A few final words

This finished off my series of posts about the MBTI, most of the stuff I learned in my PD1 (professional development 1) class this past semester.
There are a couple of things I wanted to mention before the end.

First, all this stuff has been heavily researched and all that and lots of other places can explain it probably better than I can. So if I didn't quite get something right, I probably misunderstood something (example: intuition/sensing is very confusing, and I just hope I have finally understood it).

Second, we were told this several times: these preferences are just that. Preferences. They are not to be excuses. I needed to hear this when I found myself using some of my preferences as excuses for why I did act out of my preference when it would have been better if I had.

And last, you are perhaps (or perhaps not) wondering what my own preferences are. Well, I am an INTJ. Those letters stand for introvert, intuitive, thinking, judging.
The N stands for intuition because the I was already used for introvert. E, S, F, and P all stand for extrovert, sensing, feeling, and perceiving respectively. So, if you've ever taken something and gotten some combination of four letters that looks something like that, it's probably your MBTI type. ISTJ is the most common set of preferences for engineers with the INTJ's coming up closely behind it. So I am a pretty typical engineer...good thing I'm majoring in it.


UPDATE: Oh yes! and one very last thing which I meant to say but forgot: The preferences are not meant to categorize your whole entire personality. Do not think that it does! It has nothing to do with you artistic inclinations, your musical preferences, whether you are shy or not, etc.... It is mainly for those preferences that will affect teams and groups. A team with personality conflicts will tend to have these conflicts mainly with the MBTI preferences. So they are useful for group situations. Occasionally it is good to recognize them in other situations too, but not necessarily. Okay that really is the end now.

Judging vs. Perceiving

I have recovered from the week of finals and study and, having collected my grades, am now enjoying a bit of repose with my family before starting work for the summer. (Research in heat transfer, pressures, temperatures, heat fluxes, etc.)
So 'tis high time for the last dichotomy of the MBTI dichotomies.

This dichotomy concerns how people interact with the outside world, with external factors. The judging and perceiving words can be most misleading to a lot of people. I think these may be the ones most widely different from their usual meanings (though the introvert/extrovert may be most misunderstood).

A judger tends prefers order and organization. They may like to write lists. In a group setting, they will probably attempt to form some type of structure for the group and will schedule as many things as they can.

A perceiver prefers to leave things more open-ended. They can find too much structure to be stifling.

As with all the others, just because one has a preference does not mean that person cannot act in one of the other preferences. Judgers can deal with spontaneity and even be spontaneous at times, they just tend to prefer more scheduling. Some people think judgers are more competent than perceivers, i.e. they will get more work done sooner and better. But this is not true. Perceivers may not organize things in ways that managers of groups like, but they can still be extremely competent.

I had the most experience with conflicts in groups caused by this differences in preference of this particular dichotomy. This past semester I was in a design group of seven people. Five had perceiving preferences and two had judging preferences. The entire group as a whole worked more as perceivers. We scheduled things as little as possible, set up no leadership, and generally let people work on the pieces of our design as they wished. Whenever we met for a meeting outside of class (which only occurred when we had reports and presentations due), the judgers organized the pieces for everyone to do and we sat and did them. The perceivers were mostly happy with the arrangement, but the judgers felt the project could have been done faster with more scheduling. But we did get the project done and turned in on time.

Thinking vs. Feeling

The third dichotomy of type is the thinking vs. feeling dichotomy. And again, these words mean something a little bit different than you might think.

This dichotomy is about how one makes decisions.

A thinker usually looks for rules or standards that can be applied to all situations. They tend to pull themselves out of the issue at hand to look at it as objectively as possible and to hopefully find some rule to apply to it.

A feeler tries to understand all points of view in the situation or issue. They look at each situation in a case by case system.

One should not confuse feeling and thinking with being emotional or being logical. Both can come to the same decision; they'll just reach their conclusions by different methods. Both can be extremely good, clear, and logical thinkers. It's just how they look at the situations that makes them different.

Sensing vs. Intuition

The second dichotomy concerns how you learn or "how you prefer to take in information".

It is perhaps the most difficult one to understand. I do not even think I have it all down.

Anyways, we shall plunge into this and see what we get.

A sensor tends to focus on the details while those with intuition tend to see the big picture first. My instructor gave this example: We are given an assignment to build a Frisbee thrower. Our sensing teammates will immediately begin thinking of things like the length of the throwing arm and the height off the ground and many other things of that sort and move up. The intuitive teammates will begin instead with the general design and move down.

Like I said before, these two are more difficult to distinguish between. I'm hoping my explanations of them are fairly accurate as well as understandable to others.

Extrovert vs. Introvert

This is the first dichotomy.

Many people take the extrovert/introvert to mean how friendly or outgoing somebody is. This is not true at all. Like I said before, the words all have different meaning than what we are used to. My instructor claims it is because the MBTI was introduced the eighteen-hundreds when words meant things a little different than they do now.

This dichotomy is about where you get your energy from.

An Introvert will get energy from being by himself and having some "alone time".

An Extrovert will gain energy from interacting with others.

The analogy given to us by my instructor is as follows:
An Extrovert wakes up with an empty bag. Throughout the day, with each interaction with another person, he puts a coin into his bag.
An Introvert wakes up with a full bag. As he interacts with people throughout the day, he gives a coin for each interaction.

Some Introverts can be very outgoing, it will just take them a little more energy to interact than an Extrovert. And some Extrovert can be extremely shy. But it is where they gain their energy from that makes them one or the other.

Hardly anyone is completely one or the other, so you may remember times when you went to a party and came back exhausted, though normally you would be hyped after such an event. Or you may find interactions with others becoming easier over time than you initially found it.

And that is the end of the first part.

What happens after Spring Break?

You get a bunch of exams! That's right! I've had three, one last week and two this week. I actually forgot about the one today until this morning. Fortunately for me it was only PD1 (Professional Development I) which asked all sorts of questions about the MBTI and which personality traits indicate which MBTI type, conflict management, and team performance models. I believe most of us engineers find this both easy and boring. Or, if we don't find it easy, we at least find it boring.

Speaking of which, have you ever heard of the MBTI?
That is an acronym for the Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator. It is based on four dichotomies or scales that sort of go like this:

Extrovert--------Introvert

Sensing----------Intuition

Thinking---------Feeling

Judging----------Percieving


Each of those is a dichotomy. A person is measured by this and get a combination of four letters, each standing for the characteristic he most prefers.
A couple of things must be said first so you don't get the wrong idea.
First, the words up there don't mean what we use them to mean in our normal lives. They actually have different meaning, the last two dichotomies in particular.
Second, most people fall more in-between the two sides of each dichotomy. But there is usually one side they prefer a little more than the other. And by preferring, I mean which they naturally fall into, not which they choose to be (e.g. I may wish I was an extrovert, but I'm not. I'm an introvert. I "prefer" the introverted side more often that not)

So perhaps you are wondering now what each means (since I told you they don't mean what you think they do)?


Well, I guess this post is long enough. Maybe I'll post the rest later.