THINKER'S ALAMANAC - October 18

How can four letters of the alphabet help you to understand yourself and others better?

Subject: Personality - Myers Briggs 

Event: Birthday of Isabel Briggs Myers, 1897

Personality is the supreme realization of the innate idiosyncrasy of a living being. It is an act of high courage flung in the face of life, the absolute affirmation of all that constitutes the individual, the most successful adaptation to the universal conditions of existence coupled with the greatest possible freedom for self-determination. -Carl Jung

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is a questionnaire that helps people understand their psychological preferences and identify distinct characteristics of their personalities.  Since it was first developed in 1944, the MBTI has become one of the most popular personality assessments.  Its questionnaire is published in 29 different languages in 115 countries.  

The MBTI was created by the mother-daughter team of Katharine Briggs and Isabel Briggs Myers, who was born on this day in 1897.  Despite the fact that neither had formal psychological training, both were fascinated by the topic of personality.  Katharine first gained notoriety as a writer when she wrote a parenting column in the 1920s; her primary subject was the details of how she was raising and educating her daughter Isabel.  When Isabel left home for college, Katharine became depressed and began reading the works of Carl Jung.  Jung’s theory of psychological types captivated Katharine, and she adapted his work to develop her own method of categorizing personality types.  

The key to the success of MBTI, however, came later when Katharine collaborated with Isabel to develop a questionnaire with 117 questions that would help people identify the individual indicators of their personality.  Katharine sold her system to Edward N. Hay in 1944, and the timing could not have been better.  The post-World War II jobs boom made the MBTI an easy instrument to sell as businesses looked for effective ways to fill jobs with workers who were the right fit.

The MBTI is organized around four dichotomies of personality preferences:

I. Energy - How do you acquire energy, and are you more outwardly or more inwardly focused?  

-Extrovert (Energized by spending time with people:  social, active, expressive, outspoken)

-Introvert (Energized by spending time alone or in a small group: independent, reserved, thoughtful)

II. Information - How do you take in information about your world? 

-Sensing (Interested in empirical, concrete information, what can be directly perceived by the five senses.  Hands-on, realistic, practical, sequential, detail-oriented).

-Intuition (Interested in abstract thinking, such as concepts or theories:  future and big picture-oriented, idealistic, creative)

III. Decision Making - How do you prefer to make decisions?  

-Thinking (Make decisions based on reason and logic:  objective, rational)

-Feeling (Make decisions with the heart: subjective, compassionate, seek harmony)

IV. Order/Organization - How do you prefer to get things done and to live your life? 

-Judging (Appreciate order, structure, and planning.  Like rules and following a process.

-Perceiving (Appreciate flexibility and spontaneity. Like to improvise and embrace surprises and novelty) (1)

Recall, Retrieve, Recite, Ruminate, Reflect, Reason:  What are the four dichotomies of the MBTI?

Challenge - Your Four: For each of the four dichotomies, assess your own personality.  Which do you think sums you up the best?

Extrovert (E) or Introvert (I), 

Sensing (S) or Intuition (N), 

Thinking (T) or Feeling (F), 

Judging (J) or Perceiving (P)

Once you have determined your four preferences, do some research on your four letter combination (There are sixteen different possible combinations.  Explain whether or not the descriptions you find about your four letter combination fit what you know about your own personality.

Sources:

1-https://forge.medium.com/the-capitalist-origins-of-the-myers-briggs-personality-test-309187757d4e