MBTI

[da_lj]

I spent 20 minutes earlier this week filling out an online MBTI, and today I went to Career Services on campus to review it with their resident expert, Liz K. (Free for staff; and mah boss has told me it's job-related and I shouldn't count it as personal time. ...But wait till she hears I'm going backIt was an entertaining hour, and I took a few

Comments

[icedrake]

Before I go full-out nerdy on this, how interested are you in the MBTI and all things related?

[da_lj]

Yes, please. Very interested, though unsurprisingly laggy with replies to comments ;) If that's OK, go right ahead!

[icedrake]

No worries :)

I've taken the MBTI at least three times over about 4 years. The results have varied somewhat, with the most significant shift being on the E-I scale: I'd moved from mid-range I to low-mid E. The MBTI, if memory serves, measures current, not innate, preferences. Your innate preferences are still there, but you can learn to make up for them. This seems to be what happened in my case -- who would have expected a solid I to have as customer-facing a job as Turnkey?

I got curious enough about the whole thing to take the MBTI Step II, a more in-depth evaluation. The most memorable result for me was on the same E-I scale. The Step II breaks each category down into a further five subcategories. Since the basic MBTI is an amalgamation of all five, you can get a case like mine: Mid- to low-range I on four of the five scales, and an off-the-chart E on one, skewing the entire thing to the E side. (off the chart Gregarious, I believe -- though I need to find the actual test result to verify this

[da_lj]

Oh ho ho. Career Services does do the Step Two, and it's free for staff. ...but I was initially leery of filling in multiple choice test questions for a whole hour; followed by interpretation. Now I'm not sure! From the wikipedia page, it does sound interesting... and the price is right...

[merle_]

I've always been an INTJ, with very strong I and somewhat strong T. The J fluctuates; depending on the situation I'll be a P. But as you say, some people learn to emulate. Given that I coordinate lunches at work and dominate the chatroom I've learned to pretend to be a strong E (until I return home, where I huddle in a corner for hours of alone time).

[epi_lj]

I have an interesting past history with the MBTI. There are a couple of third-party "simplified" implementations. (These are technically not the MBTI at all, but people still refer to them that way.) One is called the Kiersey Sorter. At one point, I had David Kiersey's book, "Please Understand Me," out from the library. I think I'd taken it out as part of an assignment. I was also teaching myself Visual Basic at the time, so I decided to make a quick implementation of it in VB. I wasn't aware of any other such implementation on a computer at the time. I mean, the only options I was aware of were self-scoring tests published in books like the one I had and the official one, which at the time you had to fill out on special booklets provided and mail in and wait some time for your results

[da_lj]

Hah. ...I would consider 2.5 million downloads at any time a massive number.

...Guess so would the lawyers. ;)

[epi_lj]

Oh, and I usually test out as ENFP, despite personally identifying as introverted. I am fairly near the cusp of E/I, though, and I've come out as INFP once or twice. (Needless to say, given the above story, I've taken both the Kiersey Sorter and various other such tests about a trillion times.)