ISTJs vs. INFPs

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

How do we tell them apart? Is it possible that one could be confused for another? Are there certain Enneagram types they have a predilection towards being associated with?

 

[Duffy]

I always thought ISTJs were more pragmatic and desire a stronger need for certainty.

 

[cameo]

How are they similar at all?

 

[PeaceBaby]

Good, a typology arm wrestle tournament!! ... I will arm wrestle you to the ground, ISTJs!

 

[Patrick]

How are they similar at all?

Well, they're both introverts. SJs and NFs are both cooperative/affiliative (as opposed to utilitarian/pragmatic). They share all the cognitive processes (functions)--Fi, Te, Ne, and Si (though of course the order of them is different for each). There are those huge similarities, just to name the ones that readily come to mind.

I'm an INFP, and my sister is most likely an ISTJ, and all my life I've felt we're a lot alike.

As to enneagram type, I'd say Six is a good fit for both INFPs and ISTJs. Many INFPs are probably type Four, Nine, or One; and I don't think Four is a good match for ISTJ. So, of course there are differences. I'd say those INFPs whose enneagram type is Six or One (myself, for example) have a good deal of common ground with ISTJs.

 

[cameo]

Huh. I personally don't feel like I have anything in common with INFPs, in particular. Of course, I don't know any actual INFPs in person, but I don't relate to the type descriptions I've read at all. I think that, even though the functions are all the same, the variations in order make a world of difference because, for example, auxiliary Ne (for INFPs) does next to nothing for me, where Ne is inferior.

I would also dispute your claim that SJs are affiliative because, at least for the STJ types, the presence of T (or Te as dominant/auxiliary, or what have you) really does a lot to shift those two types from affiliative to pragmatic. The SFJs I know certainly are affiliative/cooperative, but the STJs I know are pretty far from that and are much more pragmatic/utilitarian. But I'm sure that's not a debate I'm likely to win any time soon because too many people think of STJs as merely archetypal "guardians."

Edit: Of course, I shouldn't say I have NOTHING in common with INFPs, but my point was that, in general terms, I don't really think there are any striking similarities between the two.

 

[indra]

ISTJ's, because they remember things like grenade sumps and force multipliers.

 

[Patrick]

Huh. I personally don't feel like I have anything in common with INFPs, in particular. Of course, I don't know any actual INFPs in person, but I don't relate to the type descriptions I've read at all. I think that, even though the functions are all the same, the variations in order make a world of difference because, for example, auxiliary Ne (for INFPs) does next to nothing for me, where Ne is inferior.

The order does make each type unique. But according to Cognitive Styles theory, the four types that share Fi, Si, Ne, and Te all have an Authenticating approach to life.

I would also dispute your claim that SJs are affiliative because, at least for the STJ types, the presence of T (or Te as dominant/auxiliary, or what have you) really does a lot to shift those two types from affiliative to pragmatic. The SFJs I know certainly are affiliative/cooperative, but the STJs I know are pretty far from that and are much more pragmatic/utilitarian. But I'm sure that's not a debate I'm likely to win any time soon because too many people think of STJs as merely archetypal "guardians."

I believe all SJs are cooperative, as Keirsey says and Berens affirms. However, you're right again about there also being important differences. NFs focus on motive (as do SPs), SJs on structure (like NTs). Also, INFJs use the Informing communication style, while ISTJs use the Directing style.

What it means is probably just what you're noticing: that ISTJs (and all TJs, for that matter) are much more task-focused than people-oriented. In sharp contrast, INFPs (and all FPs) are decidedly more people-oriented and hardly task-focused at all.

TJs also welcome conflict; to them it's a way to clear the air and arrive at mutual understanding, establishing boundaries where they're needed. FPs tend to avoid conflict, and they withdraw or smooth things over when conflict arises; to FPs, conflict can feel painful, and they generally want to ignore or demolish boundaries between people.

Edit: Of course, I shouldn't say I have NOTHING in common with INFPs, but my point was that, in general terms, I don't really think there are any striking similarities between the two.

The similarities may not be striking, but I believe they're there if you look for them. INFPs can be the most conservative and judgmental of NFs, making them a bit more SJ-like. ISTJs might be said to be more NT-like than other SJs. But INFPs and ISTJs both have that Authenticating cognitive style; they mainly use four functions that serve best to evaluate validity--to test the truth or accuracy of information.

 

[Doctor Cringelord]

two facets of the same animal

 

[reckful]

The order does make each type unique. But according to Cognitive Styles theory, the four types that share Fi, Si, Ne, and Te all have an Authenticating approach to life.

INFPs and ISTJs only share Fi, Ne, Si and Te if you subscribe to the goofy Harold Grant function stack — a function stack that, besides being inconsistent with both Jung and Myers, has no respectable validity and has never been endorsed by the official MBTI folks.

If you're interested in reading more about that — and about the steaming pile of donkey dookie that Berens used to call the "Cognitive Styles" (and is apparently now calling "Intentional Styles") — you'll find a long, potentially eye-opening discussion here.

Myers said that the dichotomy combinations that had the most significance were NF, NT, SF and ST — combinations that have no correspondence with the so-called "cognitive functions" under anybody's function model — and reasonable people can disagree about whether she was right or wrong about that. (Keirsey certainly did.) But in any case, I believe Myers and Keirsey were both right to think that INFPs and ISTJs are closer to being opposite types than they are to being close cousins.

 

[Patrick]

Thanks, reckful, for reminding me how deep and convoluted the rabbit hole of personality typing is for some.

I read your "long, potentially eye-opening discussion," and it worried me and then made me sigh. In the end, I remembered that my own interest in p-typing involves using it as a common language for talking about ourselves--our similarities and differences. Without a common language, we end up talking past each other half the time--or we resort to vulgar name calling--so it's good to agree on a vocabulary. Ultimately, what we say has to be tied to our individual (subjective) experiences, since that's what we want to understand and convey.

I've always been reluctant (as was Keirsey) to acknowledge the function-attitudes (cognitive processes) at all. Keirsey didn't like them because they were hypothetical; he didn't see any reality to them. I don't like them because they're too complicated, and because theorists are always arguing over their true meaning. Granted, they might facilitate a more nuanced discussion (like having a conversation in Russian instead of Esperanto), but it looks to me like 95 percent of people have a hard enough time with Keirsey's four temperaments. Why make things more complicated for them? I'd rather get people talking reasonably about themselves and each other, even if they're speaking in "baby talk."

Back to the topic: If one is determined to stick to Myers's groupings (NF, NT, SF, ST) and reject Keirsey's (NF, NT, SJ, SP), then I suppose ISTJs and INFPs will be "opposite-ish," to borrow your term. But according to Keirsey, they have "cooperative use of tools" in common; both types tend to pay attention to rules and conventions rather than thumbing their nose at them.

Oh, and in Keirsey's last (?) book, Personology, he seems to have moved away from S/N being the main distinction; he elevates the directing/informing communication styles instead. In this slightly revised system, ISTJ is a "compliant enterpriser" (cooperative and directing), while INFP is a "compliant inquirer" (cooperative and informing). Still, they're both compliant, not adaptive (utilitarian/pragmatic).

The ISTJs I've known certainly tend to be quite rules-conscious--to the point of being sticklers for the rules. To my mind, that makes them more like my type than like knowledge-seeking NTs or sensation-seeking SPs (both of whom are often willing to throw out all the rules and start from scratch or do as they please).

 

[reckful]

Back to the topic: If one is determined to stick to Myers's groupings (NF, NT, SF, ST) and reject Keirsey's (NF, NT, SJ, SP), then I suppose ISTJs and INFPs will be "opposite-ish," to borrow your term. But according to Keirsey, they have "cooperative use of tools" in common; both types tend to pay attention to rules and conventions rather than thumbing their nose at them.

Oh, and in Keirsey's last (?) book, Personology, he seems to have moved away from S/N being the main distinction; he elevates the directing/informing communication styles instead. In this slightly revised system, ISTJ is a "compliant enterpriser" (cooperative and directing), while INFP is a "compliant inquirer" (cooperative and informing). Still, they're both compliant, not adaptive (utilitarian/pragmatic).

On Myers's NF/NT/SF/ST vs. Keirsey's NF/NT/SJ/SP, my position is that it's probably a mistake to view any two-dimension-based foursome as truly fundamental in the way that Keirsey did, and I'm more inclined to think (as Myers did) that there are noteworthy things to be said about all the two-preference combinations — and I think Keirsey had a lot of interesting things to say about the four combinations that he thought were the most significant.

On the more limited issue of whether some combinations might indeed, as a matter of degree, be more consequential than others, you might be interested in this post — which, besides talking about Keirsey's foursome vs. Myers' foursome, also includes a leetle correlational study I performed using a large official MBTI career sample, and a bonus spoiler about why I tend to think of the INs as my peeps.

As a last note, I haven't read Personology, but I've always been skeptical about the extent to which Keirsey really believed in the "tool usage" duality that he introduced in Please Understand Me II. That duality has always struck me as the same kind of messy, artificial category set as Berens' interactive styles (which also have their roots in PUM II), and I can't help but cynically wonder if it was largely motivated by market positioning or academic ego or something. In any case, it's certainly worth noting that this supposed entirely new basis (since the original PUM) for his types made almost no significant difference in Keirsey's type portraits.

I think the differences between the Keirsey of PUM/PUM II and the MBTI tend to be exaggerated in multiple respects, and just in case you're interested, you can read more of my take on that issue in this post.

 

[Patrick]

Gosh, reckful, you write a lot of interesting stuff. I took some time to follow a link or two to other posts, but I'm out of time now. Just one remark:

I haven't read Personology ...

I don't recommend making it a priority. IMO it's a slapdash effort (making me wonder how much is Keirsey Sr's and whether some is Keirsey Jr's), and most of it just repeats or reorganizes what's in PUM II. I forced myself to read it, and in the process I discovered a few nuggets that were of special interest to me, but I'm not sure it was worth the time I put into it.

With your background and interest, you might discover more in it than I did. The main points I got were

1. S/N is not quite as strongly emphasized as before; instead "role-directing" and "role-informing" are elevated;

2. the MBTI letter codes are completely done away with, as if to disassociate Keirsey's system from MBTT altogether;

3. there is little or no mention of I/E (though it ends up being there anyway, to get the 16 types).

 

[cameo]

I believe all SJs are cooperative, as Keirsey says and Berens affirms. However, you're right again about there also being important differences. NFs focus on motive (as do SPs), SJs on structure (like NTs). Also, INFJs use the Informing communication style, while ISTJs use the Directing style.

What it means is probably just what you're noticing: that ISTJs (and all TJs, for that matter) are much more task-focused than people-oriented. In sharp contrast, INFPs (and all FPs) are decidedly more people-oriented and hardly task-focused at all.

TJs also welcome conflict; to them it's a way to clear the air and arrive at mutual understanding, establishing boundaries where they're needed. FPs tend to avoid conflict, and they withdraw or smooth things over when conflict arises; to FPs, conflict can feel painful, and they generally want to ignore or demolish boundaries between people.


The similarities may not be striking, but I believe they're there if you look for them. INFPs can be the most conservative and judgmental of NFs, making them a bit more SJ-like. ISTJs might be said to be more NT-like than other SJs. But INFPs and ISTJs both have that Authenticating cognitive style; they mainly use four functions that serve best to evaluate validity--to test the truth or accuracy of information.

I suppose those qualifications are fair, but it sounds to me like you've just proven my point that they're not truly THAT similar. Again, I am not entirely well-equipped to compare because I haven't studied INFPs extensively and I don't know any in person (that I'm aware of). I still am not sure I'm entirely convinced that there are that many meaningful similarities, that is, I'm not sure I am convinced that there are any more similarities here than with any other types that have at least a couple of cognitive functions in common. One of my best friends is an ENFP, which also (in what I suppose to be the Harold Grant function stack model) uses Si, Te, Fi, and Ne, and while we are close friends, we are also incredibly different in terms of cognitive styles, etc.

This, and the remainder of your guys' conversation, touches on an issue that I've been contending with regarding Keirsey in particular. Any time I've taken a typology quiz that is based on Keirsey's temperament categorizations, I am usually typed as an INTJ rather than an ISTJ (because of questions like "You often contemplate the complexity of life," "You get bored if you have to read theoretical books," and other such questions that serve to establish if someone is knowledge-seeking). I don't believe this to be accurate, so it makes me quite reluctant to embrace his model.

 

[Patrick]

I suppose those qualifications are fair, but it sounds to me like you've just proven my point that they're not truly THAT similar. ...

Yeah, I guess I'm agreeing with you. Just saying the two types have at least something in common.

This, and the remainder of your guys' conversation, touches on an issue that I've been contending with regarding Keirsey in particular. Any time I've taken a typology quiz that is based on Keirsey's temperament categorizations, I am usually typed as an INTJ rather than an ISTJ (because of questions like "You often contemplate the complexity of life," "You get bored if you have to read theoretical books," and other such questions that serve to establish if someone is knowledge-seeking). I don't believe this to be accurate, so it makes me quite reluctant to embrace his model.

Keirsey himself was never big on those questionnaires. He reluctantly included them in his books because so many people are unskilled at self-searching and need some kind of guide. But yeah, the questions can be misleading, despite all the effort that goes into getting them right. A better approach, for those who have the patience for it, is to study the temperament patterns and look for the "cluster" that best matches how you see yourself.

Yet, there are some aspects of ourselves that we tend to be blind to; that makes it tricky.

I think it's harder for those who prefer Sensing because it's necessary to "zoom out" and catch the overall pattern by looking at it obliquely; and that takes energy and skill for those who aren't practiced at it. Some Sensing people abandon the effort because it seems to them the iNtuiting people are just making stuff up (and sometimes that may be true).

I know one fellow (ISTP or ISTJ) who, for years, has been meticulously studying questionnaires and details of typing systems, and he still can't quite figure out his own type. He's sure that the Myers-Briggs system misunderstands certain concepts and Socionics comes closer to getting those things right. So, he figures he's ISTP in one system and ISTJ in the other. Or he'll call himself an ISTP whose top functions are Si and Te. IMO if you study the details too closely, it'll forever be an unsolvable puzzle.

 

[Doctor Cringelord]

I'm going to construct a new personality system to rectify these problems.

The largest dilemma which has prevented me from starting is whether or not to begin with Jung as the foundation, or disregard his theories.

 

[cameo]

Keirsey himself was never big on those questionnaires. He reluctantly included them in his books because so many people are unskilled at self-searching and need some kind of guide. But yeah, the questions can be misleading, despite all the effort that goes into getting them right. A better approach, for those who have the patience for it, is to study the temperament patterns and look for the "cluster" that best matches how you see yourself.

Yet, there are some aspects of ourselves that we tend to be blind to; that makes it tricky.

I think it's harder for those who prefer Sensing because it's necessary to "zoom out" and catch the overall pattern by looking at it obliquely; and that takes energy and skill for those who aren't practiced at it. Some Sensing people abandon the effort because it seems to them the iNtuiting people are just making stuff up (and sometimes that may be true).

I know one fellow (ISTP or ISTJ) who, for years, has been meticulously studying questionnaires and details of typing systems, and he still can't quite figure out his own type. He's sure that the Myers-Briggs system misunderstands certain concepts and Socionics comes closer to getting those things right. So, he figures he's ISTP in one system and ISTJ in the other. Or he'll call himself an ISTP whose top functions are Si and Te. IMO if you study the details too closely, it'll forever be an unsolvable puzzle.

That makes a lot of sense to me. I think it probably is because I prefer Sensing that I have a hard time with it in a larger conceptual sense or whatever. I try really hard to parse it all (my cognitive patterns and preferences, etc) and then I sort of end up nitpicking examples and then I just end up getting nowhere. I guess the frustrating thing is that, even though I'm pretty confident that I am Si-dom, it's hard then to escape the sort of stereotypes about S types, so then I begin to find it too limiting to identify as one. So I guess I'd be content to just be a smart[er than usual?] ISTJ who has well developed iNtuition or something? The internet typology community's bias toward N as being more intellectual, etc. makes that sort of a hard sell though, it seems.

 

[Patrick]

The internet typology community's bias toward N as being more intellectual, etc. makes that sort of a hard sell though, it seems.

Well, I'm pretty certain that there are geniuses who prefer Sensing and dim bulbs who prefer iNtuiting.

You might also look into the multiple-intelligences theory, if you haven't yet. In academia, logical-mathematical and linguistic skills are usually weighted so heavily that they count as overall intelligence; but in reality, people can be smart at other kinds of things too.

 

[Gabe_2]

INFPs and ISTJs only share Fi, Ne, Si and Te if you subscribe to the goofy Harold Grant function stack — a function stack that, besides being inconsistent with both Jung and Myers, has no respectable validity and has never been endorsed by the official MBTI folks.

If you're interested in reading more about that — and about the steaming pile of donkey dookie that Berens used to call the "Cognitive Styles" (and is apparently now calling "Intentional Styles") — you'll find a long, potentially eye-opening discussion here.

Myers said that the dichotomy combinations that had the most significance were NF, NT, SF and ST — combinations that have no correspondence with the so-called "cognitive functions" under anybody's function model — and reasonable people can disagree about whether she was right or wrong about that. (Keirsey certainly did.) But in any case, I believe Myers and Keirsey were both right to think that INFPs and ISTJs are closer to being opposite types than they are to being close cousins.

One of the things that I took away from reading Dario Nardi's 'neuroscience of personality' is that there was actually a remarkable degree of cognitive similarity for the kind of type combination in question here. I don't know where he's going with that conclusion (somewhere, for sure, and I intend to stay tuned for updates) but I would tentatively interpret it as something like...very similar cognitive abilities focused in different ways.

Sometime I would like to know what you find so distasteful about the idea of cognitive processes. My current understanding of that model is- while it can be confusing, sometimes overly so for the purpose of figuring out someone's type, the cognitive functions do 'exist' in a meaningful-enough sense, and recognizing the differences between the extraverted vs. introverted attitudes of the same process is one of the most important distinctions to make.

 

[reckful]

One of the things that I took away from reading Dario Nardi's 'neuroscience of personality' is that there was actually a remarkable degree of cognitive similarity for the kind of type combination in question here. I don't know where he's going with that conclusion (somewhere, for sure, and I intend to stay tuned for updates) but I would tentatively interpret it as something like...very similar cognitive abilities focused in different ways.

Sometime I would like to know what you find so distasteful about the idea of cognitive processes. My current understanding of that model is- while it can be confusing, sometimes overly so for the purpose of figuring out someone's type, the cognitive functions do 'exist' in a meaningful-enough sense, and recognizing the differences between the extraverted vs. introverted attitudes of the same process is one of the most important distinctions to make.

If you're interested in quite a bit more input from me on the relationship between the dichotomies and the functions, the place of the functions (or lack thereof) in the MBTI's history, and the tremendous gap between the dichotomies and the functions in terms of scientific respectability, you'll find a lot of potentially eye-opening discussion in this TC Wiki page and the posts it links to.

As further discussed in those posts, Dario Nardi's function model is inconsistent with Jung, inconsistent with Myers, has never been endorsed by the official MBTI folks, and maybe most importantly (and unlike the respectable districts of the MBTI), has no substantial body of evidence behind it — and indeed, should probably be considered all but disproven at this point.

Even Nardi himself doesn't claim that the study discussed in Neuroscience of Personality was anything more than a tentative, exploratory one. It involved 60 people and didn't come close to providing sufficient data to respectably validate any of the functions. And it's also been criticized on the grounds that EEGs are too crude a tool for this kind of stuff. Here's most of Wikipedia's list of "disadvantages" of EEG-based research:

Relative disadvantages

• Low spatial resolution on the scalp. fMRI, for example, can directly display areas of the brain that are active, while EEG requires intense interpretation just to hypothesize what areas are activated by a particular response.
• EEG determines neural activity that occurs below the upper layers of the brain (the cortex) poorly.
• Unlike PET and MRS, cannot identify specific locations in the brain at which various neurotransmitters, drugs, etc. can be found.
• Signal-to-noise ratio is poor, so sophisticated data analysis and relatively large numbers of subjects are needed to extract useful information from EEG.

And if there's been a single review of Neuroscience of Personality in any reasonably well-known psychology periodical, I haven't been able to find it.