I don't really know. It seems to me that there's a continuum between introvert and extrovert, OR that people can be one or the other at some times, and the other at other times, OR can vary between the two depending on context.
All told, I think I lean more towards "introvert" than "extrovert" most of the time, but on occasion I think I switch to a more extroverted mode.
I dunno, it's really hard to say. I don't think I have Aspergers though. But I could be wrong.
Usually, you are one or the other in social situations. When you go to an event alone, do you talk to people? Do you spark convo or do you look at your phone? This poll will be dominated by introverts. Should be interesting to see.
I believe that whether one behaves as an introvert or extrovert depends entirely on context. I've seen so-called 'social butterflies' hide in a corner and pretend to be occupied with their phone when put in an uncomfortable social situation. Inversely, I've seen rather quiet individuals take charge and demonstrate remarkable leadership & interpersonal skills when put in a situation where there was no obvious leader.
I think this is not black or white, It's more like a grayscale.
I'm surely more introvert than extrovert, but not completely introvert. Even if I feel some Asperger symptoms in myself in certain social situations, I also enjoy to party and meet new people.
So I'm sure anyone is 100% introvert or 100% extrovert all the time (this would be really insane).
The clearest I've seen it posed is this: Do you draw energy from or expend energy on highly social situations?
I'm quite an outgoing introvert, but after enough time I become mentally worn out by socialising and need a break to gather myself. Truly extroverted people I know feed off social situations and would lose enthusiasm from taking a break where I would come back re-enthused. When they eventually retreat for some "me time" it's physical rather than mental energy which they've exhausted.
I strongly suspect people become more likely to strongly self-identify with one category or another as a result of the concepts recently becoming popularized and would be less apt to consider themselves at either extreme were they not presented as mutually exclusive, and in opposition to one another.
I'd be fascinated to see how people do on the Lipson-Shiu test, but previous attempts to get people to engage have failed miserably. I don't think people here get the point.
It's not mine, it's by Andrew Lipson and Daniel Shiu. In conversation with Andrew he said that he and Daniel put the test together in one evening, but had been chatting about it for a few weeks.
And it's very much in Andrew's style - the kind of thing he does well. I have no further insights to offer.
ICUG (Inventor)
The ICUG is given to solitude and shoe staring. He or
she loves little puzzles and is often a good source of
off-the-wall, innovative ideas. Best left to their own
devices with only occasional steering
(example: Leonardo da Vinci)
Seems pretty clear to me.
But don't forget to read the explanation at the top of the page - this has to be interpreted in context.
Interesting. Unfortunately that poll was taken well before I even joined up, cause it definitely feels like it has a strong ISTJ/INTJ slant now somehow (ignoring possible mistyping and all that)...
What a hilarious test. I'm only surprised there weren't more questions. 10 questions, 16 types?? I came up ICUE, then ICIE, then ILIE (I don't lie, I omit the truth!). Most Meyers Briggs tests come up INTP, if not INTJ or INFJ for me.
The perenially-popular Myers-Briggs personality inventory is utterly bogus. If Myers-Briggs classified body types, it would be something like this:
"We're going to classify you in four different ways: height, skin-color, adiposity, and luminance. So, for example, I'm a TPWR (tall, plump, white, rainbow), but my colleague here is a SLBC (short, lithe, black, starlight). We're going to classify you with this questionnaire, but if you're unhappy with the results you get at the end please tell us and we'll change it."
Except that MBTI is only a superficial shorthand for the more complex Jungian cognitive function theory[1], which is more nuanced and has functions interacting in more complex ways than just the 4 dimensions represented by the MBTI system. More interestingly, is that these cognitive functions are actually starting to have some connections to neurological phenomena[2]. So while on the superficial level MBTI is kind of just a bunch of sugar coating, it actually is founded in more well-reasoned psychology. It could still be highly inaccurate, but it is unusually consistent (once you accept that the tests for it are generally terrible).
[1] Here are some good resources on their basic definitions:
I was talking about the test, not Jungian psychology. Regardless of how accurate Jung's musings turned out to be, any test that insists on classifying people as either an introvert or an extrovert flies in the face of the best empirical evidence.
What really bugs me is that there are recruiters who use this test as part of their hiring process. (Not in the US.) What a waste.
You can't blame people for trying to harness the power of that psychology in a practical manner though. A simple 4-letter code is much more practical than asking a person for their ranked cognitive function preferences.
Dismissing the entire MBTI system just because it's current testing implementations aren't perfect seems a bit shortsighted when the psychology behind it is actually pretty useful for predicting team dynamics to a certain degree. If you want to be annoyed with people that have no idea how to interpret MBTI results, then that's a different story, but there's no need to throw out a perfectly good baby with the bathwater...
> A simple 4-letter code is much more practical than asking a person for their ranked cognitive function preferences.
Yes, the world would be much simpler if we dichotomised everything. My shoe size is (LARGE / small). My GPA was (HIGH / low). My political beliefs are (LEFT / right) wing. I live in the (NORTHERN / Southern) hemisphere. It certainly helps when you're designing a database schema.
Sarcasm aside, can you think of a situation where it's actually helpful to measure and classify people according to a simple dichotomy like introvert / extravert?
I don't know, can you think of a situation where it's easier to complicate things needlessly with millions of superfluous variables? There's a reason we no longer program in assembly languages -- abstraction is helpful, and many useful abstractions can be simplified to a few core concepts. Personality types are abstract frameworks that simplify the modeling of human behavior. The reason they seem like dichotomies is because that's just more practical; we don't go around saying we're only 75% right-handed for example, we just say we're either "right-handed" or "left-handed", and that conveys just about all the useful information we need. Abstractions don't have to follow a lossy compression algorithm, but compression is nonetheless helpful when dealing with overwhelming amounts of information. Just go ask any economist...
I'm not exactly sure what idea/agenda you're trying to push by debating this, it's just another tool and another set of descriptions that can be added on to what is already there, not a replacement for what is there. Just because an app gives a user an ID number doesn't mean that the authors believe their users to be nothing but serial numbers. Simplification helps convey information efficiently. So assuming the larger data set still remains at you're disposal, I really don't understand what there is to disagree with.
I want people to stop using the Myers-Briggs test, because it is not a useful decision-making tool ("bogus" for short). It generates spuriously precise results that garner false confidence, and probably crowds out other, more valid instruments.
Your left- / right-handed analogy is not appropriate. The population is strongly clustered in terms of hand-dominance: most people clearly favour one hand over another. For the kinds of personality traits the MTBI measures, the distribution is roughly bell-shaped: most people cluster towards the middle.
This bell-shape means that a simple binary classification is just about the worst way to do things. Take the I/E axis. Most psychologists will tell you that there is an intro- / extraversion continuum, and only a few people are found at the extremes. A statistician will add that, because of the wide error bands (which we can measure by checking the correlation of the results from, say, the even-numbered with the odd-numbered questions) the MTBI can only reliably identify the extreme types. For the majority of people who are close to the I/E borderline, the results of the test are basically random.
So if my MTBI tells me that I'm an "I", all I really know is that I'm not an extreme "E". That isn't very helpful.
You mentioned having the larger dataset at our disposal. With the larger dataset, we don't need the MTBI. Without it, the MTBI tells us very little. So what good is it?
Dude, you're arguing against a strawman... These 4-letter MBTI type codes do not exist. They're just a helpful lookup table for the cognitive functions which do show a strong preference dichotomy like my handedness analogy and it is covered in that neurology talk I linked to originally.
I'm literally talking about the psychology of the subject, and you're talking about red herrings and road signs for what it's worth. If you want to construct a meaningful argument against Jungian cognitive psychology, then that's cool, but you're not arguing anything new/interesting here. Of course there is no I/E line! It's much more nuanced than that, or even a 'spectrum'. That would've been painfully obvious if you even glanced at the cognitive function references I linked. Introversion/Extroversion isn't a broad/clean dichotomy, but the concepts of it can be applied to much narrower areas, like the individual cognitive functions themselves.
It's been clear for ages that people can't be broadly categorized by the dimensions you're referring to, MBTI just uses them colloquially because it's a quick/easy shorthand to more insightful analysis. But again, you're barking up a strawman that's been refuted and barked up millions of times already. If you want to refute it's usefulness, you'll be better off studying up on cognitive psychology and addressing it's real underlying faults instead of all this easy low-hanging fruit that's already been picked. Jungian psychology isn't perfect, but what you're addressing here is old and widely acknowledged.
Again, if you have a problem with people misinterpreting MBTI results (which it seems like you do, as do I), that's a whole different matter that has nothing to do with the real underlying psychology behind it. I'm actually pretty sure we agree at some level, except that I've already taken the time to study the subject matter before jumping to conclusions.
I reiterate: I am not arguing against Jungian psychology. I am arguing against the well-known MBTI instrument that is promoted, and sold by the Myers-Brigg Foundation (http://www.myersbriggs.org/) as a tool to support therapists, employers, teachers, parents, and so on in their decision making.
Yes, I'm bayonetting a strawman. But that's because the Myers-Brigg Foundation set this strawman on an altar and made themselves high-priests, and they promise miracles to those who pay the entrance fee.
You're quite right that I know very little about Jungian psychology. That's why I focus on intro- / extraversion; because that's something I do know about and is well recognised in other schools of psychology. I also explained that the non-dichotomous nature of intro- / extraversion makes the MTBI I/E distinction almost useless.
But you tell me that the other psychologists have got it wrong. That the I/E distinction really is dichotomous, like left- / right-handedness. In that case, the MTBI test is even more useless, because it can't reliably distinguish them!
There's a chapter in the book "Automate This"[1] (Chapter 7) that deals with research that will make you highly effective in communicating with other people. It focuses on the research of a man called Dr. Taibi Kahler[2], who broadly breaks people down into 6 categories:
1. Emotions driven people
2. Thoughts based people
3. Actions driven people
4. Reflections driven people
5. Opinions driven people
6. Reactions based people
Everybody has a mix of some/all of the above, but one personality type dominates.
Before you scream "bullshit!", bear in mind that this research has been used by NASA to ensure that personality types that don't mix well don't end up as astronauts together in extremely dangerous space missions, and it also helped Bill Clinton to unseat an incumbent president in the 1992 US Presidential race.
> Before you scream "bullshit!", bear in mind that this research has been used by NASA to ensure that personality types that don't mix well don't end up as astronauts together in extremely dangerous space missions, and it also helped Bill Clinton to unseat an incumbent president in the 1992 US Presidential race.
In what way are either of those things evidence in support of your claims...? NASA might be interested in this research but this appeal to authority is fallacious -- NASA is an organization interested in physics and astronomy. If you told me NASA claimed someone found water on Pluto, I'd believe you. But personality tests are not that.
And presidential races are just so full of BS to begin with. This last cycle was proof of that. It's basically impossible to say that anything in particular helped any given candidate in any given year, but every pundit loves to speculate anyway. So there's plenty of theorizing to go around.
Nothing you posted (including in your citations) gives me any kind of predictive link between the theory you espouse and how people will actually behave.
To make matters worse:
> Everybody has a mix of some/all of the above, but one personality type dominates.
Oh splendid. Yet another theory that breaks down people into "types" and tells us that we have to handle these different "types" in different ways. I'll put it on the shelf next to Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligences, the four hippocratic humours, "left-brain vs. right-brain", Myers-Brigg, the various zodiac systems, blood group personality theory (very popular here in Japan) and all the other dross
Take, for instance, Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligences. That's the one that talks about kinaesthetic intelligence, verbal intelligence and so on. It is unusual, because it actually makes a prediction that we can test: students do best when taught in a style that most closely matches their intelligence type (the "meshing hypothesis").
There are many studies that claim to test and support the meshing hypothesis. But, to cut a long story short, most of them test a different version of the hypothesis that is so weak as to be almost tautological. The very few that really do test the meshing hypothesis invariably do NOT support it. After 30 years of looking for evidence to support Gardner's theories, the American Psychological Association gave up, and announced that, unless and until somebody produces some hard evidence, they will consider the theory discredited.
So is that the end for multiple intelligence? Hardly! Teacher training colleges still teach it. Elite schools still publish reports describing the wonderful results they got when they modified their curriculum according to Gardner's recommendations. (Invariably, it turns out they did nothing of the sort. They just introduced more variety into their classroom activities -- they certainly DIDN'T target particular activities towards particular learners.) And so on.
You cite the following evidence in support of Kahler's theories:
1. The Clintons support it.
2. NASA talked to Kahler when they were developing their astronaut recruitment program.
To the former, I say, "so what"?
As for the latter, I actually took a nanosecond to follow the links you gave, and what they said was something like, "Kahler told the NASA scientists to screen out the quitters". Well, I guess that's an important point, but I'd hardly call it a complete vindication for his theories.
So I scream "bullshit!". And I will continue to do so until you show me:
1. A non-trivial, falsifiable prediction grounded in Kahler's work.
2. A good quality study that tests this prediction and finds in Kahler's favor.
ILUE
Keep a close eye on these guys. They will follow
instructions to the letter and use all their power and
ingenuity to go against the spirit of what was intended.
Omigod. That's so me. These guys really know their stuff!
I'm an introvert, but people around me don't realize that.
Too little social interactions is bad for me and at work I sit most of the day with headphones and keyboard. When I go get coffee or lunch, I need my socializing dose.
I would recommend you to read "Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking" by Susan Cain (if you already have not heard of/read it). It is not a self help book prophesying shallow slogans and quick fixes , and provides insights about how introverts can do well (cope up) in the seemingly extrovert dominated world.
You're preaching to the quire. I'm from Scandinavia. We're generally not like the more ... well, talkative cultures.
Point was, I'm so "lapp-sjuk" ("Same disease", lack of human seeing humans) daily, I seem extrovert to people when I don't have my nose in a screen/book with headphones on.
I'm still not the life of the party, but maybe the life of the coffee table. :-)
Extrovert based on my last test, but I feel introvert due to my difficulties to open discussion someone with me, either someone that I know or stranger.
Why is Aspergers presented as a third option? I'm pretty sure having AS doesn't just take you off the Introvert/Extrovert spectrum. And while many people with AS are introverted, it isn't always the case.
I feel like this might've made more sense as two different polls.
48 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 112 ms ] threadAll told, I think I lean more towards "introvert" than "extrovert" most of the time, but on occasion I think I switch to a more extroverted mode.
I dunno, it's really hard to say. I don't think I have Aspergers though. But I could be wrong.
I'm surely more introvert than extrovert, but not completely introvert. Even if I feel some Asperger symptoms in myself in certain social situations, I also enjoy to party and meet new people.
So I'm sure anyone is 100% introvert or 100% extrovert all the time (this would be really insane).
That is, indeed, what most psychologists believe. The Myers-Brigg inventory is bogus, by the way.
I'm quite an outgoing introvert, but after enough time I become mentally worn out by socialising and need a break to gather myself. Truly extroverted people I know feed off social situations and would lose enthusiasm from taking a break where I would come back re-enthused. When they eventually retreat for some "me time" it's physical rather than mental energy which they've exhausted.
http://www.andrewlipson.com/lstest.html
Added: I am an ILIE
Personally, I'm usually a Grand Vizier (ILIE).
(Oh crap - just took it again and got ILIG)
What is interesting to me is how you can create these tests in general.
You ought to make a post explaining how to invent a test. Or a website to do it, like a meme generator. That'd get more interest here perhaps.
And it's very much in Andrew's style - the kind of thing he does well. I have no further insights to offer.
But don't forget to read the explanation at the top of the page - this has to be interpreted in context.
Lipson-Shiu: ICUE
I also scored as an ICUG on that other test, which seems to fit my INTP description, lol.
I'm also an INTP, but apparently more evil: ICIE on Lipson-Shiu.
"We're going to classify you in four different ways: height, skin-color, adiposity, and luminance. So, for example, I'm a TPWR (tall, plump, white, rainbow), but my colleague here is a SLBC (short, lithe, black, starlight). We're going to classify you with this questionnaire, but if you're unhappy with the results you get at the end please tell us and we'll change it."
:0)
[1] Here are some good resources on their basic definitions:
http://www.the16types.info/vbulletin/content.php/213-MBTI-De...
http://personalityjunkie.com/functions-ni-ti-fi-si-ne-te-fe-...
[2] This talk goes into some detail about how specific brain patterns seem to correlate with the Jungian cognitive functions:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGfhQTbcqmA
What really bugs me is that there are recruiters who use this test as part of their hiring process. (Not in the US.) What a waste.
Dismissing the entire MBTI system just because it's current testing implementations aren't perfect seems a bit shortsighted when the psychology behind it is actually pretty useful for predicting team dynamics to a certain degree. If you want to be annoyed with people that have no idea how to interpret MBTI results, then that's a different story, but there's no need to throw out a perfectly good baby with the bathwater...
Yes, the world would be much simpler if we dichotomised everything. My shoe size is (LARGE / small). My GPA was (HIGH / low). My political beliefs are (LEFT / right) wing. I live in the (NORTHERN / Southern) hemisphere. It certainly helps when you're designing a database schema.
Sarcasm aside, can you think of a situation where it's actually helpful to measure and classify people according to a simple dichotomy like introvert / extravert?
I'm not exactly sure what idea/agenda you're trying to push by debating this, it's just another tool and another set of descriptions that can be added on to what is already there, not a replacement for what is there. Just because an app gives a user an ID number doesn't mean that the authors believe their users to be nothing but serial numbers. Simplification helps convey information efficiently. So assuming the larger data set still remains at you're disposal, I really don't understand what there is to disagree with.
I want people to stop using the Myers-Briggs test, because it is not a useful decision-making tool ("bogus" for short). It generates spuriously precise results that garner false confidence, and probably crowds out other, more valid instruments.
Your left- / right-handed analogy is not appropriate. The population is strongly clustered in terms of hand-dominance: most people clearly favour one hand over another. For the kinds of personality traits the MTBI measures, the distribution is roughly bell-shaped: most people cluster towards the middle.
This bell-shape means that a simple binary classification is just about the worst way to do things. Take the I/E axis. Most psychologists will tell you that there is an intro- / extraversion continuum, and only a few people are found at the extremes. A statistician will add that, because of the wide error bands (which we can measure by checking the correlation of the results from, say, the even-numbered with the odd-numbered questions) the MTBI can only reliably identify the extreme types. For the majority of people who are close to the I/E borderline, the results of the test are basically random.
So if my MTBI tells me that I'm an "I", all I really know is that I'm not an extreme "E". That isn't very helpful.
You mentioned having the larger dataset at our disposal. With the larger dataset, we don't need the MTBI. Without it, the MTBI tells us very little. So what good is it?
I'm literally talking about the psychology of the subject, and you're talking about red herrings and road signs for what it's worth. If you want to construct a meaningful argument against Jungian cognitive psychology, then that's cool, but you're not arguing anything new/interesting here. Of course there is no I/E line! It's much more nuanced than that, or even a 'spectrum'. That would've been painfully obvious if you even glanced at the cognitive function references I linked. Introversion/Extroversion isn't a broad/clean dichotomy, but the concepts of it can be applied to much narrower areas, like the individual cognitive functions themselves.
It's been clear for ages that people can't be broadly categorized by the dimensions you're referring to, MBTI just uses them colloquially because it's a quick/easy shorthand to more insightful analysis. But again, you're barking up a strawman that's been refuted and barked up millions of times already. If you want to refute it's usefulness, you'll be better off studying up on cognitive psychology and addressing it's real underlying faults instead of all this easy low-hanging fruit that's already been picked. Jungian psychology isn't perfect, but what you're addressing here is old and widely acknowledged.
Again, if you have a problem with people misinterpreting MBTI results (which it seems like you do, as do I), that's a whole different matter that has nothing to do with the real underlying psychology behind it. I'm actually pretty sure we agree at some level, except that I've already taken the time to study the subject matter before jumping to conclusions.
Yes, I'm bayonetting a strawman. But that's because the Myers-Brigg Foundation set this strawman on an altar and made themselves high-priests, and they promise miracles to those who pay the entrance fee.
You're quite right that I know very little about Jungian psychology. That's why I focus on intro- / extraversion; because that's something I do know about and is well recognised in other schools of psychology. I also explained that the non-dichotomous nature of intro- / extraversion makes the MTBI I/E distinction almost useless.
But you tell me that the other psychologists have got it wrong. That the I/E distinction really is dichotomous, like left- / right-handedness. In that case, the MTBI test is even more useless, because it can't reliably distinguish them!
1. Emotions driven people
2. Thoughts based people
3. Actions driven people
4. Reflections driven people
5. Opinions driven people
6. Reactions based people
Everybody has a mix of some/all of the above, but one personality type dominates.
Before you scream "bullshit!", bear in mind that this research has been used by NASA to ensure that personality types that don't mix well don't end up as astronauts together in extremely dangerous space missions, and it also helped Bill Clinton to unseat an incumbent president in the 1992 US Presidential race.
Here's a simple article about it: http://www.bottomlinepublications.com/content/article/busine...
[1] http://www.amazon.com/Automate-This-Algorithms-Markets-World...
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taibi_Kahler
In what way are either of those things evidence in support of your claims...? NASA might be interested in this research but this appeal to authority is fallacious -- NASA is an organization interested in physics and astronomy. If you told me NASA claimed someone found water on Pluto, I'd believe you. But personality tests are not that.
And presidential races are just so full of BS to begin with. This last cycle was proof of that. It's basically impossible to say that anything in particular helped any given candidate in any given year, but every pundit loves to speculate anyway. So there's plenty of theorizing to go around.
Nothing you posted (including in your citations) gives me any kind of predictive link between the theory you espouse and how people will actually behave.
To make matters worse:
> Everybody has a mix of some/all of the above, but one personality type dominates.
Makes the whole thing sound vacuous.
Take, for instance, Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligences. That's the one that talks about kinaesthetic intelligence, verbal intelligence and so on. It is unusual, because it actually makes a prediction that we can test: students do best when taught in a style that most closely matches their intelligence type (the "meshing hypothesis").
There are many studies that claim to test and support the meshing hypothesis. But, to cut a long story short, most of them test a different version of the hypothesis that is so weak as to be almost tautological. The very few that really do test the meshing hypothesis invariably do NOT support it. After 30 years of looking for evidence to support Gardner's theories, the American Psychological Association gave up, and announced that, unless and until somebody produces some hard evidence, they will consider the theory discredited.
So is that the end for multiple intelligence? Hardly! Teacher training colleges still teach it. Elite schools still publish reports describing the wonderful results they got when they modified their curriculum according to Gardner's recommendations. (Invariably, it turns out they did nothing of the sort. They just introduced more variety into their classroom activities -- they certainly DIDN'T target particular activities towards particular learners.) And so on.
You cite the following evidence in support of Kahler's theories:
1. The Clintons support it.
2. NASA talked to Kahler when they were developing their astronaut recruitment program.
To the former, I say, "so what"?
As for the latter, I actually took a nanosecond to follow the links you gave, and what they said was something like, "Kahler told the NASA scientists to screen out the quitters". Well, I guess that's an important point, but I'd hardly call it a complete vindication for his theories.
So I scream "bullshit!". And I will continue to do so until you show me:
1. A non-trivial, falsifiable prediction grounded in Kahler's work.
2. A good quality study that tests this prediction and finds in Kahler's favor.
(I'm such a sucker for Barnum statements.)
Too little social interactions is bad for me and at work I sit most of the day with headphones and keyboard. When I go get coffee or lunch, I need my socializing dose.
Point was, I'm so "lapp-sjuk" ("Same disease", lack of human seeing humans) daily, I seem extrovert to people when I don't have my nose in a screen/book with headphones on.
I'm still not the life of the party, but maybe the life of the coffee table. :-)
I feel like this might've made more sense as two different polls.