mbti
Introduction
There are many different ways of classifying human personality into larger categories to help us understand the differences between individuals. One of them is the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator which is derived from the work of Carl Gustav Jung. It takes an analytical approach.
Jung’s key insight was that the human personality depended heavily on how the brain acquired information (mode of perception) and how it made decisions (approach to judgment). Perception is one of two modes — Sensing or Intuition. Judgment is one of two kinds — Thinking and Feeling. He found that a given individual has a preference for one of the modes of perception and one of the kinds of judgment — in the same manner as that individual may be right-handed or left-handed. He also realized that people are either Extraverted or Introverted. The extraverted individual gains energy by being with other people while the introverted individual gains energy in solitude.
Isabel Briggs-Myers who later developed the inventory to test individuals to identify these preferences — the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) — also realized that each individual also has a preference between Perception (observation) and Judgment (decision) as the primary mode of operation.
This resulted in four categories in the classification of personality type.
| Perception | Judgment | Nature | Orientation |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intuition (N) | Thinking (T) | Extraverted (E) | Judgment (J) |
| Sensing (S) | Feeling (F) | Introverted (I) | Perception (P) |
Given that an individual has a preference in each of the four categories, we get sixteen distinct styles of operation of the brain. It is significant that these preferences don’t change over the lifetime of an individual — suggesting different biological architectures (configurations or types of CPU) of the brain. Brain power is also determined by an individual’s capacity — also genetically determined — similar to the speed of the CPU combined with memory (RAM) capacity.
When we learn over time, we collect, analyze, classify and store information in a way similar to filing data away on a hard disk of a computer. We use the CPU and RAM to acquire, process, store and retrieve information. Our classification processes provide the necessary integration of the knowledge.
Note: Take this free online test to find your personality type.