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Hybrids Unite! Complicated personalities rule!

reckful

New member
Joined
Jul 6, 2013
Messages
656
MBTI Type
INTJ
Enneagram
5
I love it when some post: "the official MBTI people." (As if that means they have the last word on anything.) It started with a mother-daughter team, based on nothing more than their own personal observations. Anyone is capable of challenging the old observations and substituting their own. There is no right or wrong answer.

I love it when Jaguar drops in with one of his predictably world-weary and clueless posts.

There is "no right or wrong answer" when it comes to MBTI-related stuff because it's just a mother and daughter's "personal observations"?

It is to laugh.

Carl Jung — mystical streak notwithstanding — was a believer in the scientific approach, and Myers took Psychological Types and devoted a substantial chunk of her life to putting its typological concepts to the test in a way that Jung never had, and in accordance with the psychometric standards applicable to the science of personality. Myers adjusted Jung's categories and concepts so that they better fit the data she gathered from thousands of subjects, and by the start of the 1960s (as the leading Big Five psychologists have acknowledged), she had a typology that was respectably tapping into four of the Big Five personality dimensions — long before there really was a Big Five. And twin studies have since shown that identical twins raised in separate households are substantially more likely to match on those dimensions than genetically unrelated pairs, which is further (strong) confirmation that the MBTI dichotomies correspond to real, relatively hard-wired underlying dimensions of personality. They're a long way from being simply theoretical — or pseudoscientific — categories with no respectable evidence behind them.

Anyone interested in reading about the validity of the dichotomy-centric side of the MBTI — and about several other issues often raised by people claiming to "debunk" the MBTI — will find a lengthy two-post discussion starting here, and further discussion of the scientific respectability of the MBTI in this post (also linked to in the first linked post).
 

big sexy

New member
Joined
Dec 3, 2014
Messages
70
MBTI Type
INfP
I love it when Jaguar drops in with one of his predictably world-weary and clueless posts.

There is "no right or wrong answer" when it comes to MBTI-related stuff because it's just a mother and daughter's "personal observations"?

It is to laugh.

Carl Jung — mystical streak notwithstanding — was a believer in the scientific approach, and Myers took Psychological Types and devoted a substantial chunk of her life to putting its typological concepts to the test in a way that Jung never had, and in accordance with the psychometric standards applicable to the science of personality. Myers adjusted Jung's categories and concepts so that they better fit the data she gathered from thousands of subjects, and by the start of the 1960s (as the leading Big Five psychologists have acknowledged), she had a typology that was respectably tapping into four of the Big Five personality dimensions — long before there really was a Big Five. And twin studies have since shown that identical twins raised in separate households are substantially more likely to match on those dimensions than genetically unrelated pairs, which is further (strong) confirmation that the MBTI dichotomies correspond to real, relatively hard-wired underlying dimensions of personality. They're a long way from being simply theoretical — or pseudoscientific — categories with no respectable evidence behind them.

Anyone interested in reading about the validity of the dichotomy-centric side of the MBTI — and about several other issues often raised by people claiming to "debunk" the MBTI — will find a lengthy two-post discussion starting here, and further discussion of the scientific respectability of the MBTI in this post (also linked to in the first linked post).

I really like the MBTI's dichotomies and find them interesting and useful, but the functions - which most people here are obsessed with and often tout as being superior to the dichotomies - are a whole nother story. So Myers allowed for people who weren't clearly one preference or the other?
 

reckful

New member
Joined
Jul 6, 2013
Messages
656
MBTI Type
INTJ
Enneagram
5
I really like the MBTI's dichotomies and find them interesting and useful, but the functions - which most people here are obsessed with and often tout as being superior to the dichotomies - are a whole nother story. So Myers allowed for people who weren't clearly one preference or the other?

On the no-clear-preference issue, Jung himself said he thought more people were essentially in the middle on E/I than were significantly extraverted or introverted, and he referred to the people in that large middle group as the "normal man." And Myers allowed for the possibility of middleness on all four MBTI dimensions. The official MBTI test is designed on the operational assumption that people have four preferences, and assigns people a (tentative) type on each dimension. But that's a very different thing from saying that the MBTI claims it isn't possible for someone to be in the middle on any dimension — and in fact, the MBTI Manual specifically notes that someone with a score near the middle is someone who has essentially "split the vote" rather than offered much evidence of a preference. And the more recent "Step II" version of the MBTI has five subscales for each dimension, and it's possible to come out on the T side (for example) of two of them and the F side of the rest.

When it comes to the dichotomies vs. functions issue, I'm definitely a dichotomies guy, and if you want a lot of my perspective on that issue, you could pick a day when you've got some time to spare, have a cup of coffee, and work your way through (1) this post, (2) this two-part post, (3) this post, and (4) the long INTJforum post linked to at the end of that first linked post.

The so-called "cognitive functions" are what James Reynierse (in an article I talk about in that INTJforum post) has rightly called a "category mistake" — and are also, in the form that you generally encounter them at MBTI forums, a long way from being Jungian. The Harold Grant function stack (the one that says INTJ=Ni-Te-Fi-Se and INTP=Ti-Ne-Si-Fe) is a model that has no respectable validity, wasn't Jung's or Myers' function model, and has never been endorsed by the official MBTI folks. The only "validity" (as the psychometricians say) that the functions have ever been able to point to is the piggybacked validity they get from the corresponding dichotomies — e.g., if you forget about Jung's function descriptions and jerry-rig an "Si" description made up of things that MBTI SJs tend to have in common (like Berens and Nardi do), then your purported "Si function" will have "validity" to the extent of — surprise! — matching up reasonably well with MBTI SJs. But as noted in the third linked post, the idea that INFPs have "tertiary Si" that "pairs" with their "auxiliary Ne" doesn't even have any piggybacked validity. It has no validity at all.
 

Seymour

Vaguely Precise
Joined
Sep 22, 2009
Messages
1,579
MBTI Type
INFP
Enneagram
5w4
Instinctual Variant
sx/so
I really like the MBTI's dichotomies and find them interesting and useful, but the functions - which most people here are obsessed with and often tout as being superior to the dichotomies - are a whole nother story. So Myers allowed for people who weren't clearly one preference or the other?

Yep... and one's "clarity of preference" on the MBTI seems to be a reasonable indication of strength of preference. And there is a way to semi-recover the functions, even without type dynamics.

Reynierse argues that not only does each preference have an individual effect, but the combination of two or three preferences together can act additively. However, in his analysis he found that three preferences together only sometimes had an effect, and the addition of a fourth preference seemed to be generally statistically insignificant.

So there IS something to the idea that preference pairs (and triads) combine in interesting ways. So, if one decomposes Fe into F + J (and a little E), one can see how the descriptions of "Fe" may actually be describing something... although one has to tease apart which parts of "Fe" are really F + J, F + E, or F + J + E. (And I think there are lots of interesting implications to this, including that an ENTJ's intuition, for example, isn't really introverted.)

Reynierse also claims that strength of preference is important, so middling preferences don't correlate with much of interest. So it makes sense someone with a middling preferences in the relevant scales (perhaps especially J/P) isn't going to find much to identify with.

One person to make an attempt to recover functions without type dynamics is Douglass Wilde (I wrote a mode (function) calculator using his approach). Wilde's system gives results that seem to be closer to reality for me subjectively, but his is not the only approach one can take.
 

SHERLOCK HOLMES

New member
Joined
Jan 10, 2015
Messages
8
MBTI Type
Ne
It would be appreciated if the confusion regarding Ti and Fi are deciphered.. For it is believed to be some what opposite functions and cant coexist in equal magnitude.
Bringing forth my case ,i am either an ENTP or ENFP .I have Ti of former and Fi of latter. Both developed. (My age is less than 20)

i have been told several times that i made mistakes analysing my functions.Whatever test or self analysis i take, my top functions are Ne,Fi,Ti and the rest are somewhat linear.
 

Mychemicalkilljoy

New member
Joined
Jan 14, 2015
Messages
224
MBTI Type
NOPE
Sigh. Every single human has a unique personality. It feels so stupid to put them in a box. I mean, if it's a vague box it's okay--but there is so much more to a person than just four letters. I have seen people get so sucked in to their type that they change who they are to fit that type. I don't know about you guys, but that's absurd! No one should have to change themselves. Everyone should be loved and accepted for who they are. CoughthisissoENFPcough
 

reckful

New member
Joined
Jul 6, 2013
Messages
656
MBTI Type
INTJ
Enneagram
5
CoughthisissoENFPcough

True dat.

I have seen people get so sucked in to their type that they change who they are to fit that type. I don't know about you guys, but that's absurd! No one should have to change themselves. Everyone should be loved and accepted for who they are.

Dear Ms. Killjoy,

It sounds to me like you could afford to work on your capacity to love and accept "people who get so sucked into their type that they change who they are" for who they are.

Your predictably patronizing INTJ pal,
reckful
 
Last edited:

Mychemicalkilljoy

New member
Joined
Jan 14, 2015
Messages
224
MBTI Type
NOPE
True dat.



Dear Ms. Killjoy,

It sounds to me like you could afford to work on your capacity to love and accept people who get so sucked into their type that they change who they are for who they are.

Your predictably patronizing INTJ pal,
reckful

Good point there reckful! However, that being said, people shouldn't have to change who they are. Everyone is beautiful!
Your Hippie ENFP buddy,
Mychemicalkilljoy
Oh and what does patronizing mean?
 

Mychemicalkilljoy

New member
Joined
Jan 14, 2015
Messages
224
MBTI Type
NOPE
I actually have an ENFP ex who sometimes calls me about a word instead of looking it up her damn self.

One of those in my life is enough. :alttongue:

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha I do that all the time I'm laughing so hard. I can't breathe!!! Ok fine I'll look it up. Haven't touched a dictionary in months... Even in school!!!
 

Mychemicalkilljoy

New member
Joined
Jan 14, 2015
Messages
224
MBTI Type
NOPE
HA. I looked it up in the Internet instead of a dictionary bc I mean it's 12 am why would I get out a dictionary--- oh wait I don't have one!
 
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