That's a typical INTP / type 5 enneagram brain wiring. I'm exactly like this.
The real issue for us is first time impressions. If people knew you before because of something important you've done, they will respect you. Otherwise, you'll fail to impress in the most important time: the first impression.
It took me a long time in my career & expensive coaching sessions and so on, to understand that I really need to work my ass off for my first impression, even more that I don't give ChatGPT-like responses to everything (lots of confidence, but just plainly wrong).
Of course, if I can just use my credentials to give an initial impression, that's better. But that's not usually the case. When it isn't, I need to be very present and aware that "it's my first impression, no need to be so precise, just say something silly and light-hearted.", because that's what most people typically expect.
I started to find examples of people who dealt with this very well, like Steve Jobs and other people that are known to make long pauses and to think before they say something. But even those people aren't a great examples, because they generally are known to be geniuses at their fields and this basically makes your audience want to listen to you.
You just really need to work on that skill, or accept that it will hamper your progress in life.
I am an INTP and this resonates with me, but is mostly an issue in group settings rather than one on one meetings.
In one-on-one first meetings I naturally participate in the back and forth. It's group meetings where I can just listen and absorb information that I come off as disengaged and don't make a good first impression. The strategy I use to mitigate this (suggested by an old boss) is to jump into the conversation very early in the meeting with 1 or 2 comments that I wouldn't have otherwise felt a need to make. It establishes my voice at the table and then I can relax and just process information
That's interesting, in the long run I would say I'm that way too, but it'll be toward the end of the meeting after things have been hashed out I'd contribute my new perspective. Or even worse for first impressions, I'll often I'll listen to a whole meeting, continue forming my thoughts even after the meeting has ended, and then write a well constructed email back to the key people.
I may have figured out a better solution than was possible for anyone during the meeting, but by sending it late people's impressions during the meetings of me may not be the best.
I tend to make good first impressions, I think, because typically (in my experience) nothing too in-depth is being discussed on the first meeting.
It's group meetings where I can just listen
and absorb information that I come off as disengaged
and don't make a good first impression
This is where I struggle sometimes. IMO/IME if it's complicated enough to have a meeting about, then it's probably something that deserves some deeper thought. Blurting and hashing out a solution right then and there is rarely the path to an optimal solution.
But of course, that's not how the world works. Spew out a solution right then and there. That's how you get ahead. Who cares if it's the best solution? You blurted it out first, and that is seen by others as a sign of confidence, and if you are confident then you must know what you're talking about... right?
God, I need to get out of this industry. Maybe all industries.
On a positive note, I do like your mitigation strategy.
Yeah I always get INTP and I get (secretly, internally) impatient with people who can't keep up. Hell I get impatient with myself if I'm not thinking fast enough. Maybe it's INTP with an ADHD modifier? Haha
Can't stand it when people run off into the weeds on examples too. Just.. it's an example. Please just get the concept of examples. They are to get us on the same context. If you can correct my example you can understand what I'm saying. We're good. Please continue with the original thought as if I'd given a good example.
Go go go go go! No, dammit, don't complain I'm being too impatient or hard on myself either, you're wasting time! Go go go!
Of course outwardly this goes through a don't be a jerk filter. Impatience is my problem.
E: Should clarify this is only for skillset relevant conversations. You can take as long as you like on spiritual or philosophical thoughts.
I just did another test, idk can they change? INTP-T again
E2: I should correct myself actually. If I'm popping back to make these edits half an hour and an hour after I posted the original comment then surely I'm thinking fast (initial comment) and also thinking slow (oh wait no, go back to that one thought, add this too).
Hey me, maybe that bit about examples is it's own blog post pal? It went a bit into the weeds itself there. Was it relevant or just on your mind? If you'd have thought slower you might not have bothered typing that bit.
The thing about these scales is that they are actually numeric. (And not real good, but that’s another story.) I’m an INTP, but really close to the middle on the I and the N. It changes things relative to some coworkers who are much more I than me.
Some people are introverts like “I just want to be alone to work and recharge”.
I’m an introvert like, “ I’ll do this on my own, but if you want to help, I’m happy to have you along.”
Social situations don’t really stress me out, but I don’t do well in group conversations.
On the random site I just used it did have a "turbulent" or sense of urgency result, which was a hair off 100%. Maybe that's the bar that determines fast or slow thinkers? Assertive vs Turbulent was the scale.
As an on again off again anxious mess, maybe I think fast so I can have multiple answers ready in case my first isn't good enough? Maybe my thinking will slow down over time (in therapy, anxiety and self-confidence are things I'm working on). It's a hypothesis anyway.
If that is the case then at the extreme ends fast thinkers within INTP don't believe in themselves and slow thinkers do. Fast thinkers are cups half empty (and will likely fall on the floor if I'm not careful) people and slow thinkers are cups can be refilled later people. Both are logical, just different levels of confidence.
It kinda checks out now I've typed it out haha. It does sort of imply there's more than 16 types of people, but that's for Myers and Briggs to deal with.
I think the whole fast vs slow thinking is also a bit tied up with kind of like "raw intelligence" vs "trained skill". I think there are some people who are really really smart and fast thinkers, and some people who are less smart and slower. But the thing is, being smart doesn't mean being right. Especially as things get complicated where methodology or background research become critical components of getting the right answers. Knowledge is probably more important than intelligence in the application of knowledge. Intelligence may be more important in the discovery of knowledge, and even then, it require the sufficient patience to acquire prerequisite knowledge in the first place.
I'm not sure that one is better than the other, but I suspect there is a lot of frustration embedded in mismatching what you want to be doing vs what you are good at.
I realised I was coming back to the thread to edit in new thoughts. This means I do both fast thinking (initial comment) and slow thinking (returning to add something else)
I no longer believe I'm solely a fast thinker, I just wasn't giving myself credit for the slow because I'm impatient af
Psychologists have been discounted for quite some time now.
But also, what would it even mean to say that Myers-Briggs is wrong? If you pick 4 personality traits and create 16 groups from them, then knowing someone's group will always give you insight into their personality.
> Because I think fast and that intp also matches me.
I would suggest that if you primarily think in a fast, intuitive manner, then INTP doesn't match you because that antithetical to what INTP means. Perhaps you are reading too much into the "type descriptions" which tend to be stereotypically and not particular accurate (or are being too trusting of questionaire test results). Many of the types are similar to each other, so it's common to see oneself to an extent in more than one description.
To be an INTP means that your dominant thinking process is "Introverted Thinking" which is slow, reasoned, logical thinking that places a high emphasis on internal consistency. And that this is backed up with a secondary thinking process of "Extraverted Intuition" which is fast, intuitive thinking, which an emphasis on ideas and creative, divergent thought patterns. Or at least, that this was true of you as a young person.
But what about fast, reasoned, logical thinking that places a high emphasis on internal consistency? There is no need for slow there.
Think eventual consistency rather than strict consistency in the world view and the thinking can be blazing fast and keep the other properties. The only advantage to slow is that it avoids the short periods of inconsistency, but that also hurts it since it is harder to make big changes in the world model.
IMO if you're thinking in terms of eventual consistency then that's a very different outlook to the one described above. There is also:
- Extraverted Thinking which is also relatively careful, reasoned and logical but puts more emphasis on external validity than internal consistency.
- Introverted intuition which is faster, more intuitive mode of thinking which some people might see as logical but isn't really. It's logical in the way ChatGPT is logical: it works until it doesn't.
Note also that nobody is using just one of these functions. So it's normal to lead with an intuitive thought and then back that up with logic or vice versa.
But I stand by the idea that you either be fast XOR fully reasoned. You can still be "kinda fast" and reasoned (but you'll never be as fast as intuitive judgements that are close to instant), and you can be pretty accurate with fast intuitive thought (but you'll never be as assured as a more thoroughly reasoned position - sometimes your intuition will lead you astray).
> I would suggest that if you primarily think in a fast, intuitive manner, then INTP doesn't match you because that antithetical to what INTP means
Why? N stands for intuitive, and the rest have nothing to do with thinking fast or slow. P just means you don't judge quickly, P could still come up with tons of ideas and explanations quickly, they just don't judge one of those correct.
Because just treating the letters separately as personality traits doesn't really work. That's the theory that's been tested and found to be bunk. What is more interesting is translating the 4-letter codes into a "stack" of cognitive functions. See https://personalityjunkie.com/functional-stack-type-dynamics... for more information the concept of a "functional stack".
Additionaly, due to extravert bias, they got the P and the J the wrong way around when designing the 4-letter codes:
- "I" means your top function is introverted (this makes sense)
- But "P" means your top extraverted function is a "P" function (N or S) rather than a "J" function (F or T)
But as an introvert's top function is introverted not extraverted, and according to the theory J/P alternates down the stack, that mean's that an I..P type's overall top function is a actually "J" function. Specifically in the this case "Introverted Thinking" (often notated "Ti").
Introverted Thinking is actually slow in two ways:
- Because it's a J ("Judgement") function. Which just means it's either an F ("Feeling" or T ("Thinking") function. These correspond to the Slow thinking from Kahneman's Thinking Fast and Slow. That's what "Judgement" is.
- Because it's an I ("Introverted") function. This doesn't make it actually slow, it just makes it appear slow. This is because "I" functions involve a relatively long amount of internal coginition before seeking more input from the external environment (this is what it means to be an "I" function). Which will appear slower to the observer who can't observe the persons internal thinking processes and can only observe when they interact with their environment.
So you mean that someone can't be introverted, trust their intuition, think instead of feel and not be judgemental, without also having a slow thinking pattern? That seems like nonsense to me. Where would you place such a person if you argue that they can't be an INTP? Or is your point to show how badly designed MBTI is?
I certainly think the MBTI as a questionaire and the encoding of types into 4-letter codes is badly designed. But I think the interpretation of underlying theory based on cognitive functions and functional stacks is both elegant and compelling.
Taking your description naively, such a person would likely be an INTJ. Which has a functional stack of (in order of most to least used thinking processes): Introverted Intuition - Extraverted Thinking - Introverted Feeling - Extraverted Sensation.
I realise that doesn't make much sense if you are used to applying the 4-letter code to persons directly. But as I mentioned above, I don't think that is a good way of doing things. It makes more sense if you take the 4 letter codes as simply being an opaque shorthand encoding for functional stacks (with the individual letters in the code not having meaning on their own, only indirectly through their correlation to a functional stack). E, I, N, S, T, F, P, J then become properties of thinking processes and an "extraverted person" is simply someone who primarily tends towards using one of the four extraverted thinking processes (Fe, Te, Ne, Se). They may or may not present like the everyday understanding of how an extravert presents (e.g. sociable and chatty). Typically people who have a "Extraverted Feeling" (Fe) dominant function closely fit this stereotype, but other types extraverts often don't.
Ok, that makes sense, but you should probably clarify that you have a nonstandard view of MBTI when you say that people can't be the personality type they describe themselves as.
If someone did the test and got INTP, then I think it is fair for them to describe themselves as INTP. You might say that the test was wrong, but as I said that isn't how most see MBTI.
It's actually not that non-standard. It's how the majority of people who are into MBTI / jungian type view things (where I've linked MBTI to Kahneman's Fast/Slow thinking is non-standard, but a cognitive functions + functional stack view is not).
It's also what the more advanced "Step III" version of the official MBTI test is based on. But that that assessment isn't just a simple questionaire: it can be only be conducted by a trained assessor and the cost of training course runs to thousands of pounds, so most people don't have experience of it, and it ends up being the simpler naive model that most people learn about.
I guess I have to take the test again. My old job had our types in the description of our team slack channel. I just remember being one of three extroverts on a team of 12.
But the way this person describes things is how I am precisely, when it comes to discussion on philosophy, politics, and so on. Debatable topics.
Slightly less so when I already know something or we are in a design/brainstorming session, I am more assertive.
I'm skeptical of the emphasis on the alphabet sorter.
Then again I see you have responded to some similar criticism of it below so I'll try to remember to read it when I'm not supposed to be managing a project.
The way I kind of view it is that I am a very slow thinker, but I've overdeveloped the skill of self-investigation. So I can "think fast" by asking myself very good questions that quickly cut to the core of where my answer would come from. There are often questions or problems (especially in the world of engineering) where the best thing for me to do is something else and let my subconscious do some work on it. It's not that I couldn't solve it using "fast brain", it's just that using "slow brain" (often diffuse thinking) is more energy efficient.
I think what it actually means is that personality type definitions are meaningless. I'm the same as above. I'm about as introverted as they come, but I also spent a years working in tech services that included sales. It's a skill like anything else. My brain works very fast and more importantly, I know what I know and what I don't and just got very good at articulating that without hemming and hawing. It's not intuitive thinking as much as it's reasoned extrapolation.
> I'm about as introverted as they come, but I also spent a years working in tech services that included sales. It's a skill like anything else
I like to think of MBTI-style types as describing as describing the baseline at which your personality started before it was influenced by life experience such as working in sales for several years. That will have changed your personality but it doesn't affect your type.
If you expect an MBTI type to describe your personality as-is then you're going to be disappointed. This is also why the questionnaires are so inaccurate because they tend to ask about behavioural patterns which are influenced by life experience. You can get a much more accurate typing if you ask about why you act in a certain way, but that's hard (impossible) to do with a fixed set of questions.
> "it's my first impression, no need to be so precise, just say something silly and light-hearted.", because that's what most people typically expect.
This
I told a friend of mine that whenever he goes on a first date. Whatever she asks, if it's within the first 10 minutes, say something that is clearly a non-serious answer. Don't say anything serious in the first 10 minutes. After that, feel free to be yourself. Since he's very serious, this helped to balance him out a bit, especially because his first impression was so different.
"What kind of work do you do?"
"I teach... rocks how to ehm... throw... other rocks. Which I know, there's an ethical issue to that. Like, would humans just be allowed to throw other humans? No! But in rock culture, well you gotta rock as a rock. Naturally, the electric guitar is their preferred instrument of choice. So rocks wanna be thrown, but only by other rocks, not by humans. I know, it's weird, I'm a bit of an exception but that's also because I grew up with parents that rocked and then it's sort of fine. Marilyn Manson also was a famous rock throwing coach."
I just made that up, but stuff like that. Key to that is also knowing when to pause and be fully willing to be imperfect.
I need to do something similar. I'm also too serious and too thinkey for the normal world. Fortunately, I have a huge imagination too, so I just show that first by being not serious at all :)
I've thought about the whole "being yourself" thing versus deviating from it for the first 10 minutes, but I figured if putting up a bit of an act (that you enjoy yourself as well) for 10 minutes changes people's impression much more positively of you and then you can fully drop it and be yourself, then it's fine.
> "I teach... rocks how to ehm... throw... other rocks. Which I know, there's an ethical issue to that. Like, would humans just be allowed to throw other humans? No! But in rock culture, well you gotta rock as a rock. Naturally, the electric guitar is their preferred instrument of choice. So rocks wanna be thrown, but only by other rocks, not by humans. I know, it's weird, I'm a bit of an exception but that's also because I grew up with parents that rocked and then it's sort of fine. Marilyn Manson also was a famous rock throwing coach."
> "I teach... rocks how to ehm... throw... other rocks. Which I know, there's an ethical issue to that. Like, would humans just be allowed to throw other humans? No! But in rock culture, well you gotta rock as a rock. Naturally, the electric guitar is their preferred instrument of choice. So rocks wanna be thrown, but only by other rocks, not by humans. I know, it's weird, I'm a bit of an exception but that's also because I grew up with parents that rocked and then it's sort of fine. Marilyn Manson also was a famous rock throwing coach."
Buried somewhere in that pile is a nugget of comedy gold.
And I know, there’s an ethical issue to that. Like, should piles be able to bury nuggets? No! But in nugget culture, well you gotta nugget as a nugget.
> The real issue for us is first time impressions.
I have a similar problem. Meeting another programmer for the first time usually leaves me feeling quite stupid. They’ll start talking about all sorts of concepts, or how they built some particular thing, and I won’t be able to follow along at all.
The good news is, since their first impression of me is so poor, they’re often blown away when they see something I spent time on. They must be thinking, how did this dingus do that?
I've an established theory that most people will try to pull you into a small sub-set of a field or area that they're an expert in, and then beat you silly with their knowledge.
This is particularly brutal if they're ego-centric and doing it to depress upon you "how smart they are".
I've seen this with quite a few "smart" people.
There are two aspects to this:
1) talking "smart" - use of phrases, language, and ideas that aren't obvious, or using terms that are part of "smart"
2) small areas of their own knowledge that you are unlikely to know.
Examples:
friend would pull me into quantum string theory (M-brains, whatever) where they'd memorized certain details of it--they weren't particularly smart on quantum string theory, but I had zero knowledge. They'd keep turning the topic into these areas despite group's conversations not going that way naturally.
another casual friend pulled me into the "A Tribe Called Red is so good" when I started gushing about my appreciation of multi-syllabically rapping styles of lyrical rappers that I liked. They were essentially regurgitating a critic's article on the topic.
Some internal Microsofters a few decades ago would describe that there was internal smart-speak for "smart" identifying people. The same is true in most contexts.
I like to just go along with it, and get them to teach me. Accept the idea that they are the expert, and place them into a teacher position. If you disagree with a statement being made, don't be adversarial, steelman their arguments and try get them to explain to you why they are making the statement they are making. Either you ignite their passion, or they avoid you because you are weirdly too enthusiastic about a mechanism they may have been using to overpower you.
I had an math professor (NOT the one I am referencing in another comment) that was ego-centric and would often respond to my incessant questioning with demoralizing (and sometimes flat out rude) responses. I just acted completely oblivious to the social faux pas and his avoidance/adversarial tendencies eventually turned into a much more productive relationship. I received the only A in the class (he publicly posted everyone's grades).
That's a fair point, and I think you're giving a good example of a certain context of established-expert wrt beginner and how to treat it.
FWIW, I had a friend indicate that because (tenured?) teaching positions are such high demand, that the available candidates can be significantly high caliber. So that might have played into why the math professor was adversarial initially.
The area I've found the depress-to-impress used was usually in peer contexts and didn't have any teachable outcomes, unfortunately. They're regurgitating material that they have better familiarity with, but probably unable to ad-lib off their "beat path".
That makes sense. I think this specific professor also wanted to do research and perhaps disliked teaching, but was required to do it. I could be misinterpreting though.
With the peers thing I just view it as we all have our pathologies, and some people just feel the need to be perceived as smart (usually some kind of insecurity). Sometimes it can just be too much though and you can get the feeling that you are walking on eggshells around them, perhaps not to trigger a judgement of you on their part.
I use a trick I learned from my math advisor. I just say "I'm sorry, I'm kind of stupid, what does it mean? Like, what does it do?". Sometimes they will overcorrect and REALLY dumb it down, but if you can show a higher level insight, they usually pick up on it and adjust. You can direct the conversation away from abstractions and specific details and more towards first principles.
Plus... intellectuals often like to feel smart, so you have an opportunity to pump their ego a bit :)
Their competitor mainstream psychology was fathered and dominated for a long time by Sigmund Freud. His success probably had more to do
to his nephew Edward Bernays and the yearly exclusive balls for the elites than anything scientific. Now there is Nudge Theory which is marred by the replication crisis and repeat fabricators; hardly scientific (though more common in academia than it should be) but it tells governments what they want to hear so it’ll stay successful until the flaws are too obvious to ignore (note that I don’t follow the field overly closely).
The MBTI is just a projection of the personality space like the more accepted Big 5. From my experience data-mining behavioral data at scale it’s a pretty good mapping and the relative value questions are adequate and the 4 dimensions do explain a lot of behavior to the point that it is very useful - a fact probability contributing to its success. My main gripe with it is the extrovert - introvert axis is a bit weak with many people being close to the middle. I’m more extroverted around intelligent people which doesn’t happen as often as I’d like, a trait held by far more commonly by ENTJ/INTJ than random chance.
> My main gripe with it is the extrovert - introvert axis is a bit weak with many people being close to the middle
I think that's partly because people don't understand what extraverted vs. introverted mean in the MBTI sense. It's not about sociability. It's actually about how much external stimuli someone likes more generally. This might be social stimuli (Fe), but it could also be physical stimuli (Se) (for example, liking being physically active or out in nature) or more conceptual stimuli / external ideas (Ne), etc. Or a computing analogy: what's your ratio of IO to CPU time.
Also, at least in the cognitive function interpretation (which IMO is the only sensible theory in the jungian/mbti family), introversion and extraversion do not apply directly to persons. They apply to thinking processes. An extraverted person is then just a person who uses an extraverted thinking mode more often than not (everyone is theorised to use both extraverted and introverted thinking modes). As you note this bias can be more or less extreme.
Indeed, it's been observed that it can both be influenced by external factors (e.g. social expectations), and that it tends to become less extreme over time. As such, a persons "type" is generally considered to be determined by what their preference was in childhood, and (the type) is taken to define their baseline personality (cf. genotype) from which their actually observable personality (cf phenotype) develops.
The "stimuli someone likes more generally" is doing a lot of the work here. I feel like it would be a much more powerful metric if it was separated into different contexts, e.g. are you an extravert with friends but an introvert with regard to the average person?
That’s a good point, reading Carl Jung is in my todo list. I generated an personality embedding from data and only mapped it to MBTI and the Big 5 out of personal curiosity rather than using it for work. The main surprise I got from that work was just how genetic personalities are.
It would make sense that the E/I axis would be clearer if early childhood experiences were used. That would make me a clear extrovert. I think the questions should be updated for that context or at least have some additional framing around the test.
> The main surprise I got from that work was just how genetic personalities are.
This idea was surprising to me too, but when I thought about it I realised it shouldn't be:
- We know that different people frequently react differently to the same stimuli (and that this is true even of very young children).
- Basically everything else in the human body shows genetic variation. It would be weird if the brain didn't.
- There is a strong evolutionary rationale for a population having a variety of complimentary congnitive styles.
I think the MBTI is most interesting is it taken to be only the genetic component of personality (providing us with AFAIK the only theory of the structure of that aspect of personality), while simultaneously leaning into the idea that personality is modified by nurture and environment (but that these changes are not described by one's MBTI type).
> That’s a good point, reading Carl Jung is in my todo list. I generated an personality embedding from data and only mapped it to MBTI and the Big 5 out of personal curiosity rather than using it for work. The main surprise I got from that work was just how genetic personalities are.
Could you possibly expand on the details of "generated an personality embedding from data"?
The data was a huge amount of complete url history and quite a lot of feature engineering goes into developing the features. Mix of Gaussian processes, random forests, GDBT, and a lot of hand coded stuff using regexes and state machines. To get the embedding the features were fed into a multi layered RBM auto encoder. Despite quick initial success of the embedding I was unable to evangelize deep learning to the org and left out of frustration. Andrew Ng, before he was famous, visited us to evangelize deep learning and my colleagues just berated him with their views about how much better Bayesian is, it was embarrassing.
I was uncomfortable with my social anxiety and introversion for much of my teens/early 20's, until I had the liberating realization that I was actually extremely extraverted around people similar to me. I am just bored with the "average" person with "typical" smalltalk, and that's ok because those just aren't my people. Of course, it's probably best to find some ways to cope with those situations, but accepting that "normal" people don't need to like me was very freeing.
MBTI differs significantly from astrology in that it's posited mechanism of action (genetics/early life experiences) is actually plausible, unlike astrology which suggests that differences in personality are due to astral bodies. It's pretty unsurprising that we're unable to measure the cognitive processes the MBTI posits given how limited our ability is to measure the brain in general. So I wouldn't count it out just because there's no experimental evidence (yet).
I've been able to observe the difference between what the MBTI calls "Judgement" (slow thinking) and what the MBTI calls "Perception" (fast thinking) in real life. The example I always give is my high school "Further Maths" class. There were 4 people in my class and it happened that we always ended up working in pairs. However the way in which each pair worked was entirely different:
- Pair 1 (me and my partner) worked independently, rushing through the questions by intuiting answers to each step. We'd then compare answers as a kind of checksum. If our answers differed, often one of us would immediately notice a mistake. And if not then we'd fall back to slowly working through the problem together step-by-step.
- Pair 2 (the other two students) defaulted to this approach of slowly working through each problem step-by-step together. This took longer up front, but produced more accurate answers.
Interesting, both approaches actually ended up taking a similar amount of time overall and yielding a similar accuracy of answer. But there is a huge qualitative difference in the kind of thinking that took place in each approach, and each person in the class also demonstrated a clear and stable preferrence for a specific approach.
There is also a vast body of literature on "Dual-process theories" like this one, popularised by Daniel Kahneman's book Thinking Fast and Slow.
> That's not how science works. If you have a hypothesis with no experimental evidence, discussing it as a fact is akin to doing astrology.
Sure, but you can discuss it as theory without implying that it's proven fact. Most (if not all?) theories that are now considered scientific fact initially went through a period where they were lacking in conclusive experimental evidence.
> I'm sure you're aware that most people recognize themselves in horoscopes descriptions of their personality. This is quite similar to that.
I am. And that's why I think the plausibility of the theory is important. There's a difference between saying "people think in way A and way B" and "whether people think in way A or way B is determined by the position of the planets at the time they were born".
I guess I would say that it's not quite true that there's no experimental evidence. It's more the case that the academic discipline "experimental psychology" has failed to find evidence. Other disciplines like cognitive science and behavioural economics tend not to have studied the MBTI specifically, but have found experimental evidence for theories that are substantially similar enough to the MBTI's hypotheses that IMO they do count as some evidence.
Specifically there is experimental evidence that:
- There are qualitatively different ways in which people can think and process information.
- People can have a stable preference for a given thinking process. And that such preferences follow a bimodal distribution.
- People can have a preference towards either introversion or extraversion (MBTI's I vs. E distinction)
- People can think either in a "Fast" way (fast, intuitive, perceptually inaccesible) or a "Slow" way (slow, reasoned, perceptually accesible) (MBTI's J vs. P distinction)
That's evidence for ~50% of the MBTI already, and would leave "Feeling" vs. "Thinking" (value judgement vs. descriptive judgement) and "Sensing" vs. "Intiuton" (concrete vs. abstract thinking) as interesting research questions.
I'm of the opinion that the test itself is bogus, but that the theory it is attempting to test has merit and is worthy of investigation with better tests. Test-retest reliability doesn't distibguish between those two possibilities.
I always get damn near the middle of the chart, on both axes.
But I think this confirms your claim in my case. For nearly every single answer on the test, my response is "it depends." I really could go either way on nearly every single question because I need more context.
It makes me think the whole test is essentially BS, kind of like a horoscope where you can read whatever you want into it.
Yeah, the test isn't really very accurate. And if you're getting close on both axes that mean the test is actually telling you it isn't sure! (this doesn't mean your personality is actually close - it means the test doesn't know).
There are better tests (like this one https://sakinorva.net/functions) which will give you a confidence percentage for each cognitive function rather than just a best guess overall type. But none of them are that great, and currently the gold standard for determining type is to only use the test results as starting to point and to familiarise yourself with the theory to fine tune that, potentially with the guidance of an type expert.
unlike astrology which suggests that differences in
personality are due to astral bodies
Tangential, but: I wonder if astrology might have been accidentally correct in some ways.
Clearly astrological bodies have no actual influence on us. I'm not that crazy.
However, mightn't the time of year of birth have a big influence? The amount of sunlight received, activities undertaken, and foods eaten by the expectant mother and newborn baby will vary based on time of year. The differences may be minor today, but would have been pretty profound in antiquity.
Imagine being born two thousand years ago in the northern latitudes during the deep winter. Mother and child experience six months of darkness, eating preserved and salted foods. Now imagine the opposite. You are born during summer. Mother and child get lots of sunlight and fresh food. Surely there are effects! I think it would be surprising if there were none.
Astrology is almost certainly right in some respects (a stopped clock is right twice a day after all). Other than time of birth thing, I suspect some of the personality traits astrology describes are genuinely traits that humans can have (although, I'm not actually familiar with what astrology describes), they just don't correlate to birthdate/planet as claimed. Astrology was after all created by humans are familiar with human behaviour.
Regarding birth date, I would speculate that one of the most significant effects it has on modern children is how far through the school year they are born (and thus whether they are one of the older children or one of the younger children in their cohort). As you say, it's likely that there's some effect. I personally somewhat doubt it's causes differences in personality anywhere near as drastic the kind that astrology claims.
I disagree. There’s no casual pathway between Astrology and who you are. With MBTI you respond to a questionnaire, so there is some connection to you. How accurate this is, well that’s a topic for debate. However, the most accurate personality models are also based on questionnaires of this sort.
Some time ago I also thought MBTI was bullshit, now I think it’s quite useful. And at least for me, anecdotally, has predictive power.
> How accurate this is, well that’s a topic for debate.
Not really; we know for a fact it is not accurate (and thus irrelevant). You can debate it if you wish but the facts of the matter have been long settled.
Accuracy isn't binary. Not being perfect doesn't mean it is irrelevant. My map of the city could be more accurate but it still gets me where I need to go.
It doesn't matter how we define accuracy, I argue relevancy comes into play moreso when they stated this model is useful, making accuracy a non-issue, even if that's not what their exact words.
The desire for your beliefs to be true also affects scientists and biases the scientific enterprise. That doesn’t mean science is not reliable. Same applies here. The bias exists, it doesn’t mean that the results are useless.
Trying to make business decisions on the basis of MBTI metrics, which is what it is often criticised for, is of course misguided.
But saying "MBTI is pseudoscience you cannot be INTP" makes as much sense as "Hair colour names are unscientific, so you can't identify as blond".
Sure you can. It's a description. I wouldn't go ascribing intelligence on the basis of hair colour, but I wouldn't doubt you have a hair colour either.
And if you've found commonalities / common experiences and like being with other blond people, that's fine too.
The MBTI is descriptive. However, it claims to be descriptive of internal mental processes, which it posits to exist in a certain way (admittedly not everything interprets the MBTI this way, but IMO this is the only interpretation under which the MBTI is an interesting theory).
I'm personally quite open to the idea that it's an accurate categorisation, but I do also think that it's an extroadinary claim that requires extroadinary justification. IMO saying "oh, it's just a description" because that evidence hasn't (yet) been found is a bit of a cop out.
I love how on the internet, people make a big effort to criticize arguments and not show any evidence that AT LEAST, proves that their criticism makes sense.
So here I ask you: given that Psychology is a social SCIENCE, also a part of STEM. And psychologists definitely use those tests, I was personally introduced to them by a psychologist that helped me with career coaching, recognized on his field with a bunch of papers.
Now, please explain yourself: why is it a pseudoscience? I want proofs.
Lets be real though. Nobody just stops at they are INTP. This is the kind of thing that corporate busybodies in HR - or something related - will use to evaluate people.
It's a categorical system. It categorises people in to groups on dimensions. Dimensions that are ultimately defined by the questions that give the category.
You can measure people on many dimensions, and all dimensions that are not truly random will correlate with some aspect of the persons life.
Interestingly, some of the dimensions of the MTBI correlate with dimensions of the "Big 5".
Introversion - Extroversion => Almost the same dimension as in Big 5.
Intuitive - Sensation => Correlate strongly to Big 5 Openness
The longer textual descriptions of the MTBI categories that one can find online are "made up" so they could indeed be said to be a type of pseudoscience.
Cool, you’re pointing out something many also agree, but how exactly is your comment even remotely constructive? There’s much more in OP’s comment than Myers-Briggs.
MBTI are pseudoscience -> This.
It absolutely fails to make predictions, except that people who describe themselves as liking to think are people who like to think, and other obvious ideas. It is very hyped in actual application, though. As is homeopathy and astrology.
<edit>
Big Five Personality traits and the HEXACO model exist, and they seem to have more a more positive scientific review history. “Your boss is probably someone more likely to have qualities from the dark triad” is still bad news when looking at the real world versus an ideal world, but this seems to be a checked fact.
</edit>
There is some evidence to suggest that the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) may not be as reliable and valid as its proponents suggest. In fact, some studies have found that the MBTI does not consistently yield the same results for individuals who take it multiple times, which raises questions about its reproducibility and the reliability of the results.
For example, a study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found that only about half of individuals who took the MBTI twice received the same result both times. This suggests that the MBTI may not be a reliable measure of personality traits.
In addition, other studies have found that the MBTI does not reliably predict job performance or other real-world outcomes, further questioning its validity as a psychological assessment tool.
The questionaire is bullshit (how on earth would we expect to measure thinking processes through a questionaire), but the underlying theory is a lot more interesting.
It's terms (like "thinking") are technical jargon that don't correspond to their usual meanings though. For example "thinking" is really "descriptive judegement" (cognition focussed on whether things are true/false/possible/impossible), to be contrasted with "feeling" (which is actually also a rational cognitive process!) just focussed on "value judgement" (cognition focussed on whether things are good/bad/should happen/shouldn't happen).
It is also not supposed to measure personality traits in the same sense that other models do. It is two steps removed:
1. It attempts to measure interal cognitive processes rather than external behavoural traits (how you think, not what you think)
2. It attempts to measure people's natural personality baseline (cf genotype) from which their actual personality (cf phenotype) develops as modified by their life experiences and the context in which they live.
Both of which make it even more difficult to measure with a questionaire that tends to only ask about current behaviours. But IMO also make it a much more interesting and much more plausible theory.
How do you know the first impressions people have are negative based on speed of response?
I'm often slow to respond and make no effort to change that on first impression, but I have been told - many times - that people view me as thoughtful and intelligent.
I can't view myself from another's perspective but if you take 5 seconds to come up with an answer which is really good, most people seem to completely forget the 5 second silence and remember the good answer. As you would expect.
Many people's quick replies are poor quality, so a high quality reply stands out. This does assume someone can identify the difference, but hopefully you're in such an environment.
Also, people tend to gravitate to a calm self-assured voice. The quick reply is more a hallmark of comedians and entertainers who need to quickly generate fame and popularity. Since the comedian is such a revered figure in American culture, perhaps that is why it is easy to try to mimic that approach.
Right. If you have the belief that others will value your input, regardless of speed, that seems to become a self-fulfilling prophecy (assuming that belief is derived from genuine previous experience of having created value).
A quick wit is valuable, but not in all situations.
If I'm a bit tipsy then I get less serious and think less deeply and respond more quickly and (at least in my mind) with more humor, which is great socially, but would be terrible in everyday life.
> You just really need to work on that skill, or accept that it will hamper your progress in life.
First impressions are important, but there's a lot more to them than just simply being the first one out of the gate with something insightful. You can convey your seriousness and intent with presence, active listening, facial expressions, preparation, poise, etc. It is a projection of what you think about yourself, ultimately.
If you're sitting there deliberating over getting the Good First Impression, or even just waiting for your turn to speak, people are going to pick up on that. Not saying you are, just that it is an easy trap to fall into.
I'm INXP and type 5, and one thing that's helped me get around this is improvisational comedy. Probably more easy for me because I'm on the cusp of T and F so I'm used to not thinking all the time, but I imagine it'd still help someone farther on the T side of things.
As someone whose current job puts me into a lot of somewhat contextless meetings with peers, I've noticed this is an issue for me as well. Could you share any other specific strategies you've come across for this?
Elon Musk also tends to take long pauses when he answers a question. I thought it was odd the first time I saw it. Almost like he is looking it up on an internal interface or something. Not sure if this is done intentionally or a style that he has developed.
I was studying body language a few years back, and learned about what particular eye movements often correspond to thinking-wise. A fun exercise that I did was I watched some of Elon's interviews but I tried to contextualize EVERYTHING he said with his eye movements alone. When viewing from this lens, you can glean a lot of interesting information. A basic example: For right handed people, looking up and to the right often means they are tapping into their imagination, whereas up and to the left is memory. You can basically plot a chart of how engaged Elon is throughout his interview/talks, and know what responses he has that are pre-canned and what parts of those responses are more rehearsed than other parts.
The real issue for us is first time impressions. If people knew you before because of something important you've done, they will respect you. Otherwise, you'll fail to impress in the most important time: the first impression.
It took me a long time in my career & expensive coaching sessions and so on, to understand that I really need to work my ass off for my first impression, even more that I don't give ChatGPT-like responses to everything (lots of confidence, but just plainly wrong).
Of course, if I can just use my credentials to give an initial impression, that's better. But that's not usually the case. When it isn't, I need to be very present and aware that "it's my first impression, no need to be so precise, just say something silly and light-hearted.", because that's what most people typically expect.
I started to find examples of people who dealt with this very well, like Steve Jobs and other people that are known to make long pauses and to think before they say something. But even those people aren't a great examples, because they generally are known to be geniuses at their fields and this basically makes your audience want to listen to you.
You just really need to work on that skill, or accept that it will hamper your progress in life.