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[INTP] Chameleon INTP, and forced extroversion.

Cypocalypse

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I have a hunch. INTPs do act like a chameleon a lot, or at least they think they do, because there aren't too many of us in the first place, and chances are, even our closest friend, isn't even an INTP (highly likely an NF chick we do consider flirting with).

Were there enough times you actually felt you sincerely acted INTP socially?

Actually, I act legitimately INTP when I'm with my usually older ENFP friends. It's fun being a devil's advocate of their idealism.

I realized though that Ti is never a girl magnet and if I want to have chances with girls (for example), I usually toggle my ENTP sarcasm with occasional whiff of ENFP romanticism. It certainly puts me at a better social disposition. Toggling is easy because lately, I'm more like xNxP. At this rate, I dont think I'd still be INTP for the next couple of years.

Still, having a very strong N means I'll botch up a group interaction composed of ESFx's. It just happened a few days ago.
I was interacting with more than 10 of them.

At least having a good understanding of MBTI helps me find a comfy social niche. Selective and slightly prejudicial it may seem, at least it lessens isolation.

Seriously, I dont think i can live life well having a strong Ti, with no other legitimately strong cognitive auxilary. If I would hate J, then I need to be an extroverted P to be an effective countermeasure.

Anybody shares a similar outlook?
 

Fluffywolf

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I act legitimatly INTP in sterile new situations.

In a place for work, or something. I'm just my INTP self and don't care about how I'm seen.


When going out, well, when I still drank I didn't care much about anything and just did whatever my mind thought doing.

But now when I go out. I do find myself often trying to fit in a bit more. Being a bit more of a chameleon. Just so I don't look too boring. Dancing, laughning, talking and joking. Doing all kinds of thinks INTP's don't do usually! I can't do it for the entireity of the night though. An hour or so at most and I'll make up a witty excuse to take a break or something. It requires quite a lot of energy for me to speak up between a bunch of ESFJ's to actually say something funny at the right time. Damn ESFJ's missing out on so many jokes because I felt the moment was past. :p

Around close friends I can just be myself though. People that know me well enough I also am more E with and it just tends to be a laugh. I can be my sterile fun self that talks seriously and throws out some one liners to not spoil the mood.

But the main reason I try to fit in as much as possible in some situations is because I'm curious about people and often would like to know more and realize that interaction is ultimatly the best way of learning more.

I've heard that acting ESFJ-ish makes us look silly, and also that looking silly isn't a negative thing and does make for quite some interaction. Teehee.
 

Zoom

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In all honesty, I'm not sure about what ye (OP) are saying... I fully understand the chameleon effect, and use to full advantage to make my life easier, but it doesn't change what I'm like at the core. It (lots of group socialising) tires me mentally/emotionally, because the less required alone time I have the more irritable, reserved, and overly logical I become.

I don't become more like other 'types' when I act like them - I actually start to wonder more and more how they stand those activities, like large-group socialisation or being loud. I can understand it, and enjoy it for short periods of time, but that doesn't make me want to do it any more than I have to to keep myself comfortable and amused.
 

Fluffywolf

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In a few words, I see it as a potential way to broaden my own horizons a bit. I'd never truely become any other type, fully agree on that. But I can chameleonize my feelings towards enjoying life the way other types enjoy life.

But I have to feel comfortable before even trying it. If I'm in a new club or a new place, I fail at it. :p
 

Zoom

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In a few words, I see it as a potential way to broaden my own horizons a bit. I'd never truely become any other type, fully agree on that. But I can chameleonize my feelings towards enjoying life the way other types enjoy life.

But I have to feel comfortable before even trying it. If I'm in a new club or a new place, I fail at it. :p

Oh, I understood you - I was referring to the OP. Apologies for the slight lack of clarity.
 

Totenkindly

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Haight and I have both studied "mirroring" behavior (non-type) related, and thus the chameleon effect, there's a few books out there about it. (I have one about the Imposter Syndrome too.)

For me, I grew up in a religious environment / very SJ environment, so I learned to wear a sort of "F" face. I also used my N to connect with people (figure out what they wanted from me and how to interact with them in a way that made me acceptable and safe). Inside I was frustrated a lot because I never felt like I could just be me and say what I meant without someone flipping out; but I thought it was "wrong" to create tension due to my religious ruleset (which I pretty much had no chance to not follow, considering it was my basic frame I was taught and if I had abandoned it, I wouldn't have been able to survive because family and friends would have dumped me or made my life hell).

I can still do it, but it's far more conscious and by choice, not a coping mechanism.

I also tend to "emulate" the people I'm with, in order to maximize the connection of ideas and experiences (so I allow myself to manifest the points of commonality in my personality, while cloaking the parts that could cause issues). Funny enough, in a discussion, which I consider to be "impersonal" and not relational, I do mention points of commonality in order to strengthen the sense of connection... but you can tell I am comfortable when I do the more natural thing of proposing the POV that is currently not being presented (i.e., the "other side" or "missing angle"). I only really do that alot when I feel like people won't mistake me for an enemy and thus flip out.
 

CJ99

Is Willard in Footloose!!
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Haight and I have both studied "mirroring" behavior (non-type) related, and thus the chameleon effect, there's a few books out there about it. (I have one about the Imposter Syndrome too.)

For me, I grew up in a religious environment / very SJ environment, so I learned to wear a sort of "F" face. I also used my N to connect with people (figure out what they wanted from me and how to interact with them in a way that made me acceptable and safe). Inside I was frustrated a lot because I never felt like I could just be me and say what I meant without someone flipping out; but I thought it was "wrong" to create tension due to my religious ruleset (which I pretty much had no chance to not follow, considering it was my basic frame I was taught and if I had abandoned it, I wouldn't have been able to survive because family and friends would have dumped me or made my life hell).

I can still do it, but it's far more conscious and by choice, not a coping mechanism.

I also tend to "emulate" the people I'm with, in order to maximize the connection of ideas and experiences (so I allow myself to manifest the points of commonality in my personality, while cloaking the parts that could cause issues). Funny enough, in a discussion, which I consider to be "impersonal" and not relational, I do mention points of commonality in order to strengthen the sense of connection... but you can tell I am comfortable when I do the more natural thing of proposing the POV that is currently not being presented (i.e., the "other side" or "missing angle"). I only really do that alot when I feel like people won't mistake me for an enemy and thus flip out.


I can relate a lot to that enviroment as my parents are ESTJ and EsFj who actually met in a church. What was strange is that my dad encouraged my questions a lot but as i got more "radical" he stopped encouraging and we started to lock horns. I think my dad secretly admires N types proberly because he was brought to end up being an individualist or at least individual for an ESTJ.

As to the chameleon effect i never force Extroversion though recently its been coming out itself a lot. Interesting thing is i normal chameleon absolutely or not at all. Infact sometimes i do this thing where i delibratly stand out - kind of anti chameleon - so to not get drawn in to SJ like standards in the first place. The rest ofthe time i do the whole "i am a wall" routine.

Any other INTPs ever get the anti-chameleon thing?
 

Cypocalypse

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Anti-chameleon is like glorifying INTPness. But isn't being INTP per se troubling enough for SJs?

Jennifer,
Just wondering. How was your early love life. Do you get to draw NF men (like there are a lot of them), and can you picture out an idea on how different love life is to an INTP woman, compared to the more common INTP males?
 

CJ99

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Anti-chameleon is like glorifying INTPness. But isn't being INTP per se troubling enough for SJs?

Jennifer,
Just wondering. How was your early love life. Do you get to draw NF men (like there are a lot of them), and can you picture out an idea on how different love life is to an INTP woman, compared to the more common INTP males?

Yeah it is! They have really hated me recently though as i've been turning ENTP! I think my dad sees it as getting more confident in the wrong way. I think he see the glimpes i give him of Ne as an "immature stage" of puberty!
 

mortabunt

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Honestly, author, I act INTP a lot of the time, unless I am coxing a race. Then I act ENTJ. I wouldn't act unlike an INTP unless something important was at stake.
 
Last edited:

Risen

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I turn into some sort of feely extrovert when I'm struck by a heavy dose of stress hormones (onset by the fatigue and stress of a long school day, coupled with forced human interaction). The result is an overt flip in personality characteristics and energy levels. It's a state I really can't reach on my own without such conditions, despite my great abilities at manually altering my own personality consciously. In this state i am also much less prone to chameleon behavior, but adopt a form of extroversion that is completely my own. I believe I only get into this state mostly because of a desire to be more extraverted, something I have sought consciously but has probably had a greater effect in unconscious or suppressed thought patterns which manifest through the onset fatigue (a trigger for the shadow personality in Jungian theory).
 
L

Lasting_Pain

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I can only be me when I am either by myself or with good friends. Otherwise I am a overly nice nice guy who likes to blend in with the surroundings.
 

lardman64

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When I "chameleon" it is usually in groups of 5+ people socialising. I try to be as charming and upbeat as I can. I also throw in the random insulting joke here and there but I've learned to make it more and more subtle to let the group know it's just for laughs and I'm only playing.

The fatigue issue Risen mentioned reminds me that when I used to stay up all night for an assignment, without even trying I would turn into a kind-of-crazy, highly sociable, talkative, somewhat confrontational energy-filled machine when I got to class. Then, after a couple of hours, I would quiet down and crash. HARD.
 

substitute

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My type's the archetypal chameleon and I think I've figured out over time why and how I do it and what implications it has for me with my friendships and relationships.

I think that to begin with, with a person I'm not seeking so much to imitate them as much as to mirror them, and the subconscious aim here is to sorta "get into" them, to understand them, what it's like to be them, in their world, bit like a method actor exploring a character. And once I get the hang of that, it shifts from mirroring to "balancing" - adapting my own patterns of behaviour, in line with my core self, to a way that compliments and balances out the other person's, so that together we're not too much or too little of any one thing.

The effect this has on my relationships is that over time I've come to realize that I need to look for people and relationships that "enable" me to be a person I like to be, and to stay away from relationships that "push" me into roles and patterns of behaviour that I don't like or enjoy, or that make me a person I don't like or whatever.

For example, I don't like spending too much time with my brother - because he's rather overly Bohemian and takes spontaneity to levels that even I as an ENTP find destructive, it sort of "forces" me to play a part where I feel stifled by how responsible and down to earth and level headed I have to be in order to save our "duo" from crashing and burning constantly at the expense of others. It makes me have to play the ISTJ, and I get on my own nerves constantly with the things I find myself saying and doing with him. He then "reviews" me as a person and sees me as stolid and boring and overly concerned with details and stuff, and I realize that in the context of him and me, it's true, I am, and that's not a person I like to be, so he's not a person I like to be with too much.

Spending time with my ISTP however makes me feel good about myself and "enables" to be a person I like being. He can be slightly over cautious, overly caught up in details, he gets stuck in ruts when his trails of facts lead to dead ends and, although he's happy to be spontaneous, he can lack for ideas of things to do. I find this legitimizes my intuitive leaping and broader vision (ignoring details), but also because he has very sound internal judgement I find that I can be completely unjudgemental and laissez-faire with whatever he chooses to get up to in his private life, trusting that he doesn't need me to nag or moralize at him in order to not bring himself and me into disasters and disrepute. I can be a happy-go-lucky, easy-going and fun guy without having to worry about it becoming as extreme as my brother's Bohemianism.

Same with my ENTJ - the fact that I can trust him to keep a hand on the tiller, keep focused on the goal and take charge means that I'm freed from having to play the role of the captain or boss, which is something I hate to do, and can leave that responsibility to him whilst I focus on the roles of "scout", experimentor and idea generator that I enjoy.
 

ChocolateMoose123

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I know what the OP means. I have struggled with this quite a bit during my early 20's. I'd say this. No matter how "chameleon like" an INTP is...what never changes is their internal thought processes and hard line convictions. When you think of things that way, who cares if you become more or less extroverted? More or less talkative? More or less anything! An INTP never changes those things that they hold close and dear to themselves. (unless they decide they want to) It's true that we "can go either way" or "see both sides" with a lot of ideas and temperaments but we can only do that with things that don't really matter to us.

So why not have fun and play with those different sides? Who cares if someone will think this or that of us (because they're seeing the outer "person" and not the inner one)? Often I've met and had the closest talks with people that have been brought closer because of that extroversion I exuded and then I've been comfortable with them enough to tell them about how I really think and what I truly believe! That's how I think of it. Hope that helps. Oh, and if this doesn't resonate with any other INTP's then I'm simply speaking for myself ;)
 

Tallulah

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And once I get the hang of that, it shifts from mirroring to "balancing" - adapting my own patterns of behaviour, in line with my core self, to a way that compliments and balances out the other person's, so that together we're not too much or too little of any one thing.

The effect this has on my relationships is that over time I've come to realize that I need to look for people and relationships that "enable" me to be a person I like to be, and to stay away from relationships that "push" me into roles and patterns of behaviour that I don't like or enjoy, or that make me a person I don't like or whatever.

For example, I don't like spending too much time with my brother - because he's rather overly Bohemian and takes spontaneity to levels that even I as an ENTP find destructive, it sort of "forces" me to play a part where I feel stifled by how responsible and down to earth and level headed I have to be in order to save our "duo" from crashing and burning constantly at the expense of others. It makes me have to play the ISTJ, and I get on my own nerves constantly with the things I find myself saying and doing with him. He then "reviews" me as a person and sees me as stolid and boring and overly concerned with details and stuff, and I realize that in the context of him and me, it's true, I am, and that's not a person I like to be, so he's not a person I like to be with too much.

Spending time with my ISTP however makes me feel good about myself and "enables" to be a person I like being. He can be slightly over cautious, overly caught up in details, he gets stuck in ruts when his trails of facts lead to dead ends and, although he's happy to be spontaneous, he can lack for ideas of things to do. I find this legitimizes my intuitive leaping and broader vision (ignoring details), but also because he has very sound internal judgement I find that I can be completely unjudgemental and laissez-faire with whatever he chooses to get up to in his private life, trusting that he doesn't need me to nag or moralize at him in order to not bring himself and me into disasters and disrepute. I can be a happy-go-lucky, easy-going and fun guy without having to worry about it becoming as extreme as my brother's Bohemianism.

Same with my ENTJ - the fact that I can trust him to keep a hand on the tiller, keep focused on the goal and take charge means that I'm freed from having to play the role of the captain or boss, which is something I hate to do, and can leave that responsibility to him whilst I focus on the roles of "scout", experimentor and idea generator that I enjoy.

I very much do this, too, sub. I instinctively balance out the extreme characteristics of the other person, which is why I don't enjoy hanging out with certain people. They make me feel like a version of myself that's not fully accurate, and I'm very aware of it, and yet, the chemistry of the relationship is such that I can't change it.

I also tend to balance MBTI characteristics, too. If I'm around a person that's excessively I or excessively P, I become the E or the J, which is fine for a while, but then it makes me tired and cranky, and I resent it. But it drives me nuts to see traits that I have exaggerated like that, for some reason. Inside, I'm going, "For Pete's sake, MAKE A DECISION!" :smile:

MD, that's the way I use the chameleon thing to my advantage, too. I use it in group settings to get along with everyone, and then as I get to know someone one on one, I can show them more of my actual self.
 

bcvcdc

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Still, having a very strong N means I'll botch up a group interaction composed of ESFx's. It just happened a few days ago.
I was interacting with more than 10 of them.
question, seriously, did you not know they were ESFx's? Did you just assume they were N's like you? how are you able to tell if you're in a group of N's or in a group of S's? I'm asking because for me, it just seems like everyone I meet is an INT something. I mean, when I first encounter them, they look like they could possibly be of the S persuasion, but then they show their statistically correct personas by doing something as simple as opening their mouths to give advice and I'm left there with them telling me that I'm right on the mark with something I said, but I know I'm not. help.
 

avolkiteshvara

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I can relate to this. In any given moment I can be:

-black
-mexican
-Republican
-artistic
-hipster
-cowboy
-etc..

This usually leads to alot of people liking me that I absolutely can't stand.

I've always had trouble with WASPy SJs though. Can't even grasp a piece of the way they work.
 
L

Lasting_Pain

Guest
I can relate to this. In any given moment I can be:

-black
-mexican
-Republican
-artistic
-hipster
-cowboy
-etc..

This usually leads to alot of people liking me that I absolutely can't stand.

I've always had trouble with WASPy SJs though. Can't even grasp a piece of the way they work.

The sarcasm reeks from that post.
 

TopherRed

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Anybody ever hear of the "shadow type" concept? Like when you're extremely stressed, you turn into your shadow, or your opposite.I've got the ISTP...which means when I'm stressed, I should probably be fiddling with something mechanical while you INTPs figure out what to serve for brunch. Either way, sucks turning into something you're not.
 
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