Is MBTI type (or part of it) genetic?

[Macabre]

At risk of starting another Nature v. Nurture fistfight, i have to ask this. INTPs are rarey. as are INTJs. However, my Dad is INTJ, I'm INTP, My sis is INTP, I think my bro is INTP <--------unsure, but i think so. Is the NT type being geneticked down to us? or are we just highly anomalous, a statistical outlier. or is it upbringing. my mum's an ESFJ, for reference.

Sorry in advance if this was posted before.

P.S. own stories welcome!

 

[mrbluey]

Didn't you tell me your mom's an ENFP?
Anywho..
It depends, of course. I'm suspicious about your conclusion precisely because they're your family members. It may be a 'nurture' effect.
I don't know if your evaluated personalities are right - assuming they are

 

[mrbluey]

If anything, I'd say I might be an 'anomaly'.
If MBTI types have any genetic or assimilative roots, then I'm an unusual case.
The rest of my family - father ESTJ, mother ISTJ, brother ESTP, sister ESFP, are Sensors, while I'm an -flashes type card-
Just saying - humans can adapt in many ways; not necessarily by assimilation.
Say not 'anomaly', but rather 'individual'.

As for the genetic component, I see little evidence to support type inheritance

 

[Macabre]

... I knew it. NvN. Again. They took all ze tests, except my brother. i'm looking for other cases. refutions welcome.

 

[Macabre]

I like "anomaly". it's less pc.

 

[mrbluey]

if you say so. i was giving more consideration to the.. valence of the perspective

 

[Ghosty]

I'm an INFJ. My mother is an ISFP and my father was an INTJ. My aunt (mother's side), by what I've analized is possibly an ISTJ. Can't really analize my dad's side of the family since I almost never see them unless we run into each other in public. Personally, I dunno if it would be genetic or not. I guess that would go back to the Nature vs. Nurture argument.

 

[Seymour]

Here's an existing thread on this topic: Is Type Inherited?.

From the above thread, it's clear that there has been a lot more research on the heritability of Big 5 traits (which correspond somewhat to some of the MBTI scales). Those studies show:

All five factors show an influence from both heredity and environment. Twin studies suggest that these effects contribute in roughly equal proportion.[39] Of four recent twin studies the mean estimated broad heritabilities on self-report measures for the Big Five traits were as follows:[40]

Openness [N/S]: 57%
Conscientiousness [J/P]: 49%
Extraversion [E/I]: 54%
Agreeableness [F/T]: 42%
Neuroticism [no MBTI equiv]: 48%

The the one MBTI study I found indicates in its abstract:

Twins’ scores on the continuous scales were subjected to behavior genetic model-fitting procedures. Extraversion-Introversion and Thinking-Feeling yielded heritabilities of about .60, consisting largely of nonadditive genetic variance. Sensing-Intuition and Judgment-Perception yielded heritabilities of about .40, consisting largely of additive genetic variance.

So 40% to 60% inherited seems like a good rule of thumb, depending.

(more in the above thread)

 

[King sns]

Hmm... About 70 percent of my family comprises SP's. The primary people I was raised by were my grandmother, grandfather, and mother. (ENFP, ISTJ, and ESFJ.) So I guess the nature argument makes sense in my case. In a family fully of SP's, but was raised by non-sp's, and still came out sp.

 

[istj86]

I was about to post about this. I think your childhood can make your personality evolve.

For example, my family was broken almost since i was born, have no sisters or brothers and spent a lot of time alone because my mother was super paranoid that something happened to me if i went to play on the street and i had really bad experiences with her..
i guess that made me an ISTJ... im comfortable being on my own -even if i would like to have a girlfriend-, i dont trust people quickly (why would i if i couldnt trust my own mother?) and stuff like that... i can think of a lot of links between the ISTJ description and my life.

 

[skylights]

i bet it's pretty well balanced between genetics and environment.

i don't think you'll see any real consistent patterns in MBTI types within families, though. MBTI is just shorthand for a hugely complex system of thought and processing.

 

[chickpea]

probably not. but i have an enfp mom and intp dad, so in my case i turned out a combination of both.

 

[Stanton Moore]

Can you show which genes code for which traits? No. No you can't.

Therefore you can't say that MBTI is genetic.

 

[mujigay]

hmmm...I've always thought that was an interesting idea, but a bit shaky. How would DNA code for personality type? It could certainly work within my family, though.

Dad: ISTP
Mom: INFJ
Sister: ISFP
Me: INTJ

...we're a family of hermits.

 

[21%]

I don't think it's genetic in a way that you will inherit your parents' cognitive function preferences. However, you can tell if a baby is extroverted or introverted almost straight away once they are born -- so something has to be 'there' before the nurture even begins. I think nurture plays a huge part, though. My mom (ISFJ) and dad (INTP) always stressed the importance of communication, caring for others, being principled, etc. so perhaps that helped shape me and my sister's preference for Fe. I'm INFJ and she's ENFJ -- same genetics, same environment, so perhaps that means something...

 

[Anew Leaf]

I know from my psychology days that extraversion/introversion has a pretty strong correlation right from birth to adulthood. (As 21% points out above me as well.)

I am not sure where it comes from, but I feel that in looking back at myself throughout my life I came out of the gate as an INFP. My parents both got typed and my dad is an INTP, and my mom is an ENFP.

My dad has spent a lot of my life trying to make me into an INTP like him (not consciously but I don't think he knows how to parent otherwise ), and my mom spent most of my life trying to turn me into an ENFP like her.

There is probably some kind of genetic component to it. My dad's family, extended and immediate, has an abnormally high rate of NTs in it.