There are many misconceptions, generalizations, and stereotypes all throughout Personality Typing. Whether it’s about the types themselves, the definitions they’re built upon (such as the cognitive functions), or the very notion of typing itself. Most people find it preferable to look at these things at face value, whether it’s for fun or only to have an argument against it.
It might be logical to look at a personality such as an ISFJ and to assume that all that means for that person is that they are a shy, emotional person who might be organized and practical. But that’s little more than stereotyping.
In this post I will be addressing all of the individual letters that make up the 16 personalities type codes, such as ENTP or ESTJ, to make clear the true definitions for those letters, and what it means to have them as part of your type.
Personality typing should never be reduced to something as simple as putting people into narrow, shallow boxes, where they “have to” act a certain way. You are who you are, and that doesn’t change as easily as you might think. So why try to box yourself or anyone else into such limiting systems? This is usually the main argument of people against any sort of personality typing; “Why should some test put me in some dumb box, I’m a unique individual and no one could ever know me better than I know myself!”.
But of course the opposite isn’t any better. The people who think they have “the best type”, and use that as an excuse to stay at whatever level they are, often ignoring their flaws or even using their type to justify and celebrate their negative habits and behavior.
It’s almost sad how common it is to see people proudly embracing the stereotypes of their own types, or even types they admire, such as a Thinker who believes that automatically makes them an intellectual, a genius with no ties to silly things like emotions.. Or Feelers being put down as irrational, emotional, even crybabies.
Personality types should be all about understanding yourself and others better, for both internal AND external harmony. All types have their own specialties, and things they’ll have a harder time with. But I’m not talking about organizing their rooms and how good at sports or science they are, I’m talking about things much more ingrained into who you are and how you interact with the world.
So without any further adieu, let’s properly define what the letters truly mean and how they work.
As you may be aware, there are 16 personality types, made up of four variables:
Introversion vs Extraversion
iNtuition vs Sensing
Feeling vs Thinking
Judging vs Perceiving
It’s important to keep in mind that those words don’t have the same meaning here, as they would normally. For example, being Introverted doesn’t mean you’re shy, nor does being Extraverted mean you’re outgoing.. Now, onto the definitions!
Introversion vs Extraversion
Introversion and Extraversion in personality typing is actually all about where you first look for information! An Introverted person would naturally look within themselves first, before searching externally, whereas an Extraverted person would look to the outside world, and other people first.
iNtuition vs Sensing
If Introversion and Extraversion are the different ways of taking in information, then iNtuition and Sensing would represent that very information, being concerned with understanding things on a universal level, whether it’s based on past and present experiences, or conceptual possibilities.
Intuition is all about the conceptual and the abstract, looking at the world through a lens of patterns and possibilities and “what could be”. It works by networking information in a spread out way and seeing how it all connects to one another.
Sensing also works with patterns, but unlike iNtuition, Sensing is primarily focused on tangible experiences, whether it is from the past, or the present moment. Unlike the networking scattered style of iNtuition, Sensing prefers to focus on individual pieces of information and analyzing them as they are.
Feeling vs Thinking
Unlike iNtuition and Sensing which only gather and analyze information in their own ways, Feeling and Thinking are all about the application of that information. They most certainly aren’t about how smart, emotional, logical, or irrational a person it!
Feeling is actually just the preference and focus of the Meaning of things, manifesting as one’s feelings. It gives significance and value to information, people, and everything else we care about. Feeling presents us with the sum of our values and desires.
Thinking is more concerned with the Use of things, focusing on the details of our information and deriving utility from what we know, and what we can do with it. It gives us the knowledge of how to proceed and accomplish things.
The important thing to remember is that there is a crucial balance to our use of BOTH Feeling and Thinking. To discredit our feelings is to render any thought or action meaningless, and to ignore our thinking would leave us stuck in a rut of inefficiency and failure. The two are equally important.
Judging vs Perceiving
These two are a bit different than the previous ones, in that they don’t differentiate in how they deal with information, rather they are concerned with action and reaction, how we plan and move forward in life.
Judgers tend to make choices and plan things immediately, given the opportunity. They use their understanding of external values and action to make quicker judgements and proceed with their plans, without giving much thought to other possibilities or options.
Perceivers, on the other hand, prefer to take things slower and to look out for all of the options and opportunities they have, before making any considerable decisions. They’re much better at “going with the flow”, though they should also be careful not to delay acting on their observations for too long.
Once again, it’s important to remember that everyone uses both iNtuition & Sensing, and both Feeling & Thinking. It’s just a matter of preference and what comes more naturally that determines which letters make up your type, and how that influences the order of your cognitive functions!
Our personalities and cognition are wonderful complex things, and while it might be tempting to feel proud of your type, or try to find and be “the best type”, all of the types, letters, and cognitive functions are unique and important in their own ways, and if you over exaggerate some parts and shun others, you will be ignoring important parts of yourself that are just as important for your development, as the things that do come most naturally to you.
For more specific information on how the letters affect you in the form of functions, check out my other posts outlining what the cognitive functions are, and how they work!
-Empathine
