[INFP] How Rare are INFPs?

[Siúil a Rúin]

It is difficult to define these categories in application. It comes down to where you draw the line defining the outer boundary of a type. There are a lot of people who fall between iNtuitive and Sensor: sometimes because they have developed both functions in their stacking and sometimes because they fall somewhere between Ni<-->Si or Ne<-->Se in how they express their perceiving functions.

My impression from reading is that when Jung described an iNtuitive, he wasn't referring to someone who uses some of that function, but the more absolute version of the type. When you look at people that way, then yes, there are far fewer examples of the type. Also, if you look at people that way, then the majority of Sensors have some iNtuitive bent to their personality. My impression is that online people favor the category of iNtuition, so that the moment someone expresses some abstraction, they immediately are identified as iNtuitive, when by Jung's approach, they would more likely be a Sensor. Perhaps the same can happen with introverts and extroverts, where online people are more inclined to define someone as an introvert if that person wants to spend some time alone, which is also true for most extroverts.

I would say there are two levels to all of the four IN-- personality types. There is one level that includes enough people for all of us to know 5 or more of them. These people tend to enjoy some theoretical discussion, are introverted, and perhaps enjoy some imaginative play, however, they are actually rather concrete in their personalities when compared with the absolutely iNtuitive version of the type. So are they actually Sensors? Extroverts? Perhaps, and I've gone back and forth with it in my mind alot. There is a way it definitely distorts the concept of the category, but it's also not entirely clear to me if they perfectly fit the other category.

At risk of saying the wrong thing, the majority of people who type as IN-- tend to feel really concrete to me, but I'm also not sure they are Sensors. I tend to try to resolve it by finding more categories, rather than trying to "purify" the existing ones because I think that results in a bunch of left-over people who don't belong in any of the boxes.

Edit: Also, coming from the opposite perspective, the people in the Sensing or extroverted categories who are really, purely demonstrating just those functions, are also going to be a subset of the larger category. There are some Sensors who are super-concrete to the absolute exclusion of theory, iNtuitive, and the abstract. These people are significantly different from Sensors who use a lot of iNtuition. To keep that category pure as absolute Sensing, you'd have to kick a lot of people out there too.

IOW, I'm not really sure what the answer is, but I do think the type descriptions can get distorted by mistyping, and by people who barely fit the category. I'm just not certain how that relates to the big picture when trying to equalize the approach to all categories. Are there uber-INFPs and kinda-INFPs? Or is that nonsense? Are there ubers and kindas for all the types or are the IN-- categories especially distorted by inclusion of people who don't really fit the descriptions?

 

[Smilephantomhive]

There is no objective way to determine whether or not someone is accurately typed, so we cannot create reliable statistics. I don't think knowing how common or rare a certain type is beneficial anyway since it create a sense of othering or us vs them mentality in mbti communities. I mean how has knowing the rarity of your type benefited any of you anyway?

 

[DITR]

You know I don't know. But I do know that I have put an effort into finding odd, very unusual people, and one of those people happens to be an INFP, and I definitely haven't met many people like him.