What's Your Personality?

johndylan1 said:

I took this a few years ago INTJ, funny at the time I remember the test saying that only 2% of the population were intj, this poll suggests otherwise...

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As has been noted more than a few times before, I don't think internet forums, and political internet forums at that, should really be viewed as being representative of the general population in this regard. :lol:

Gathomas88 said:

As has been noted more than a few times before, I don't think internet forums, and political internet forums at that, should really be viewed as being representative of the general population in this regard. :lol:

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Not representative at all, sure, but you'd think it wouldn't be completely up-side-down. Do you suppose it's the politics or is it the forum format that we are attracted to?

lizzie said:

I expect that the reason we see a disproportional representation of some types on an internet forum, has something to do with the type who is interested in communicating in this fashion. If I were highly extroverted, I'd likely be spending my time with a lot of people, exchanging ideas and getting my battery charged from the environment. Instead, I reserve my own energy, and express myself without maximum personal contact, which enables me to stay somewhat focused on ideas and concepts, rather than feeling like I need to escape. As a rule, when I socialize, it's going to usually be with one person, two at the most, and with someone who shares many of my own personality traits. When I go to a party, I'm usually the one that you will find sitting outside, looking at the setting sun, or the moon and the stars.

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I'm with you on this one.

johndylan1 said:

I'm with you on this one.

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I just tend to suspect that people who communicate in this format, generally tend to be a little more introspective, because we like to be deliberate with expression, rather than just filling up time and space.

In addition to the poll in the thread over here (http://www.debatepolitics.com/general-political-discussion/184311-vote-here-gay-same-sex-unions.html), the poll in this thread is also an indication just how out of touch this discussion board is in member political perspective compared to the nation as a whole.

In this poll, nearly 84% have an "N" as the second letter in their character representation with 16% having an "S" as the second letter of their character representation.

But, in the nation as a whole, according to David Keirsey's Please Understand Me II, the book that is the foundational work on this subject for the layman, almost 80% of the population has an "S" as the second letter in their character representation, with little more than 20% having an "N" as the second letter of their character representation.

Yes, the population as a whole is almost completely the reverse of the composition of this political discussion board.

The second letter of character representation, probably the most misunderstood of the four scales that comprise the character representation, is huge as a representation of how, by what mechanism, reality is perceived, from one's outer senses ("S" people) or from one's inner senses or "intuition" ("N" people").

"S" people are more concrete, practical, sensible and realistic .. whereas "N" people are more abstract, intuitive, imaginative and speculative.

And, of course, these two types differ thus greatly on the substantive perception of political issues.

So whereas a number of "N" people may support "gay marriage", amnesty and legalization for illegals, legalized pot, and the extremist like, the great majority of Americans, "S" people, do not support those positions.

Reality check, for all members of this board: you're out of the mainstream of America, most people here at either or both (libertarians) wings of the political spectrum, far removed from the great majority of Americans at the center of the political spectrum.

Your personality type: INTJ.

Strength of individual traits: Introversion - 40%, Intuition - 20%, Thinking - 67%, Judging - 47%.
I don't think it's accurate. Too many of the questions had the answer "it depends."

[edit] holy crap INTJ completely describes me to a T.

ENTP. Extraversion - 1%, Intuition - 9%, Thinking - 11%, Prospecting - 16%.

ENTP.

Does that really fit me? What say you?

I'm unique.

Yay.

Slyhunter said:

[edit] holy crap INTJ completely describes me to a T.

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Kind of funny how that works, isn't it? :lol:

ISTP. Says only 5% of the population have this type. Guess I'm like a rare gem or something.

DiAnna said:

Considering we're supposedly only 1% of the population, there sure are a lot of us on this thread!!! :lol:

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There's 3. DiAnna, Smoke & Mirrors and Serenity. So this is where you've all been hiding. I guess I was just looking in all the wrong places. And your type really is very rare.

I am ENTP and my natural match is INTJ or INFJ. And I think the female INTJ is just a myth.

It took me decades to find my INFJ match and when I finally did I popped the question before the month was over.

Medusa said:

admit you are caught by my magnet

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Well I do get plenty of iron in my diet. However, you just want to make me your Pygmalion project. :lol:

I am a textbook ISTP (the Mechanic).

Its a fairly rare personality type. I haven't read through the entire thread so I am not sure who else on here is one.

This describes me almost perfectly: https://www.personalitypage.com/ISTP.html I am definitely good logical analysis and technical skill (work in IT), I am great in a crisis, have a hard time expressing my feelings, not much of a rule follower, an endurance athlete and big into fairly extreme sports, never had a "gut feeling" about anything, I make few judgments based on personal values, not much for laying around and always needing to be up doing something.

The Strengths and Weakness Section for ISTPs describes me well:

ISTP Strengths

Good listeners
Usually self-confident
Generally optimistic and fun to be with
Practical and realistic, they handle daily concerns
Are not threatened by conflict or criticism
Able to leave a relationship with relative ease once it is over
Able to administer punishment, although they're not interested in doing so
Likely to respect other's needs for space and privacy

ISTP Weaknesses

Living entirely in the present
Not naturally good at expressing feelings and emotions
Not tuned in to what others are feeling, they may be insensitive at times
Tendency to be overly private and hold back part of themselves
Need a lot of personal space, which they don't like to have invaded
They thrive on action and excitement, and may stir things up to create it

Famous People With ISTP Personalities

A number of famous individuals have been described as having an ISTP personality based on analysis of their lives, works and behaviors. Some of the possible famous ISTPs include:

Tom Cruise, actor
Keith Richards, musician
James Dean, actor
Clint Eastwood, actor
Zachary Taylor, U.S. President
Chuck Yeager, U.S. Air Force officer
Alan Shepherd, astronaut
Amelia Earhart, aviator
Frida Kahlo, artist
Tiger Woods, golfer
A few fictional characters that fit in with the description of the ISTP personality type include:

Hans Solo, Star Wars
Butch Coolidge, Pulp Fiction
Blondie, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Wolverine, X-Men
Jason Bourne, The Bourne Identity
Maggie Fitzgerald, Million Dollar Baby

My wife is an ISFJ (the nurturer). Our two types together complement each other well as parents.

It would be interesting to see what personality types corresponded to what ideologies on this forum. For example, I would imagine that most ISTPs are Moderates or Liberals (with libertarian leanings) and most ISTJs and INTJs are fairly Conservative. I also know that certain personality types are much more likely to be religious than others.

SouthernDemocrat said:

It would be interesting to see what personality types corresponded to what ideologies on this forum. For example, I would imagine that most ISTPs are Moderates or Liberals (with libertarian leanings) and most ISTJs and INTJs are fairly Conservative. I also know that certain personality types are much more likely to be religious than others.

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Interestingly, we INTJs actually seem to swing to both sides of the spectrum. We simply do so at extremes a lot of the time.

Karl Marx and Ayn Rand, for instance, were both INTJs.

We seem to account for a lot of the "angrier" variety of philosophers in general, as a matter of fact. Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Luther, and Christopher Hitchens were all INTJs to name just a few.

A certain degree of curmudgeonly radicalism simply seems to come with the territory. :lol:

Gathomas88 said:

Kind of funny how that works, isn't it? :lol:

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It's uncanny. There has been a lot of research on the subject and I think it's completely valid. But it still surprises me how accurate it can be.

For example;


ENTP Inventor | Oddly Developed Types

This is spot on regrding my leadership style.

Keirsey (1998) has note that ENTPs (indeed, all NTPs) do not tend to give orders, i.e. "Do this," "Go here," or "Do not do this." Rather, they provide suggestions, information, or advice to those under their command. "It would be a good idea to do this because..." or "We need to get this done..." and "It's not a good idea to..." For this reason, Keirsey called the NTPs the Role Informatives.

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"We need to get this done" sure does ring a bell. That's what I always say when the guys are slacking off a bit. Instead of saying "Get back to work", I'll say "C'mon guys, we need to get this done".

In general, ENTPs would rather tell people what to do than how to do it. This may be frustrating for types who like clear, detailed instructions.

Many ENTPs have voiced the sentiment, "I lead because I don't like to follow."

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I'm not a bossy boss. I'm easy going. I maintain my authority on a jobsite via my crews' respect for my knowledge and skill rather than by being a tyrant. I only bark out orders when it's absolutely necessary and when I assign someone a task I tend to let them do it whatever way they are comfortable doing it. Like the article says, I prefer to advise rather than order people around. As long as they get it done in a timely manner and the results are acceptable I don't really care about the methods they use to do it. The only exception being that if I see someone doing something unsafe I'll immediately stop everything and call everyone together for a safety meeting.

An underling's ability to follow directions really isn't that high on my priority list like it is with most people in leadership positions in this business because quite frankly I'm not going to give them a lot of directions. If I have to micromanage someone all the time it will frustrate and irritate the hell out of me and I'm afraid I might bash them with a hammer or run them over with a backhoe or something. And I don't want to go to prison so I simply can't use them.

The Lie Detector Type

One study found that the more like an ENTP a person is, the better they are at detecting lies (Sanchez, 2011). As Extraverts, ENTPs focus their attention on other people. As Intuitives, they notice patterns, which researchers have noted is correlated with a higher abillity to pick up on falsehoods. As Thinkers, ENTPs test how self consistent information is rather than relying on the emotional content of a message. As Perceivers, ENTPs will keep their hypotheses about truth-falsehood open longer than a Judger, allowing them to take in the maximum amount of information before settling on a decision. All of these factors, suggests Sanchez, explain why ENTPs are so good at human true or false questions.

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I am notorious for that and have been called a human lie detector by several people. My kids always hated that about me.:lol:

My employer recognized this ability years ago and takes advantage of it by having me either do the job interviews myself or at least sit in while someone else does the interview. For example, if we need to hire a carpenter the lead carpenter will do the interview to judge whether they will be compatible with his crew and I'll sit in to advise him on whether or not I think the prospective employee is being truthful. If I suspect that they're not being truthful about something I'll cut in and start grilling them to get to the bottom of the matter. When someone lies at an interview while I'm there, they're in for a very uncomfortable experience and will often keep looking at the door like they want to escape.

You'd be surprised at how many people lie at job interviews. They lie about their skills, their criminal record, their employment history, whether they've stolen from an employer in the past, etc, etc.

One of my favorite things to do at an interview is pick up the phone and say "If I call your former employer right now, what do you think they're going to tell me about you?" and see whether they'll answer that question truthfully or not. Or if they try to avoid the question altogether.

I think that's why I like watching C-SPAN so much. It's like a comedy channel to me. It cracks me up when I hear politicians tell all those ridiculous lies.

But this special ability can also be a curse because I hate being lied to and practically everybody is a ****ing liar. When I was a teenager that made me resent people a lot. But as I matured I realized that you can't go through life hating everybody and you can tell just as much or even more about a person by the lies they tell as you can by the sincere things they say.

Gathomas88 said:

Interestingly, we INTJs actually seem to swing to both sides of the spectrum. We simply do so at extremes a lot of the time.

Karl Marx and Ayn Rand, for instance, were both INTJs.

We seem to account for a lot of the "angrier" variety of philosophers in general, as a matter of fact. Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Luther, and Christopher Hitchens were all INTJs to name just a few.

A certain degree of curmudgeonly radicalism simply seems to come with the territory. :lol:

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That makes a lot of sense. The few INTJs I have known have been very conservative, but I could see where INTJs would be very whatever they are. I doubt there are many INTJ moderates out there. The INTJs I have known were very religious, but it was much more about doctrine and scriptural knowledge with them than spiritualism.

My wife is an INFJ which is statistically the most likely to be religious, while my type ISTP is statistically the least likely to be religious. It really is interesting how much a person's personality type explains about them. I know with me, I have never seen any point to philosophy at all other than naturalism. The world to me is just this physical place, governed by physical laws, where there is ultimately a fully rational and logical explanation for everything. I sometimes am envious of people that can see spiritual dynamics to the world around them. My type has a disproportionate number of endurance athletes and thrill junkies in it. I regularly run 40 to 60 miles a week, and when its not bitterly cold ride a 100 miles a week or more (and strength train on top of it all), its just a compulsion with me. There is just something in me that wants to push myself all the time like that.

That all said, supposedly an ISTP and an INTJ have similar thought processes. They are both types that do well in science / technical fields with INTJs being good at theoretical science while ISTPs being good at applied science.

SouthernDemocrat said:

It would be interesting to see what personality types corresponded to what ideologies on this forum. For example, I would imagine that most ISTPs are Moderates or Liberals (with libertarian leanings) and most ISTJs and INTJs are fairly Conservative. I also know that certain personality types are much more likely to be religious than others.

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I'm an ENFP, and I don't have a particular lean, as I can lean one way or another depending upon the issue. I could never understand how a person can agree with every platform that his/her party supports anyway.

An unexplainable from writing alone one. That is my personality!

ChrisL said:

I'm an ENFP, and I don't have a particular lean, as I can lean one way or another depending upon the issue. I could never understand how a person can agree with every platform that his/her party supports anyway.

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I am largely the same way, I don't understand how anyone could be extreme in any of their beliefs, but some people of course are.

SouthernDemocrat said:

I am largely the same way, I don't understand how anyone could be extreme in any of their beliefs, but some people of course are.

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Define "extreme."

Muhammed said:

There's 3. DiAnna, Smoke & Mirrors and Serenity. So this is where you've all been hiding. I guess I was just looking in all the wrong places. And your type really is very rare.

I am ENTP and my natural match is INTJ or INFJ. And I think the female INTJ is just a myth.

It took me decades to find my INFJ match and when I finally did I popped the question before the month was over.

Well I do get plenty of iron in my diet. However, you just want to make me your Pygmalion project. :lol:

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just my looks are enough to do it baby

Gathomas88 said:

Define "extreme."

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Having views that are well outside of the mainstream and that lack any nuance. I think lacking nuance and thinking everything is black and white without gray areas is what defines extreme more than anything else.

SouthernDemocrat said:

Having views that are well outside of the mainstream and that lack any nuance. I think lacking nuance and thinking everything is black and white without gray areas is what defines extreme more than anything else.

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Perhaps, but that's somewhat subjective. There isn't much of anything to suggest that the "mainstream" view on a given issue is necessarily correct simply because it happens to be more popular than other views, after all.

There also isn't any particular reason why a strongly held position cannot still be nuanced and well reasoned.

Fallacy - Argument to Moderation (Argumentum ad Temperantiam)

This isn't to say that you are wrong, per se. There are some legitimately whacked out people in this world. However, to assume that someone's position is less credible than the norm simply because it gravitates more towards the far end of the spectrum than the middle isn't necessarily a logically sound conclusion in and of itself.

There is a time and a place for "extremism" just as there is with anything else in this world.

Or... That's my story, anyway, and I'm sticking to it. :mrgreen:

lizzie said:

I expect that the reason we see a disproportional representation of some types on an internet forum, has something to do with the type who is interested in communicating in this fashion. If I were highly extroverted, I'd likely be spending my time with a lot of people, exchanging ideas and getting my battery charged from the environment. Instead, I reserve my own energy, and express myself without maximum personal contact, which enables me to stay somewhat focused on ideas and concepts, rather than feeling like I need to escape. As a rule, when I socialize, it's going to usually be with one person, two at the most, and with someone who shares many of my own personality traits. When I go to a party, I'm usually the one that you will find sitting outside, looking at the setting sun, or the moon and the stars.

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Some of us extroverts like coming to places like this simply because we love to debate.

Like right now my INFJ fiancee is totally worn out of energy, she was worn out so after we made love I just tucked her in, cuddled a while until she went to sleep. Then I came here to troll DP and maybe have a lively debate about whatever. Being with an ENTP can really drain the batteries of an INFJ. But I understand that she is not withdrawing, she is simply recharging.

This cartoon kinda describes the ENTP/INFJ dynamic.

Island Types 10 | Oddly Developed Types

ISTP. No idea what it means, but answered as I could.