Re: Personality Type / Myers Briggs (was: Philotype)

> Date:         Sun, 23 Sep 2001 13:09:55 +0200
> From: daniel andreasson <danielandreasson@...>
> The test that n e v e r applies to me is that Personality Type /
> Myers Briggs / Jung / ISTJ/ENFP / whatever test.
>
> Whenever I take that test I get a different result. I always feel
> I could be either/or for every question. Does anyone else experience
> the same thing? I think we've discussed this before.
>
> These are pairs you have to choose between. For me it's impossible.
> I'm almost always both.
Not that I attach great significance to the results, but for me they
have been pretty consistent. On one axis I actually came out as
totally neutral, on two occasions years apart.

But I know what you mean about the choices not really being exclusive.
I think it's on purpose. If they were exclusive, it would be easy to
pick the ones that reflect your opinion of yourself, and not how you
actually behave in daily life.

What I do is this: I never spend more than two seconds or so on each
question. If I 'know' the answer offhand, or just feel like answering
a certain way, that's easy. If I would really like to pick both or
none of the answers, I just choose one at random --- or if the
question exposes an opposition that is similar to an earlier one where
I had to pick at random, I might go the other way.

The point is that there are many questions that will score on each
axis in the personality model. If the model is valid -- a big question
-- you are one end of a certain axis, your answers will consistently
reflect that. But if you are sort of in the middle, you will score
both ways on different questions, probably with a greater or lesser
bias in one direction --- unless you try to be consistent, in which
case an early random pick can skew the whole thing.

I thought it was a fun thing to play with, anyway --- I forget what my
actual result was, but it may not surprise people on this list to
learn that the 'archetypal' description given was called 'Tutor.'

Lars Mathiesen (U of Copenhagen CS Dep) <thorinn@...> (Humour NOT marked)

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