reckful
New member
- Joined
- Jul 6, 2013
- Messages
- 656
- MBTI Type
- INTJ
- Enneagram
- 5
David Keirsey's famous for his view that splitting Myers' 16 types into NFs, NTs, SJs and SPs creates four groups that each has characteristics in common (and differs from the other three groups) to an extent that significantly exceeds the other possible two-letter groupings.
As further discussed in this post, Keirsey really started out as (and largely remained, at least through PUM II) an MBTI guy, but liked to frame his famous foursome as if it also carried on a grand, historical four-type tradition. But the purported match-ups he pointed to between his MBTI-based types and various older foursomes were often pretty strained.
I've long thought that the right way to read Keirsey is as a guy who had a lot of good insights into the MBTI types (and a talent for bringing them to life on the page) — including interesting (although not always correct) things to say about his favored two-letter combinations — but without buying into his view that there was something truly fundamental about the NF/NT/SJ/SP carve-up.
Isabel Myers was a big believer that there were lots of noteworthy aspects of personality associated with combinations of preferences, and the 1985 MBTI Manual (which she co-authored) included brief descriptions of every possible two-letter combination. But NF/NT/ST/SF was Myers' favored foursome, and I can't resist noting that it's a carve-up of the types that totally ignores the so-called "cognitive functions." (Each of Myers' four groups consists of types with four different dominant functions.)
Myers explained why she thought NF/NT/ST/SF was the most meaningful way to group the types in Gifts Differing. She said:
Keirsey didn't think much of Myers' S groups. In explaining how he got from Myers to NF/NT/SJ/SP, he said:
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Which brings me to a little study that I haz just performed...
The official MBTI folks put out Career Reports that show the popularity for each type of "22 broad occupational categories," based on "a sample of more than 92,000 people in 282 jobs who said they were satisfied with their jobs." That's a large freaking sample by personality typology standards, and it included 5,830 ISFJs, 11,410 ISTJs, 3,230 ISFPs, 5,114 ESTPs, 4,321 ESFPs and 12,019 ESTJs.
To give you an indication of the nature of the stats, here are the "Most Attractive Job Families" (job satisfaction scores of 60-100) for the ESFPs:
ESFPs
Health Care Support [100]
—Nurse's aide, veterinary assistant, pharmacy aide, physical therapy aide
Food Preparation and Service [99]
—Chef, food service manager, bartender, host/hostess
Personal Care and Service [91]
—Lodging manager, personal trainer, hairdresser, child care provider
Office and Administrative Support [70]
—Bank teller, receptionist, clerical services, legal secretary
Sales and Advertising [62]
—Sales manager, real estate agent, insurance agent, salesperson
Building and Grounds Maintenance [60]
—Gardener, tree trimmer, housekeeping, lawn service supervisor
And again, there are 22 categories in all.
I don't have a full set of those Career Report stats, but I have them for the six S types previously mentioned, and it occurred to me to wonder whether the occupational preferences of SJs tend to be more alike than the occupational preferences of STs (as Keirsey's perspective would arguably lead you to believe) or vice versa (more in line with Myers' perspective).
So I decided to calculate what you might call the total distance between the job choices of those six S types by totaling the 22 differences in job satisfaction ratings. And here are the results:
ISFJ vs. ISTJ (both SJs): 737
ISFJ vs. ISFP (both SFs): 337
ESTP vs. ESFP (both SPs): 659
ESTP vs. ESTJ (both STs): 375
In both cases the results favor Myers' perspective — that ST/SF is a more meaningful way to group the S's than SJ/SP — and by a very wide margin.
And noooooooooooo, I'm not saying this disproves the fundamentality of Keirsey's temperaments by any means, but I am saying I consider those results some serious food for thought. Career choices are a big part of a person's life — not to mention an aspect of life that Myers and Keirsey both thought (consistent with decades of data) tends to be substantially influenced by your type — and 92,000 is a huge sample, and those ST/SF-vs.-SJ/SP results are dramatically lopsided.
My perspective continues to be that it's probably a mistake to put too much emphasis on any particular grouping of the 16 types, including Myers'. As reflected in the MBTI Manual, I assume there are probably noteworthy and insightful things to be said about each of the possible two-letter combinations.
And in that regard, and as a final note, I can't resist mentioning that, although I agree that I have some significant things in common with my fellow NTs, I've increasingly come around to the view that, if I had to pick a group of four MBTI types to really be my "kindred spirits" group, it would be the INs rather than the NTs. And anybody's who's interested can read more about that in the spoiler.
As further discussed in this post, Keirsey really started out as (and largely remained, at least through PUM II) an MBTI guy, but liked to frame his famous foursome as if it also carried on a grand, historical four-type tradition. But the purported match-ups he pointed to between his MBTI-based types and various older foursomes were often pretty strained.
I've long thought that the right way to read Keirsey is as a guy who had a lot of good insights into the MBTI types (and a talent for bringing them to life on the page) — including interesting (although not always correct) things to say about his favored two-letter combinations — but without buying into his view that there was something truly fundamental about the NF/NT/SJ/SP carve-up.
Isabel Myers was a big believer that there were lots of noteworthy aspects of personality associated with combinations of preferences, and the 1985 MBTI Manual (which she co-authored) included brief descriptions of every possible two-letter combination. But NF/NT/ST/SF was Myers' favored foursome, and I can't resist noting that it's a carve-up of the types that totally ignores the so-called "cognitive functions." (Each of Myers' four groups consists of types with four different dominant functions.)
Myers explained why she thought NF/NT/ST/SF was the most meaningful way to group the types in Gifts Differing. She said:
Myers said:Each of these combinations produces a different kind of personality, characterized by the interests, values, needs, habits of mind, and surface traits that naturally result from the combination. Combinations with a common preference will share some qualities, but each combination has qualities all its own, arising from the interaction of the preferred way of looking at life and the preferred way of judging what is seen.
Whatever a person's particular combination of [S/N and T/F] preferences may be, others with the same combination are apt to be the easiest to understand and like. They will tend to have similar interests, since they share the same kind of perception, and to consider the same things important, since they share the same kind of judgment.
Keirsey didn't think much of Myers' S groups. In explaining how he got from Myers to NF/NT/SJ/SP, he said:
Keirsey said:I soon found it convenient and useful to partition Myers's sixteen types into four groups, which she herself suggested in saying that all of what she referred to as the "NFs" were alike in many ways and that all four of the "NTs" were alike in many ways — although what she called the "STs" seemed to me to have very little in common, just as the "SFs" had little in common.
----------------------------------------------------------------
Which brings me to a little study that I haz just performed...
The official MBTI folks put out Career Reports that show the popularity for each type of "22 broad occupational categories," based on "a sample of more than 92,000 people in 282 jobs who said they were satisfied with their jobs." That's a large freaking sample by personality typology standards, and it included 5,830 ISFJs, 11,410 ISTJs, 3,230 ISFPs, 5,114 ESTPs, 4,321 ESFPs and 12,019 ESTJs.
To give you an indication of the nature of the stats, here are the "Most Attractive Job Families" (job satisfaction scores of 60-100) for the ESFPs:
ESFPs
Health Care Support [100]
—Nurse's aide, veterinary assistant, pharmacy aide, physical therapy aide
Food Preparation and Service [99]
—Chef, food service manager, bartender, host/hostess
Personal Care and Service [91]
—Lodging manager, personal trainer, hairdresser, child care provider
Office and Administrative Support [70]
—Bank teller, receptionist, clerical services, legal secretary
Sales and Advertising [62]
—Sales manager, real estate agent, insurance agent, salesperson
Building and Grounds Maintenance [60]
—Gardener, tree trimmer, housekeeping, lawn service supervisor
And again, there are 22 categories in all.
I don't have a full set of those Career Report stats, but I have them for the six S types previously mentioned, and it occurred to me to wonder whether the occupational preferences of SJs tend to be more alike than the occupational preferences of STs (as Keirsey's perspective would arguably lead you to believe) or vice versa (more in line with Myers' perspective).
So I decided to calculate what you might call the total distance between the job choices of those six S types by totaling the 22 differences in job satisfaction ratings. And here are the results:
ISFJ vs. ISTJ (both SJs): 737
ISFJ vs. ISFP (both SFs): 337
ESTP vs. ESFP (both SPs): 659
ESTP vs. ESTJ (both STs): 375
In both cases the results favor Myers' perspective — that ST/SF is a more meaningful way to group the S's than SJ/SP — and by a very wide margin.
And noooooooooooo, I'm not saying this disproves the fundamentality of Keirsey's temperaments by any means, but I am saying I consider those results some serious food for thought. Career choices are a big part of a person's life — not to mention an aspect of life that Myers and Keirsey both thought (consistent with decades of data) tends to be substantially influenced by your type — and 92,000 is a huge sample, and those ST/SF-vs.-SJ/SP results are dramatically lopsided.
My perspective continues to be that it's probably a mistake to put too much emphasis on any particular grouping of the 16 types, including Myers'. As reflected in the MBTI Manual, I assume there are probably noteworthy and insightful things to be said about each of the possible two-letter combinations.
And in that regard, and as a final note, I can't resist mentioning that, although I agree that I have some significant things in common with my fellow NTs, I've increasingly come around to the view that, if I had to pick a group of four MBTI types to really be my "kindred spirits" group, it would be the INs rather than the NTs. And anybody's who's interested can read more about that in the spoiler.
Here are some membership stats for TC and PersonalityCafe:
June 2013 membership stats for PersonalityCafe:
INFP 3723 — 21%
INFJ 2580 — 15%
INTP 2228 — 13%
INTJ 1876 — 11%
ENFP 1352 — 8%
ENTP 1112 — 6%
ENFJ 514 — 3%
ISTP 527 — 3%
ISFP 506 — 3%
ISTJ 437 — 2%
ENTJ 401 — 2%
ISFJ 314 — 2%
ESTP 159 — 1%
ESFJ 102 — 1%
ESFP 117 — 1%
ESTJ 97 — 1%
August 2012 membership stats for TypologyCentral:
INTP 17%
INFP 17%
INFJ 16%
INTJ 12%
ENFP 10%
ENTP 8%
ISTP 4%
ENFJ 3%
ENTJ 3%
ISFP 3%
ISTJ 2%
ISFJ 1%
ESTP 1%
ESFP 1%
ESTJ 1%
ESFJ 1%
And as if those IN vs. ES differences weren't already huge enough in absolute terms, they'd actually be twice as dramatic if you took account of the fact that there are something like two S's for every N in the general population (according to the official MBTI folks) and translated the stats into self selection ratios (i.e., the odds that any particular person of that type would be a member of one of those forums) on that basis.
And here someone may object: But, reckful, come on. Everybody knows that INs are the folks who freaking live on the internet, so the fact that there are a lot more of them on any particular website may not say as much as you might otherwise think about their greater affinity for the theme of that website. And to that I'd respond: I don't necessarily disagree with that, but the fact that INs are the folks most inclined to live on the internet — to the extent that you're right about that — is another piece of strong evidence in favor of viewing the INs as a significant type group.
I'd say the INs are the types best characterized as "born students." They're the types most likely to be found learning something for the sheer joy of learning, and the types most likely to begin their response to "What do you hope to accomplish in your life?" by saying (to quote an INTJ woman at PerC), "I want to learn as much as I can."
The MBTI Manual calls INs the "thoughtful innovators" and says they "are introspective and scholarly. They are interested in knowledge for its own sake, as well as ideas, theory, and depth of understanding. They are the least practical of the types." In Type Talk, Kroeger & Thuesen note that INs "would rather speculate as to why Rome is burning than actually fight the fire. They are speculative, reflective, introspective, conceptual, and highly abstract in orientation."
I'd say INs are the nerds. INs are the folks who tend to be the most serious about the world of literature and philosophy and the arts, and to take one or more divisions of pop culture seriously. You might say the INs' church is the library. As already noted, the INs are the folks most likely to more or less live on the internet, and to fail to see much of a significant distinction between the internet and so-called "real life." I think INs tend to be the most independent thinkers, and the most likely to define themselves strongly on the basis of their independent perspectives — not "special snowflake" unique, necessarily, but independently arrived at, and often more minority/subcultural than culturally mainstream.
Jung was an IN, Briggs and Myers were both INs, and Keirsey was an IN. And it sounds to me like most of the predecessor typologists whose theories Jung reviewed in Psychological Types were fellow INs who I suspect were also, like Jung, partly moved to formulate their "different types" theories by the fact that — like a sizeable percentage of the INs in (I assume) most eras — they felt significantly alienated from the majority of their fellow men.
----------------------------------------------------------------
As a final, more wonkish, note on the INs...
As I'm always pointing out, Jung spent more of Psychological Types talking about the things he thought extraverts had in common and introverts had in common than he spent talking about all eight of the functions put together. I'm not really a Beebe fan, but he certainly characterized Jung's perspective accurately when he said:
In the Foreword to a 1934 edition of Psychological Types, Jung bemoaned the fact that too many people were inclined to view Chapter X as the essence of the book, and explained that he'd put the eight specific "function-type" descriptions at the end of the book for a reason. He said, "I would therefore recommend the reader who really wants to understand my book to immerse himself first of all in chapters II and V." And Chapters II and V are pretty much all about extraversion vs. introversion, with Chapter V devoted to a long analysis of Spitteler's Prometheus and Epimetheus — which Jung calls "a poetic work based almost entirely on the type problem," explaining that the conflict at the heart of it "is essentially a struggle between the introverted and extraverted lines of development in one and the same individual, though the poet has embodied it in two independent figures and their typical destinies."
And the central focus on extraversion/introversion, and the things Jung thought all extraverts and all introverts tend to have in common, runs through every chapter of Psychological Types other than Chapter X — the only part of the book with any substantial description of the eight functions. As Jung saw it, the dynamics of the human psyche revolved first and foremost around a single great divide, and that divide involved two all-important components — namely, introversion/extraversion and conscious/unconscious.
And here's the thing (for purposes of the present discussion): Jung assigned what's arguably the lion's share of the modern conception of S/N (the concrete/abstract duality) to E/I, with the result that, when Jung looked out at the world and spotted what he thought was a definite "introvert," he was almost assuredly looking at someone who'd be typed IN under the MBTI.
So I think it's fair to say that Jung himself viewed the INs (who he called the "introverts") and ESs (who he called the "extraverts") as the two most significant MBTI subgroups — even though he didn't frame them in those terms.
June 2013 membership stats for PersonalityCafe:
INFP 3723 — 21%
INFJ 2580 — 15%
INTP 2228 — 13%
INTJ 1876 — 11%
ENFP 1352 — 8%
ENTP 1112 — 6%
ENFJ 514 — 3%
ISTP 527 — 3%
ISFP 506 — 3%
ISTJ 437 — 2%
ENTJ 401 — 2%
ISFJ 314 — 2%
ESTP 159 — 1%
ESFJ 102 — 1%
ESFP 117 — 1%
ESTJ 97 — 1%
August 2012 membership stats for TypologyCentral:
INTP 17%
INFP 17%
INFJ 16%
INTJ 12%
ENFP 10%
ENTP 8%
ISTP 4%
ENFJ 3%
ENTJ 3%
ISFP 3%
ISTJ 2%
ISFJ 1%
ESTP 1%
ESFP 1%
ESTJ 1%
ESFJ 1%
And as if those IN vs. ES differences weren't already huge enough in absolute terms, they'd actually be twice as dramatic if you took account of the fact that there are something like two S's for every N in the general population (according to the official MBTI folks) and translated the stats into self selection ratios (i.e., the odds that any particular person of that type would be a member of one of those forums) on that basis.
And here someone may object: But, reckful, come on. Everybody knows that INs are the folks who freaking live on the internet, so the fact that there are a lot more of them on any particular website may not say as much as you might otherwise think about their greater affinity for the theme of that website. And to that I'd respond: I don't necessarily disagree with that, but the fact that INs are the folks most inclined to live on the internet — to the extent that you're right about that — is another piece of strong evidence in favor of viewing the INs as a significant type group.
I'd say the INs are the types best characterized as "born students." They're the types most likely to be found learning something for the sheer joy of learning, and the types most likely to begin their response to "What do you hope to accomplish in your life?" by saying (to quote an INTJ woman at PerC), "I want to learn as much as I can."
The MBTI Manual calls INs the "thoughtful innovators" and says they "are introspective and scholarly. They are interested in knowledge for its own sake, as well as ideas, theory, and depth of understanding. They are the least practical of the types." In Type Talk, Kroeger & Thuesen note that INs "would rather speculate as to why Rome is burning than actually fight the fire. They are speculative, reflective, introspective, conceptual, and highly abstract in orientation."
I'd say INs are the nerds. INs are the folks who tend to be the most serious about the world of literature and philosophy and the arts, and to take one or more divisions of pop culture seriously. You might say the INs' church is the library. As already noted, the INs are the folks most likely to more or less live on the internet, and to fail to see much of a significant distinction between the internet and so-called "real life." I think INs tend to be the most independent thinkers, and the most likely to define themselves strongly on the basis of their independent perspectives — not "special snowflake" unique, necessarily, but independently arrived at, and often more minority/subcultural than culturally mainstream.
Jung was an IN, Briggs and Myers were both INs, and Keirsey was an IN. And it sounds to me like most of the predecessor typologists whose theories Jung reviewed in Psychological Types were fellow INs who I suspect were also, like Jung, partly moved to formulate their "different types" theories by the fact that — like a sizeable percentage of the INs in (I assume) most eras — they felt significantly alienated from the majority of their fellow men.
----------------------------------------------------------------
As a final, more wonkish, note on the INs...
As I'm always pointing out, Jung spent more of Psychological Types talking about the things he thought extraverts had in common and introverts had in common than he spent talking about all eight of the functions put together. I'm not really a Beebe fan, but he certainly characterized Jung's perspective accurately when he said:
Beebe said:For Jung the attitude type was the primary thing, and the function type a kind of subsomething that expressed that attitude in a particular way. Accordingly, he organized his general description of the types in terms of the attitudes, describing first "the peculiarities of the basic psychological functions in the extraverted attitude" and then going on to "the peculiarities of the basic psychological functions in the introverted attitude."
In the Foreword to a 1934 edition of Psychological Types, Jung bemoaned the fact that too many people were inclined to view Chapter X as the essence of the book, and explained that he'd put the eight specific "function-type" descriptions at the end of the book for a reason. He said, "I would therefore recommend the reader who really wants to understand my book to immerse himself first of all in chapters II and V." And Chapters II and V are pretty much all about extraversion vs. introversion, with Chapter V devoted to a long analysis of Spitteler's Prometheus and Epimetheus — which Jung calls "a poetic work based almost entirely on the type problem," explaining that the conflict at the heart of it "is essentially a struggle between the introverted and extraverted lines of development in one and the same individual, though the poet has embodied it in two independent figures and their typical destinies."
And the central focus on extraversion/introversion, and the things Jung thought all extraverts and all introverts tend to have in common, runs through every chapter of Psychological Types other than Chapter X — the only part of the book with any substantial description of the eight functions. As Jung saw it, the dynamics of the human psyche revolved first and foremost around a single great divide, and that divide involved two all-important components — namely, introversion/extraversion and conscious/unconscious.
And here's the thing (for purposes of the present discussion): Jung assigned what's arguably the lion's share of the modern conception of S/N (the concrete/abstract duality) to E/I, with the result that, when Jung looked out at the world and spotted what he thought was a definite "introvert," he was almost assuredly looking at someone who'd be typed IN under the MBTI.
So I think it's fair to say that Jung himself viewed the INs (who he called the "introverts") and ESs (who he called the "extraverts") as the two most significant MBTI subgroups — even though he didn't frame them in those terms.