Why are we here? I don't know. No one does. No point in dwelling on it. But why are _you_ _here_? Well, possibly because none of the 16 Myers-Briggs personality type descriptions seem to fit your profile. Or perhaps too many of them do.
Typing is hard. Humans are complex creatures. If our brains were simple enough for us to understand, we would be too simple to understand them, and all that... But still, typing ourselves shouldn't be that hard, should it? No one knows me better than me, right? Who better to diagnose the patient than... err.. the patient?
Hmmm... well, it's not ideal... but, seeing as we know it can be done and that you kids are gonna go ahead and do it anyway, we might as well give you a few pointers.
1. You’re Taking the Tests
If you're lucky, taking the popular tests at, say... Truity or 16Personalities, might be enough to set you on the right track, but because of the way that they are constructed, there's also a good chance (risk) they'll lead you astray.
This is because they're trying to type you based on the letters of the 16 acronyms...
Treating a letter coin, which has two very distinct behaviours associated with it, like one coherent entity, is an oversimplification that, of course, can lead to some quite unreliable results.
Take Feeling for example. While the introverted, self-focused, side of the coin favors concepts like integrity, authenticity and loyalty (sometimes) at the expense of group consensus, the extraverted, tribe-focused, side prefers diplomacy and group harmony (sometimes) at the expense of the individual. This makes for radically different behaviors in a person.
And this is the thing really. You probably shouldn't be taking the tests at all... what you should do is buckle down and learn about the cognitive functions the hard way...
...but don't give up just yet! There’s hope for you still (if you keep on reading)!
2. You’re Taking the Wrong Tests
Perhaps you can get away with clicking radio buttons after all! Instead of taking the mainstream tests you should try some that are built to test your cognitive functions, like:
By doing this, at least you will remove the illusion of similarity between unrelated types that the MBTI acronyms inevitably conveys, which brings us to our next topic...
2. You’re Comparing the Wrong Types
The INFJ isn't similar to the INFP (for example). They share absolutely no cognitive functions.
Sure they're both Introvert, Intuitive Feelers, but their Introversion resides in completely different functions and the orientations of their Intuition- and Feeling-functions are complete opposites.
3. You’re a Jumper
Another reason you might not fit neatly into the box MBTI has prepared for you is that you might be what Objective Personality refer to as a "Jumper".
According to Objective Personality we all split our four function stack into something called “saviour” and “demon" functions. Supposedly, it’s a matter of respect. We respect our saviour functions and disrespect our demons. Which functions we count as our saviours has a huge influence on our behaviour and being a jumper influences precisely this.
Sticking to the standard MBTI-model, our saviour functions would always be represented by the two topmost functions of the stack:
But as jumpers, instead of traversing the orientational gap of our first two functions, we stay in the comfortable orientation of our dominant function and skip our second function entirely in favour of our third:
But what does it mean?
Well... it means a few things. For one, it pushes the jumper out towards the ends of the extraversion/introversion-spectrum. A jumper effectively becomes a double introvert or a double extravert depending on which type they are to begin with.
Another thing that's affected here is something Objective Personality has borrowed from Toni Robbins called the "human needs":
Are we primarily Gatherers, out and about exploring, or are we Organisers, staying in the safety of the camp, trying to get a grip on that which is already known? Are we primarily interested in ourselves, our inner world and our identity or are we more focused on the values or reasons of others? Are we Self above Tribe or Tribe above Self?
Jumping doesn’t change our primary Human Need. Our dominant function stays the same. The Ni-dominant INFJ Jumper, for example, will still, first and foremost, be an Organiser. But depending on the dichotomy of our mid-axis functions (Thinking/Feeling or Sensing/iNtuition), our secondary Human Need will change either from Self to Tribe, Tribe to Self, Gather to Organise or Organise to Gather, which, of course, constitutes a major change to the expression of our type.
Furthermore, one might argue that changing your preferred observer- or decider function should also change one of the letters in your type's acronym. That, for example, an INFJ that prefers her thinking decider to her feeling decider really should be thought of as an INTJ instead of an INFJ. Albeit a different kind of INTJ.
INiTiJ vs INiTeJ
It’s a type hiding within a type!
The last concept influenced by jumping the stack is one that Objective Personality has chosen to call "The Animals" and one that, incidentally, happens to be the focus of our next topic...
4. You Prefer the Wrong Kind of Animals
In essence, each of the four OP Animals (“Play”, “Blast”, “Consume” and “Sleep”) is a duo of cognitive functions working together to create a behaviour.
Depending on where on the introversion/extraversion-spectrum we belong and whether we're the standard or the jumper version of our type, the order of the OP Animals will change. The more introverted we are the more likely we are to prefer and exhibit the more introverted behaviors of Sleep and Consume, and the more extraverted we are the more likely we are to prefer the more extraverted behaviors of Blast and Play.
These internal differences, especially between the standard and jumper version, between (in the above example) sleep- and blast first has a huge impact on the expression of a type. It's really no wonder type descriptions can be sort of hit and miss when there's these kind of internal differences inherent to the types.
5. You’re not Honest with Yourself
Sometimes we're too smart for our own good. After taking the tests a few times, we start to pick up on nature of the questions and if we've got our minds set on a particular type we might decide (consciously or unconsciously) to tip the scales.
Needless to say we need to be completely honest with ourselves if we want the truth.
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