function stack" for each type, the concept of four ways of thinking (S, N, T, F) that can be either inwardly or outwardly focused (i, e). That makes eight ways of thinking: Se, Si, Ne, Ni, Te, Ti, Fe, Fi. I believe this is also called "type dynamics". This idea seems better developed in Socionics (model A). In general I'm not "sold on" (convinced of) the idea that by knowing only someone's top preference (e.g. introverted thinking, Ti), that uniquely defines the order of all of their other preferences for every single individual that has the same 'top preference'. I'm willing to believe there may be a preference for the 'order' of the others that is statistically more common than others, but I would require significant evidence to be convinced that the order of the other seven is always uniquely defined by the first one or two. Here's a couple of example articles that focus on 'cognitive stack': INTP vs INTJ: 5 Ways to Truly Tell Them Apart and The INTJ “Mastermind” Personality Type
- Since I have a scientific mindset, I have a low opinion of anyone who suggests that only a highly trained professional (typically themselves and any other professionals who agree with them, but not highly trained professionals who don't agree with them) is qualified to discuss 'personality' or make any recommendations to people since that seems to me to be taking psychology out of the realm of science and making it an art form. ---Part of the issue here is that the hard sciences are inherently exclusive (there is a knowledge barrier to entry or participation), you can't design an airplane or satellite without a LOT of technical knowledge (that tends to require a LOT of background in math), whereas the social sciences like economics or teaching or psychology (or politics, see Plato's Protagoras) are open to participation by amateurs without specialized training or experience, and the results of the practical applications of the hard sciences (i.e. engineering) are readily observable and independently verifiable (e.g. the airplane works and is more efficient or safer than others) whereas the results of the soft sciences can be very difficult to quantify (e.g. how much did the psychologist/psychiatrist actually help a patient). One result of this is that in the hard sciences and engineering there is more focus on practical results and less concern with university degrees (particularly advanced degrees, proven skill/results will trump an advanced degree in engineering when seeking a job other than in academia) whereas the social sciences seem to me to tend to have an attitude of academic elitism (and also tend to focus on papers/books published rather than tangible results) where the letters after someone's name (e.g. PhD, MD, PsyD) determines someone's status -- although that may be an inaccurate perception on my part due to certain individuals that I have encountered.
The following is a MBTI Type Table organized as a spiral by prevalence of the types in the general population (as shown here which is taken from MBTI data or as shown on the pages for the 16 individual NERIS types) to show the more common types in the center (most common ISTJ in the upper left center and least common INFJ in the far lower left outer).
(this version if formatted to look good on FA, it is best viewed in the default FA dark mode with light text because that will make the types fade away into the background as they get less common)
- - -> - - - -> - - -> - - - v
ENFP - ISTP - ESTP - INFP
^ ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' v
ESFP + ISTJ - ISFJ + INTP
^ ' ' ' ' ' *---> - - v ' ' ' ' ' v
^ . . . . . . . . . . . . . v . . . . . v
ISFP - ESTJ - ESFJ + ENTP
^ - - <- - - <- - - ' ' ' ' ' v
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . v
INFJ - INTJ - ENFJ - ENTJ
**--- <- - - <- - - <- - -
*the most common is ISTJ (followed by ISFJ, ESFJ, ESTJ), these 'common four' SJ types are all 8-14% of the population EACH, or 37-53% total (45%);
the 'middle six' types from ENFP/ESFP/ISFP (~4-9% range each) to ISTP (4-6%) to INFP and ESTP (4-5% each), all combined are 27-42% total (35%);
**least common is INFJ (followed by INTJ, then ENTP/ENTJ/ENFJ which are all similar at 2-5%, then INTP at 3-5%), these 'uncommon six' types all combined are only 12-27% total (20%).
[FYI, if you want to add the numbers that form those ranges you get 76-122%, LOL]
The sensing 'S' types are far more common than the intuitive 'N' types, and together comprise 54-82% (68%) or about two-thirds of all people. The only 'N' type that is remotely as common as the least common 'S' types (ISTP and ESTP) is the ENFP and its relative frequency (and that's relative at 6-8%) may influence the 'common' view of intuitive types in general. In fact, of the eight intuitive 'N' types (strongly correlated to high Openness in the 'Big Five') the most common four (ENFP, INFP, INTP, and ENTP) are ALL also 'P' (also weakly correlated to high Openness in the 'Big Five', but much more strongly correlated to low Conscientiousness) and their combined frequency (15-23% or ~19%) significantly exceeds the combined frequency of the remaining four (7-17% or ~14%) so people who are not themselves 'N' tend to have opinions of the 'N' types that have been based on xNFP or xNTP (e.g. dreamy, impractical, irresponsible, laid-back, and generally friendly since the NF's outnumber the NT's) and don't know quite what to think about the rare NJ types (which includes both of the 'leader' types, ENTJ and ENFJ).
Random thoughts on MBTT types:
When you look at the historic people who are famous for being responsible for progress in human knowledge/understanding and the best guesses at their types, the majority are N's; without N's or with a lower frequency of N's advancement in knowledge/science would be much slower. The SJ's might be responsible for establishing empires and the SP's for exploring the physical world but it is the NT's and NF's that tend to be responsible for progress in either science or spirituality. SJ's might be patrons for NT scientists or NF priests, or they might followup innovations in science with practical applications like SJ's in engineering, or they might make modifications/changes to an existing religion by creating a new faction/denomination with minimal changes that tries to fix a problem that some other SJ's created by how they interpreted or implemented the original NF's ideas.
INTJ's and INFJ's are extremely rare, even compared to their extroverted cousins; from an evolutionary viewpoint are these two types just 'failed' attempts to produce leader types who are doomed to unhappiness by not being extroverts? I suppose the two 'leader types' do have a notable tendency to end up dying when their political power games or cults lose/fail/implode so maybe their introverted cousins tend to live longer and help keep the genes in the pool. LOL.
Finally, since I have a few Journals about philosophy, here is a fun Q&A comparing MBTI types to philosophies.
My thoughts about Socionics:
I am much less knowledgeable about socionics than I am with MBTT and its derivatives.
My information about socionics comes from these three websites:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socionics
http://www.socionics.com
https://www.socioniko.net
My overview: 'Eastern' European socionics is similar to but not identical to the 'Western' Myers-Briggs Type Theory (MBTT). They are both developed from the (somewhat unscientific) ideas that Carl Jung published in the 1920's, but MBTT was developed in the West (USA) from more of a perspective of psychology and appropriateness for careers (by some people without formal degrees or training) while socionics was developed in East Europe (USSR) from more of a perspective of sociology and interpersonal interaction. Both are criticized as being rather unscientific or pseudoscience because of how they were developed, but in my opinion that is not necessarily a reason to condemn them... somebody using an Ouija board or Tarot cards might propose a theory that actually turns out to be correct (either by random chance or divine/supernatural inspiration), the role of logic and science is to prove or disprove any theory regardless of the origin of the theory. IMHO, comparing MBTT to Socionics is helpful because it discourages relying too much on one particular model and because each has a slightly different perspective and these sorts of dialectical comparisons are both how the truth is arived at and how new ideas are created (c.f. Socrates to the Scientific Method). From a more pragmatic standpoint, it is difficult for proponents of either MBTT or Socionics to 'point at' the other one and call it pseudoscience without having to face how the same criticisms apply to their own preferred system, and hopefully seek to prove or improve their own.
Here are some sentences I copied from https://www.socioniko.net/en/articl.....vs-intro3.html and pasted together: "Important: unlike Jung (and unlike socionics), in MBTT Rational is not the same as Judging, Irrational is not the same as Perceiving. They use a different model. Jung used TWO synonyms for the same dichotomy: rationality/irrationality and judgment/perception. Myers chose the second name, and described this dichotomy similarly to Jung's ideas, but also added something new: in her interpretation, Judging types are decisive, self-disciplined, strong-willed, resolute, while Perceiving types are careless, unpunctual, somewhat infantile. This of course made her types somewhat different from the original Jung's types. Myers herself wrote that her hypothesis somewhat contradicts to empirical data. In her book Gifts Differing (1968) she wrote that the criterion J/P sometimes does not work well for introverted types. [Based on a quick experiment with 108 socionicists, comparing their socionics type with their MBTT type] at least we know now for sure that socionics, MBTT and Keirsey, in spite of their common origin from the Jungian typology, are not identical! We consider this “displacement of criteria” as the main reason why Americans, for more than 40 years of existence of MBTT and more than 20 years of Keirsey typology, failed to build a system of intertype relationships. There were only rare attempts to describe relations between certain types, but not a system of relationships. The main spheres of application of socionics are almost the same as for the Myers-Briggs Type Theory (MBTT) [Career Guidance and Education & Family Consulting], except for one particular thing: MBTT deals only with intertype differences, while socionics also deals with intertype compatibility. [In socionics] the type is considered IN DYNAMICS. This means that the relationship between two types, e.g. INT-rational and ISF-rational, may have various options. This is probably its principal difference both from original Jung's ideas and from MBTT: considering the type not as a “list of traits”, but rather as an “algorithm of traits”." [Personal observation: that “list” vs. “algorithm” sounds like the difference in philosophy between an ontology of 'being' vs. an ontology of 'becomming', where process philosophy or existentialism use an ontology of 'becomming'.]
"After all, abstract ideas are not too easy to sell... " --LOL, a cogent criticism of capitalism, and one that essentially dates back to Socrates and Plato.
"The tests were influenced by some American stereotypes, especially the most controversial dichotomy J/P, which according to this test could easily be renamed into “successful – not successful”." --LOL, yes I had noticed that about the MBTI J/P letter. In MBTI the last letter, the J/P rating, is correlated to Conscientiousness in the Big Five (~0.49) whereas in socionics the last letter is measure of whether a person's primary favored thinking style is in the 'rational' T/F dichotomy or in the 'irrational' S/N dichotomy.
Socionics Rationality/Irrationality (or judgment/perception in MBTT). I'm tempted to call the four letter version of a socionics type (e.g. INTj) a "typesky" as some humor at the Eastern-bloc origin of the theory. I also think I have a preference to using a different fourth letter other than lowercase 'j' and 'p' to help highlight the difference from the four letter MBTI types, perhaps 'r' for rational and perhaps 'u' for irrational (why 'u'? because 'I' is taken for Introverted and the letter 'u' was not being used yet and it is a letter found in both USSR and Russia, uh, I mean it stands for unrational, yeah that's it).
I like the Socionics idea of making a characteristic/factor of whether 'rationality' is primary ('j' in socionics lettering) with the 'irrationality' as a secondary preference or if 'irrationality' is primary ('p' in socionics lettering) with the 'rationality' as a secondary preference. The following are the 'four rules of Socionics types', found 2/3 of the way down the page here:
Each extraverted type has an extraverted function dominant, introverted – secondary.
Each introverted type has an introverted function dominant, extraverted – secondary.
Each rational type has a rational function dominant, irrational – secondary.
Each irrational type has an irrational function dominant, rational – secondary.
--but what evidence/data is there that these rules are truly the fundamental 'laws of psychology' (or at least homo-sapiens psychology).
Socionics calls the these four groupings 'clubs': Pragmatists (ST), Researchers (NT), Socials (SF), Humanitarians (NF), and those 'clubs' seem the closest socionics has to the Keirsey 'temperaments' (SJ, SP, NT, NF).
I like the intertype compatibility theory from socionics but I don't know if it has been supported by evidence and independent studies, though both Keirsey's book and the 16personalities website also talk about relationships between opposites. However, since the human population distribution is somewhat skewed towards the E and S sides of their respective dichotomies (using the MBTT letters and scale), I have an intuitive feeling that people who are strong I and/or N should look toward people who are more mid-range on those for their 'duality', thus an strong INTj in socionics may want to look towards an xxFj for duality rather than a strong ESFj, while a weak inTj (using lowercase 'i' and 'n' to indicate weaker preference) would do better with typical or strong ESFj... but that's just a guess.
Overall, I think MBTT diverged from Jung's theory by combining some traits of Conscientiousness from the 'Big Five' into the last J/P letter (done intuitively by Myers, rather than by rigorous science), while socionics focused the last letter as a method to indicate a priority (of personal focus) between T/F (rational) or N/S (irrational) functions and tried to avoid combining it with Conscientiousness. Both systems missed Neuroticism from the 'Big Five', though that might have been because Jung was studying people with problems and thus they might all have had high Neuroticism. I like socionics a bit better because it avoids what seems to be the somewhat poorly defined J/P of MBTT (that only moderately correlates to Conscientiousness) and has an inter-type relations model that is thought provoking, but IMHO it needs to add the two factors of the 'Big Five' that it is missing, Conscientiousness and Neuroticism.
<in work>
My thoughts about 'Big Five' personality typing:
- The 'Big Five' is a personality model, the common acronym for the five factors is 'OCEAN'. The 'Big Five' isn't proprietary like the MBTI test and it was developed with more rigorous scientific methodology than either MBTT/MBTI or Socionics and seems better regarded in the scientific community. Since it is more science-focused it doesn't have all the personality stereotypes and 'marketing' of the systems like MBTI and it is lacking anything that corresponds with the inter-type relations theory of Socionics.
- A quick description of the Big Five, from the consent form on the test here: "These represent personality domains associated with aspects of power, love, work, affect and intellect and are frequently labeled Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Emotional Stability, and Openness." There are statistics on how well the 'Big Five' personality factors correlate with the four MBTI factors here.
Here is one test: https://sapa-project.org https://sapa-project.org/survey/start.php
Here is another test: http://www.personal.psu.edu/~j5j/IPIP/
16personalities/NERIS Type Explorer® uses the four letter types familiar from MBTT but has added another letter at the end and adjusted the traits to better match up to the 'Big Five'. They have plenty of articles of their own on their website and this article covers their theory. I haven't read all the articles on their website, but I'd describe it as a hybrid of the Jungian systems and the more academically oriented Big Five, that is designed to produce a set of types (stereotypes) that are more accurate (matching objective reality) than the MBTI® while having more practical utility to a layperson than the Big Five. I haven't purchased their premium service and I'd be interested to hear from someone who has whether they thought it was worth the cost.
NERIS uses the following terms for their five factors: Mind (E/I), Energy (S/N), Nature (T/F), Tactics (J/P), Identity (-A/-T). Their definition of J/P is described similarly to Myers-Briggs, and has some mild cross-correlation to S/N (S being related to J, while P is related to N). In Big-Five terms that means they haven't fully separated Openness to Experience (represented by N/P) and Conscientiousness (represented by J/S). That correlation is what makes SJ's more common than SP's and NP's more common than NJ's (INFJ and INTJ are the most uncommon types). They use the same primary groupings that Keirsey called 'temperaments' (NT, NF, SJ, SP) but call them 'Roles', and they additionally define secondary groupings they call Strategies (I-A, E-A, I-T, E-T).
<in work>
HEXACO is a system with six factors, or dimensions: Honesty-Humility (H), Emotionality (E), Extraversion (X), Agreeableness (A), Conscientiousness ©, and Openness to Experience (O). It is an alternative to the 'Big Five' that omits 'Neuroticism' and adds 'Honesty-Humility' and 'Emotionality' as well as defining some of the others a bit differently. I like how it separates Emotionality and Openness to Experience. I find it useful to compare other systems to the more common Jungian and Big Five systems because it helps demonstrate the variety of systems and the difficulty inherent in creating a system.
<in work>
https://getpocket.com/explore/item/.....rsonality-test
That's all of my commentary on personality typing systems for now. I will probably update this periodically.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The main spheres of application for most of these personality typing systems has a lot of overlap: Career Guidance, Education (teaching), and Family Consulting. Socionics also deals more extensively with intertype compatibility and Enneagram offers spiritual or personal development advice while the Big Five is more academic and better suited to research projects.
Before I discuss specific systems I want to address a few common criticisms about personality typing systems and their associate psychometric tests (the tests that assign the type or ratings) as well as their supporters/adherents that are not specific to any one system but are commonly raised by detractors of a system or of the concept of personality typing in general.
- Regarding my qualifications: I don't have a university degree in Psychology or any of the Social Sciences. My knowledge of the various personality typing systems and their psychometric testing methods is that of a well-read layperson. I'm acutely aware that I'm not a specialist and that I am not necessarily using words in the same manner an academic psychologist would. I am familiar with technical writing and engineering specifications and the importance of writing with precision, but this Journal is not attempting to be academic or precise in how it uses language and terminology.
- Regarding social psychology in general. I am aware of the difficulty in repeating social psychology research. People have the right to be skeptical about these sorts of systems.
- Regarding criticism of 'self-report' personality tests (including not only Enneagram, MBTI, KTS, Socionics, 16 personalities/NERIS, and all of the tests that measure the 'Big Five', but also psychometric tests that help identify personality disorders like the NPI or PNI)... I think any serious scientist recognizes the problems inherent in self-reporting but for those who are going to wield this issue specifically as a criticism of any personality testing/typing system then I think it is incumbent upon THEM to suggest something better that is actually practical!!! You'd have a difficult time even performing a scientific study (e.g. of 1000 people) if all the participants needed to be independently evaluated by a single researcher (or better, a single panel of researchers/analysts) to achieve independence from self-reporting and even that would not solve the subjectivity issue since multiple researchers/analysts/therapists would likely interpret the criteria differently (a criticism of the Personality Disorders in the DSM). Having everyone visit a qualified psychological professional to receive their type and personalized advice sounds exceptionally costly and rather like an impractical dream, although perhaps someday there will be an AI with that level of complexity. There are already apps that provide some amount of therapy.
- Regarding criticism of the stability of personality factors or type over time in an individual... well some stability over time is part of the definition of 'personality' but if you're expecting complete consistency across different physical/mental states (normal, tired, hungry, drunk, angry, sad, etc.) then you may have unreasonable expectations and if you're expecting complete consistency over time (e.g. in a 'longitudinal study') then you're into the realm of the philosophy of personal identity and theory of mind and you're going to need to deal with metaphysical issues like the Platonistic/Christian concept of a 'soul' (a permanent and unchanging 'thing' that defines 'self') and the Buddhist concept of 'anatta' (there is no permanent and unchanging 'self' or soul). I think it is incumbent upon anyone who criticizes a personality test that yields different results for the same person at different times to not only suggest something better but also to demonstrate that the 'thing' that they are trying to measure is not itself changing over time!
Enneagram
My thoughts on Enneagram:
I'm much more familiar with the Jungian-based systems and the 'Big Five'. I've read a thin book on the Enneagram ("the essential enneagram" by David Daniels, M.D. and Virginia Price, Ph.D.) but I don't really know that much about it and although I know my own type I don't know the other 8 Enneagram types well enough to bring any pictures to mind if someone told me their 'number' nor do I know how to effectively interact with those types based on what my own type is. I like the idea that Enneagram doesn't imply that any of their 9 types is any better or worse than any other type, so it is like Myers-Briggs in that regard. I also like the idea of seeing at least one system that doesn't use multiple different independent factors (e.g. the various 2 factor systems, the 4 factors of MBTI, or the 5 factors of the 'Big Five' or NERIS) which are rated separately then combined into types but rather just has a group of types (or 'stereotypes' or even 'archetypes' if you prefer). Not having multiple factors eliminates the problem of people complaining about the rating system for each factor (e.g. whether it is a binary dichotomy, trinary, quartiles, etc. and whether it is referenced with regard to some objective standard or only referenced with regard to the average and standard deviation of a group of test samples), the downside is that not having those things makes it seem less scientific. Enneagram claims to have some research that supports their types and testing method but I don't know if there is independent validation of it. The Enneagram testing system that I saw just narrows down your choices and ultimately you need to read the descriptions of the types you are most likely to be and decide for yourself which one fits you the best. There is some correlation between the Enneagram types and the Jungian types but it isn't a one-to-one relationship, but rather based on your MBTI type you're probably going to be one of three or so Enneagram types.
The spiritual self-improvement advice for each type is an interesting touch that you don't get in most of the other typing systems I've seen. While the advice it gave me seems appropriate I couldn't help thinking that the advice Enneagram would probably give the Buddha is essentially "you're too detached from the physical world, you need to give into your desires and let loose more often" LOL, thanks Mara! That just shows that different personality types tend to pursue different spiritual paths; I wouldn't presume to try to tell the Buddha that he was on the wrong path and that Nirvana was not a worthy goal. That opinion of the Enneagram system's spiritual advice may simply reflect my limited knowledge of the system.
Personally, I wouldn't want to use Enneagram as a primary/first typing system but it is different enough from the Jungian systems that it makes a good way to differentiate between people who have the same Jungian type or it may provide a better fit for some people who don't think they fit well into the Jungian types.
Jungian systems
My thoughts on Jungian systems:
I'm familiar with two main systems that are based on the work of Carl Jung, Myers-Briggs Type Theory (MBTT) and Socionics, as well as two variations/derivatives of MBTT, the Keirsey Temperament Sorter (KTS) and the NERIS Type Explorer®, which are similar to but distinct from MBTT due to the proprietary nature of the MBTI® test. 'Eastern' European Socionics is similar to but not identical to the 'Western' Myers-Briggs Type Theory (MBTT), with the last of the four 'letters' being defined somewhat differently. They are all developed from the (somewhat unscientific) ideas that Carl Jung published in the 1920's, but MBTT and KTS were developed in the West (USA) from more of a perspective of psychology and appropriateness for careers (by some people without formal degrees or training) while Socionics was developed in East Europe (USSR) from more of a perspective of sociology and interpersonal interaction. Both are criticized by their detractors as being rather unscientific or pseudoscience because of how they were developed, but in my opinion that is not necessarily a reason to condemn them... somebody using an Ouija board or Tarot cards might propose a theory that actually turns out to be correct (either by random chance or divine/supernatural inspiration), the role of logic and science is to prove or disprove any theory regardless of the origin of the theory. IMHO, comparing MBTT to Socionics is helpful because it discourages relying too much on one particular model and because each has a slightly different perspective and these sorts of dialectical comparisons are both how the truth is arrived at and how new ideas are created (c.f. Socrates to the Scientific Method). From a more pragmatic standpoint, it is difficult for proponents of either MBTT or Socionics to 'point at' the other one and call it pseudoscience without having to face how the same criticisms apply to their own preferred system, and hopefully seek to prove or improve their own.
- I haven't actually read Jung's works so I can't comment on the issues about how well people have developed and implemented them. MBTT, Socionics, and other Jungian systems have some very vocal detractors/haters, but I'd prefer it if they produced some good research rather than just complaining. I'm willing to read a peer-reviewed scientific critique, but the complaints I've seen tend to be a 'laundry list' that include issues that would not meet the muster for a peer reviewed scientific journal, including ad-hominem attacks against the developers of the system and complaints that are probably going to be common to anything in the 'soft' social sciences.
- Regarding naming and acronyms, MBTT = Myers-Briggs Type Theory, MBTI = Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (the actual test, which is proprietary and controlled), KTS = Keirsey Temperament Sorter (another test, which is different from MBTI and is also proprietary and controlled). IMHO the systems that are proprietary and tightly controlled tend to develop both adherents/supporters and 'haters', it can become as bad as philosophy, politics, or religion.
Meyers-Briggs (and others)
My thoughts on MBTT, and MBTI:
- I'm very familiar with MBTT and I've taken the full official MBTI several times over the last 30 years and I tend to get the same result which seems to fit me quite well. I like Keirsey's Temperament theory from the book "Please Understand Me" and how it groups the 16 Jungian types into 4 groups called temperaments (SP, SJ, NT, NF). My current preference of Jungian systems is the one at www.16personalities.com, since it incorporates Keirsey's four groupings of the 16 types and also adds a fifth letter that corresponds to Neuroticism in the 'Big Five', which brings a Jungian-based system into better alignment with the more thoroughly researched 'Big Five'.
- Regarding dichotomies and factors: Jung's idea of dichotomies and the specific 8 items organized into pairs of two 'opposite' dichotomies that he picked may or may not be 'correct' (an accurate model of objective reality), however even if the factors of 'personality' are not treated as 4 dichotomies as Jung did (with 4 binary scales as in the Myers-Briggs, e.g. Intuition vs. Sensing, Thinking vs. Feeling) but are considered to be 4 independent factors that are measured on a continuum it is still helpful to give both extremes of any individual factor their own names. For instance, some version of an Extraversion to Introversion continuum appears in many personality factor systems (e.g. Big Five, aka OCEAN) but it is easier to discuss the words 'Extroverted' and 'Introverted' rather than say "High Extroversion" and "Low Extroversion"... and possibly "Average Extroversion" aka 'Ambiversion', or even "Medium-High Extroversion" and "Medium-Low Extroversion", see the next item.
- Regarding discretized rating systems (particularly binary/dichotomy systems): Using and discussing binary ratings for any particular personality factor may not be particularly helpful, but it does make presentation and understanding easier and it can be helpful in not stigmatizing either the high or low end of that factor. IMHO, the main reason for binary ratings in literature and studies is to keep the total number of options to a managable number. It is easy to deal with a two-factor system with binary results for each factor that yields (2^2=4) four personalities (e.g. the Hippocrates four classical Greek personalities) but a two factor system with three results (including an intermediate or 'average' result for each factor) would yield (3^2=9) nine personalities, and a two-factor system with five results for each factor (e.g. very low, low, average, high, very high) would yield (5^2=25) over two dozen possibilities. Comparatively, while a four factor system with binary results yields (2^4=16) sixteen types like MBTI but including three results would make that (3^4=81) an unmanageable 81 types, and a five factor system (like the Big Five) with binary results yields (2^5=32) a barely tolerable thirty-two types but including three results would make (3^5=243) over two hundred types which would require huge studies to validate and encyclopedia-sized books to describe. Alternatively, using the 8 Jungian factors like Socionics (i.e. Te, Fe, Se, Ne, Ti, Fi, Si, Ni) but allowing them to be arranged in any order rather than using Model-A would yield (8x7x6x5x4x3x2x1 or 8! or 8 factorial = 40,320) over forty thousand types. Thus the number of factors used and how many ratings each factor is discretized into and whether the priority of the other factors becomes a factor itself effectively becomes limited simply by the practicalities of conducting research on them or discussing them in a book-length work. IMHO, I think it is incumbent upon anyone who criticizes the idea of binary ratings to suggest something better that is actually practical!!!
-- Here is my own suggestion regarding rating the factors: The binary capital letters commonly used for the MBTI types fail to show how strong the various preferences were, although the full MBTI results do indicate how strong the reported preference is. I actually prefer to show MBTI/Jung types using five letters for each different factor (dichotomy), using the small font letter 'x' to indicate someone with little preference and small font letters to indicate minor preference (e.g. e/i, s/n, t/f, j/p - a/t) and reserving the capital letters (E/I, S/N, T/F, J/P - A/T) to indicate someone with a strong preference. There is a very big difference between an ixxj and an INTj; MBTT theory probably won't be as helpful or applicable to someone who has a lot of x's and small letters compared to someone with a lot of capital letters (e.g. an ixxj compared to an INTj). It is important to remember that the stereotypes of the various 16 MBTI personalities are just that, STEREOTYPES, and I haven't encountered a serious book about MBTT that didn't stress that in the introduction to the 16 types.
- Regarding the number of factors that make up 'personality': According to current research, the number of individual factors of personality that underlie or make up the 'Big Five' is probably on the order of two to three dozen (e.g. the SPI-27), which can be grouped into five major groupings, the 'Big Five'. However it is the two to three dozen individual factors that are more important to determining personality, not how those average into the 'Big Five' groupings. Thus if there were 27 factors and each factor was rated simply as 'low', 'average', or 'high' then there would be 3^27 = 7.6 TRILLION possible combinations, or a thousand times more than there are currently humans alive on planet Earth; that level of complexity is partially why psychiatry seems more like art than science and why each person on Earth can essentially be considered their own 'unique' personality type (even without considering other factors like culture and personal history).
- Placing the 'average' for a factor: Regardless of how many factors are chosen (whether 2, 3, 4, 5 or some other number of factors), there is a fundamental question for each factor of what to make the reference scale for that factor (the same choice is typically applied to all factors). For instance a researcher could create a set of questions (or other method) to evaluate a particular factor, get a large number of people to take that evaluation, check that the distribution of results matches a 'standard' or normal distribution (a statistics thing) and then assign a scale that rates a particular individual's results compared to the average result and the standard deviation; this is how IQ scores are created. The Jungian types as used in MBTT take a different approach, they assume an objective scale between each 'dichotomy' exists and is independent of how many humans tend to pick one or the other of a given pair of dichotomies; thus when a large number of people take the MBTI the results show that humans tend on average to have a unequal preference for one side of some of the diachotomies (because the measuring scale was determined independently of the actual results of testing a large sample), in particular S (sensing) and J (Judging). IMHO, this becomes more relevant when you use a non-binary rating system, for instance (using my 5 result system of S/s/x/n/N and J/j/x/p/P) a person who tested as an EsTj in MBTI would be ExTx if the results were 'normalized' to the 'average human' results, whereas a person who tested as an IxTx on MBTI would become InTj when the results are normalized. When you look the two MBTT factors that testing shows to be not evenly distributed, which are S/N and J/P, and compare them to the closest equivalents in the 'Big Five' system, which does present results in relation to the 'average', it shows that the 'average' human is both not particularly Open to new ideas and somewhat Conscientious in the viewpoint of MBTT.
-- Treating all the 'factors' as continuum that likely have a 'normal distribution' (like Big Five) means that there will be people that are 'average' on all of the factors! These people are obviously not identical, LOL. This just means that the particular 'factors' that were chosen cannot be used to differentiate between these people and that either the sub-factors (e.g. the 'Big Five' are called 'big' because they each have ~6 sub-factors) or other characteristics/traits/etc need to be used to differentiate these people; this isn't any different from any of the categories/stereotypes, e.g. all INTJ's are not identical, but it does point out that most systems don't have an 'average' or 'no preference' category/stereotype. The closest that most 3+ factor systems (like MBTT or Socionics) tend to come to having an 'average' category/stereotype is having those things for various pairs of factors that ignores the preferences in any other factor, e.g. NT's, or NJ's, or IN's; these things go by various names like Keirsey Temperaments, Socionics Clubs, Socionics Temperaments. From a practical standpoint all of the factors that an individual has an 'average' value in aren’t very useful for stereotyping or creating names for groups, so any system that allows and then ignores average values will need to deal with all possible groupings of two, three, or four significant factors, e.g. for INTJ-A there are the combinations IN, IT, IJ, IA, NT, NJ, NA, TJ, TA, JA, INT, INJ, INA, NTJ, NTA, TJA, INTJ, INTA, INJA, ITJA, NTJA. Yeah there are too many combinations to write sterotypes for all of them so some sort of analysis would need to be done to determine which groupings were significant enough to name (e.g. Keirsey deciding the four groups SJ, SP, NT, and NF are significant).
-- Note: The corrolation of MBTI to Big Five is approximately: E/I --> Extraversion [-.74] (and some inverse neuroticism), S/N --> Openness [.72], T/F --> Agreeableness[.44], J/P --> Conscientiousness [-.49]. Reversing that, the Big Five to MBTI correlation would be: O --> N [.72], C --> J [.49], E --> E [.74], A --> F [.44], N --> none (or T of A/T on 16types and some I), so someone high in all five OCEAN factors would probably be a MTBI ENFJ-T (note, that is the third most uncommon 4 letter MBTI type) and someone low in OCEAN would be a ISTP-A, however since the distribution of the MBTI types is not uniform, the average/mean person in OCEAN would be an XSXJ in MBTT and thus anyone who was not a SJ (e.g. an NT or SP) would be identified as 'not typical' or deviating from XXXXX in OCEAN and someone who was an XXXX in MBTT would be OcXXX in Big Five (where the uppercase 'O' indicates higher than average openness and the lowercase 'c' indicates lower than average conscientiousness).
-- There do appear to be some technical 'issues' with exactly how the MBTI letters are defined and separated. Several of the letters are probably interrelated, something which can be noted by amateurs by the uneven distribution of the types (e.g. ENFP's outnumber all the other 3 xNFx types combined and INFJ's are almost non-existent at <1%). The JP and the SN scales appear to correlate with one another, and Extraversion seems to have some relation to N, F, and P, as well as the inverse of Neuroticism on the Big Five.
-- Additionally, the TF scale may be somewhat poorly defined (mostly correlating moderately to Agreeableness in the Big Five). It may turn out to be an attempt to characterize what is the dichotomy between the two modes of thought described in Thinking, Fast and Slow: "System 1" is fast, instinctive and emotional; "System 2" is slower, more deliberative, and more logical.
-- I am less familiar with the ideas regarding a unique "cognitive function stack" for each type, the concept of four ways of thinking (S, N, T, F) that can be either inwardly or outwardly focused (i, e). That makes eight ways of thinking: Se, Si, Ne, Ni, Te, Ti, Fe, Fi. I believe this is also called "type dynamics". This idea seems better developed in Socionics (model A). In general I'm not "sold on" (convinced of) the idea that by knowing only someone's top preference (e.g. introverted thinking, Ti), that uniquely defines the order of all of their other preferences for every single individual that has the same 'top preference'. I'm willing to believe there may be a preference for the 'order' of the others that is statistically more common than others, but I would require significant evidence to be convinced that the order of the other seven is always uniquely defined by the first one or two. Here's a couple of example articles that focus on 'cognitive stack': INTP vs INTJ: 5 Ways to Truly Tell Them Apart and The INTJ “Mastermind” Personality Type
- Since I have a scientific mindset, I have a low opinion of anyone who suggests that only a highly trained professional (typically themselves and any other professionals who agree with them, but not highly trained professionals who don't agree with them) is qualified to discuss 'personality' or make any recommendations to people since that seems to me to be taking psychology out of the realm of science and making it an art form. ---Part of the issue here is that the hard sciences are inherently exclusive (there is a knowledge barrier to entry or participation), you can't design an airplane or satellite without a LOT of technical knowledge (that tends to require a LOT of background in math), whereas the social sciences like economics or teaching or psychology (or politics, see Plato's Protagoras) are open to participation by amateurs without specialized training or experience, and the results of the practical applications of the hard sciences (i.e. engineering) are readily observable and independently verifiable (e.g. the airplane works and is more efficient or safer than others) whereas the results of the soft sciences can be very difficult to quantify (e.g. how much did the psychologist/psychiatrist actually help a patient). One result of this is that in the hard sciences and engineering there is more focus on practical results and less concern with university degrees (particularly advanced degrees, proven skill/results will trump an advanced degree in engineering when seeking a job other than in academia) whereas the social sciences seem to me to tend to have an attitude of academic elitism (and also tend to focus on papers/books published rather than tangible results) where the letters after someone's name (e.g. PhD, MD, PsyD) determines someone's status -- although that may be an inaccurate perception on my part due to certain individuals that I have encountered.
The following is a MBTI Type Table organized as a spiral by prevalence of the types in the general population (as shown here which is taken from MBTI data or as shown on the pages for the 16 individual NERIS types) to show the more common types in the center (most common ISTJ in the upper left center and least common INFJ in the far lower left outer).
(this version if formatted to look good on FA, it is best viewed in the default FA dark mode with light text because that will make the types fade away into the background as they get less common)
- - -> - - - -> - - -> - - - v
ENFP - ISTP - ESTP - INFP
^ ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' v
ESFP + ISTJ - ISFJ + INTP
^ ' ' ' ' ' *---> - - v ' ' ' ' ' v
^ . . . . . . . . . . . . . v . . . . . v
ISFP - ESTJ - ESFJ + ENTP
^ - - <- - - <- - - ' ' ' ' ' v
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . v
INFJ - INTJ - ENFJ - ENTJ
**--- <- - - <- - - <- - -
*the most common is ISTJ (followed by ISFJ, ESFJ, ESTJ), these 'common four' SJ types are all 8-14% of the population EACH, or 37-53% total (45%);
the 'middle six' types from ENFP/ESFP/ISFP (~4-9% range each) to ISTP (4-6%) to INFP and ESTP (4-5% each), all combined are 27-42% total (35%);
**least common is INFJ (followed by INTJ, then ENTP/ENTJ/ENFJ which are all similar at 2-5%, then INTP at 3-5%), these 'uncommon six' types all combined are only 12-27% total (20%).
[FYI, if you want to add the numbers that form those ranges you get 76-122%, LOL]
The sensing 'S' types are far more common than the intuitive 'N' types, and together comprise 54-82% (68%) or about two-thirds of all people. The only 'N' type that is remotely as common as the least common 'S' types (ISTP and ESTP) is the ENFP and its relative frequency (and that's relative at 6-8%) may influence the 'common' view of intuitive types in general. In fact, of the eight intuitive 'N' types (strongly correlated to high Openness in the 'Big Five') the most common four (ENFP, INFP, INTP, and ENTP) are ALL also 'P' (also weakly correlated to high Openness in the 'Big Five', but much more strongly correlated to low Conscientiousness) and their combined frequency (15-23% or ~19%) significantly exceeds the combined frequency of the remaining four (7-17% or ~14%) so people who are not themselves 'N' tend to have opinions of the 'N' types that have been based on xNFP or xNTP (e.g. dreamy, impractical, irresponsible, laid-back, and generally friendly since the NF's outnumber the NT's) and don't know quite what to think about the rare NJ types (which includes both of the 'leader' types, ENTJ and ENFJ).
Random thoughts on MBTT types:
When you look at the historic people who are famous for being responsible for progress in human knowledge/understanding and the best guesses at their types, the majority are N's; without N's or with a lower frequency of N's advancement in knowledge/science would be much slower. The SJ's might be responsible for establishing empires and the SP's for exploring the physical world but it is the NT's and NF's that tend to be responsible for progress in either science or spirituality. SJ's might be patrons for NT scientists or NF priests, or they might followup innovations in science with practical applications like SJ's in engineering, or they might make modifications/changes to an existing religion by creating a new faction/denomination with minimal changes that tries to fix a problem that some other SJ's created by how they interpreted or implemented the original NF's ideas.
INTJ's and INFJ's are extremely rare, even compared to their extroverted cousins; from an evolutionary viewpoint are these two types just 'failed' attempts to produce leader types who are doomed to unhappiness by not being extroverts? I suppose the two 'leader types' do have a notable tendency to end up dying when their political power games or cults lose/fail/implode so maybe their introverted cousins tend to live longer and help keep the genes in the pool. LOL.
Finally, since I have a few Journals about philosophy, here is a fun Q&A comparing MBTI types to philosophies.
Socionics
My thoughts about Socionics:
I am much less knowledgeable about socionics than I am with MBTT and its derivatives.
My information about socionics comes from these three websites:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socionics
http://www.socionics.com
https://www.socioniko.net
My overview: 'Eastern' European socionics is similar to but not identical to the 'Western' Myers-Briggs Type Theory (MBTT). They are both developed from the (somewhat unscientific) ideas that Carl Jung published in the 1920's, but MBTT was developed in the West (USA) from more of a perspective of psychology and appropriateness for careers (by some people without formal degrees or training) while socionics was developed in East Europe (USSR) from more of a perspective of sociology and interpersonal interaction. Both are criticized as being rather unscientific or pseudoscience because of how they were developed, but in my opinion that is not necessarily a reason to condemn them... somebody using an Ouija board or Tarot cards might propose a theory that actually turns out to be correct (either by random chance or divine/supernatural inspiration), the role of logic and science is to prove or disprove any theory regardless of the origin of the theory. IMHO, comparing MBTT to Socionics is helpful because it discourages relying too much on one particular model and because each has a slightly different perspective and these sorts of dialectical comparisons are both how the truth is arived at and how new ideas are created (c.f. Socrates to the Scientific Method). From a more pragmatic standpoint, it is difficult for proponents of either MBTT or Socionics to 'point at' the other one and call it pseudoscience without having to face how the same criticisms apply to their own preferred system, and hopefully seek to prove or improve their own.
Here are some sentences I copied from https://www.socioniko.net/en/articl.....vs-intro3.html and pasted together: "Important: unlike Jung (and unlike socionics), in MBTT Rational is not the same as Judging, Irrational is not the same as Perceiving. They use a different model. Jung used TWO synonyms for the same dichotomy: rationality/irrationality and judgment/perception. Myers chose the second name, and described this dichotomy similarly to Jung's ideas, but also added something new: in her interpretation, Judging types are decisive, self-disciplined, strong-willed, resolute, while Perceiving types are careless, unpunctual, somewhat infantile. This of course made her types somewhat different from the original Jung's types. Myers herself wrote that her hypothesis somewhat contradicts to empirical data. In her book Gifts Differing (1968) she wrote that the criterion J/P sometimes does not work well for introverted types. [Based on a quick experiment with 108 socionicists, comparing their socionics type with their MBTT type] at least we know now for sure that socionics, MBTT and Keirsey, in spite of their common origin from the Jungian typology, are not identical! We consider this “displacement of criteria” as the main reason why Americans, for more than 40 years of existence of MBTT and more than 20 years of Keirsey typology, failed to build a system of intertype relationships. There were only rare attempts to describe relations between certain types, but not a system of relationships. The main spheres of application of socionics are almost the same as for the Myers-Briggs Type Theory (MBTT) [Career Guidance and Education & Family Consulting], except for one particular thing: MBTT deals only with intertype differences, while socionics also deals with intertype compatibility. [In socionics] the type is considered IN DYNAMICS. This means that the relationship between two types, e.g. INT-rational and ISF-rational, may have various options. This is probably its principal difference both from original Jung's ideas and from MBTT: considering the type not as a “list of traits”, but rather as an “algorithm of traits”." [Personal observation: that “list” vs. “algorithm” sounds like the difference in philosophy between an ontology of 'being' vs. an ontology of 'becomming', where process philosophy or existentialism use an ontology of 'becomming'.]
"After all, abstract ideas are not too easy to sell... " --LOL, a cogent criticism of capitalism, and one that essentially dates back to Socrates and Plato.
"The tests were influenced by some American stereotypes, especially the most controversial dichotomy J/P, which according to this test could easily be renamed into “successful – not successful”." --LOL, yes I had noticed that about the MBTI J/P letter. In MBTI the last letter, the J/P rating, is correlated to Conscientiousness in the Big Five (~0.49) whereas in socionics the last letter is measure of whether a person's primary favored thinking style is in the 'rational' T/F dichotomy or in the 'irrational' S/N dichotomy.
Socionics Rationality/Irrationality (or judgment/perception in MBTT). I'm tempted to call the four letter version of a socionics type (e.g. INTj) a "typesky" as some humor at the Eastern-bloc origin of the theory. I also think I have a preference to using a different fourth letter other than lowercase 'j' and 'p' to help highlight the difference from the four letter MBTI types, perhaps 'r' for rational and perhaps 'u' for irrational (why 'u'? because 'I' is taken for Introverted and the letter 'u' was not being used yet and it is a letter found in both USSR and Russia, uh, I mean it stands for unrational, yeah that's it).
I like the Socionics idea of making a characteristic/factor of whether 'rationality' is primary ('j' in socionics lettering) with the 'irrationality' as a secondary preference or if 'irrationality' is primary ('p' in socionics lettering) with the 'rationality' as a secondary preference. The following are the 'four rules of Socionics types', found 2/3 of the way down the page here:
Each extraverted type has an extraverted function dominant, introverted – secondary.
Each introverted type has an introverted function dominant, extraverted – secondary.
Each rational type has a rational function dominant, irrational – secondary.
Each irrational type has an irrational function dominant, rational – secondary.
--but what evidence/data is there that these rules are truly the fundamental 'laws of psychology' (or at least homo-sapiens psychology).
Socionics calls the these four groupings 'clubs': Pragmatists (ST), Researchers (NT), Socials (SF), Humanitarians (NF), and those 'clubs' seem the closest socionics has to the Keirsey 'temperaments' (SJ, SP, NT, NF).
I like the intertype compatibility theory from socionics but I don't know if it has been supported by evidence and independent studies, though both Keirsey's book and the 16personalities website also talk about relationships between opposites. However, since the human population distribution is somewhat skewed towards the E and S sides of their respective dichotomies (using the MBTT letters and scale), I have an intuitive feeling that people who are strong I and/or N should look toward people who are more mid-range on those for their 'duality', thus an strong INTj in socionics may want to look towards an xxFj for duality rather than a strong ESFj, while a weak inTj (using lowercase 'i' and 'n' to indicate weaker preference) would do better with typical or strong ESFj... but that's just a guess.
Overall, I think MBTT diverged from Jung's theory by combining some traits of Conscientiousness from the 'Big Five' into the last J/P letter (done intuitively by Myers, rather than by rigorous science), while socionics focused the last letter as a method to indicate a priority (of personal focus) between T/F (rational) or N/S (irrational) functions and tried to avoid combining it with Conscientiousness. Both systems missed Neuroticism from the 'Big Five', though that might have been because Jung was studying people with problems and thus they might all have had high Neuroticism. I like socionics a bit better because it avoids what seems to be the somewhat poorly defined J/P of MBTT (that only moderately correlates to Conscientiousness) and has an inter-type relations model that is thought provoking, but IMHO it needs to add the two factors of the 'Big Five' that it is missing, Conscientiousness and Neuroticism.
<in work>
'Big Five' systems
My thoughts about 'Big Five' personality typing:
- The 'Big Five' is a personality model, the common acronym for the five factors is 'OCEAN'. The 'Big Five' isn't proprietary like the MBTI test and it was developed with more rigorous scientific methodology than either MBTT/MBTI or Socionics and seems better regarded in the scientific community. Since it is more science-focused it doesn't have all the personality stereotypes and 'marketing' of the systems like MBTI and it is lacking anything that corresponds with the inter-type relations theory of Socionics.
- A quick description of the Big Five, from the consent form on the test here: "These represent personality domains associated with aspects of power, love, work, affect and intellect and are frequently labeled Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Emotional Stability, and Openness." There are statistics on how well the 'Big Five' personality factors correlate with the four MBTI factors here.
Here is one test: https://sapa-project.org https://sapa-project.org/survey/start.php
Here is another test: http://www.personal.psu.edu/~j5j/IPIP/
16personalities/NERIS Type Explorer® uses the four letter types familiar from MBTT but has added another letter at the end and adjusted the traits to better match up to the 'Big Five'. They have plenty of articles of their own on their website and this article covers their theory. I haven't read all the articles on their website, but I'd describe it as a hybrid of the Jungian systems and the more academically oriented Big Five, that is designed to produce a set of types (stereotypes) that are more accurate (matching objective reality) than the MBTI® while having more practical utility to a layperson than the Big Five. I haven't purchased their premium service and I'd be interested to hear from someone who has whether they thought it was worth the cost.
NERIS uses the following terms for their five factors: Mind (E/I), Energy (S/N), Nature (T/F), Tactics (J/P), Identity (-A/-T). Their definition of J/P is described similarly to Myers-Briggs, and has some mild cross-correlation to S/N (S being related to J, while P is related to N). In Big-Five terms that means they haven't fully separated Openness to Experience (represented by N/P) and Conscientiousness (represented by J/S). That correlation is what makes SJ's more common than SP's and NP's more common than NJ's (INFJ and INTJ are the most uncommon types). They use the same primary groupings that Keirsey called 'temperaments' (NT, NF, SJ, SP) but call them 'Roles', and they additionally define secondary groupings they call Strategies (I-A, E-A, I-T, E-T).
<in work>
HEXACO and other systems
HEXACO is a system with six factors, or dimensions: Honesty-Humility (H), Emotionality (E), Extraversion (X), Agreeableness (A), Conscientiousness ©, and Openness to Experience (O). It is an alternative to the 'Big Five' that omits 'Neuroticism' and adds 'Honesty-Humility' and 'Emotionality' as well as defining some of the others a bit differently. I like how it separates Emotionality and Openness to Experience. I find it useful to compare other systems to the more common Jungian and Big Five systems because it helps demonstrate the variety of systems and the difficulty inherent in creating a system.
<in work>
Some criticism of personalty typing and tests
https://getpocket.com/explore/item/.....rsonality-test
That's all of my commentary on personality typing systems for now. I will probably update this periodically.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
