Socio-economic background and MBTI

[tinkerbell]

Actually I can say in the UK there is no significant difference in MBTI spread and Socio ecco group

so roughtly speaking the same proportions exsist (ie not skewed enough to create a sigifican dif).

 

[proteanmix]

How do you know that?

 

[tinkerbell]

I conducted primary research (for work) with a nationally represenative sample of the UK population 1000 Adults (aged 16+).

Omnibus' have demographic questions, so MBTI classifications crossed with SEG gives me that

 

[proteanmix]

I read this study done by the Journal of Psychological Type in the mid-90s. "The distribution of MBTI types by ethnicity and gender in the US" Hammer A. and Mitchell WD.

They found that African-Americans had a disproportionate amount of ISTJs and Hispanics a disproportionate amount of ESFPs compared to the rest of the American population. I wonder what accounts for those differences. Maybe SES holds a clue.

 

[sculpting]

On one hand I see what you're driving at - for example, ENFPs who come from working class or poor backgrounds probably develop Te at an earlier age than ones from more affluent backgrounds, and may also seem a little less consistently fluffy and sweet - but on the other hand I think people are who they are despite socio-economic status.

College graduates are more likely to put off having children. There is an above-average amount of college graduates here. Since when is having children stereotypically SJ? Last time I checked reproductive instincts were alive and kicking in all humans.

So that makes me ask:
does sensing or intuitive preferences affect the decision to attend and graduate from college?
are intuitives (with or without college education) less likely to have children? are sensors (with or without college education) more likely to have children?

My basic point is people need to sort out the pieces that make the whole instead of just assuming the whole part is the way it is because that's just the way it is. SES is a looming and I'd say dominating factor in why you are they way you are.

I was raised as white trash as is possible to be. My mom and grandmom are both ENFPs raised white trash. My dad was an INFJ from a farm family, but I spent very little time with them as a kid.

As for me and my sibs:
Me-ENFP
Brother-ESFP
Sister-ESFP

I am the only person in three generations of family to have a high school degree. Both sibs dropped out. Mom and sibs dropped out. Grandmom and sibs dropped out.

I am the only person ever to go to college, let alone go to grad school.

I'd say watching my mom left me with very valuable insight and a lot of Te way early with little Fi.

The Te lessons learned were never depend on anyone else-or you are at their mercy. Become financially independent from others, never let anyone tell you what you can or cant do. Avoid debt, be accountable and responsible to yourself, be willing to face up to your own mistakes. I can do whatever I need to do to take care of myself. Adversity is my best friend as it makes me drive myself further, enhance my skills, develop my mind, and become stronger when Ne would have let me wonder off and play. Having a kid at 18 actually strengthened this drive. Instead of playing, I really did have to be accountable for the care of another person. Te, Te, Te, Te....

The unfortunate Fi lesson learned was never to become emotionally dependent on anyone either. Dont trust people, dont rely on them, you cant they are undependable.

Why didnt my sister and brother do this as well-they have Te too?

Ne and a lack of Se-it allows me to see things that are not in front of my face. It allows me to ignore the things that are in front of me-people's opinions, things they value, limitations, societal constraints, lack of money, being a single mom. It allows me to see the meta structure in my behavior patterns and not repeat them-perhaps this is TeSi at work?

 

[tcda]

They found that African-Americans had a disproportionate amount of ISTJs and Hispanics a disproportionate amount of ESFPs compared to the rest of the American population. I wonder what accounts for those differences. Maybe SES holds a clue.

I'm from a Hispanic family, I would say that where they are from, the average Introverts and Thinkers would be considered an X on both those axes by English standards.

It's a cultural issue, with such big families and such an emphasis on being sociable, as well as being such a sentimental culture, it's hard not to develop your E and F - which I am grateful for.

 

[proteanmix]

Why didnt my sister and brother do this as well-they have Te too?

Ne and a lack of Se-it allows me to see things that are not in front of my face. It allows me to ignore the things that are in front of me-people's opinions, things they value, limitations, societal constraints, lack of money, being a single mom. It allows me to see the meta structure in my behavior patterns and not repeat them-perhaps this is TeSi at work?

OK, I'm not trying to be a jerk or anything, but you believe it was your Ne that allowed you to be successful?

If I can find five ESFPs (or any type for that matter) that escaped a similarly disadvantaged background to achieve what would you say? What allowed them to do it? Do you attribute your personal success to being intuitive or any other functional preferences?

Like I said, I'm not trying to be difficult. It's my pet peeve, but I feel like this needs to be pounded into people's heads. What I understand you to be saying is your ambition, determination, and drive to make a different future for yourself than what you had growing up stems from your being intuitive. Am I understanding you correctly?

I break most of my SES and cultural indicators too and I could throw out a mightier list than yours. I don't attribute it my sensing and intuiting behaviors more than my own industriousness, drive, and sense of personal development.

 

[cafe]

Yeah, my dad is probably an SP and grew up in rural poverty. He was eventually able to earn the equivalent of a Masters in his field and did pretty well for himself financially until his health began to fail.

 

[Kingfisher]

i did not know about mbti for most of my life, so i feel like i am not qualified to analyze a lot of my experiences with social class in an mbti sense.
but my feeling (based on my experience) is that people are very diverse, and they remain diverse no matter what social class you are in.

i spend time now working with kids of a very low social-economic class, and i really don't see any kinds of trends in them as far as mbti.

 

[edcoaching]

I've worked with literally hundreds of urban students from a rich mix of backgrounds, 80% below the official poverty line. They turn out to be a mix of types very very similar to what I get in suburban schools...when we reinforce the concepts over time, they experience the preferences and understand that all types are great ways to be. Hmmm, sounds like what it takes for most adults to figure out best fit type...

 

[Thalassa]

College graduates are more likely to put off having children. There is an above-average amount of college graduates here. Since when is having children stereotypically SJ? Last time I checked reproductive instincts were alive and kicking in all humans.

It has nothing to do with instincts. SJs are more likely to prioritize traditional things like get married, have children, own a house by thirty. Ns don't necessarily prize traditional things, don't necessarily think of themselves as failures if they don't fit the pattern of their surrounding social group, are more comfortable with doing these things on their own time or not at all. I don't think it has anything to do with graduating college. My best friend - an ENxJ -owns her own buisiness and never wants to have children and also never went to a university. Most the SJs I know who I went to high school with already have the traditonal two-story home and 2.5 kids. It's fucking uncanny. Plenty of these people went to college. I think that Ns are more comfortable with living outside of the box.

My sisters - both who are most probably Ss, one definitely, the other borderline - have children. Me and my ENFJ sister do not.

So that makes me ask:
does sensing or intuitive preferences affect the decision to attend and graduate from college?

No.

are intuitives (with or without college education) less likely to have children?

possibly, though of course some Ns will still want a family at a young age

are sensors (with or without college education) more likely to have children?

I think SJs are, because it's what they believe is normal or standard or traditional, aside from any animal instincts. "Family values."

My basic point is people need to sort out the pieces that make the whole instead of just assuming the whole part is the way it is because that's just the way it is. SES is a looming and I'd say dominating factor in why you are they way you are.

I was born to a working class family in hicktown WV. My personal story is not totally different from Happy Puppy's, though I'm pretty certain I won't be taking the grad school route. I'm just saying...

 

[sculpting]

OK, I'm not trying to be a jerk or anything, but you believe it was your Ne that allowed you to be successful?

If I can find five ESFPs (or any type for that matter) that escaped a similarly disadvantaged background to achieve what would you say? What allowed them to do it? Do you attribute your personal success to being intuitive or any other functional preferences?

Like I said, I'm not trying to be difficult. It's my pet peeve, but I feel like this needs to be pounded into people's heads. What I understand you to be saying is your ambition, determination, and drive to make a different future for yourself than what you had growing up stems from your being intuitive. Am I understanding you correctly?

I break most of my SES and cultural indicators too and I could throw out a mightier list than yours. I don't attribute it my sensing and intuiting behaviors more than my own industriousness, drive, and sense of personal development.

No problem at all-let me clarify. I can only tell my own story and guess at other folks.

Te gave me the drive and ambition, the rationale (based on visceral Fi pain avoidance) for why I needed to escape. It developed the plans, the sense of responsibility. Te was the key, the organized force behind the drive. It listened to my grandmother, watched my mom, recorded those lessons and then used them.

Maybe some of this was helped by observing the Te lessons and then storing them in Si. I didnt realize until recently how important Si is in ENXPs to help ground the judgments we make with our XiXe. A good example was as a freshman in high school I realized "If I do not graduate in the top 10% and go to college I be forced on the street with no way to pay my bills". This was an Te fact that I used to ground and I began to look for possible ways out using Ne.

I think Ne allowed me to see the way past and exploit all the possibilites.

As an ENFJ, doesnt Fe give you "industriousness, drive, and sense of personal development"? I really dont know honestly..

What I see with ESFPs-both my sis and bro and other ESFPs now that I know what to look for-inferior Ni is their achilles heel if they are immature.

Ni seems to allow you to view things from multiple perspectives. ESFPs do this really neat trick of rewriting the past to their own advantage. They rewrite their own parts in their minds so that nothing is ever their fault-always the fault of the other person.

So they dont learn Te lessons the same way I do. My bro eventually grew out of it, but things were bumpy till about 28 when his wife left him and he was out of work. He had to learn responsibility.

My sis is 32 and she is amazing in her ability to never be at fault for anything. My mom and I just assumed she was a pathological liar to be honest-but no maybe in her brain she really does believe her version of the truth due to the inferior Ni it seems.

The more important question once you understand these patterns-What can you do with each of these types to help them succeed?

An ESFP?

1. Cater to Se-take them to an affluent neighborhood. Emphasize that the way you get here is through going to college. Have affluent business men mentor them. Show them the monetary rewards of finishing school. make them work shit part time jobs to "see" what happens when you dont finish school. Help show them scholarships, loans, ways to go to school part time. Show single moms all the programs out there that can help them, the subsidized day care centers and so on. They have to "see" the alternative.

2. Cater to Fi-Show them what people who dont finish college end up like. Also, they seek affirmation-surround them with peers who are college bound and they will tend to follow suit. Give them mentors whose praise they will find rewarding. Praise them liberally when they do well. Give them a lot of verbal support and checking in.

3. Teach them to use Te. Teach them to manage money, organize effectively, apply for grants. Put them into programs which structure most of their day so that they can focus on learning to self structure the most important parts. Here also is that sense of responsibility. I am a huge fan of a year of community service for high school kids-teach them they are an integral part of their community. They dont have Fe for that, and tert Te is pretty weak. Check in often and keep them on track.

4. Help them with that inferior Ni by holding them responsible for their actions.

(um, or well, something like that.... for an ISTP it be a different set of needs, an ESFJ something different. Gotta say though in rural white trash america the N's clumped together and most did go on to college.)

 

[FDG]

I'm from a Hispanic family, I would say that where they are from, the average Introverts and Thinkers would be considered an X on both those axes by English standards.

It's a cultural issue, with such big families and such an emphasis on being sociable, as well as being such a sentimental culture, it's hard not to develop your E and F - which I am grateful for.

Yeah, I agree. On some forums people used to think I'm ESFP exactly for this reason.

 

[proteanmix]

It has nothing to do with instincts. SJs are more likely to prioritize traditional things like get married, have children, own a house by thirty. Ns don't necessarily prize traditional things, don't necessarily think of themselves as failures if they don't fit the pattern of their surrounding social group, are more comfortable with doing these things on their own time or not at all. I don't think it has anything to do with graduating college. My best friend - an ENxJ -owns her own buisiness and never wants to have children and also never went to a university. Most the SJs I know who I went to high school with already have the traditonal two-story home and 2.5 kids. It's fucking uncanny. Plenty of these people went to college. I think that Ns are more comfortable with living outside of the box.

OK, so you're still saying intuitives have less of a desire/need to reproduce. It's pretty widely know that college graduates delay marriage and childbearing and the more postsecondary education (master's, PhD) you have the more likely you are to altogether forego those things. The most obvious reason being you're still in school and don't have time to get married and raise kids. My next question was if you believe college is a factor at all given what we know. You're relying on anecdotal information based on your family and I'm coming at you with verifiable fact. If there is a positive relationship between pursuing higher education and a perceiving preference, then what you're asserting would follow but you don't want to go that far and say that. So I'm still confused about the connection you're making between being intuitive and not having/wanting kids. I think what you're saying is being intuitive causes you not to want to have such "mainstream" desires. I don't believe that's true.

MS can you address the points that have been brought up earlier in the thread, especially the ones I listed such as:

1. Geographic location
2. Race
3. Education
4. Cultural influences
5. Politically affiliation
6. Income
7. Sexuality

How might those factors influence the manifestation of type? I'm making a distinction between how type is manifested vs SES changing someone's type.

Can we actually move away from the typical MBTI stereotypes for once and start discussing more salient factors for how and why people are they way they are? If you want to just make blanket statements about types behaving the way they do instead of bringing some nuance into the discussion then I don't see this going very far before it turns into the same old, same old.

No problem at all-let me clarify. I can only tell my own story and guess at other folks.

Te gave me the drive and ambition, the rationale (based on visceral Fi pain avoidance) for why I needed to escape. It developed the plans, the sense of responsibility. Te was the key, the organized force behind the drive. It listened to my grandmother, watched my mom, recorded those lessons and then used them.

Maybe some of this was helped by observing the Te lessons and then storing them in Si. I didnt realize until recently how important Si is in ENXPs to help ground the judgments we make with our XiXe. A good example was as a freshman in high school I realized "If I do not graduate in the top 10% and go to college I be forced on the street with no way to pay my bills". This was an Te fact that I used to ground and I began to look for possible ways out using Ne.

I think Ne allowed me to see the way past and exploit all the possibilites.

As an ENFJ, doesnt Fe give you "industriousness, drive, and sense of personal development"? I really dont know honestly..

What I see with ESFPs-both my sis and bro and other ESFPs now that I know what to look for-inferior Ni is their achilles heel if they are immature.

Ni seems to allow you to view things from multiple perspectives. ESFPs do this really neat trick of rewriting the past to their own advantage. They rewrite their own parts in their minds so that nothing is ever their fault-always the fault of the other person.

So they dont learn Te lessons the same way I do. My bro eventually grew out of it, but things were bumpy till about 28 when his wife left him and he was out of work. He had to learn responsibility.

My sis is 32 and she is amazing in her ability to never be at fault for anything. My mom and I just assumed she was a pathological liar to be honest-but no maybe in her brain she really does believe her version of the truth due to the inferior Ni it seems.

The more important question once you understand these patterns-What can you do with each of these types to help them succeed?

An ESFP?

1. Cater to Se-take them to an affluent neighborhood. Emphasize that the way you get here is through going to college. Have affluent business men mentor them. Show them the monetary rewards of finishing school. make them work shit part time jobs to "see" what happens when you dont finish school. Help show them scholarships, loans, ways to go to school part time. Show single moms all the programs out there that can help them, the subsidized day care centers and so on. They have to "see" the alternative.

2. Cater to Fi-Show them what people who dont finish college end up like. Also, they seek affirmation-surround them with peers who are college bound and they will tend to follow suit. Give them mentors whose praise they will find rewarding. Praise them liberally when they do well. Give them a lot of verbal support and checking in.

3. Teach them to use Te. Teach them to manage money, organize effectively, apply for grants. Put them into programs which structure most of their day so that they can focus on learning to self structure the most important parts. Here also is that sense of responsibility. I am a huge fan of a year of community service for high school kids-teach them they are an integral part of their community. They dont have Fe for that, and tert Te is pretty weak. Check in often and keep them on track.

4. Help them with that inferior Ni by holding them responsible for their actions.

(um, or well, something like that.... for an ISTP it be a different set of needs, an ESFJ something different. Gotta say though in rural white trash america the N's clumped together and most did go on to college.)

Thank you for clarifying, HP.

I still understand you to be saying is your NeTe was your saving grace. This is a totally different topic, but for those of us who don't use that particular function combination consciously but are still able to have our shit together, what do you think the explanation is? I think it's dangerous to associate character qualities and traits to specific functions. Te is not synonymous with drive and ambition.

This is a really good question:

What can you do with each of these types to help them succeed?

I think that once you start looking at someone's history and background, their type begins to fade and other characteristics take on more significance. To me knowing someone was raised in a single parent family, with an alcoholic parent, had their first child by 18, and was able to overcome their personal adversity means more than type. At the very least I know this is a resilient and determined person and those are character traits which are more descriptive and truer to a person's core than type.

And frankly, some people will always fall through the cracks. Not everyone will survive and thrive even within the same family. Some people don't learn from the mistakes of others very well and have to repeatedly make the same mistake themselves before they start learning. Observational learning is not obvious to some people. I could probably make an argument that the more individualistic a person is, the less able they are to learn from observation because their need for individuality reduces their ability of vicarious and shared experience. IDK, I just pulled that out of my ass so don't debate me on it.

 

[Jaguar]

I could probably make an argument that the more individualistic a person is, the less able they are to learn from observation because their need for individuality reduces their ability of vicarious and shared experience. IDK, I just pulled that out of my ass so don't debate me on it.

I agree that you pulled that out of your ass.
So I won't debate you.

 

[Speed Gavroche]

They found that African-Americans had a disproportionate amount of ISTJs and Hispanics a disproportionate amount of ESFPs compared to the rest of the American population. .

Yes I've read this too. In France elsewhere, ENFP seems to be the most current type or one of the most. There's also more INFPs than somewhere else. France is actually an FP land, and french males are more often xNTPs than american male, but less often xSTJ or xSTP.

Personally, I spent my childhood in a low middle class family but with a high cultural capital. My ISFJ father were a technician in the pharmacist industry and my INFP mother was a career counselor, but they had a high intelectual background and and were highly intelectually and politically inolved. They openly talked about this before me and my ENFP young brother. We lives in a little appartment of 3 rooms, we had a car, a TV, 1 and next 2 computers, 2 or 3 times by year sent to the camp, leaved in vacation each summer. It was nice.

At primary school, though I said we were of the low middle class, I was probably among the promoted part of the child, the majority were from a poor family. We live in a distant banlieue of Paris, in a socially and ethnically very mixed environment.

Is there a relation with my type, I don't know, but I was ever a sort of ISTP prototype, ha ha.

 

[Speed Gavroche]

i spend time now working with kids of a very low social-economic class, and i really don't see any kinds of trends in them as far as mbti.

I've worked with kids from very low social-economic class too, I hav'nt seen particular leanings. There's a majority of sensor, maybe, but just like in the global population. It is hard to type children anyway, they always seem extrovert!

 

[neptunesnet]

Yes I've read this too. In France elsewhere, ENFP seems to be the most current type or one of the most. There's also more INFPs than somewhere else. France is actually an FP land, and french males are more often xNTPs than american male, but less often xSTJ or xSTP.

Something about this and other remarks of this nature seem flawed to me [yes, I'm saying that prematurely]. As of right now without having researched very much of it, I can't exactly see how the type frequency would change from culture to culture. Although I do believe that culture, personal adversity, socioeconomic status, and countless other external factors affect personality, I think it only affects how that type is manifested, not how it's formed. To use a personal example, I grew in the South [Fe country], and as a result I am what most people would consider "polite." I always say "please" and "thank you," I still say "yes m'am"/"no m'am," I send thank you cards to friends for gifts and special occasions, I apologize incessantly and many times for faults that weren't mine, and I do all sorts of other things that would consider "Fe behavior," but I am certainly a Fi-user. Also, I had to be careful in typing some of my Southern friends because the tendency is to label them all either TPs or FJs based solely on their behavior, which could be confused for a preference for Fe, when that's not always the case.

My point is that type doesn't change. If you are an ESFP, you'll always be an ESFP regardless of environment, although I realize that environment alters the way the person's functions would be expressed (thus their behavior would diverge from stereotypical type behavior). For instance, the ESFP may become more responsible after having children or may be more practical-minded having grown up in a family of STJs [Fi could incorporate into its system that being more practical-minded keeps her from being financially dependent on anyone or that being more reliable would be beneficial to her kid], but she'd still be SeFi.

 

[BlueFlame]

My point is that the way I see it type doesn't change. If you are an ESFP, you'll always be an ESFP regardless of environment. However, environment would alter the way the person's functions would be expressed (thus their behavior would diverge from stereotypical type behavior). For instance, the ESFP may become more responsible after having children or may be more practical-minded having grown up in a family of STJs [Fi could incorporate into the system that being more practical-minded keeps her from being financially dependent on anyone or that being more reliable would be beneficial to her kid], but she'd still be SeFi.

I agree with this 100%, and I think this applies to the oddities we see when people take cognitive function tests. It's hardly unusual to see an order unlike the prescribed MBTI version, but those oddities just make you a unique version/expression of your type.

Personally, I come from an upper-middle class, Southern Baptist family. Raised to be a Republican. I'm a member of the DAR. The whole shtick.
I wasn't raised to question the status-quo or think outside the box...
I spent my time in private Christian schools, universities, and churches being told what to think. I was raised in an illogical, insane authoritarian home where you did not question what was happening, even when it went to extremes. You said *Yes, m'am* and did what was asked of you, and if you were told the sky is red, then the sky was red (and I was told that exact thing countless times.) Any attempts I made to push for mutual respect or a harmonious family or wielding of my Fe to stop the insanity were wasted.

I didn't fit into that mold, and regardless of my parents' ridiculous efforts to destroy that part of me, I'm still here today. Perhaps a little more fond of logic than I would be, a little more afraid of emotion, and probably with a lot lower self-esteem than I could have, but ENFJ me is still here. I have children and I work in a very T industry, but I'm still here! My head may come out of the clouds to make dinner or create spreadsheets, but I'm still a sensotard/T-tard! :hi:

 

[Edgar]

I think many people here are "allowed" to be a stereotypically scatterbrained and head-in-the cloud sensotards because they don't have the responsibility that comes with taking care of a family.

Are you implying that Sensors take better care of their families?

When children come into the equation you must learn certain characteristics that are associated with sensing and judging.

So every time someone births a child they become an busybody SJ mother-hen, fretting about social norms and responsibilities?


Sounds to me you are just projecting personal views and self reflections on general population.