How to Understand Myers-Briggs Personality Types

What would it be like to read a Horoscope that really did describe you and could accurately predict some of the stages of life you'll go through? A good personality typing system can do just this, and without any hocus-pocus or guessing. It's all based on seeing patterns of how you react to your world. The personality typing system devised by Katharine Briggs and her daughter, Isabel Briggs Myers, is perhaps the best-known system.

Understanding your personality type can help you understand other people, too. You can be a better friend when you accept others' differences. Read on to learn more.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

1. The sixteen types are combinations of four pairs of letters. Extroverted or Introverted = E or I. Sensing or Intuitive = S or N. Thinking or Feeling = T or F. Judging or Perceiving = J or P. About 75% of people will choose the first letter in each of these pairs; ESTJ is the most common type, and INFP is the least common.

2. E or I indicates how your personal energy is directed. If you are "Extroverted," your mind and skills naturally turn to the world around you. You are happiest, and feel most yourself, when you are engaging other people, or projects that are larger than you can do by yourself. If you are "Introverted," your mind and skills are mainly devoted to your own sphere. You are happiest, and feel most yourself, when you are involved with your own thoughts and projects, and you gladly take on solitary work assignments.

3. S or N indicates what part of the world your mind focuses on. The "Sensing" realm encompasses what you can feel directly with your five senses, and also the way the world works: its rules, habits, maps and certainties. The "Intuitive" realm is the invisible world of possibility. Intuitives are mainly interested in the future, the past, imagined worlds, revolutionary new ideas, strategy, and other kinds of possibilities.

4. T or F indicates how you mainly process the world. "Thinking" includes logic, facts, numbers, plans, and how-to processes. "Feeling" includes not only emotion, but also values and morals. Everyone thinks and feels, but most people make decisions using mainly one or the other. While most men are T and most women are F, there are many F men and T women.

5. J or P shows the sort of goal that your mental processing finds satisfying. "Judging" refers to the outcome of a process. Dominant J's either think or feel so decisively that they quickly reach outcomes, often in the form of decisions. "Perceiving" refers to feeling satisfied by the process itself, whether it's a physical process or a mental one. Dominant Ps are characterized by verbs they are always doing: playing, singing, building, selling, acting, graphing, inventing, testing.

6. Try taking a Myers-Briggs type test, or guess your type based on how well you know yourself. Psychologists have written profiles of how these types typically think, behave and decide. Look up a few profiles of your type and see what you can learn.

Tips & Warnings

• Get input from friends, who may see things in you that you don't perceive.
• Ask friends to take the test, and see how you are different.

Resources

• Myers-Briggs Foundation
• Myers-Briggs Type Indicator test
• Keirsey Temperament Sorter test (free)
• sample profiles at Typelogic