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Type preference > Personality

What does personality mean to you? I’ve heard “personality” used when describing a person’s attitudes or characteristics. I’ve also heard it used to describe a person’s disposition. Well, both influence how we act and yet there are so many different ways to describe personality.

Is it fixed, like someone’s temperament or flexible depending upon the situation? At work you may be an ultra-multitasker dependent on schedules but find that the opposite approach makes you happiest in your personal life. If that’s the case, there must be more to personality than just characterizing you as a person. Spoiler alert – it’s all about preference!

Let’s take a look into personality type preference through the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI).

Type theory

In his 1921 book, Psychological Types, Carl Jung proposed that there are recognizable patterns in people’s seemingly random behavior which suggest preferences. His first proclaimed dichotomy in behavioral preference is judging and perceiving, explaining how people process information. Generally, perceiving refers to collecting all the information as it comes, while judging refers to accepting information as it is and then making a decision. There this nuance to what we do with the information as well. Sensing or intuition preference describes how we acquire information. Thinking or feeling preference explains how we organize information.

Next, Jung proposed the extraversion and introversion dichotomy, explaining the source of people’s energy as external or internal. Probably the most well known of the type preference pairs, and yet most misunderstood. To many, its more palatable to view this at the two attitudes, which direct the rest of the preference processes.

“Yet if we consider that no man is simply introverted or simply extraverted, but has both attitudes potentially in him-although he has developed only one of them as a function of adaptation-we shall immediately conjecture that with the introvert extraversion lies dormant and undeveloped somewhere in the background, and that introversion leads a similar shadowy existence in the extravert. And this is indeed the case. The introvert does possess an extraverted attitude, but it is unconscious, because his conscious gaze is always turned to the subject. He sees the object, of course, but has false or inhibiting ideas about it, so that he keeps his distance as much as possible, as though the object were something formidable and dangerous.”

– C. J. Jung, The Problem of the Attitude Type, 1953

Isabel Briggs Myers and Katherine Cook Briggs endeavored to modernize Jung’s type theory when publishing the MBTI in 1962. The MBTI examines the dealings between preferences, the dynamics and flow of type, expressed through unique combinations of the dichotomies.

Not all personality tests are MBTI

There are many versions of “personality” assessments you’ll find online. Take them with caution as they aren’t compliant with standards established by the Myers-Briggs Foundation. That said, any results you receive should also be qualified. If you abstain from the MBTI and prefer other tools, here is some general criteria:

Validity – who made it, how is it administered?
Purpose – why was it created, and what are the intended results?
Authority – who verifies its accuracy?

As you venture into the realm of self-reporting, try to remember that you can skew the results. The conditions, situations, or current events can dramatically sway how you feel and address a self-reported preference. Your answers are only a snapshot in time at that given moment, circumstance, or stage in life.

Interpreting the MBTI

“I took the MBTI years ago and got ___ result. I took it again and got a different result, ___.”

We’re all dealing with this realistic scenario, today. If your preference before the pandemic was middle of the road – E vs I – you enjoyed the social energy from coworkers and noise but needed your time to shut out the world and get things done. Now you find yourself in this new normal of #wfh, isolated from that environment, do think your type preference would be the same?

Applying the type preference in regular life

Often we see the MBTI applied in talent management. Managers want a record of the type preference for all their team members so that the team can work better together. That doesn’t sound voluntary, nor does it remotely give the participants authority to responsibly explore their preference.

I don’t feel it’s an appropriate inventory for applicants and onboarding. Instituting the MBTI as a vehicle to categorize people is a common misuse. And that’s not cool. Some liken the MBTI or similar personality assessments as having a direct correlation to outcomes, potential performance, motivation, or other intrinsic drivers. It isn’t a predictor of capacity, cohesion, proclivity to collaborate, or behavioral success. Seriously, can you know with absolute certainty that an INFP won’t be a good project manager or an ESTJ won’t be a good servant leader? NO!

The underlying point that is frequently missed when applying type preference is MBTI and similar qualified tools help us – individually and internally – leverage psychological evidence to gain self-awareness.

The problem to be explored

At its core, there is a messaging dilemma. The MBTI should help people explore themselves. One outcome of this journey could be improved self-awareness. Knowing oneself is the foundation of the emotional quotient (EQ) and developing emotional intelligence (EI). That’s the beauty of having type preference interpreted by a practitioner – you learn more about why you do what you do, how you prefer to do things, and what you can do to do things better with others.

100s of years of clinical research, theory, and findings are available, often for free, to help us make sense of our human nature.

“It’s up to each person to recognize his or her true preferences” – Isabel Briggs Myers

I’ll continue to explore these topics and stay tuned for more on how we can learn and grow honestly across social and emotional spectrums.

You can learn more about MBTI here.

You can learn more about self-awareness and emotional intelligence here.