Dario, I have a few questions which I suppose aren't very related to each other.
1. Why do you think it is that the academic community doesn't more strongly recognize MBTI or cognitive functions and instead focus on Big 5. There is a lot more information on MBTI and cognitive functions which makes it more practical to use in everyday life.
I've ended up mostly answering this elsewhere. I would add a few things:
--FFM is open-source, while MBTI instrument is not. This makes it suspect (conflicts of interest) and less accessible.
--What's practical for the academic isn't what's practical for the public.
2. As we can't really expect others to take and publish their tests and some of the value of type is to understand others better who think differently than we do, it is naturally beneficial to attempt to guess other people's type. Do you do this? What do you think the best methods are? Language? Do you put any stock on
visual typing? Do you use temperament or dichotomies?
Research into expertise suggests high-performing experts draw on 2 resources:
a) A rich theoretical framework
b) Years/thousands of case studies
One area investigated was medical doctors and their ability to diagnose patients.
So yes, I do more-or-less type people, especially if I need to interact with them around something practical. I have all the type models in my head and hundreds, maybe thousands of case studies over almost 25 years. Perceptually, no doubt I'm attending to voice tone and pace, body language, eye motion, physiological structure, word choice, what they respond to with energy, etc. I don't focus on any of these. I just let the info come in and eventually it pings. This info feeds into interaction styles and temperament, as well as cognitive processes. I'm aware of various "flavors" of each type. I don't use career or such as a data point.
I'd must mention "triangulation". This is key. Imagine you are lost in the woods. Fortunately, you have some tools. You have a compass. It provides one data point. You can see mountains as a well-known landmark. That's another data point. Then maybe there's a sign or trail somewhere. That's yet another data point. You can combine this information to arrive at a most-likely current location and route home. In the same way, every assessment provides a data point. Taken together, the data points can be used to triangulate the best-fit type. And if the triangulation is imperfect--that is, there are some contradictions between assessment results--then my confidence is lower and I need to get more active to learn the person's type.
If I want to move faster or verify type, to do micro-pinging. I was inspired by an innovation in quantum physics. There's actually a way to *mostly* bypass the limits of measuring quantum systems. Instead of taking a single hard measurement, which disturbs the system, you
very gently ping the system hundreds of times to get a statistical distribution. I think ENFPs do this a lot to assess people's response patterns. I just do this with type. I insert particular words or such into the interaction, very tiny by themselves, and note the brief response (if any). Eventually, I build up a distribution around a particular type, or sometimes a hard response back that's pretty clear.
I'm making it sound more thought out than it is. It's pretty automatic, at least in American culture. In Japan, for example, I have a much harder time because I didn't grow up in the culture, the feedback is more subtle, the general style more conformist, I have many fewer example, and so forth. So I'd actually make an effort there.
I'm *very* skeptical of typing people on TV or through their works or generally in any public capacity. That's why I trust to interact with the person directly.
3. It seems that in cognitive function tests, some extraverted vs. introverted types are very different - Te vs Ti or Fe vs Fi and that people clearly prefer one over the other and the way these things manifest has a clear differentiation. Most people who score high on Ni though seem to score high on Ne and visa versa. Why do you think that is?
I don't know what the MBTI scale data etc says here, but let's say it's the case. I'd think it was due to the abstract nature of Intuiting. Using N, we can image "as if". That's why, when I do exercises in workshops, I think it's important to have people do actual exercises, like fishing the unconscious (Ni) or transcontextual thinking (Ne), that illustrate the practical differences between Ne and Ni (or whatever).
4. How do you think Helen Fisher's type theory fits with MBTI, cognitive functions, temperament theory, etc. Do you see a correlation between these things? What do you think about connecting type to body hormones?
http://www.helenfisher.com/downloads/articles/Article_ We Have Chemistry.pdf
There are many dozens of hormones and neuro-transmitters that impact personality, not just four. And even the four she mentions are multi-dimensional. I should probably not open this can of worms.
5. Along the lines of correlation, a couple of years ago I was very curious about how Enneagram was related to four letter type. So I ran some data and came up with this
Enneagram and MBTI Correlation - Typology Wiki. It's hard to find a lot of research about personality type in general. You're involved in some very interesting things. Do you publish the results of your research and if so where? Where else do you see interesting and useful research going on?
You can find boat loads of research on personality type in CAPT's MILO database, here:
Isabel Briggs Myers Memorial Library
Regarding the enneagram and the brain, I did some research. It's published in 2012 in the "Nine Points Bulletin".
I publish in books and bulletins. When I finish my study of EEG and type, I will publish that in a journal, though links to MBTI might end up being a footnote there, as they hate that kind of thing. I'm also hooked into a grant with research publication options for brain activity, personality, and VR training. Hopefully, that will bear fruit. My publishing history is otherwise mostly in AI. Since I'm mostly running my own business, I don't really care to jump through all the hoops unless it really matters.