I wonder what the common personalities look like? Has anyone posted one of those?
| Your Personality is Very Rare (INTP) |
 Your personality type is goofy, imaginative, relaxed, and brilliant. Only about 4% of all people have your personality, including 2% of all women and 6% of all men You are Introverted, Intuitive, Thinking, and Perceiving. |
[Hat Tip: GrrlScientist]
9 comments :
I guess this is a Myers-Briggs Type indicator, which I believe is based on Jungian psychology. I score as either INTP or INTJ which are apparently both very rare (I read this as synonymous with 'weird').
What's the consensus as to the validity of these type of tests?
Your personality type is goofy, imaginative, relaxed, and brilliant.
Hm. One outta four? :D
INTP is an engineer :)
http://www.mypersonality.info/personality-types/
And not all that rare, either:
http://www.personalitypage.com/demographics.html
If you're an INTP, you're a hopelessly intraverted geek. There is no hope for you. I am one, I should know. Take the test again when you're in a completely different mood. Most likely, it will be the same.
Larry,
Do you think you are INTP? If you do explore it. If you think you aren't simply ignore it. It doesn't make a darn difference. There's a heck of a lot mor to life than Type.
Anonymous,
Taking the MBTI repeatedly (especially on one of those dodgy questionnaires on the web, is simply going to confuse you. Based on what is indicated, and what you conclude from a discussion of type, you can work out what you think your type is. If it doesn't help simply forget it. There's a lot more to life than type.
Ian,
The MBTI cannot determine what your type is. And if you find any MBTI practitioner who claims to be able to read your mind or type with a questionnaire, you can be sure the person is spouting BS.
It accurately diagnosed me as ISTJ then said "your personality is the most common". Huh? As I recall MBTI, E is some 75%, so no I personality could be "the most common".
I took the M-B test as part of a workshop on teambuilding within our school board and administration. I came out INTP as well as our Business Manager and Technology Director, which wasn't too surprising as we all had the same sorts of behaviors to situations.
As for ian b gibson's question of how valid M-B is, I would say somewhat better than astrology ("Oh, she's a Leo, no wonder she craves all the attention!" vs. "You're an INTP like me, we're such geeks!")
I guess an analogy is a crankiness that accompanies my wife's menses. Most times a very happy-go-lucky person, my wife sometimes gets cranky. Not all her crankiness is a result of her period (but most is) so I walk a fine line of a) dismissing her testiness as an effect of menses; or b) taking her crankiness for real as manifestation of her being truly dissatisfied with some thing under my control. Making an assumtion and mistaking (b) for (a) is disastrous, but asking her if it's (a) when it's actually (b) makes matters worse.
Same goes for the MBI: Knowing someone is a certain MBI type does not guide you a whole lot when it comes to dealing with specific behaviors. Assuming that a behavior is MBI-related may not increase your success in dealing with that behavior, but may actually hinder understanding of the motivations for that behavior.
So, uh, my short answer is "May be valid, but not useful."
I've taken the official Meyer-Briggs test and this one; both tell me I'm INFJ. Apparantly we're less than 1%!
While the MBTI is fun, it lacks the psychometric reliability and validity of legitimate personality tests (see this pdf). Its theory is that there are sixteen discreet personality types, which doesn't correspond to current personality research (e.g., the Big Five Typology).
A few years ago I did the Myers-Briggs test as part of a two week course for senior managers. It was done on the 'proper' questionnare and marked formally.
My results claimed that I was an INTP (curious coincidence) and that most of my colleagues were of similar although not identical types.
We were all IT professionals so being categorised as engineering types did not seem too outragous.
The main thrust of the course was to show us how we could get better relationships with other executives in the company (who were mostly E*** sales types) by speaking to their goals and dreams, rather than by speaking of our normal numbers and risk averse behavious.
All very interesting, although I can't say that it changed much in reality.
We did however discuss the Jungian archetypes and how these drove the categorisation, and also how you had primary and secondary characters depending on circumstance.
Personally I was unconvinced. I can see how the Myers-Briggs indicator can produce a reliable 'score' arising from a set of validated questions - but to my mind this seemed like just one of many possible categorisations of personality... and based on some outdated guff which had no scientific underpinings. There was no explanation about the mechanism of the four archetypes and whether these were genetic, cultural, or environmental.
In the end I dismissed it as an interesting exercise and methodology for thinking about relationships, but not an underlying truth about the human condition.
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