HN Explorer

Poll: Hacker News (Myers-Briggs) Personality Types

116 points by epi0Bauqu ↗ HN
What is your Myers-Briggs personality type?

If you don’t know you can find out at http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/JTypes2.asp or on Facebook at http://apps.facebook.com/my-type/.

For info on the types, check out profiles at http://www.personalitypage.com/portraits.html and http://typelogic.com/

I am interested to see how much we differ from the average population. The average #s appear in parenthesis after the choices, and were copied from http://www.geocities.com/lifexplore/stats.htm

Obviously only choose one type. (And none of the links above are associated with me in any way aside from the fact that I just copied and pasted them.)

143 comments

[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 338 ms ] thread
epi0Bauqu
I was an INTP in high school, and somewhere down the line became an INTJ.
imp
Interesting. I've switched the other way. Although I don't think I actually changed at all. I used to think I was pretty organized, but I've come to realize I'm not and I'm more P than J.
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paulhart
In theory these are default states - if external factors are removed, what would you revert to?

I default to INTP but can ramp up the E as needed (and these days I need it more an more). I can mess with the other values too, but I/E is the easiest for me to play with.

jwynia
I/E isn't as much about whether you are "outgoing" or "gregarious", etc. It's really more about whether you:

* Process things internally/externally * Get energy from being with people or find being with people "draining"

I'm also an I who has learned socially acceptable things like public speaking, participating in group discussions, etc. but a couple of hours in such a group and I'm exhausted while my E wife is energized.

rglullis
Precisely. I'm an Introvert but I can do things like public speaking, having a job interview or giving a lecture reasonably well. Also, I have no trouble to get into a circle of strangers and easily initiate a conversation - as long, of course, it is some kind of interaction where I think it is meaningful. But after some time interacting with people, I just want to go home, get back to the computer, a book, swim for an hour by myself, etc.

On the other hand, I have a friend who is an Extrovert, but at the same time he is considerably shy. He craves interaction and is really cool with people that he knows, but it seems that he blocks whenever there is someone new in the room, or in a situation where people might judge him.

MaysonL
Those are in increasing order of superiority, aren't they?<gd&r>[INFP]
tokipin
i think Linus Torvalds is INFP
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ComputerGuru
Type-3 iNTj (44-50-50-22)

I used to be an INTP (i think) in high school, but since then I've become a highly social, highly popular but really-geeky geek; which gave me the above score.

pierrefar
Here's a trick: do the test twice, about 10-15 minutes apart.

When I did, the strength percentages changed, but the actual type was constant. Interesting.

LogicHoleFlaw
I went back and took the test again. For each question where I'd hesitated to choose between two options I took the option which I had not chosen the first time. What surprised me was that the type did not change, only the percentages.

The description of my personality type (INTJ) was uncanny.

icey
I've taken probably 30 of these tests over the years, from all sorts of different places; I've always come out as an INTJ.
xlnt
I've gotten INFP, INTP in the past and INTJ (today). Silly thing can't even keep its story straight.
redorb
I think mine would change based on how I was feeling that day - does that make me bi polar?
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bigtoga
I'm ENTJ - just like Madonna and Whoopi Goldberg!
mrtron
I'll throw my name in that hat too. (22, 38, 75, 11)

Don't hold it against me :)

Most of my friends are INTJ/INTP, we sent this around in some emails a few months ago.

johns
You forgot Steve Jobs and Bill Gates
feijai
Jobs would be an ENFP.
tokipin
pretty sure he's ENTP -- the prototypical entrepreneur

Gates is certainly ENTJ

feijai
Jobs is not just an entrepreneur: his #1 feature is charisma. No one with a T has a reality distortion field.

He's an ENFP.

tricky
for all you INTPs out there, have a look at this:

http://www.intp.org/intprofile.html

I was floored when I found that link. Describes me to a T.

brl
I know what you mean. Reading INTP personality profiles online was a life changing experience for me. Suddenly everything made so much more sense.
watmough
"Hence, it is common to see INTPs dabbling at many things, achieving competency, just enough to prove to themselves that they could become more proficient if they wished, but rarely actually bothering to refine their skills further. This is a point at which we begin to get a feel for the workings of iNtuition backing up Thinking. The INTP has a whole set of skills which he knows that he would be proficient at, yet other people may know little of this."

Yes, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up when I read this.

There's a great book by Radcliffe Hall called 'A Saturday Life' (Info on Radclyffe Hall http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radclyffe_Hall) that should be of interest, and also some good pulp SciFi Fantasy that I found pretty comforting while I was growing up.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_of_the_Five_Magics Master of the Five Magics by Lyndon Hardy about a hopeless wizard trainee.

louislouis
Wow! Took the test 5mins ago, found out I'm an INTP too. Now reading these comments and links is blowing my mind! lol
axod
Why? Millions of people behave similarly. I don't get why this is interesting... or surprising.
bouncingsoul
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forer_effect
steveplace
That's why horoscopes and fortune cookies work.
hugh
Except in bed.
Tichy
Interesting, but somewhat unsatisfactory, I feel. What if the description really did describe everyone quite well? For example "you are a human" would describe everybody quite well. So the experiment seems incomplete.
brl
It's not just identifying with some vague general points of the description. For some people reading an INTP profile for the first time is blow-your-mind-and-shit-your-existential-pants amazing.

INTPs would be first in line to understand and point out the kind of cognitive bias that make people believe in horoscopes and astrology (and possibly the other 15 MBTI categories).

axod
Care to share what is so amazing about it? As it apparently describes millions of people to a T :/
petercooper
Wow, pretty amazing. I test myself every year or two, and other than flipping from ENTP to INTP several years ago, it's been INTP ever since. I'm surprised just how many INTPs there are on here considering the supposedly low prevalence.

FWIW, my wife is ESFJ, the polar opposite. It actually works out rather well. It's worth seeing what your SO is too, I wonder if that's a pattern.

tricky
My wife is ESFJ, too.
psiphlife
I'm INTP and my girlfriend is INTJ. I consider myself very lucky to have someone to relate to. We have a lot of the same habits -- e.g. we both stay up too late, are too stubborn, and we try to be completely honest with each other -- and usually this is nice, but sometimes we get carried away.

For example, when we met four months ago, we almost completely ignored our school work in favor of getting to know each other.

And for the past week we've been going to bed at 5am and waking up at noon. Ugh. :)

ia
i'm intj and my wife is esfj. she's going to school to become a therapist, while i'm finishing a cs degree... talk about opposites. but, it works.
petercooper
You're not wrong there. Mine's a nurse! The way I see it, hopefully I can use my brains to bring in some cash while we're young, and she can care for me once I go senile in my 50s from stress.
kaens
I'm fairly certain that INTP is more the norm when looking at the set of people who would be interested in HN. (Well, obviously. I mean that the stereotypical programmer / hacker-in-the-classical-sense seems like they'd fall close to INTP)
hugh
I really think that the 1% prevalence number thrown around for INTPs in the general population has to be an underestimate.

I'm wondering how they came up with that number. Where did they get their test sample? Surely if you go around asking people to take personality tests at random, their likelihood of saying "yes" vs "no, sod off" is going to be a lot stronger for some personality types than others.

jaxn
I am an ENTP. E/I was only a 2 point difference, so I usually say I am an E/INTP.

Another question, how many people actually were administered the actual Myers Briggs test vs a web survey or classroom activity? (I took the test via a career counselor 10 years ago).

rglullis
Wow. 30 points for INTP, 13 for INTJ while I'm writing this.

The timing for this poll couldn't be better. Just yesterday I was wondering about three things:

- How much of an INTP Paul Graham shows to be through his writing and his attitudes in regards to the development of Hacker News (both the software and the community).

- How much of the "initial" community would be INTP. It seems to me that many people came here because of affinity.

- Given that INTX are the least common group in the population (less than 5%), and given the way that PG is not willing to change the community "profile", this site is bound to have few users. Not because of elitism, but just because there isn't that many INTXs around!

wheels
I've seen these run through various hacker communities in the past and INTJ is definitely the classical hacker, with INTP not too far behind.

When testing in high school I tended to test INTP, but I've drifted towards ENTP and now tend to test as a pretty strong extrovert.

STHayden
makes me feel a little weird being and INTJ Designer with marginal to crappy hacking ability. Yeay for feeling out of place.
jkush
These are interesting results. I'm an ENTP - which seems to me to be an extroverted version of INTP. If you lump those two together - it seems that the overwhelming people here are very, very similar.
jonuts
i'm surprised there are so few extroverts here..

INTJ represent

jmatt
I'm a ENTP and rarely post. I am right on the line between INTP/ENTP. I've seen people on the line refered to as an XNTP. I've taken the test a number of times over the years and always end up with the same type.

I know I am, as more of an extrovert, just as likely to voice my opinions in any number of different ways. I think if anything this forum provides a way for introverts to voice their opinions.

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davo11
there are stacks but they're talking amongst themselves at the pub
krs
NTs dominate technical fields and most engineers are INTPs, so these results are consistent with what I've seen before. I've learned that your position on the Introversion-Extraversion axis depends on your situation. I'm a lot more outgoing when I'm at work if I can get a few hours in the evening alone to recharge mentally.

Oh, yeah. INTJ.

josefresco
I got to 25 before I bailed .. what does that say about me?

72 questions you got to be kidding me.

LogicHoleFlaw
Answer the questions as quickly as you can. Your first impulsive response will be the most accurate.
sah
Most accurate against what other measure? Has this been tested in some way, or is it just something people say?
LogicHoleFlaw
Good question. Actually I'm not sure - I'm just repeating the advice my mother gave me when I asked her. She's a certified proctor for these sorts of things.
marvin
At least three different psychologists have told me that the instinctive response is supposed to be the right one. I think it has something to do with how these tests were developed.

Keep in mind that personality tests like these are primarily intended to map out traits of a person's personality in preparation for some kind of psychotherapy. Maybe not so much for Myers-Briggs, I wouldn't know. But the scientific intent of these tests, if you could call it that, is simply to give your therapist an idea of when to start when trying to figure out some deeper issue. (Why you are miserable, unable to work, excessively anxious in specific situations etc.) For that purpose, personality tests are perfectly suitable.

martythemaniak
I wonder how much of an overlap there is between the INTPs and INTJs. For example, I always score INTP on these tests, and yet the INTJ profile describes me far, far better.
brl
You really only need one question to test for INTP. Do you have a constant compulsive need to correct people for even very small errors in logical congruency regardless of the social consequences? Can you detect cognitive dissonance from like 100 meters away? Have you ever not really been listening to somebody but somehow still noticed that they contradicted what they just said two minutes ago? Have you already hit the 'reply' button to explain to me that four similar questions is not technically the same thing as one question?
eru
No, I won't explain this to you.
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brl
INTP poster boy here.
xlnt
I scored 100 for introverted. Do I get a reward party?
alaskamiller
Yes. But only you're invited.
Hexstream
Is it really acceptable to contract "you" and "are" in that sentence?
rms
No... but I'm not sure why. Go English.
Hexstream
I'm guessing it's because the subject is "only you" (who's invited? "only you") and you can't merge half of the subject with (half of) the verb like that.
justindz
My mom is certified to deliver one of the official versions of the test. When I first took it in Middle School (well, used to be called Jr. High) I scored 1 point in the E column which is the courtesy point you get for being male. Therefore, the only way I could become more introverted would be to have been born a woman.
schtog
YOUR TYPE I N T P Strength of the preferences % 67 75 1 22

i dont get that. 1% thinking but yet

RANK of FUNCTION FUNCTION ORIENTATION Dominant Thinking Introverted ( Ti ) Secondary iNtuition Extraverted ( Ne ) Tertiary Sensing Introverted ( Si ) Inferior Feeling Extraverted ( Fe )

The consequences of the orientation and rank of each of the four functions for the INTP type is described in turn below.

thinking seems to be the most dominant of INTPs?

i myself consider myself a thinker. maybe with a direction towards more practical means though rather than philospoher.