• You are currently viewing our forum as a guest, which gives you limited access to view most discussions and access our other features. By joining our free community, you will have access to additional post topics, communicate privately with other members (PM), view blogs, respond to polls, upload content, and access many other special features. Registration is fast, simple and absolutely free, so please join our community today! Just click here to register. You should turn your Ad Blocker off for this site or certain features may not work properly. If you have any problems with the registration process or your account login, please contact us by clicking here.

Is Keirsey Right?

wildcat

New member
Joined
Jun 8, 2007
Messages
3,622
MBTI Type
INTP
The things people often use as examples differentiating sensing and intuiting seems to me to come down to education, experience, and exposure.

What I notice on the forum is if anyone can talk about politics, science, current events, and their feelings, with any intelligence they're an N. I'm from DC so any Joe or Jane Blow on the streets of downtown DC can talk politics and current events and I can go to the theater or a make-up counter to hear people talking about their feelings.

These are my opinions of why people think intuitives are so rare:

Location: People from smaller population centers tend to be more like-minded than those from larger metropolitan areas. That like-mindedness is often thought of as being "sensing" which it isn't necessarily. Your immediate culture impacts how you conceive of things, which brings me to the second reason:

Culture: I'm a racial minority and I find it hard to scrape off the thick patina of Fe, Si, and Se from most of the black people I try to type. I know two black INTJs that are more Fe than me! And frankly the way my Fe manifests itself feels different than the way the other Fe-dominants on the forum manifests itself so I've basically given up trying to find people who I typologically identify with on the forum.

Exposure: You can be the strongest ISxJ ever and if you've been exposed to many different types of people, foods, ideas, languages, whatever I completely think you'll be more open to experience than an ENxP who's been in one place their whole life. In fact, the larger vat of knowledge Si has to pull from it begins to look like an encyclopedia of knowing virtually anything.

Education: This ties to exposure as well, but you can be taught things like critical thinking skills, argumentation, metaphor use. A lot of what people consider being intuitive comes down to being culturally literate, i.e. "Did you get my [obscure] reference?" Yes: N. No: S. Being culturally literate is dependent upon how much you're plugged into the dominant culture. If you're not, a lot of metaphor use will go over your head. Or you'll use metaphor that is within your domain of knowledge but doesn't necessarily map to the dominant culture.

And these gawd-awful typing threads!!!:steam: Think about this: if you have an incredibly popular movie or fictional character that everyone seems to relate to and enjoy they're probably a sensor or close enough to the S/N line for people to see a bit of everyman in that character. Ye average sensor, will not identify with a hardcore N and vice versa. When I researched correlations between MBTI and the Big Five I found studies that most people hover around the middle of the Openness factor, which roughly relates to what MBTI considers "sensing" and "intuiting." The Openness factor as has subfactors:

  1. Fantasy - the tendency toward a vivid imagination and fantasy life.
  2. Aesthetics - the tendency to appreciate art, music, and poetry.
  3. Feelings - being receptive to inner emotional states and valuing emotional experience.
  4. Actions - the inclination to try new activities, visit new places, and try new foods.
  5. Ideas - the tendency to be intellectually curious and open to new ideas.
  6. Values - the readiness to re-examine traditional social, religious, and political values.

If I had to guess, I think the ONLY factors that indicate a preference for intuiting are Ideas and Values. Fantasy, Aethetics, Feelings, and Actions, are anyone's game. And guess what? You can score highly on those subtraits and still get a high Openness score without having high Ideas and Values scores. Conversely, you can score high on the Ideas and Values subtraits and still have a low Openness score. I personally think a truly open person would score highly on all subtraits not just a few, or rather the most important ones. ;)

Based on my experience I think the population of S/N is around 60/40 rather than 75/25 or that impossible 90/10.
A very good post. The problem is that my coffee is nigh ready, and man, coffee does not wait. So I make it short. I agree with EVERYTHING you say, save fantasy.
The S is not a fantast. Otherwise, you hit the mark. You are a perceptive lady. :)

But. I do not agree with the conclusion bit. I am a Keirsey Conservative. I water my absinthe.
Otherwise the sugar in the absinthe gets stuck in my throatie. I stick to the 90/10 dichotomy.
I should explain why- if it were not that I have an errand in the kitchen. :coffee:
 

kelric

Feline Member
Joined
Sep 8, 2007
Messages
2,169
MBTI Type
INtP
Well often time the famous people that are being typed are entertainment celebrities, and it could be argued that "artsy stuff" attracts a disproportionate amount of iNtuitives.

But anyway, if I had to guess I'd say Ns comprise more than 10% and less than 20% of the general population.

I've never seen the "type a celebrity" threads as anything more than a fun exercise... I don't think there's much doubt that public personas of celebrities, especially in this day and age, are manufactured - if not completely, to such an extent that it's all but impossible to have any confidence that you really know anything about who they are as people. I mean, a lot of these people have agents and PR people whose *job* it is to spin their persona to make them more marketable. I'm not saying that it's *impossible* to learn anything about them as people, but there's an awful lot of false data out there, and your average Joes like me don't really have many criteria with which to separate the PR from the truth. Not that I particularly care, but there you go :D.

I think that your numbers are probably more or less right, Edgar, but PM made a bunch of good points. There are definitely cultural factors related to ethnicity, urban-rural, age, education, location (are you at work, or home, or out on the town?) and any other number of characteristics that have a huge effect on how we present ourselves to others. It's easy for someone who's not a member of our cultural group to get the wrong idea about us, simply by comparing us with people they're familiar with... which can give a pretty incorrect impression of who we are.

I do think that many people tend to mistype themselves as intuitives. It wouldn't really surprise me if the percentage is along the lines of 80-20... if you feel comfortable with a hard dichotomy. I'd think that it's more of a distribution like this:

ex1_lognormal_distribution.gif


Ignore the labels and imagine the "N-S line" right in the center of the image, with S on the left and N on the right (I'm too lazy to draw one out and host it myself tonight - and the shape of this curve is at least somewhat close to what I'm thinking :D) Now, if you split it right down the middle, *most* people fall on the S side... but a pretty large population of "S" people and "N" people are actually closer to a lot of their "opposites" than they are to the extremes of their "own type". Throw in all of the variables that PM mentioned, and it becomes a morass of fuzziness.

In the end, I don't think that it really matters very much. If out of type, you can get a better understanding of how you can relate to other people, and use it as a tool to see how you may or may not have things in common with others to share experiences and viewpoints, the labels don't make much difference. I have found Keirsey's classifications and descriptions pretty useful - whether he's "right" or "wrong"? Not sure. But a lot of his observations seem to ring true in reality.
 

PeaceBaby

reborn
Joined
Jan 7, 2009
Messages
5,950
MBTI Type
N/A
Enneagram
N/A
Well, I'll just add from an observational perspective, I don't get the intuitive "click" from very many people in my life ... I would believe those ratios based on my experience.
 

Mondo

Welcome to Sunnyside
Joined
Mar 1, 2008
Messages
1,992
MBTI Type
EsTP
Enneagram
6w7
It's tough to say.
Out of all the people I know really well, I'd say there's a 60/40 N/S ratio.
On the other hand, I may just become friends with iNtuitives more easily.
There's a big world out there and while I'd say I have a lot of friends- I'm not friends with everyone!!!
 

Nonsensical

New member
Joined
Aug 2, 2008
Messages
4,006
MBTI Type
ENFP
Enneagram
7
I guess we wouldn't know unless a widescale unbiased servey was conducted, which probably won't happen.

I don't agree entirely with the statistics, as I think that there are more iNtuitives than 10%, and would agree with maybe 25%, as there are surely a lot more Sensors.
 
G

Glycerine

Guest
I definitely believe that there are way more sensors than iNtuitives but then I might mistype a lot of people as S based on how detail-oriented and attentive they are to things.
 

527468

deleted
Joined
Oct 22, 2008
Messages
1,945
There is also the problem of typing someone as S simply because they lack N.
 

The Ü™

Permabanned
Joined
May 26, 2007
Messages
11,910
MBTI Type
INTJ
Enneagram
5w6
Instinctual Variant
sp/sx
I have to agree with Mondo and a few others here.

He's right that most people just prefer to use Sensing.

I've done this before with people using the book Do What You Are, with the S/N table near the front of the book. And nearly everyone preferred Sensing over Intuition, even with something that really wasn't even a quiz.

I think the N bias is mostly in the online tests (Human Metrics and, even worse, similarminds.com tests), along with stereotypes that are attributed to online writings (though which somehow get thrown on Keirsey).

I don't know that mistypes are as prevalent as people say.

As for the Global 5 Openness correlation. It seems to me that the only universal N trait is Fantasy, since, by definition, it is the N type who "gives himself up to fruitless fantasies." The Intellect factor seems to overlap with N and T (where STs score average, NTs score high), and the Liberalism (Values) factor seems to overlap with both utilitarian temperaments (SP and NT). (As a cooperative type, the NF could be traditional, too.)
 

proteanmix

Plumage and Moult
Joined
Apr 23, 2007
Messages
5,514
Enneagram
1w2
As for the Global 5 Openness correlation. It seems to me that the only universal N trait is Fantasy, since, by definition, it is the N type who "gives himself up to fruitless fantasies." The Intellect factor seems to overlap with N and T (where STs score average, NTs score high), and the Liberalism (Values) factor seems to overlap with both utilitarian temperaments (SP and NT). (As a cooperative type, the NF could be traditional, too.)

The reason why I don't think Fantasy is an N trait is because when you get into the realm of what fantasy is most people think that it's unicorns or parallel universes, which is a type of fantasy. I'm thinking people believe that reality-based fantasy isn't epic or otherworldly enough to be true fantasy so it's not considered.

Dictionary.com says fantasy is
1. imagination, esp. when extravagant and unrestrained.
2. the forming of mental images, esp. wondrous or strange fancies; imaginative conceptualizing.

I saw a movie a couple of years ago called Paprika where characters are completely separated from reality. Yeah, that's undoubtedly extravagant and unrestrained imagination. Then I think about the whole Romance genre of literature that for all intents and purposes is realistic fantasy-based literature and I can tell you most of the authors write for an SF audience. There's also the element of vicariousness wrapped up in how people experience fantasy, with sensors wanting fantasy that they can see themselves possibly engaging in. To me that counts as imaginative conceptualizing but maybe others have higher standards. ;)

Basically what I'm saying is I think the type of fantasy a person engages in can be "S" or "N" but the inclination to engage in fantasy is not necessarily an S or N trait. Look at how often people go to the movies or read fiction as a form of escapism or a chance to deviate from regular life. Hell, the internet is one big wet sloppy fantasy land and it's doing pretty well.
 

tinkerbell

New member
Joined
Aug 31, 2008
Messages
3,487
MBTI Type
ENTP
I think his figures are fairly spot on based on the work I did in the UK (although some differences).

Lis
 

The Ü™

Permabanned
Joined
May 26, 2007
Messages
11,910
MBTI Type
INTJ
Enneagram
5w6
Instinctual Variant
sp/sx
The reason why I don't think Fantasy is an N trait is because when you get into the realm of what fantasy is most people think that it's unicorns or parallel universes, which is a type of fantasy. I'm thinking people believe that reality-based fantasy isn't epic or otherworldly enough to be true fantasy so it's not considered.

Dictionary.com says fantasy is
1. imagination, esp. when extravagant and unrestrained.
2. the forming of mental images, esp. wondrous or strange fancies; imaginative conceptualizing.

I saw a movie a couple of years ago called Paprika where characters are completely separated from reality. Yeah, that's undoubtedly extravagant and unrestrained imagination. Then I think about the whole Romance genre of literature that for all intents and purposes is realistic fantasy-based literature and I can tell you most of the authors write for an SF audience. There's also the element of vicariousness wrapped up in how people experience fantasy, with sensors wanting fantasy that they can see themselves possibly engaging in. To me that counts as imaginative conceptualizing but maybe others have higher standards. ;)

Basically what I'm saying is I think the type of fantasy a person engages in can be "S" or "N" but the inclination to engage in fantasy is not necessarily an S or N trait. Look at how often people go to the movies or read fiction as a form of escapism or a chance to deviate from regular life. Hell, the internet is one big wet sloppy fantasy land and it's doing pretty well.

Okay, now I can see where you're getting at.

Personally, I assumed fantasy orientation to be the more stereotyped version of it (AKA unworldly fantasy). :blush:
 

"?"

New member
Joined
May 2, 2007
Messages
1,167
MBTI Type
TiSe
But seriously, that dude knows what he's talking about. The best MBTI/Jungian typology scholar that I've come across. If anyone knows a better one, I'd like to hear about it.
Sorry I haven't seen it yet, in particularly where MBTI comes in. Keirsey's work is based on temperament and at best can group varied types into a commonality (SP,SJ,NT,NF). However I am suspect of his work by going further, in particular in attempting to come up with a statistical number based on Jung's 8 cognitive functions.

In short you can't say there are X amount of E or I unless you know that you are referring to a particular cognitive function. If you say there are X amount of introverts are you referring to Si,Ni,Ti,Fi and the same for extraverts? If you say there are an X amount of N's are you referring to Ni or Ne? We know that Ni may be quite rare, but Ne gets to go along for the ride by just being intuitive. On the other hand if you say there are an X amount of S's, are you referring to Si or Se? We may be able to argue that Si is quite common, but Se gets grouped in because it's a sensing function.

Until someone determines stats based on the functions, there is no evidence of type rarity. In fact from what I have read, the only time that Jung alludes to type rarity is to say that it's very rare for any person to be 100% of any cognitive function. Myers Briggs also alludes to the reason why there may be more SJ's in saying that many are born with a blank slate and their culture determines the outcome of those people's type.
 

Lauren Ashley

Revelation
Joined
Aug 19, 2008
Messages
3,067
MBTI Type
INFJ
Enneagram
4
Instinctual Variant
sx/sp
If you say there are an X amount of N's are you referring to Ni or Ne? We know that Ni may be quite rare, but Ne gets to go along for the ride by just being intuitive.

This seems true in my case. I know many intuitives, but the majority are ENXPs and INFPs.
 

tinkerbell

New member
Joined
Aug 31, 2008
Messages
3,487
MBTI Type
ENTP
not sure if it helps but I put on some profiling questions onto an omnibus (nat rep sample), and the proportions of types worked out fairly similar to Keirsey.

Now maybe the shorter version scales are less accurate, but given they are giving similar proportions I am not buying it.....

Go with the proportions stated I don't beleive they are wrong.

Do be careful of all your mates being N types of S types etc, different environements or people attacked to each other....

I work in an SJ organisation but an NT team, we have about 30-40% of the whole team are NT, the rest of the business is huge but we are a pocket of big picture (possibly cos I recruited a fair few)

Lis
 

Kalach

Filthy Apes!
Joined
Dec 3, 2008
Messages
4,310
MBTI Type
INTJ
For what it's worth, a while back I indulged myself. There's a simplified self-test in GD Lawrence's People Types and Tiger Stripes, third edition, which I copied out onto two pleasant and cheerful pages. And handed out in class. With some preparation and a little post-test debriefing, 166 students (18-19 year-old female tertiary students majoring in Language) coughed up preference claims that when compiled, looked like this:

TYPE (x) y (z)
x=total number of persons out of 166 reporting this type
y=as a percentage
z=percentage of females reporting this type per average population according to Type Statistics and Surveys

ESTJ (9 ) 5.4% (6.3 )
ESTP (4 ) 2.4% (3.0 )
ESFJ (13 ) 7.8% (16.9 )
ESFP (8 ) 4.8% (10.1 )
ENTJ (7 ) 4.2% (0.9 )
ENTP (11 ) 6.6% (2.4 )
ENFJ (9 ) 5.4% (3.3 )
ENFP (20 ) 12.0% (9.7 )

ISTJ (6 ) 3.6% (6.9 )
ISTP (2 ) 1.2% (2.4 )
ISFJ (15 ) 9.0% (19.4 )
ISFP (11 ) 6.6% (9.9 )
INTJ (4 ) 2.4% (0.8 )
INTP (4 ) 2.4% (1.8 )
INFJ (21 ) 12.7% (1.6 )
INFP (22 ) 13.3% (4.6 )

Which gives us:
ST (21) 12.7%
SF (47) 28.3%
NT (26) 15.7%
NF (72) 43.4%

And:
S: 41%
N: 59%

Presumably, that they were (mostly) all female, were all university students, and are all studying Languages makes a difference to the stats. Also, the "test" was wholly and totally unprofessional and ill-informed: they did it as a surprise exercise in speaking English.

I believe I may take them test-driving SUVs in the park next.

NB: That partikalr book makes the difference between S and N by asking the testee to pick a preference based on one or more sentences that stand out from the following ten (and NOT to mull over all the sentences too much), thus:

S pays most attention to experience as it is.
S likes to use eyes and ears and other senses to find out what’s happening.
S dislikes new problems unless earlier experience shows how to solve them.
S enjoys using skills already learned more than learning new ones.
S is patient with details but impatient when the details get complicated.

N pays attention to the meaning of facts and how they fit together.
N likes to use imagination to come up with new ways to do things, new possibilities.
N likes solving new problems and dislikes doing the same thing over and over.
N likes using new skills more than practicing old ones.
N is impatient with details but doesn’t mind complicated situations.
 

SilentStream

New member
Joined
Jan 14, 2009
Messages
60
MBTI Type
INTP
Personally, I only know 2 people who are intuitive and the rest are sensors, so I am inclined to agree with keirsey's statistics. Out of the about one hundred people that attend my family's local church I have met one intuitive (the husband of a regular attender but who doesn't go himself). Of course, I cannot be sure of my typing abilities, but I have known these people for most of my life.

The reason why I don't think Fantasy is an N trait is because when you get into the realm of what fantasy is most people think that it's unicorns or parallel universes, which is a type of fantasy. I'm thinking people believe that reality-based fantasy isn't epic or otherworldly enough to be true fantasy so it's not considered.

Dictionary.com says fantasy is
1. imagination, esp. when extravagant and unrestrained.
2. the forming of mental images, esp. wondrous or strange fancies; imaginative conceptualizing.

I saw a movie a couple of years ago called Paprika where characters are completely separated from reality. Yeah, that's undoubtedly extravagant and unrestrained imagination. Then I think about the whole Romance genre of literature that for all intents and purposes is realistic fantasy-based literature and I can tell you most of the authors write for an SF audience. There's also the element of vicariousness wrapped up in how people experience fantasy, with sensors wanting fantasy that they can see themselves possibly engaging in. To me that counts as imaginative conceptualizing but maybe others have higher standards. ;)

Basically what I'm saying is I think the type of fantasy a person engages in can be "S" or "N" but the inclination to engage in fantasy is not necessarily an S or N trait. Look at how often people go to the movies or read fiction as a form of escapism or a chance to deviate from regular life. Hell, the internet is one big wet sloppy fantasy land and it's doing pretty well.

Yep.

I have never agreed with the assumption that the colloquial definition of imagination correlates with intuition. Imagination is a distinctly human trait that everyone enjoys to some extent. And it is clearly obvious that fantasy is the favourite hobby of almost everyone, when it comes to films, novels and stories. So if someone is asked about their preference for fantasy and imaginative pursuits, of course the results are going to be skewed towards intuition. I also think that describing intuition as the ability to look for and see possibilities is also a bit misleading, from my experience SPs love new possibilities.
 

The Ü™

Permabanned
Joined
May 26, 2007
Messages
11,910
MBTI Type
INTJ
Enneagram
5w6
Instinctual Variant
sp/sx
Yep.

I have never agreed with the assumption that the colloquial definition of imagination correlates with intuition. Imagination is a distinctly human trait that everyone enjoys to some extent. And it is clearly obvious that fantasy is the favourite hobby of almost everyone, when it comes to films, novels and stories. So if someone is asked about their preference for fantasy and imaginative pursuits, of course the results are going to be skewed towards intuition. I also think that describing intuition as the ability to look for and see possibilities is also a bit misleading, from my experience SPs love new possibilities.

Well, a desire for (and fear of) change and openness (and closed) to new ideas are also distinctly human traits. Do you honestly think that anyone is mindlessly open to new ideas all the time or that SJs are mindlessly traditional 100 percent of the time?

I don't see why Intellect and Liberalism correlate to N anymore than Fantasy does, using this logic.

And plenty (if not most) of the Ss here who have taken the Big 5 had a low preference for Fantasy.

What I find in the case of fantasy is that most people enjoy reading, watching movies, and so forth to be entertained, not to be inspired.
 
Top