Myers-Briggs Essay (Christian Perspective)
In the year 1962, Psychological pioneers Katharine Cook Briggs and her daughter Isabel Briggs Myers published one of the first modern personality assessment questionnaires. This questionnaire would then be further developed and eventually become one of the most popular personality type indicators in the US. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (or MBTI) was based off of Jung’s theory of psychological types and was designed to help people pinpoint the specifics of their personalities so that they could select a career path that would be best suited to them.
With the MBTI, people are identified as being one of sixteen different personality types. These personality types are determined by measuring four different aspects of personality: (1) Extraversion vs. Introversion, (2) Sensing vs. Intuition, (3) Thinking vs. Feeling and (4) Judging vs. Perceiving. The first personality aspect (Extraversion vs. Introversion) describes how people respond and interact with their environment, the second aspect focuses on how people gather information; the third determines how people make decisions based on the information they gather and the fourth focuses on how people deal with the world around them.
Extraverted individuals tend to enjoy high levels of social interaction and like spending time around people. This is opposed to Introverts who tend to lean more toward having fewer, yet more meaningful social interactions and prefer spending a larger portion of their time in solitude. People usually gather information through intuition or sensing. Those who use intuition are normally more attentive to things such as patterns. They enjoying thinking about different possibilities or outcomes and tend to think toward the future. “Sensors” on the other hand tend to rely more on their own senses and interpretations of reality to gather information. Individuals who prefer thinking to feeling tend to make decisions that generally focus more on facts and data, whereas “feelers”
With the MBTI, people are identified as being one of sixteen different personality types. These personality types are determined by measuring four different aspects of personality: (1) Extraversion vs. Introversion, (2) Sensing vs. Intuition, (3) Thinking vs. Feeling and (4) Judging vs. Perceiving. The first personality aspect (Extraversion vs. Introversion) describes how people respond and interact with their environment, the second aspect focuses on how people gather information; the third determines how people make decisions based on the information they gather and the fourth focuses on how people deal with the world around them.
Extraverted individuals tend to enjoy high levels of social interaction and like spending time around people. This is opposed to Introverts who tend to lean more toward having fewer, yet more meaningful social interactions and prefer spending a larger portion of their time in solitude. People usually gather information through intuition or sensing. Those who use intuition are normally more attentive to things such as patterns. They enjoying thinking about different possibilities or outcomes and tend to think toward the future. “Sensors” on the other hand tend to rely more on their own senses and interpretations of reality to gather information. Individuals who prefer thinking to feeling tend to make decisions that generally focus more on facts and data, whereas “feelers”
References: Cherry, K. (). The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. Retrieved from http://psychology.about.com/od/psychologicaltesting/a/myers-briggs-type-indicator.htm HumanMetrics: Jung Typology Test. (n.d.). Retrieved October 7, 2012, from www.humanmetrics.com: www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/JTypes2.asp Myers, D. G. (). Chapter 13: Personality. In K. Feyen (Ed.), Psychology (10th ed., p. 527). New York, New York: Worth Publishers.