MBTI type does change. Humans are on the top of the food chain because we adapt, after all.
MBTI is a reflection of what we are most of the time.
What you are most of the time can change, depending on your environment. We're all defined by it, more or less.
I mean, you even eat and breathe your environment. Without it, there is nothing.
What you are is the sum of who you have the capability to be and what you need to be. Also to some extent what you want to be, of course.
what does our large brains and hands that made us get on the top of the food chain have to do with whether our personality changes or not?
reflection of who we are is our ego, not our personality type, personality type goes further from ego. its the ego that is changing not the personality type, our ego and interaction style is what is adapting to environment, you are confusing those things to personality type.
what you are capable of is about your shadow, what you need to be is your temperaments adjusting itself(not changing itself) to environment and what you want to be is your persona, none of those has nothing to do with your personality type(or maybe the potentials on your shadow).
Exactly. Our brains change and adjust based on all the nuances of our surroundings. Otherwise we'd be robots. It's what makes our minds different from our kidneys or lungs, (despite the fact that it's coded with the same DNA.) Despite difficulty in changing our neural chemistry, I believe that it can happen over time. (Something similar to quitting smoking or changing your eating habits.) We're actually much too complicated to be fully defined by an MBTI type. If we all TRULY followed the function system or were our types 100% of the time with no room for change, we would find that some people are exactly alike in every situation.(Because with only 16 behavioral options you statistically are going to run out of room and end up having to create a lot of very similar people.) And we don't. And we never will. And that's why it's untrue to say that "our type doesn't change" or we can't be something outside of a small box of behaviors, and our behaviors and thoughts and motivations can't vary greatly throughout our lifespan.
type isnt an behavioral option lol, it has nothing to do with your behavior(or does in socionics, but thats why it sucks balls).
its funny that everyone claiming that type does change, doesent know what type even is.
i used this as an example for test where we had to write an essay about genes and personality(ill just write a short version here):
everyone knows(in scientific community) that personality is determined by genes and how these genes are activated due to environment(if you dont agree, go to school). this is studied by identical twin studies that have been adopted to different families.
extraversion is a trait that can be noticed even in very small babies, so it seems that there is strong genetic effect for this trait. now if you take an extraverted identical twins to different families when they were babies and other environment supports the extraversion and other tries to repress it(or doesent support it as much as it would be needed). other child would be able to express his need to act extraverted, but the other one would have to repress these extraverted traits(at least to some extend). naturally the one that gets to express these traits would act more extraverted than the one who needs to repress these tendencies.
neurophysically extraversion is lower idle activity overally, higher activity on frontal cortex when activated and lower activity in dopamine system compared to introverts. lower idle activity causes extraverted people to seek stimuli from external world as this low activity causes anxiety(how much of this depends how extraverted the person is). introverts on the other hand get overstimulated easily, because its the higher idle activity + activity needed to act extraverted. dopamine system works as a reward system, so extraverts need to seek out more things from external world that activates the dopamine system to get the same "reward doze" than introverts.
the child that needs to repress his natural tendencies to extravert, would naturally be less happy with his life situation as he needs more activation of the brains to not feel anxiety and to get the "reward doze" that he needs to feel happy. naturally he would adjust to the situation by not trying to extravert so much and if the environment is repressing this tendency enough, he would even start to seem like an introvert, but an unhappy introvert(naturally there are other factors to happiness too, but lets just leave them out from this or this will get too complicated).
lets assume that he has managed to repress these extraverted tendencies enough. now at his early adult years, he would most likely think that he is an introvert and would score as an introvert in self report tests(like MBTI, big 5 etc) because he sees himself as an introvert(not the life of the party, doesent think that he needs all that much stimuli etc). but these tests just measure the outcome of the personality, but thats not what the MBTI/jungian typology is about, they are not behavioral tests, even tho they test self-reported behavior, they are about how the person naturally acts. they test persona, not personality, because the underlying personality is too hard to measure in self-report tests for several reasons.
now the two genetically same people who are both extraverted by nature, would most likely score differently on E-I scale. but the one that would score I, would actually be E acting out like I. later in life he would most likely get the need to extravert more. from his point of view, it seems that he has changed personality and MBTI test would measure his type differently.
lets say this person is ENTP for example, he would have repressed his Ne in early years, but even tho his Ne would have been lower in early adulthood than his Ti, it doesent mean that he would have turned into INTP, because for ENTP its the Ti that has been developed to support his Ne and for INTP its Ne that has been developed to support the Ti. this is so fundamental part of personality that it doesent change. only what is seen outside varies. in MBTI/jungian typology E is determined by the orientation of the first function, the first function doesent change places with other functions.
if you look at how brain plasticity works, it will tell you the same thing. those fundamental parts that you have created in early life are so strong that they dont disappear, because thats where you use your other functions from and when using those other functions(Ti is always supporting Ne with ENTP), you are also using the functions that support the part that you have repressed. repressing that E from you just takes it out of the conscious thinking.
neuroplasticity works by degenerating what is not used and generating new connections that are needed. Ne is still used, even tho you try to repress it, its just the extraverted tendencies that are repressed to unconscious. and repressing things doesent make them not used, they just cut it out from the conscious thinking.
