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Do Forteans Share A Myers-Briggs 'Type'?

Which Is Your Myers-Briggs Category (As Actually Tested)?

  • ISTJ

    Votes: 7 13.7%

  • ISFJ

    Votes: 1 2.0%

  • INFJ

    Votes: 6 11.8%

  • INTJ

    Votes: 9 17.6%

  • ISTP

    Votes: 2 3.9%

  • ISFP

    Votes: 1 2.0%

  • INFP

    Votes: 11 21.6%

  • INTP

    Votes: 4 7.8%

  • ESTP

    Votes: 1 2.0%

  • ESFP

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • ENFP

    Votes: 3 5.9%

  • ENTP

    Votes: 3 5.9%

  • ESTJ

    Votes: 1 2.0%

  • ESFJ

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • ENFJ

    Votes: 2 3.9%

  • ENTJ

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Total voters
    51
Well...

I've just completed two separate online tests and my best match seems to be ENFJ. I had the odd problem with answering honestly though. The first test advised against giving neutral responses but I can't, for example, rate my preference for preferring to stick to a plan as opposed to improvising, or co-operating rather than competing as this depends on what the activity might be.

Perhaps the tests are clever enough to account for this, I don't know ... I know someone who works on psychometric testing in some hush-hush area of the British Army and intelligence. She claims these tests are so spookily accurate that even if the subject deliberately lies the algorithms somehow reveal their personality flaws through the pattern of the inconsistent answers. Or something. There is, allegedly, no way to cheat.

Another issue: I took another Myers-Briggs test maybe a couple of years ago and I'm sure the result was INTJ on that occassion. I'd have to look it up.

A rather more traditional personality test I once took labelled me an outgoing introvert, which I'd say was spot-on - and far easier to understand.

Anyway, as that is what today's tests say I've broken ENFJ's duck in the poll.
 
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Henry,

...i thought INT21 would be all over this ..

INT21 is critical even of himself.

And asks the question 'Am I really giving a true and honest answer to the questions, or am I biased by expectation of the result , based on similar psychological test results ?.

But I'll certainly give it a go.

INT21.
 
Henry,

Not sure what you mean.

You do know where my username ' INT21 ' comes from ?

INT21.
 
Henry,

I think I see where you are coming from. The letters INT being part of the grading system.

But I wouldn't know the grade until I had completed the test.

Off to do that now.
 
ISTP

Had a problem deciding on a couple of questions.

Interesting that the majority here (so far) appear to be introverted.

INT21
 
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Andy X said:
She claims these tests are so spookily accurate that even if the subject deliberately lies the algorithms somehow reveal their personality flaws through the pattern of the inconsistent answers. Or something. There is, allegedly, no way to cheat.
Click to expand...
Some tests can reveal this, often the simplest way is to reverse code some answers (most questions scale 1-10 for 'most like' odd ones score in reverse), or throw in really silly questions (oddly, this works quite well) like "Have you lied on any of the question?", "Are you a wombat?"

I'd speculate that in a test with a battery of questions that are randomly presented (well, they should be) with, let us say, four categories of question, each designed to measure a facet or trait, one way might be to record the time taken to answer questions overall, in the four sub categories and then look for the outlier times that might hint at obfuscation.

I proposed as a dissertation for an MBA (I gave it up, three toddlers, family is far more important that 'organising my time better'), to put a mixture of tests with similar question formats together, randomise them, stick in some complete dummy questions that seem likely in the context, score them the same, time it all and figure out how to spot anyone gaming the system. I even had a top career analyst company on-board. The Uni (Reading) wouldn't countenance such a wild idea, although I stand by the principle.

Belbin management style tests showed that anyone who's results didn't establish a clear management role or refused to take the test was almost without exception, a liability in a team. And Belbin did a lot of experiments and testing.

Good questionnaires need a solid underlying theory, a stack of work, some horrible statistical analysis, several refinements and a corroboration with reality. Then they need to be repeatable. Good tests, solid ones [for example Sociotropy–Autonomy Scale (SAS); (Beck, Epstein, Harrison, & Emery, 1983)] go through iterations and re-verification and then one has to consider banks of questions for each 'question', i.e. each questionnaire use is drawn from a much larger pool of questions that delver the same results, to avoid 'gaming' or priming by repeated taking of such tests.

It's a tricky area and getting it right has a solid process that requires a lot of work (or you can make up some vaguely Jungian bollox and write Forer statements describing the end results).
 
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Coal said:
Some tests can reveal this, often the simplest way is to reverse code some answers (most questions scale 1-10 for 'most like' odd ones score in reverse), or throw in really silly questions (oddly, this works quite well) like "Have you lied on any of the question?", "Are you a wombat?"

I'd speculate that in a test with a battery of questions that are randomly presented (well, they should be) with, let us say, four categories of question, each designed to measure a facet or trait, one way might be to record the time taken to answer questions overall, in the four sub categories and then look for the outlier times that might hint at obfuscation.

I proposed as a dissertation for an MBA (I gave it up, three toddlers, family is far more important that 'organising my time better'), to put a mixture of tests with similar question formats together, randomise them, stick in some complete dummy questions that seem likely in the context, score them the same, time it all and figure out how to spot anyone gaming the system. I even had a top career analyst company on-board. The Uni (Reading) wouldn't countenance such a wild idea, although I stand by the principle.

Belbin management style tests showed that anyone who's results didn't establish a clear management role or refused to take the test was almost without exception, a liability in a team. And Belbin did a lot of experiments and testing.

Good questionnaires need a solid underlying theory, a stack of work, some horrible statistical analysis, several refinements and a corroboration with reality. Then they need to be repeatable. Good tests, solid ones [for example Sociotropy–Autonomy Scale (SAS); (Beck, Epstein, Harrison, & Emery, 1983)] go through iterations and re-verification and then one has to consider banks of questions for each 'question', i.e. each questionnaire use is drawn from a much larger pool of questions that delver the same results, to avoid 'gaming' or priming by repeated taking of such tests.

It's a tricky area and getting it right has a solid process that requires a lot of work (or you can make up some vaguely Jungian bollox and write Forer statements describing the end results).
Click to expand...

Interesting - and according to my scant research the mother and daughter who developed these tests were indeed Jungians. You probably knew that.

You obviously know a fair a bit about this field. Have you formed any overall impression of the testing methodology under discussion (MBTI) regarding its usefulness? It doesn't seem to be universally well regarded.

From Wikipedia:

"Although popular in the business sector, the MBTI exhibits significant scientific (psychometric) deficiencies, notably including poor validity (i.e. not measuring what it purports to measure, not having predictive power or not having items that can be generalized), poor reliability (giving different results for the same person on different occasions), measuring categories that are not independent (some dichotomous traits have been noted to correlate with each other), and not being comprehensive (due to missing neuroticism) "​
​
I'm not knocking this thread and I'm sure these test must reveal something, but possibly not a great deal we didn't already know: the fact that most people who like to ponder Fortean topics are largely introverted is exactly what I'd expect. At the very worst it's a bit of fun, and there's nothing wrong with that.

Somewhere in my mum's house is a big 'Test Your Personality' hardback from the 1960s or 70s, which seemed to be a bit of a fashionable pursuit at the time. As I remember it's full of all kinds of questions involving visual tests such as choosing preferred and disliked colours in various images, as well as the usual 'do you enjoy being the centre of attention?' stuff.
 
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Andy X said:
You obviously know a fair a bit about this field. Have you formed any overall impression of the testing methodology under discussion (MBTI) regarding its usefulness? It doesn't seem to be universally well regarded.
Click to expand...
I can't believe you haven't noticed I think MBTI is bunk ;) ...I've posted elsewhere the best summing up I know is here:

http://skepdic.com/myersb.html

It's worrying that such a thing ( a really blunt little tool) has come to be regarded as a reliable tool and is being used to select staff in some organisations. My current employer (at least until 3:30 Friday) is using MBTI as part of leadership training, I was told by a manager. I may have given him a figurative 'both barrels' on it. MBTI is popular is such applications because it sounds good, the 'type' statements are so vague as to be practically Forer statement, so almost 100% of everybody thinks it's right when they read it (like a daily horoscope) and, and this is a biggie, it's non-scalar. Person (a) can't score 'higher' than person (b).

It's the case that a management team is not generally going to endorse any kind of retrospectively introduced testing that might show them up as 'not the best for their job'. MBTI won't do that. So you get the warm glow of using something sciencey and psychometric, but without a chance that one of your charges will turn out to be a far better bet for your job than you are.

It's a shame, plenty of good tools and data exist for aiding recruitment and job-selection.

The one thing MBTI might do well is identify introverts and extroverts, although few are exclusively one or the other and the day-to-day variance in this trait can often be large. One might say folk are predominantly one thing orf the other.

We live in a culture of extrovert values, at least Western business does. 'It turns out' that introverts are NOT broke extroverts and in general have a better attention for detail and can concentrate on work for longer periods. In short, extroverts make more noise, introverts tend to get the work done. It's the extroverts that have cultures of interminable meetings that don't actually produce anything useful, who think brainstorming actually works and that 'team building exercises' are a good idea (for them maybe) . They're the 'talk the talk' people.

E.g. A young colleague of mine is quite wound up about giving presentations to large groups of people he doesn't know well. Because the current graduate scheme is dependent on extrovert values, such as this kind of thing, he's internalised the idea he's failing in some way. It's come as a relief for him to discover he's a normal introvert and the idiots who run the scheme don't understand that they're taking mostly introverted engineer types and trying to make them (fix them) into extroverts. Of course a very few are extrovert so it works for them, so 'the scheme is working'. The introverts are stigmatised as lacking confidence etc etc.
 
Thanks for the comprehensive response. Like most subjects, even those that can initially seem quite dry, this becomes more and more interesting.

I had noted, no - sensed - your scepticism (a personality test once told me I was very intuitive) ;) Hence my request for further detail (I haven't read the entire thread very thoroughly as I am obsessed with processing my ToDo list in the correct sequence before taking on new tasks due to insecurities about job status)! My over-use of parentheses is possibly a symptom of my tendency to compartmentalise my feelings.

Coal said:
MBTI is popular is such applications because it sounds good, the 'type' statements are so vague as to be practically Forer statement, so almost 100% of everybody thinks it's right when they read it (like a daily horoscope)
Click to expand...

My gut feeling exactly - I chucked away the screenshot from my second MBTI test as it was flattering wishy-washy nonsense about my top three type matches complete with childish cartoon illustrations about sharing and fixing humanity and being a compassionate leader and stuff*

Which reminds me of another troubling and unanswerable question I encountered: something like, "I enjoy providing support to those in emotional distress" - what the heck does 'enjoy' mean in that context? Is the test trying to make the subject give away that they get a kick from feeling good about themselves but do not in fact care about the suffering person? Is that a sign of psychopathy? I don't know - I've met a few folks who ostentatiously do a lot for 'charridee' but aren't very nice people ... I wondered if that one was a trick question, or just extremely poorly worded. I notice that neither Psychopath nor Sociopath feature in the personality types although it's fairly well established that these diagnoses fit a goodly percentage of any population. No suggestion of Autism either.

Thanks for the link. I'll read it when I'm feeling highly motivated to prioritise my own well-being above spending time with others who may need my emotional support and leadership. *double wink*.

I'd agree that testing for intros vs. extros must be pretty easy, and couldn't agree more that the current criterion for success in many areas now seems to be a kind of misplaced self-confidence, i.e. a boring mutated form of extroversion that makes the kind of tosspieces who think they'll become famous by appearing on TV 'reality' shows because they 'don't know the meaning of failure, Lord Sugaarrr' widely admired as thrusting and successful. Or even worse, results in people like your talented young colleague feeling pressured into trying (and maybe failing) to masquerade as extroverts to get their boxes ticked by numbskulls.


I know a lot of extroverts who are perfectly fine people. This is not extrovertalist hate speech.

Edit: Hope things turn out the way you want on Friday.


*Although that's more a fault of the pop-culture presentation - something to be shared with a couple of clicks - rather than the test itself perhaps, however flawed the test may be.​
 
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For those who like pictures.

col.jpg
 
Although I'd be understandably delighted to share the ENFJ personality type with Johnny Depp and Dick Van Dyke* I'm not convinced. My first go at the online tests when Patrick30 started the thread reliably returned an 'IN' something result, yet now I've metamorphised into an 'EN'.

If I'm an extrovert I'm also a Dutchman and a monkey's uncle.

... and I can't put my apparent switch from the INs' camp to the ENs down to normal fluctuations in mood; if anything I'm probably feeling more introverted than I was when I did the tests in 2015.

As Coal has remarked on this page this may be a very blunt tool. Thinking of the questions that I can actually remember it seems possible that the test has picked up on the fact that I like making friends and socialising and the like, but these things do not make someone an extrovert.

*Edit: and AnonyJoolz
 
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...I like making friends and socialising and the like, but these things do not make someone an extrovert.

Agreed, but those traits show a degree of gregariousness that may tilt you away from the Introvert.

INT21
 
IIRC the introvert and extrovert on this test don't mean you are actually one or the other....it's 'where you draw your energy from'.
 
Andy X said:
Well...

I've just completed two separate online tests and my best match seems to be ENFJ. I had the odd problem with answering honestly though. The first test advised against giving neutral responses but I can't, for example, rate my preference for preferring to stick to a plan as opposed to improvising, or co-operating rather than competing as this depends on what the activity might be.

Perhaps the tests are clever enough to account for this, I don't know ... I know someone who works on psychometric testing in some hush-hush area of the British Army and intelligence. She claims these tests are so spookily accurate that even if the subject deliberately lies the algorithms somehow reveal their personality flaws through the pattern of the inconsistent answers. Or something. There is, allegedly, no way to cheat.

Another issue: I took another Myers-Briggs test maybe a couple of years ago and I'm sure the result was INTJ on that occassion. I'd have to look it up.

A rather more traditional personality test I once took labelled me an outgoing introvert, which I'd say was spot-on - and far easier to understand.

Anyway, as that is what today's tests say I've broken ENFJ's duck in the poll.
Click to expand...


I'm apparently an ENFJ too - authenticity, concern and community altruism. Fairly accurate in my case.
 
INT21 said:
...I like making friends and socialising and the like, but these things do not make someone an extrovert.

Agreed, but those traits show a degree of gregariousness that may tilt you away from the Introvert.

INT21
Click to expand...

I suppose so, but I tend to think of introversion (I'm sure definitions differ) as being a tendency to live amongst one's own thoughts at least as much as in the world at large, and a cherishing of privacy, rather than reticence or shyness as such. If you met me you probably wouldn't think me very introverted, but if I compare myself to extroverts I know the difference in personality type is obvious. For example a friend of mine who anyone would describe as extroverted can't spend five minutes alone in his own company - it drives him up the wall and he has to go down the pub or something - not because he's wrestling with any demons - he just has to be around people being the 'life and soul' all the time, possibly because he comes from a large, boisterous family and had to compete with a load of siblings for attention - nurture vs. nature? Myself, I can talk to anyone from any walk of life about anything for hours and am good at making friends but I fucking hate small-talk and am probably not that good at it. That's when I do feel a bit socially uncomfortable sometimes. I am very gregarious but don't much like parties so will never be admitted to the extroverts' club.

See, now I'm banging on about myself and sound narcissistic, and there's my other problem with these tests: although they are meant to describe all personality types there is nothing unflattering such as, "you are self-centered, narcissistic (very common), selfish (very common), lazy, irresponsible (very common), bullying, unkind (very common), vapid, immature" ... and so on. There is no suggestion that a result might indicate psycho / sociopathic tendancies either, which are also not uncommon and therefore surely rather important when it comes to this kind of testing.

AnonyJoolz said:
I'm apparently an ENFJ too - authenticity, concern and community altruism. Fairly accurate in my case.
Click to expand...

Welcome to an exclusive club! And would you describe yourself as being broadly extroverted?
 
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CarlosTheDJ said:
IIRC the introvert and extrovert on this test don't mean you are actually one or the other....it's 'where you draw your energy from'.
Click to expand...

I see what you mean, having read up on the subject a little more. Maybe I'm an extrinvert!

Again, I wonder if the sticking point is the assumption that being introverted means being timid or unadventurous and risk-averse, which isn't necessarily the case.
 
Andy X said:
Again, I wonder if the sticking point is the assumption that being introverted means being timid or unadventurous and risk-averse, which isn't necessarily the case.
Click to expand...
There is this notion that an 'introvert' is a 'broken extrovert', which is not the case. Introverts don't necessarily lack confidence or social skills. They prefer to socialise with small numbers of people. They tend to avoid crowd situations, as it's more like a sensory overload that make them uncomfortable, than lack of skills as such.

I've heard it said that introverts spend 'time inside their head', but we might call this 'thinking'.

Risk adverse is not 'introverted' as such. An introvert is probably taking in a bit more about what's actually going on and not be avoiding risk so much, as more accurately quantifying it...
 
Looking at the scores on the doors so far there are three types with no votes at all, which according to google means the following famous folks might be unlikely to be (or have been) Forteans:

ESTP: (nul points)
Donald Trump, Madonna, Eddie Murphy, Bruce Willis, Ernest Hemingway, Jack Nicholson, Michael J. Fox

ESFP: (nul points)
Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, Picasso, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, Bob Hope, Peter Kay

ESFJ: (nul points)
Jack Benny, Sally Field er, Ned Flanders, Mary Poppins

Whereas the clear winners (INFP, ITSJ) suggests that this motley crew:

George H.W. Bush, George Washington, Harry, S. Turman, Herbert Hoover, Andrew Johnson, HM QEII

Will Shakespeare, Audrey Hepburn, J.R.R Tolkein, Diana, Princess of Wales, Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, A.A. Milne

Would be up for all sorts of oddness.

Hmm....

The internet doesn't seem to know what Myers-Briggs type Charles Fort was, whereas Dickens, the Virgin Mary and St. Francis of Assisi are easily categorised.
 
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