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Personality Typology
psychology
July 22, 2003, 09:27 PM
Micah and Dan have been talking about the Myers-Briggs (/Keirsey/Jung/etc.) personality test recently, so I thought now might be an appropriate time to weigh in on the subject.
I've read David Keirsey's Please Understand Me, which is an excellent book that I recommend highly. Keirsey builds on the basic personality type system by talking about personality temperments, or the four major groupings of the sixteen types. Here's how it breaks down.
To Keirsey, the most important type distinction is Intuition versus Sensing (N versus S). He argues that the visionary, head-in-the-clouds intuitives and the pragmatic, down-to-earth sensers have fundamentally different worldviews, and two people who differ along this type line will have to work hard to understand and accept one another. Thus this is the first major division among the types. The second division (to make four temperments) depends on the first; if you are a senser (S) type, the important division is Judging versus Perceiving (J versus P). If you are an intuitive (N) type, the important distinction is Thinking versus Feeling (T versus F). So we wind up with:
- the freedom-loving, egalitarian, thrill-seeking Dionysian or Artisan temperment (the SP)
- the duty-bound, paternal, tradition-oriented Epimethean or Guardian temperment (the SJ)
- the knowledge-based, power-seeking, skill-building Promethean or Rational temperment (the NT)
- and finally the self-actualizing, relationship-oriented, spiritual Apollonian or Idealist temperment (the NF).
To Keirsey, the Extraverted versus Introverted (E versus I) distinction is the least important and thus never factors in to temperment.
People with the same temperment have similar goals for and outlooks on life. They may find it easier to communicate with others of the same temperment. For example, as I've mentioned before, I test as an INTJ (although my Judging/Perceiving distinction is fairly even and I have a strong Feeling side to complement the Thinking). Note that I share the same temperment as Micah and Dan (the NT Rational), so we should find that our goals in life (building our skills, acquiring knowledge, reshaping the world, etc.) and our worldview (reality exists to be reworked, we will never live up to our own expectations, etc.) to be similar. This doesn't mean we'll agree on all the fundamental questions of life; we won't. But it does mean our personalities give us a similar understanding of the world that we won't share with our Artisan, Guardian, and Idealist friends.
So do I actually believe all this? Well, yes and no. No personality theories are currently considered scientifically valid by most academic psychologists. This is mostly because a fuzzy concept like "personality" isn't amenable to scientific studies; it varies too much to test in any controlled environment. Given this constraint, we need to ask whether its worth thinking about anyway. My answer to this question is always yes. So I'd argue Myers-Briggs is worth giving serious consideration.
That said, I'd also argue your consideration shouldn't be too serious. As Jung originally conceived of them, the personality types are archetypes, or idealized portraits of distilled personality traits. They do not describe real people. So if you take Keirsey's test and look over the type descriptions, you'll probably find your real personality overlaps a few of the types, as I alluded to by describing myself as "an INTJ with equal Perceiving and a strong Feeling side". So it's worth remembering that Myers-Briggs as a predictive model is a rough measure at best.
Posted by Dan on July 23, 2003 at 08:05 PM
I wonder if there is anyone in our line of work/study who ISN'T an NT? It is interesting to me to see what jobs suit what personality types. I also find the distribution of the personality types (40-45% Guardian, 35-40% Artisan, 5-10% Idealist, 5-10% Rational) pretty interesting too. http://keirsey.com/scripts/stats.cgi
Posted by Rob on July 23, 2003 at 09:14 PM
I would guess (and I emphasize that I could be way off) that Neema ( http://www.neemanet.com/ ) is an SP Artisan type. I'd also guess that Andrew ( http://www.stinkytofu.tv/ ) is an NF Idealist type (I'm not sure whether you've met him or not, Dan).
But you're right; the proportion of NT Rationals is probably much higher at CMU than the world at large. CMUish work is the kind of thing that gets Rationals excited. But its definitely not a given; there are plenty of people in the world who work in high technology that aren't Rationals. Like I said, the whole typology only works as a predictive model to a certain extent, with lots of caveats.
Fun food for thought though.