Cultural archetypes, stereotypes and modal types

[entropie]

Originally Posted by nolla

How about we compromise: "got rich and famous, yet feels empty inside and can't help but to feel for the senile relatives back home"? Plus some rage.

That sounds familiar, I second it

[6sticks]

Since personality types are supposedly innate, then all this shows is the unreliability of the MBTI. It's not like the USA aborts fetuses who test INFP, and the Germans aren't genetically predisposed to birth ISTJs, Aryan propaganda aside.

[entropie]

okokok was just a general feeling

In the end we are all alone, not in the feeling of a society, aint we ?

[6sticks]

Originally Posted by entropie

okokok was just a general feeling

In the end we are all alone, not in the feeling of a society, aint we ?

srite

[Gabe]

What I've always wondered is how much a country's type is based on the actual 'modal type' (just a hypothetical of if that existed. Because I think it's impossible to measure) or cultural history, or institutions, or what? Particularily, I often wonder if factors having nothing to do with people in said country (resources, existing government structure, different challenges). For instance, how the functions of academia make it very much a Theorist culture, even though the majority of professors may very well NOT be theorists.

What we know is that what I just mentioned occurs extremely often- Either people develop and accomplish things through a non-preffered function because of a real or percieved neccesity (e.g Freud's extraverted thinking) or engage in some compulsory version of a culturally-accepted function.

Anyway, what must be true is that a culture with a certian type does NOT have to mean that type is an actual modal type!

The other side of this, is, I wonder if at some point biology starts to respond to culture, and in that way a cultures type begins to actually become a modal type. (Hopefully not, although it wouldn't be the end of the world. *Living* requires all 8 functions, so that kind of evolution would have to always reverse eventually)

Have any of the experts been looking into any of that stuff?

[edcoaching]

Originally Posted by 6sticks

Since personality types are supposedly innate, then all this shows is the unreliability of the MBTI. It's not like the USA aborts fetuses who test INFP, and the Germans aren't genetically predisposed to birth ISTJs, Aryan propaganda aside.

It isn't that there aren't INFPs in the United States--it's that the culture doesn't value their strengths as much as those of other types. People who've studied suicide rates postulate that the reason INFPs are 7 times more likely to attempt suicide in the United States than any other type is because the culture is opposite to their preferences...

Originally Posted by Gabe

What I've always wondered is how much a country's type is based on the actual 'modal type' (just a hypothetical of if that existed. Because I think it's impossible to measure) or cultural history, or institutions, or what? Particularily, I often wonder if factors having nothing to do with people in said country (resources, existing government structure, different challenges). For instance, how the functions of academia make it very much a Theorist culture, even though the majority of professors may very well NOT be theorists.

[quote=Gabe;314124]The archetypes don't seem to be built on modal type--other than perhaps the modal type of whoever takes control. You can figure out the archetypes of corporations, too, and very often there's a CEO component in newer companies as to what is honored. But the modal type may be different. At 3M in the early days of using type there, for example, it was common for every manager in a session to come out ESTJ and verify that as their type. Then in the halls they'd tell the trainer, "I'm really __ __ __ __ but I can't admit it..." The culture was that strong then.

Originally Posted by Gabe

What we know is that what I just mentioned occurs extremely often- Either people develop and accomplish things through a non-preffered function because of a real or percieved neccesity (e.g Freud's extraverted thinking) or engage in some compulsory version of a culturally-accepted function.

Yup. Culture changes the way we express type. For example, people who have extraverted Judging functions in Perceiving cultures (think South America) are much more relaxed about time and schedules than J's in J cultures.

Originally Posted by Gabe

Anyway, what must be true is that a culture with a certain type does NOT have to mean that type is an actual modal type!

Absolutely. See my opening example on France. The current US sample says the modal type is ISFJ by a hair. I think. I didn't pull out the manual to check...

Originally Posted by Gabe

The other side of this, is, I wonder if at some point biology starts to respond to culture, and in that way a cultures type begins to actually become a modal type. (Hopefully not, although it wouldn't be the end of the world. *Living* requires all 8 functions, so that kind of evolution would have to always reverse eventually)

Have any of the experts been looking into any of that stuff?

Mmmm, I think the consensus is behavior adapts rather than biology responds. For example, the samples we have (and they aren't perfect) from First Nations , just a few of them and the nations definitely differ, is that a majority prefer Sensing, just like in the United States. But for the Nations who have described their own archetypes, it's been Intuition. They theorize that as they fine-tuned survival skills, their minds turned to creating explanations for life and the universe and how things should be. Think of the phenomenal government system of the Iroquois nations and the abstract nature of their art (again, these are their examples--I don't figure out another culture's archetype...if I'm "following the rules")

I worked with the staff of an Ojibwe charter school. For each preference pair they discussed what their culture valued and concluded INFP. The principal looked at me and said, "And for 350 years we thought you were listening..."

[Haight]

So ec, do you have a link to stats or reports that would show me how MBTI population percentages are broken down by country?

Because . . . that would be interesting.

[6sticks]

Originally Posted by edcoaching

It isn't that there aren't INFPs in the United States--it's that the culture doesn't value their strengths as much as those of other types. People who've studied suicide rates postulate that the reason INFPs are 7 times more likely to attempt suicide in the United States than any other type is because the culture is opposite to their preferences...

Maybe so. But if modal type changes from country to country then either personality type isn't innate or the MBTI is unreliable. Or, I guess, that the suicides really add up.

[Haight]

Originally Posted by 6sticks

Maybe so. But if modal type changes from country to country then either personality type isn't innate or the MBTI is unreliable. Or, I guess, that the suicides really add up.

Who said that one's personality is 100% innate?

[6sticks]

Originally Posted by Haight

Who said that one's personality is 100% innate?

In the "are you born with it?" thread

Originally Posted by edcoaching

The research done so far shows that type is innate; culture, family, workplace, environment influence our expression. That's why typing others is so difficult. We have a type but we learn behaviors (or end up OCD or psychotic or a robot or somehow dysfunctional or ostracized...)

So if types are innate then modal types only show the expressed behaviors favored by a culture, and not the true types. If the MBTI were more accurate in determining the true type, the percentages of, say, INTPs in every culture would be the same... once you factor in suicides, witch-hunts, and whatnot.