[MBTI General] MBTI Type Percentages

[Verona]

I came across this study done at the University of Iowa using MBTI type and I found the percentages they accumulated to be quite interesting because they differ a lot from the traditional MBTI numbers floating around. The numbers on the MBTI website are from between 1972-2002 while this study was released in 2013 and contains more recent data specifically relating to college students. This study reported a much higher number of NFPs compared to the traditional numbers and have S and N types being almost equal. Any study has a margin of error but it does make me wonder if maybe younger people are now just as likely to be N over S. It might explain why there are so many NFPs in this forum. Thoughts?

Here is a link to the study. There were 775 students surveyed over many years. The type numbers start being discussed on page 79. http://lib.dr.iastate.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4102&context=etd

 

[á´…eparted]

God this paper is not good at presenting data cleanly. UGH. Anyway, the important piece here for the purposes of this thread on page 80 is still hard to read. I went in and added some numbers to the table. The green numbers are the found percentage of the population, and the deviation from the old statistic. The paper delinates this by gender, WHY I don't know because later on the stop doing that. Ugh

Anyway, this is what people here want to know:

There's some other interesting bits in there. A common theme seems to be that statistically ENFP's make for bad students. Also, sorry NF's, you're not special snowflakes. Quite the contrary actually.
[MENTION=8936]highlander[/MENTION] you'd probably like this paper.

 

[Punderstorm]

Woah, this is pretty cool!

 

[/DG/]

I would like to see more things like this. There probably are other papers that attempt to address this, but I am too lazy to look for them. I like the idea of examining populations in different ways. After all, we know that the phone survey was likely of a skewed population, just as this survey of college students is a skewed population.

 

[Verona]

God this paper is not good at presenting data cleanly. UGH. Anyway, the important piece here for the purposes of this thread on page 80 is still hard to read. I went in and added some numbers to the table. The green numbers are the found percentage of the population, and the deviation from the old statistic. The paper delinates this by gender, WHY I don't know because later on the stop doing that. Ugh

Anyway, this is what people here want to know:



There's some other interesting bits in there. A common theme seems to be that statistically ENFP's make for bad students. Also, sorry NF's, you're not special snowflakes. Quite the contrary actually.
[MENTION=8936]highlander[/MENTION] you'd probably like this paper.

Thanks for doing up that table! The information was a bit confusing and difficult to get through.

 

[Verona]

I would like to see more things like this. There probably are other papers that attempt to address this, but I am too lazy to look for them. I like the idea of examining populations in different ways. After all, we know that the phone survey was likely of a skewed population, just as this survey of college students is a skewed population.

I did find another smaller study done as well. There is a very clear table on page 33 about the types by percentage but only 98 people were typed http://repository.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1002&context=mapp_capstone

 

[Verona]

I thought it was interesting that ENFP was the most common type in both of those studies. I have read quite a few times that ENFPs on here are so common because they are actually mistyped ESFJs but maybe that is not the case at all. Maybe ENFP is a more popular type than previous reports have stated. Same with the INFP/ISFJ mistype I have read about. In the first study INFPs are a slight bit more common than ISFJs.

 

[Jeremy8419]

Now let's see one for high school dropouts, one for those in the military, and one for stay at home parents.

 

[Smilephantomhive]

Personally I think it will take a long time and a lot of work to find accurate percentages of the types.

 

[Verona]

Now let's see one for high school dropouts, one for those in the military, and one for stay at home parents.

Yes a larger survey of the general population would be great. I don't really trust any of these reports - including the official MBTI ones - to be completely accurate.

 

[reckful]

Isabel Myers noted — based on the boatloads of student-population data that had already been gathered by the late 70s — that it was clear that the higher you go up the academic ladder, the higher the proportion of N's.

So virtually any college population is going to have a higher proportion of N's than the general population, and the more academically selective the college is, the higher the proportion of N's is likely to be.

The official MBTI stats on this page are based on "a variety of MBTI results from 1972 through 2002, including data banks at the Center for Applications of Psychological Type; CPP, Inc; and Stanford Research Institute (SRI)" — and they're not perfect, but there are multiple reasons to expect them to better reflect the general population type frequencies than the types of Iowa State students.

And meanwhile, speaking of skewed samples, the members of MBTI forums are a population that's quite strongly skewed in the direction of N's (first and foremost) and introverts (secondarily), as dramatically illustrated by the PerC and Typology Central stats in the spoiler in this post.

ENFPs aren't all that much more common at MBTI forums than in the general population, but INFPs (like the other three IN types) certainly are. And that's for the same reason that Jung and Briggs and Myers and Quenk and Berens and Nardi are all INs — because INs have a substantially greater tendency to be interested in personality types than other types.

 

[Cold]

God this paper is not good at presenting data cleanly. UGH. Anyway, the important piece here for the purposes of this thread on page 80 is still hard to read. I went in and added some numbers to the table. The green numbers are the found percentage of the population, and the deviation from the old statistic. The paper delinates this by gender, WHY I don't know because later on the stop doing that. Ugh

Anyway, this is what people here want to know:

There's some other interesting bits in there. A common theme seems to be that statistically ENFP's make for bad students. Also, sorry NF's, you're not special snowflakes. Quite the contrary actually.
[MENTION=8936]highlander[/MENTION] you'd probably like this paper.

Thanks for making the table! It's quite interesting.

 

[Seymour]

Isabel Myers noted — based on the boatloads of student-population data that had already been gathered by the late 70s — that it was clear that the higher you go up the academic ladder, the higher the proportion of N's.

So virtually any college population is going to have a higher proportion of N's than the general population, and the more academically selective the college is, the higher the proportion of N's is likely to be.

The official MBTI stats on this page are based on "a variety of MBTI results from 1972 through 2002, including data banks at the Center for Applications of Psychological Type; CPP, Inc; and Stanford Research Institute (SRI)" — and they're not perfect, but there are multiple reasons to expect them to better reflect the general population type frequencies than the types of Iowa State students.

And meanwhile, speaking of skewed samples, the members of MBTI forums are a population that's quite strongly skewed in the direction of N's (first and foremost) and introverts (secondarily), as dramatically illustrated by the PerC and Typology Central stats in the spoiler in this post.

ENFPs aren't all that much more common at MBTI forums than in the general population, but INFPs (like the other three IN types) certainly are. And that's for the same reason that Jung and Briggs and Myers and Quenk and Berens and Nardi are all INs — because INs have a substantially greater tendency to be interested in personality types than other types.

I was going to post something similar about how sampling from a university/college popular is already pre-selecting for Ns. Also, brought to mind by your last paragraph, funny how people who supposedly share functions (like NPs and SJs) never seem to appear in the same grouping in real life (not even as a secondary, lesser grouping). Instead we see INs in a grouping (those who are interested in personality typing), even though no functions are shared by half of them.

 

[Verona]

Isabel Myers noted — based on the boatloads of student-population data that had already been gathered by the late 70s — that it was clear that the higher you go up the academic ladder, the higher the proportion of N's.

So virtually any college population is going to have a higher proportion of N's than the general population, and the more academically selective the college is, the higher the proportion of N's is likely to be.

The official MBTI stats on this page are based on "a variety of MBTI results from 1972 through 2002, including data banks at the Center for Applications of Psychological Type; CPP, Inc; and Stanford Research Institute (SRI)" — and they're not perfect, but there are multiple reasons to expect them to better reflect the general population type frequencies than the types of Iowa State students.

And meanwhile, speaking of skewed samples, the members of MBTI forums are a population that's quite strongly skewed in the direction of N's (first and foremost) and introverts (secondarily), as dramatically illustrated by the PerC and Typology Central stats in the spoiler in this post.

ENFPs aren't all that much more common at MBTI forums than in the general population, but INFPs (like the other three IN types) certainly are. And that's for the same reason that Jung and Briggs and Myers and Quenk and Berens and Nardi are all INs — because INs have a substantially greater tendency to be interested in personality types than other types.

I agree and I said that the first study was restricted to college students so it only dealt specifically with one demographic. The second study I posted where ENFP was also the most common type was a random sampling of adult volunteers from the age of 20 to 65.

I just wonder if more recent samplings of the population will end up showing some different MBTI numbers emerging because S traits were very valued by older generations but now they aren't as revered. Since all of these studies are based on self-reporting I wonder if in time different trends will end up emerging as different characteristics are viewed in a more positive/negative light through our culture. I am not sharing this to denigrate past research. I just enjoy speculating about what future trends in MBTI might be.

 

[reckful]

I was going to post something similar about how sampling from a university/college popular is already pre-selecting for Ns. Also, brought to mind by your last paragraph, funny how people who supposedly share functions (like NPs and SJs) never seem to appear in the same grouping in real life (not even as a secondary, lesser grouping). Instead we see INs in a grouping (those who are interested in personality group), even though no functions are shared.

Yeah, as you know, and as further discussed here, I side with James Reynierse in his conclusion that the "cognitive functions" are just a "category mistake."

Myers definitely gave the functions some lip service, but she thought the preference combinations that made the types who shared them the most alike were the S/N and T/F combinations — i.e., the NFs, NTs, SFs and STs — and those are four groups where each member has a different dominant function (assuming you believe in "dominant functions" at all).

As for me, and speaking of INs... although I agree that I have some significant things in common with my fellow NTs, I've increasingly come around to the view that, if I had to pick a group of four MBTI types to really be my "kindred spirits" group, it would be the INs rather than the NTs, and anybody who wants to read a bit of "reckful on INs" can find it in the spoiler at the end of this post — which also explains why there's a strong argument to be made that Jung viewed INs and ESs as a very fundamental pair of opposites.

 

[reckful]

I just wonder if more recent samplings of the population will end up showing some different MBTI numbers emerging because S traits were very valued by older generations but now they aren't as revered. Since all of these studies are based on self-reporting I wonder if in time different trends will end up emerging as different characteristics are viewed in a more positive/negative light through our culture. I am not sharing this to denigrate past research. I just enjoy speculating about what future trends in MBTI might be.

Although I agree that the distributions of types could change over time, decades of twin studies strongly suggest that genes account for around half (or more) of the kinds of relatively stable temperament dimensions measured by the MBTI and Big Five (more in this post), and the way the genetics works is complicated. It's not like N parents have N children and S parents have S children. So I'd expect that distributional changes, to the extent that they happen, are likely to happen very slowly, rather than changing in a noticeable way from one generation to the next.

 

[Verona]

Although I agree that the distributions of types could change over time, decades of twin studies strongly suggest that genes account for around half (or more) of the kinds of relatively stable temperament dimensions measured by the MBTI and Big Five (more in this post), and the way the genetics works is complicated. It's not like N parents have N children and S parents have S children. So I'd expect that distributional changes, to the extent that they happen, are likely to happen very slowly, rather than changing in a noticeable way from one generation to the next.

I see what you are saying about types changing over time and it would be interesting to see if that happens. I was actually referring to the scores changing due to people self-reporting differently because different characteristics are considered more desirable now than they were 20 years ago. Since the test results reflect how someone sees themself it can be skewed in favor of culturally desirable traits.

 

[highlander]

I came across this study done at the University of Iowa using MBTI type and I found the percentages they accumulated to be quite interesting because they differ a lot from the traditional MBTI numbers floating around. The numbers on the MBTI website are from between 1972-2002 while this study was released in 2013 and contains more recent data specifically relating to college students. This study reported a much higher number of NFPs compared to the traditional numbers and have S and N types being almost equal. Any study has a margin of error but it does make me wonder if maybe younger people are now just as likely to be N over S. It might explain why there are so many NFPs in this forum. Thoughts?

Here is a link to the study. There were 775 students surveyed over many years. The type numbers start being discussed on page 79. http://lib.dr.iastate.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4102&context=etd

I think it's invalid because the percentage of college graduates will be higher on the intuitive vs. sensing side.