Personality Puzzles

An e-mail has been making the rounds of our little group encouraging us to take the Briggs-Meyers personality test and see where we fall. I'm pretty certain any potential reader of this blog already got that e-mail from me, so this may be old hat, but I do have some new thoughts tagged on here, so stay with me. I got pegged as an INTP--Introverted iNtuitive Thinking Perceiving, one of 16 personality types. The nickname given to INTPs is "Architect," and we comprise about 5% of the total population. A write-up of the INTP type, provided by the unfortunately named Joe Butt, is as follows:

"INTPs are pensive, analytical folks. They may venture so deeply into thought as to seem detached, and often actually are oblivious to the world around them.

Precise about their descriptions, INTPs will often correct others (or be sorely tempted to) if the shade of meaning is a bit off. While annoying to the less concise, this fine discrimination ability gives INTPs so inclined a natural advantage as, for example, grammarians and linguists.

INTPs are relatively easy-going and amenable to most anything until their principles are violated, about which they may become outspoken and inflexible. They prefer to return, however, to a reserved albeit benign ambiance, not wishing to make spectacles of themselves.

A major concern for INTPs is the haunting sense of impending failure. They spend considerable time second-guessing themselves. The open-endedness (from Perceiving) conjoined with the need for competence (NT) is expressed in a sense that one's conclusion may well be met by an equally plausible alternative solution, and that, after all, one may very well have overlooked some critical bit of data. An INTP arguing a point may very well be trying to convince himself as much as his opposition. In this way INTPs are markedly different from INTJs, who are much more confident in their competence and willing to act on their convictions.

Mathematics is a system where many INTPs love to play, similarly languages, computer systems--potentially any complex system. INTPs thrive on systems. Understanding, exploring, mastering, and manipulating systems can overtake the INTP's conscious thought. This fascination for logical wholes and their inner workings is often expressed in a detachment from the environment, a concentration where time is forgotten and extraneous stimuli are held at bay. Accomplishing a task or goal with this knowledge is secondary.

INTPs and Logic -- One of the tipoffs that a person is an INTP is her obsession with logical correctness. Errors are not often due to poor logic -- apparent faux pas in reasoning are usually a result of overlooking details or of incorrect context.

Games NTs seem to especially enjoy include Risk, Bridge, Stratego, Chess, Go, and word games of all sorts. (I have an ENTP friend that loves Boggle and its variations. We've been known to sit in public places and pick a word off a menu or mayonnaise jar to see who can make the most words from its letters on a napkin in two minutes.) The INTP mailing list has enjoyed a round of Metaphore, virtual volleyball, and a few 'finish the series' brain teasers.

INTPs in the main are not clannish. The INTP mailing list, with a readership now in triple figures, was in its incipience fraught with all the difficulties of the Panama canal: we had trouble deciding on:

1) whether or not there should be such a group,
2) exactly what such a group should be called, and
3) which of us would have to take the responsibility for organization and maintenance of the aforesaid group/club/whatever."

That seems pretty on target to me. The test can be found at Humanmetrics, a scary-sounding site that is more innocuous than the title might suggest (I kind of expect a site like that to have a subtitle suggesting a hidden agenda: "Humanmetrics: Measuring Human Potential for a Eugenically Better Future").

A list of all Mr. Butt's definitions can be found at Typelogic, which includes examples of famous people who represent each personality type (and which include far too many shameful celebrities--I don't really want to know that I'm the same "type" as Rick Moranis or Gerald Ford) and "Type Relationships" which purport to suggest how other personality types fit with yours. Give it a look and post your results in the comments here; we can figure out where you fit into my life, which is really the only important thing anyone needs to know. There is also another take on the personality types at Keirsey.com, which breaks the types into four categories (that's where the "Achitect" title comes from). That site also lists famous persons--more respectable ones, on the whole (I like being linked to Walt Disney and Abraham Lincoln more than the previous mentions).

I must admit to being a bit disappointed that I didn't come out as an "Artisan" or "Guardian." I suppose such tests are of only limited accuracy, basing your entire personality profile on a few dozen questions, but I like to think of myself as more of a free spirit.

You can stop laughing now. I know I'm anal retentive--I just don't have to like it is all. It has its uses, but I often wish I had the capacity for change.

On that note, I just finished a chapter in my constantly mentioned Creating a Life Worth Living in which the reader was asked to classify him or herself into a series of ten artistic "types" as well, though you were encouraged to consider yourself as falling into several types to varying degrees. I had a bit of many--the Interpreter and the Leader most strongly--but it seemed fantastically obvious to me that I was almost entirely a Generator:

"Generators manufacture ideas and schemes. They have enormous enthusiasm and a surplus of initiative. For the generator the best moment in the creative process is the first stage of conceptual ecstasy... Generators adore brainstorming and despise repetition. They have more ideas in one week than they can carry out in a whole lifetime... Thrilled with the search and unattached to the outcome, generators are focused on the sheer production of ideas themselves.

This exaltation of the idea can create postpartum depression when the difficulties and complications of carrying a project through to completion arise. The surfeit of ideas also makes is possible for generators to begin many projects without finishing any of them."

(emphasis emphatically mine)

There's more, but that really struck a chord with me. That's probably what brings on much of my frustration in life--I have so many things I think I could or should do, and the fact that I carry through almost none of them (or so it seems to me) drives me to distraction.

Why don't any of these darn tests provide solutions? WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO?

Tell me, O computer world. Solve my problems for me. I'll be waiting.