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Big 5 and Mbti Correlation?

violetsunrise

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Hi,

I am new to this forum but not typology and personality systems, recently I joined a genetic research site uploaded my dna raw data file and found there are genetic markers for the big five personality. My results came back High agreeableness Low neuroticism Low extroversion Moderate conscientiousness and High openess to experience. Has anyone else learned their big five factors or any other innate personality tendencies through their genome? Also, how would these results map to the Mbti?
 

Dante H.

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Hi,

I am new to this forum but not typology and personality systems, recently I joined a genetic research site uploaded my dna raw data file and found there are genetic markers for the big five personality. My results came back High agreeableness Low neuroticism Low extroversion Moderate conscientiousness and High openess to experience. Has anyone else learned their big five factors or any other innate personality tendencies through their genome? Also, how would these results map to the Mbti?

I know this isn't current, but how did you find the genetic markers?
 

Pionart

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I don't know about this thread, but I'm sick of seeing people say that Big 5 is superior to cognitive functions. SiCk Of It.!!!
 

violetsunrise

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I don't know about this thread, but I'm sick of seeing people say that Big 5 is superior to cognitive functions. SiCk Of It.!!!

Cognitive functions correlate to the big five model.
 

Pionart

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Cognitive functions correlate to the big five model.

Makes no difference logically, but I prefer to say "big 5 correlates to cognitive functions" because cognitive functions are the underlying mechanism that the brain works on and big 5 dichotomies are a rough manifestation of that.
 

rav3n

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Cellmold

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I don't know about this thread, but I'm sick of seeing people say that Big 5 is superior to cognitive functions. SiCk Of It.!!!

I can understand where you're coming from, but the big 5 dimensions are much more effective at mapping out to behaviour than the rather nebulous cognitive functions.

Makes no difference logically, but I prefer to say "big 5 correlates to cognitive functions" because cognitive functions are the underlying mechanism that the brain works on and big 5 dichotomies are a rough manifestation of that.

As you know, I'm a skeptic. Cognitive function theory has completely failed to help me in my life or relations with others. I've had more typing variations than I can be bothered to write down. Maybe it has helped others, and I can admit my bias here to some extent, but I do not think it is consistent enough to be useful.

I also believe it has been hijacked towards the purpose of making people feel happy with who they are, which is actually a pretty dangerous and restrictive mindset, and less helpful for the purpose of self - awareness. Especially as the people who most feel happy with who they are, are usually the ones most blind to their flaws.

I've not seen much on neurological connections between cognitive functions and the brain, except maybe Dario Nardi, and his work was ridiculously simplified compared to more in depth and extensive neurology.
 

Pionart

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I can understand where you're coming from, but the big 5 dimensions are much more effective at mapping out to behaviour than the rather nebulous cognitive functions.



As you know, I'm a skeptic. Cognitive function theory has completely failed to help me in my life or relations with others. I've had more typing variations than I can be bothered to write down. Maybe it has helped others, and I can admit my bias here to some extent, but I do not think it is consistent enough to be useful.

I also believe it has been hijacked towards the purpose of making people feel happy with who they are, which is actually a pretty dangerous and restrictive mindset, and less helpful for the purpose of self - awareness. Especially as the people who most feel happy with who they are, are usually the ones most blind to their flaws.

I've not seen much on neurological connections between cognitive functions and the brain, except maybe Dario Nardi, and his work was ridiculously simplified compared to more in depth and extensive neurology.

Well, if you can determine your type, then cognitive functions can help you determine any imbalances you have, for example if you're overusing your inferior function. It suggests that there is a proper way to function based on your innate wiring and that there are ways to function correctly or incorrectly. But if you can't determine your type, then it's a bit useless, unless someone does it for you, but the information regarding the subject will probably become more concrete later on so that it becomes easier to do.

So I don't know if it has been hijacked or whatever, but it certainly requires being open to the possibility that you're imbalanced, and being willing to take steps to remedy those imbalances. It tells you what your baseline functioning roughly is and how you're deviating from that baseline.

I don't know whether I can say that the theory has "helped" me. I've more been focused on trying to help the theory by figuring out how it all works and what can be done with it. The theory is still in the phase of being effectively laid out so that it can be used, and it takes a long time at the present to be able to learn what's going on enough to see it.

I guess what it's done is told me my strengths and weaknesses. It's let me know that if I am constantly forgetting to do things, that that's just how I'm naturally wired as an INFJ, which is a type with one of the worst memories for concrete things. It explains that difficulties interacting with people might be due to typological differences in the sense that we place emphasis on opposite side of the information spectrum, and suggests ways that this can be dealt with and to what extent that it can. For example if I interact with an INTP there may be a conflict due to the differences between Fe and Ti, but if I switch the order of Fe and Ti in my cognitive function order then it may work better, or I may need to linger for a while when I get to Ti in the usual function ordering.

It gives one of the factors involved in personal relationships in other words, and can determine (alongside other factors that need to be taken into account) what kind of potential a relationship offers.

Another way that I've used it is for mapping out my timeline. I can see through the multi-type approach how there have been different threads operating throughout my life, like multiple stories all working together to created a unified story. If I'm perceptive enough, I can determine which storyline a particular behaviour is most likely coming from. It's a bit analytical in that it divides a person into lots of parts, so can have the effect like that saying about how when you dissect a flower it loses its beauty, so by trying to understand yourself by "dissecting" your mind up you can somewhat lose the way that the whole is more than the sum of its parts, but it may be useful to do so nonetheless. I couldn't say for sure whether that method is or isn't appropriate for understanding a person, it's just a method I've been trying to understand.

There's plenty more. I don't know what use the Big 5 has. It seems like an approximate version of MBTI dichotomies, which might explain some things better than the dichotomies of MBTI, but MBTI dichotomies would explain things that Big 5 doesn't. But Big 5 doesn't seem to have the idea of baseline functioning which can be deviated from, and it lacks the discrete structures that are useful for a more analytical approach. Have you found use for Big 5?
 

Cellmold

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Well, if you can determine your type, then cognitive functions can help you determine any imbalances you have, for example if you're overusing your inferior function. It suggests that there is a proper way to function based on your innate wiring and that there are ways to function correctly or incorrectly. But if you can't determine your type, then it's a bit useless, unless someone does it for you, but the information regarding the subject will probably become more concrete later on so that it becomes easier to do.

So I don't know if it has been hijacked or whatever, but it certainly requires being open to the possibility that you're imbalanced, and being willing to take steps to remedy those imbalances. It tells you what your baseline functioning roughly is and how you're deviating from that baseline.

I don't know whether I can say that the theory has "helped" me. I've more been focused on trying to help the theory by figuring out how it all works and what can be done with it. The theory is still in the phase of being effectively laid out so that it can be used, and it takes a long time at the present to be able to learn what's going on enough to see it.

I guess what it's done is told me my strengths and weaknesses. It's let me know that if I am constantly forgetting to do things, that that's just how I'm naturally wired as an INFJ, which is a type with one of the worst memories for concrete things. It explains that difficulties interacting with people might be due to typological differences in the sense that we place emphasis on opposite side of the information spectrum, and suggests ways that this can be dealt with and to what extent that it can. For example if I interact with an INTP there may be a conflict due to the differences between Fe and Ti, but if I switch the order of Fe and Ti in my cognitive function order then it may work better, or I may need to linger for a while when I get to Ti in the usual function ordering.

It gives one of the factors involved in personal relationships in other words, and can determine (alongside other factors that need to be taken into account) what kind of potential a relationship offers.

Another way that I've used it is for mapping out my timeline. I can see through the multi-type approach how there have been different threads operating throughout my life, like multiple stories all working together to created a unified story. If I'm perceptive enough, I can determine which storyline a particular behaviour is most likely coming from. It's a bit analytical in that it divides a person into lots of parts, so can have the effect like that saying about how when you dissect a flower it loses its beauty, so by trying to understand yourself by "dissecting" your mind up you can somewhat lose the way that the whole is more than the sum of its parts, but it may be useful to do so nonetheless. I couldn't say for sure whether that method is or isn't appropriate for understanding a person, it's just a method I've been trying to understand.

There's plenty more. I don't know what use the Big 5 has. It seems like an approximate version of MBTI dichotomies, which might explain some things better than the dichotomies of MBTI, but MBTI dichotomies would explain things that Big 5 doesn't. But Big 5 doesn't seem to have the idea of baseline functioning which can be deviated from, and it lacks the discrete structures that are useful for a more analytical approach. Have you found use for Big 5?

The problem with MBTI is that it can be tailored too easily to suit the person's biases & on top of that, very few people seem able to even agree on what the functions are or should be defined as.

I point to the myriad of threads, videos and general discussions on here and other platforms as evidence that cognitive function theory is very vague and unrealised. You may be able to justify that by saying you are figuring out the theory and how it all works as a way to help it and learn what can be done with it, but I just see it as a jumbled mess with an ever-increasing series of interpretations.

I've owned a great deal of books on the subject, from Gifts Differing, to Jung's own Psychological Types and Lenore Thompson's personality manual, to name a few, and it only serves, from my perspective, to cause too many different baselines to arise.
For example you gave a hypothetical interaction between yourself as an INFJ and an INTP and then mentioned (as one angle of resolving it) switching your Fe and Ti in order to ease a conflict between yourselves. But the interpretations of both your behaviour and the INTP's is left to a great deal of assumption, both around what each of you think or yourselves and each other in the opposite perspective. The basis for claiming one type over another is left to the wind, it's very 'out there' and nebulous. And while I admit there are limitations to the extremes of empiricism, that doesn't mean it's a good idea to go with a science so soft it's practically imploding under the weight of it's own contradictions.

And if switching functions is possible when necessary, then how is that different from the usual interpretation of social interaction? Where one or another is adapting and changing themselves to suit the situation? If anything it's grounds for less confidence in type, not more. People have been doing that for thousands of years without the need for an MBTI framework on which to hang that understanding. It's also how most professional relationships survive.

The reason it seems so useful for analytical understanding is that it is concerning the social interaction realm of human society. There are hundreds, perhaps even millions, of different ways behaviour and intent can be interpreted. We've been trying to understand this for most of our existence and, as a species, we have been through a great deal of different ideas and systems for understanding one another. Social interaction is emotional, chemical, a bit mysterious and tends to go on at a very quick and unconscious level of the brain. That means MBTI fits nicely into the spectrum as a system vague and undefined enough for people to see it as a tool for understanding those similarly vague social behaviours. There's a lot of instinct and intuition in understanding other people's behaviours and motivations and we're really good at it, generally speaking, which is why we can usually read one another to a certain extent and predict some actions and moves.

Ironically, at the same time, the MBTI theories also tend to make the mistake of occasionally going too specific and defining certain tasks or job areas as most suitable to a certain function or type. By contrast (and you asked me how Big 5 is useful) the dimensions of the big 5 simply outline areas that you may or may not be suited to. For example if you are high in openness you may not particularly enjoy routine jobs with set activities, another example is those high in the trait of neuroticism may not be suited to activities of high pressure and responsibility (although it may have a converse affect and make people try harder under such pressures). Those are some very simplistic examples, for the sake of brevity, but it can easily be used in a more in-depth and analytical way. By contrast MBTI is simply piling complexity on top of complexity....and I normally like a degree of complexity, but it has to be a purposeful and useful complexity, not something that comes across like a social game, or the equivalent of people discussing their horoscopes from a newspaper, except taken to a ridiculous extreme and with seriousness added on top.

You say that MBTI has a baseline whereas Big 5 doesn't, I just don't see it, if anything the opposite is true. MBTI doesn't seem to know what it's baseline is, or else people keep picking and choosing the baseline that suits them the best. Big 5 on the other hand is more neutral and doesn't attempt to give a good or bad appraisal of your traits (with the exception of openness which is like big 5's version of being an INxx type when it comes to self-grandiosity***).

Another issue with MBTI is the gathered data on job type correlation (and lets not brush over the fact this theory was essentially adapted from Jung's work for the purpose of business application). With job correlation I find it very convenient that people in certain jobs, give their type most usually as the type that is correlated with that job. For example, I have seen statistics (and there are many on here who have posted these) of those in scientific fields, most commonly give their types as INTJ or INTP. Which seems very suitable for MBTI, given that those types (in both cognitive functions and general descriptions) are correlated with scientifically based jobs. As I said: How very convenient for the theory. There is a term for that, it's a bit of a cliche, but it's known as a confirmation bias.

I don't know how many will have the patience to read this far, but please be assured I'm not just blindly hating or ragging on MBTI for trolling purposes or personal pleasure. In truth there is a part of me that wishes, I think, that it were actually more reliable and useful than it is, because then I could justify the time I spent on it and use it for the betterment of myself.

People are free to carry on with the theory, I won't stop them, but I also won't ignore any criticism and flaws within that system. If you can give it a fair appraisal and judge for yourself, well there's nothing wrong with that. I might be proven completely wrong about MBTI one day and I accept that as a possible outcome, but I don't see that happening any time soon.

Just don't bet all your fragile cognitive eggs on it.

*** Which isn't to say I believe INxx types (whatever or whoever they might be) are prone to self-grandiosity, but that the apparent 'rarity' and 'exceptional' nature of those types as most commonly defined, tend to attract people who want to be seen as a different or exceptional individual for their own emotional well-being and ego.
 

Pionart

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Cellmold said:
You say that MBTI has a baseline whereas Big 5 doesn't, I just don't see it, if anything the opposite is true. MBTI doesn't seem to know what it's baseline is, or else people keep picking and choosing the baseline that suits them the best.

I'll respond to the rest later, but I just wanted to clarify what I meant by a baseline.

With Jungian type, I believe that it is supposed that a person has an "innate" type. So if they test as a type other than that, it is assumed that the person has moved away from their baseline. However, with Big 5 I don't believe this idea is present? If you test as something one time, then test as something different later on, I think the assumption is that your baseline has switched.

This means that Jungian typology/MBTI can be used as a sort of diagnostic tool to determine whether a person is functioning optimally or not (at least as far as some factors are concerned), whereas Big 5 doesn't seem to have this.

And also Jungian typology/MBTI makes it possible to consider a developmental approach, in terms of which function a person has developed up to (however once all 8 functions are developed and properly integrated, a different approach must be used to analyse things any further).
 

Cellmold

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I'll respond to the rest later, but I just wanted to clarify what I meant by a baseline.

With Jungian type, I believe that it is supposed that a person has an "innate" type. So if they test as a type other than that, it is assumed that the person has moved away from their baseline. However, with Big 5 I don't believe this idea is present? If you test as something one time, then test as something different later on, I think the assumption is that your baseline has switched.

This means that Jungian typology/MBTI can be used as a sort of diagnostic tool to determine whether a person is functioning optimally or not (at least as far as some factors are concerned), whereas Big 5 doesn't seem to have this.

And also Jungian typology/MBTI makes it possible to consider a developmental approach, in terms of which function a person has developed up to (however once all 8 functions are developed and properly integrated, a different approach must be used to analyse things any further).

Sorry to bombard you with lots of information at once, but I would think you need to find a baseline before you can deviate from it. I understand what you mean, but my point is that MBTI makes finding that innate type quite difficult.

Is a person a poorly developed version of one type? Or are they actually a different type altogether? And how do you distinguish between them?
 

Pionart

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Sorry to bombard you with lots of information at once, but I would think you need to find a baseline before you can deviate from it. I understand what you mean, but my point is that MBTI makes finding that innate type quite difficult.

Is a person a poorly developed version of one type? Or are they actually a different type altogether? And how do you distinguish between them?

MBTI does make it difficult, yes, which is why like I've said I've had to discover new ways of looking at the system which has taken me years of regular deliberation and experimentation to arrive at. Now I'm starting to be able to get results through the "function order" approach by identifying what the order of functions is that a person uses (when I say order I mean that they use one function, and then another, and then another, in a sequence) and then reading for any deviations in that ordering from what is expected. For example, an NP maybe have a characteristically Si flavour running through a lot of what they say, indicating that they are imbalanced in the direction of Si.

I would like to draw a distinction between levels of development, and balance. A person can be well developed in the sense of having perhaps all 8 of their functions integrated into their psyche at a fairly young age, but still be imbalanced in the sense of placing too much emphasis on some function which is draining for them to use. And a person could be balanced in the sense of operating as that type should in terms of the emphasis they place on their functions, but be poorly developed in the sense of not having integrated many of their functions relative to their age and what their genetics would have predisposed them to do (I think different people are genetically predisposed to develop their functions at a certain rate, but various factors can speed this development up or slow it down).
 

Pionart

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The problem with MBTI is that it can be tailored too easily to suit the person's biases & on top of that, very few people seem able to even agree on what the functions are or should be defined as.

What I find is that a lot of the descriptions of the functions say valid things, and with a long time of processing what the functions are, you can gradually start to see which aspects are more valid than others.

I think to really understand the functions, you need to be able to experience them within yourself. You need to be able to think about a function and seen in your mind's eye what that function is. A merely verbal understanding is insufficient.

I point to the myriad of threads, videos and general discussions on here and other platforms as evidence that cognitive function theory is very vague and unrealised. You may be able to justify that by saying you are figuring out the theory and how it all works as a way to help it and learn what can be done with it, but I just see it as a jumbled mess with an ever-increasing series of interpretations.

Yeah, as I say there's a sea of misinformation on the topic. But all the clutter will be cleared away soon. Well, a lot of it will.

I've owned a great deal of books on the subject, from Gifts Differing, to Jung's own Psychological Types and Lenore Thompson's personality manual, to name a few, and it only serves, from my perspective, to cause too many different baselines to arise.
For example you gave a hypothetical interaction between yourself as an INFJ and an INTP and then mentioned (as one angle of resolving it) switching your Fe and Ti in order to ease a conflict between yourselves. But the interpretations of both your behaviour and the INTP's is left to a great deal of assumption, both around what each of you think or yourselves and each other in the opposite perspective. The basis for claiming one type over another is left to the wind, it's very 'out there' and nebulous. And while I admit there are limitations to the extremes of empiricism, that doesn't mean it's a good idea to go with a science so soft it's practically imploding under the weight of it's own contradictions.

Well, one thing worth noting is that we do this automatically. We automatically change the way we're using our functions based on the person we're interacting with. There are multiple ways to handle any particular type pairing, with different strengths and weaknesses for each approach.

I don't think I would call typology a particularly soft science. I wouldn't say it's necessarily a hard science, but it approaches hardness if you know what you're doing. Most people don't, though.

And if switching functions is possible when necessary, then how is that different from the usual interpretation of social interaction? Where one or another is adapting and changing themselves to suit the situation? If anything it's grounds for less confidence in type, not more. People have been doing that for thousands of years without the need for an MBTI framework on which to hang that understanding. It's also how most professional relationships survive.

Well, it would be of benefit to the system if the way that is is purported to work is in line with how things are known to work without employing that system. But just as nature pretty much obeyed Newton's laws before Newton came up with them, but once we became conscious of them we became able to harness that knowledge to develop technology, so too does understanding of the mechanics of human interaction allow us to artificially change that functioning for particular purposes.

There are, however, serious questions regarding the ethics of doing this.

The reason it seems so useful for analytical understanding is that it is concerning the social interaction realm of human society. There are hundreds, perhaps even millions, of different ways behaviour and intent can be interpreted. We've been trying to understand this for most of our existence and, as a species, we have been through a great deal of different ideas and systems for understanding one another. Social interaction is emotional, chemical, a bit mysterious and tends to go on at a very quick and unconscious level of the brain. That means MBTI fits nicely into the spectrum as a system vague and undefined enough for people to see it as a tool for understanding those similarly vague social behaviours. There's a lot of instinct and intuition in understanding other people's behaviours and motivations and we're really good at it, generally speaking, which is why we can usually read one another to a certain extent and predict some actions and moves.

I agree that there are many ways to understand human behaviour, and we do this on an unconscious level very well anyway, but there is still something to be said for developing a framework which explains a decent degree of the factors involved and brings it to a conscious level.

After all, isn't that the purpose of the field of psychology in general? Though, I do have my doubts about whether psychology as a whole is something we should be doing or not.

Ironically, at the same time, the MBTI theories also tend to make the mistake of occasionally going too specific and defining certain tasks or job areas as most suitable to a certain function or type. By contrast (and you asked me how Big 5 is useful) the dimensions of the big 5 simply outline areas that you may or may not be suited to. For example if you are high in openness you may not particularly enjoy routine jobs with set activities, another example is those high in the trait of neuroticism may not be suited to activities of high pressure and responsibility (although it may have a converse affect and make people try harder under such pressures). Those are some very simplistic examples, for the sake of brevity, but it can easily be used in a more in-depth and analytical way. By contrast MBTI is simply piling complexity on top of complexity....and I normally like a degree of complexity, but it has to be a purposeful and useful complexity, not something that comes across like a social game, or the equivalent of people discussing their horoscopes from a newspaper, except taken to a ridiculous extreme and with seriousness added on top.

Hmm, well in this case it depends on the particular resource/person that's making the claims and how well they understand things in general. A cognitive functions approach still only outlines correlations between career areas and the likes, but can make inferences that aren't possible with the Big 5 approach. For example, while they're both rather inclined to scientific professions, INTP and INTJ have a totally different way of operating. INTPs are more theoretical, INTJs are more technological, for instance, so they would be likely to be found in different areas of science. But both an INTP and an INTJ could score the same thing on a Big 5 test, despite both being honest in their answers, so Big 5 would suggest the same jobs for each of them.

Again, it all comes down to the individual. Maybe many or even most people use typology in a horoscope-y fashion, but you've gotta look at what the best of the best is in terms of the information available. Though, I understand that with so much misinformation it can be hard to make out what the best information is exactly.

You say that MBTI has a baseline whereas Big 5 doesn't, I just don't see it, if anything the opposite is true. MBTI doesn't seem to know what it's baseline is, or else people keep picking and choosing the baseline that suits them the best. Big 5 on the other hand is more neutral and doesn't attempt to give a good or bad appraisal of your traits (with the exception of openness which is like big 5's version of being an INxx type when it comes to self-grandiosity***).

I actually would say the opposite here. There might be type bias with MBTI practitioners, but really all types are considered equal, but with Big 5, the dichotomies are generally defined in terms of having a particular trait or not having it, and I've seen it said (something along the lines of) all of the positive sides of the dichotomies in Big 5, with the exception of neuroticism, (i.e. extroversion, openness, agreeableness and conscientiousness, correlating to ENFJ) are desirable. MBTI has Intuitives and Sensors, with their being strengths to each approach. Big 5 has people who are open, and people who aren't.

Another issue with MBTI is the gathered data on job type correlation (and lets not brush over the fact this theory was essentially adapted from Jung's work for the purpose of business application). With job correlation I find it very convenient that people in certain jobs, give their type most usually as the type that is correlated with that job. For example, I have seen statistics (and there are many on here who have posted these) of those in scientific fields, most commonly give their types as INTJ or INTP. Which seems very suitable for MBTI, given that those types (in both cognitive functions and general descriptions) are correlated with scientifically based jobs. As I said: How very convenient for the theory. There is a term for that, it's a bit of a cliche, but it's known as a confirmation bias.

This may be to do with how people's perceptions of themselves change as a result of their career. There are many INTJs and INTPs in scientific fields, there are also many ENTPs and INFJs, and there are Sensors e.g. ISFJ in the more fact-based scientific fields.

I don't know how many will have the patience to read this far, but please be assured I'm not just blindly hating or ragging on MBTI for trolling purposes or personal pleasure. In truth there is a part of me that wishes, I think, that it were actually more reliable and useful than it is, because then I could justify the time I spent on it and use it for the betterment of myself.

People are free to carry on with the theory, I won't stop them, but I also won't ignore any criticism and flaws within that system. If you can give it a fair appraisal and judge for yourself, well there's nothing wrong with that. I might be proven completely wrong about MBTI one day and I accept that as a possible outcome, but I don't see that happening any time soon.

Just don't bet all your fragile cognitive eggs on it.

*** Which isn't to say I believe INxx types (whatever or whoever they might be) are prone to self-grandiosity, but that the apparent 'rarity' and 'exceptional' nature of those types as most commonly defined, tend to attract people who want to be seen as a different or exceptional individual for their own emotional well-being and ego.

Yeah, it might be a while before it happens, but I'm quite certain that it will happen.

The question I am concerned with is: will it be for the benefit or detriment of mankind?
 

Pionart

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I would like to draw a distinction between levels of development, and balance. A person can be well developed in the sense of having perhaps all 8 of their functions integrated into their psyche at a fairly young age, but still be imbalanced in the sense of placing too much emphasis on some function which is draining for them to use. And a person could be balanced in the sense of operating as that type should in terms of the emphasis they place on their functions, but be poorly developed in the sense of not having integrated many of their functions relative to their age and what their genetics would have predisposed them to do (I think different people are genetically predisposed to develop their functions at a certain rate, but various factors can speed this development up or slow it down).

Actually, I think these two different ideas are linked.

If you have an imbalance in your psyche for a long time, that can I believe hinder one's psychological development.

I think this happened to me when I was younger. I got stuck in Ti for a long time, and it was too heavy of a focus for over a decade. On the plus side, I have a very impressive Ti now (at least for an INFJ), however it caused significant problems with my overall development.
 

Cellmold

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Actually, I think these two different ideas are linked.

If you have an imbalance in your psyche for a long time, that can I believe hinder one's psychological development.

I think this happened to me when I was younger. I got stuck in Ti for a long time, and it was too heavy of a focus for over a decade. On the plus side, I have a very impressive Ti now (at least for an INFJ), however it caused significant problems with my overall development.

A similar thing would have happened to myself, hence my reference back to maladaptive processes and habits. The way we, due to the complexity of how we process our philosophical relationship with the world, can actually end up with behaviors that run counter to our own interests and even to our own nature.

I actually think that this isn't native to humans either and can affect other animals (particularly mammals) but largely the ones we have influenced. So perhaps it is a homo sapiens transference onto other species, although not anthropomorphism.

I, being of timid and weak character, always subordinated my nature to others because of a lack of self esteem.

This means I've spent most of my life trying to aquire a nature that I may not be suited for and the consequences of which I've been struggling under ever since.
 

Maou

Mythos
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Actually, I think these two different ideas are linked.

If you have an imbalance in your psyche for a long time, that can I believe hinder one's psychological development.

I think this happened to me when I was younger. I got stuck in Ti for a long time, and it was too heavy of a focus for over a decade. On the plus side, I have a very impressive Ti now (at least for an INFJ), however it caused significant problems with my overall development.

I feel in the same boat here. My upbringing has left me in a state of operating outside of my best interest.
 
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