A Beginner's Guide to the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)

Carl Jung

In 1921, brilliant Swiss psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung published a work he called Psychological Types, and in this work he undertook the monumental task of characterizing all the various aspects of personality found in different people. It was by no means the first attempt to categorize people's personalities--even the Ancient Greeks had developed the idea of different temperaments--but it was certainly one of the deepest dives into the mind of the individual that the world had ever seen.

Jung's work was certainly superb, but it focused almost entirely on internal cognitive processes. Without the connection to any sort of concrete action, Jung's ideas were neglected outside of academic circles--until 1962, that is. At this point, a woman named Katherine Cook Briggs and her daughter Isabel Briggs Myers, began elaborating on Jung's ideas and attempted to connect them to observable behaviors with the goal of finding a way to identify ideal candidates for different types of jobs. In doing so, they created what is now called the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, or MBTI. They somewhat deviated from Jung's work, but mostly stayed faithful to his basic precepts.

MBTI is now the most popular personality assessment in the world, and even in casual circles one can frequently find plenty of conversations concerning each person's MBTI "type". Many--including myself--have found it to be an extraordinarily useful tool for understanding themselves and others, and I'd hate for anyone to miss out on this opportunity of self-exploration because they didn't understand any of the jargon thrown around by the MBTI community. So, with the background now out of the way, I'd like to explain a little bit about how MBTI works, starting from scratch.

MBTI attempts to describe people based on four different elements of their personality. The first element of personality is that of introversion and extroversion. This element describes where people get their energy from--an introvert gains their energy from focusing inwardly, while an extrovert gains their energy from focusing outwardly. Extroverts are drained by being alone and require stimulation to keep going, while too much external stimulation typically drains introverts very quickly and they must withdraw from the outside world--socializing, activity, etc.--to regain their energy. In MBTI, extroverts are designated by the letter E while introverts are designated by the letter I.

The second element of personality in MBTI is that of sensation and intuition. Jung and MBTI use these words much, much differently from the layman, so caution must be used when using this terminology. Sensation and intuition are known as the perceiving functions due to the fact that they deal with how people gather information. Someone who prefers sensation is called a sensor and they prefer information that is concrete and tangible. They are not necessarily more limited to their five senses; it's just they prefer to focus on what is rather than what could be. People who prefer intuition, on the other hand, are called intuitives and they prefer to gather information abstractly and to "connect the dots" between different insights and ideas. Sensors are designated by the letter S and intuitives are designated by the letter N.

The third element of personality is that of thinking and feeling. Once again, the definitions used in this context are not the same as those commonly used. Thinking and feeling are called the judging functions because they deal with how people make decisions based on the information taken in by sensation and intuition. Thinkers prefer impersonal analysis of information. They are not as concerned with how they or others will feel about a certain decision and typically dislike injecting anyone's personal values into a situation. Feelers prefer personal evaluation of information--they are not comfortable making a decision without considering harmony, empathy, and ideals. They make decisions by assigning value, as opposed to the raw cause-and-effect kind of decision-making that comes naturally to thinkers. Thinkers are designated by the letter T and feelers are designated by the letter F.

The fourth and final element of MBTI is judging and perceiving. This aspect of personality describes whether one prefers to express and draw upon their judging (T or F) outwardly or their perceiving (S or N) outwardly. A judger prefers to show the world their thinking or feeling function while keeping their perceptions internal, and a perceiver prefers to show the world their sensing or intuition function while keeping their judgements internal. There are some behaviors that are loosely correlated with judging and perceiving--for instance, judgers are often stereotyped as being more organized and uptight while perceivers are often stereotyped as being lazier and more laid-back--but the key aspect of judging vs. perceiving is how S, N, T, and F are expressed. There are certainly many rigorous, punctual perceivers and many disorganized, scattered judgers. Judgers are designated by the letter J and perceivers are designated by the letter P.

To find your MBTI type, take the four designated letters for each element and line them up in order--for me, it's ISTP, for Introverted Sensing Thinking Perceiver. There are 16 distinct MBTI types:

                  Intuitives          Sensors

                    ENFJ               ESFJ

Feelers         INFJ              ISFJ

                    ENFP               ESFP

                    INFP               ISFP

                   ENTJ                ESTJ

Thinkers     INTJ               ISTJ

                   ENTP                 ESTP

                   INTP                ISTP

Each of the 16 types has its strengths and weaknesses, and learning about your MTBI type can help you maximize your strengths and work on your weaknesses. If you want to find your type, there's a self-assessment test here that I've found to be very high-quality. However, I recommend against simply letting a test tell you what type you are. Instead, read about MBTI and all of the different types and consider how you really act and think. Good descriptions of each of the MTBI types can be found here and here. 

There's an enormous amount of information about Myers-Briggs I'd like to write about here, but the rest will have to wait for other posts. I hope you enjoy learning about personality types as much as I have for the last several months.