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Does anyone here know their Myers-Briggs type or ever tried to figure it out?
Ok yes I know it's pseudoscience, I know it's not much better than a horoscope, but it's the fun thread gimme a break. If we can talk about tarot we can talk about MBTI. (MBTI at least is willing to talk about the weaknesses and negative aspects of different personality types, which makes it a little better than a horoscope.)
I think I'm an INFx (never quite sure on the last letter). Or at least an INxx. Probably most people who enjoy long internet arguments are an INxx of some kind.
Most people think you're supposed to just mix and match the four letters (decide if you're an introvert or extrovert for I or E, thinker or feeler for T or F, etc) but actually what it's really "about" is the "cognitive function stack", the cognitive tools that you use to process information and make decisions. The four letter personality type is just a code for a specific function stack. So for the INTP for example, their functions (from most dominant to least dominant) are Ti Ne Si Fe - introverted thinking, extroverted intuition, introverted sensing, and extroverted feeling. The "introverted" functions are more private, more about determining the texture of your inner experience, more about how you generate thoughts and ideas internally, and the "extroverted" functions are how you interface with the outside world, those are the aspects of your experience that you want to share around and make public, you're more likely to want to know how other people are experiencing that same function, etc.
If nothing else, I think the idea of different individual aspects of your cognition being introverted or extroverted, rather than introversion/extroversion being a single trait, is interesting and may have some use.
If you want personality pseudoscience I recommend the Enneagram over Myers-Briggs. It has a lot more depth. Myers-Briggs is focused on being descriptive, while Enneagram is more focused on being prescriptive. As in, "If I have this kind of personality type, what should I do to be a healthier and happier person?" And the advice is very good in my experience! At least for type Fives, I have not tried the advice for other types and can't testify to their accuracy and effectiveness. But if you're the kind of nut who finds categorizing by personality really fun, then you're probably a type Five anyway.
Based on the descriptions, I'm more of a Four. (...and that's exactly what the test gave me, 4w3. That probably should really be 4w5 though, because I have rather idiosyncratic conceptions of "status" and "success" that probably don't line up with what the test authors had in mind.)
I think there's a difference between, do you like to categorize people because it's another interesting data point about how they work, or do you like to categorize people because you want to know the color of their soul.
This is basically the thing that got me interested in psychometrics. My problem is I have a bad tendency to categorize people in my head as lab rats with identifiable characteristics and try to predict what they’re going to do. It can make it a little hard to actually connect, because I’ve already formed an impression of what box someone fits it, and my box is oddly specific.
That said, what you said earlier about the most interesting part of Meyers-Briggs being the type functions is also my view. I think the categorizations are bogus, but I’m definitely the sort of person whose most conscious experience is thinking through things like I’m making a logical argument, pulling in information from the environment to try and enhance that logic, and then dragging my feelings along.
Except when anxiety hits and the processor gets interrupted by the amygdala. That’s when things go off the rails.
That's really interesting! I didn't have you pegged that way based on some of your other posts, but I suppose it does fit.
The idea that someone could experience "logical argumentation" as their default mode of conscious experience is definitely very interesting to me. I mean I understand intellectually that there's no reason why that couldn't be the case, and I know that there are many people who would report that they think this way. But it's rather foreign to me, because logic to me is a tool, it's not where I live. The urge to typical-mind is so strong, so when people report to me that this is how they are by default, I always have a little urge to ask... really? Do you actually not experience your mind as a buzz of images and sounds by default? It's quiet and "logical" up there? Really?
That's actually my big issue with the MBTI: Thinking and Feeling aren't so alien to each other. I could probably be equally described by the INFP functions, making decisions based on values, following what's right, working on refining values, trying to take others' perspectives into consideration. I do both. But I'm distrustful of my 'gut,' and I want to expose it to logical argumentation to see if what I'm doing is actually in accordance with the logical way to pursue my values and preferences. I'm a big believer in cooperation, but because I believe it is logical.
I also have a strong romantic identity, which does somehow slot in to that frame. But by far the most important thing in a relationship to me is that I can explore ideas with my partner -- my girlfriend met me because I gave a lecture about history and she felt, according to her recollection, that "this is the kind of man I need in my life!" 100% of my partners have either identified with the Tumblr phrase "sapiosexual" or could fairly be described with it. That's not to say I'm not affectionate in a traditional sense, because I have also been described as romantic, but for me a relationship needs both aspects. For me, my idea of an amazing date is a discussion about the concept of justice over dinner and a reflection on the future of commerce as pillow talk.
That's also a problem with the MBTI -- it doesn't have anywhere to put the logician who's also a hopeless romantic!
I think in words. Have you ever used Spreeder?
I hardly know her!That's what my mental imagery often looks like; words scrolling through my head against a black background. I often feel punctuation, when I wrote "feel" just then I felt kind of like I needed to lean, and when I write a full-stop period, I feel like I need to jolt forward like a typewriter. (*jolt*)Basically 85-90% of my internal experience is me thinking about what I would write in an essay or say in a lecture about my experiences or whatever I'm thinking about; for instance, today, I was thinking about how the prisoner's dillema applies to dating and the kind of argument I would make for cooperation in a world where so many people feel like defecting. I don't necessarily think in syllogisms, but I do think in logical, well-flowing arguments. So what people read on the motte is extremely close to just what I'm doing in my head most of the time. That's why my motte posts are often so long. This, right now, is literally my stream-of-consciousness.
I have "absent-minded professor" vibes, and I frequently make wrong turns when driving because I was thinking about personality theory instead of navigating. Fortunately my cerabellum is pretty good at keeping my foot on the brake when it needs to be.
I also like listening music to crowd out distractions so I can get into my flow of words, and sometimes I pace while thinking to also occupy my body and 'get it out of the way.'
Well, maybe not unless you count the sound of my own voice, or music. I don't experience many mental images, and I find fiction hard to read if it has a lot of description, because my imagination can't keep up with the imagery they're trying to get me to experience. I prefer dialogue.
My internal conscious experience is highly verbal, and I've occasionally found myself thinking about a phrase so intensely that I say it out loud accidentially. My chief mode of internal experience is to imagine that either I'm doing what I am now -- and writing something -- or to imagine myself with my partner, or in front of a crowd of people, explaining to them what I'm thinking. When I was in school I often imagined giving a class presentation on whatever was interesting me at the moment.
I hate smalltalk, but I love public speaking, because to me it's like writing an essay out loud, and with more opportunity for humor.
It's logical, but not necessarily quiet. Like I intimated, the logical processing I go through has to compete with the anxiety feelings that often try to crowd it out -- tightness in the chest, lightheadedness, shaking, impending sense of doom. I guess you could maybe think of the logical thinking as a way to compensate for the fact that my emotional experience is so intense and unreliable.
I resonate with so much of this, except for finding fiction hard to read - while I also vastly prefer dialogue, my imagination has no trouble generating imagery to match the narrative. But I've always also thought that was the part of reading that was like exercise and years as a slop vacuum have made me farm strong at it. That's why visual novels and comics can be wordy as hell but nobody is impressed when you tell them you read them.
Anyway, do you ever worry when you find yourself saying "Ha ha now you're Tolkien!" (when you just read a cleverly written passage) or "Just fucking shoot me already" (infinite applicable situations) out loud that that's how hobos get started? Because I do, all the time.
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Right, I'm always trying to explain this to people. The "logic vs emotion" dichotomy is clearly overly simplistic and not really tenable. But at the same time, I think it's pretty clear that different people do think and experience in fundamentally different ways, and we need some kind of language for talking about it, even if we end up not using those terms specifically.
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