So anyways, a while back, a Facebook friend suggested that I take a personality test.
Actually that’s not quite true…
My friend made the observation that I tended to make arguments based on feelings rather than purely on thinking, and that was reflective of my personality type, or something to that effect.
Admittedly — despite assurance from my friend that there was no reason to — I took a bit of umbrage at the observation. In retrospect that reaction may have been proof that my friend’s observation had some merit: this “umbrage” — my own “feelings” regarding my friend’s observation — prompted me to ask my friend where I might take a personality test to determine whether I actually have the personality type — the “Feelings” part, at least — that my friend claimed.
So my friend provided a link (I will find it later and add it; right now I am thumb typing in Gmail and I have a crap signal), and I took a short quiz, asking how I would behave in certain situations, what I think about this or that, etc. etc. etc., blah blah blah.
There are 4 main categories on this personality scale, and each category is split into 2 parts. For clarity’s sake — it may not be clear now, but it will be in a minute — I will list the 4 categories and their 2 parts.
Category 1 is whether a person is Introverted (I) or Extroverted (E).
Category 2 is whether a person relies on Sensing (S) or iNtuition (N).
Category 3 (the one that made me needlessly take temporary umbrage) is between Thinking (T) and Feeling (F), and
Category 4 is between Judging (J) and Perceiving (P).
(Regrettably, I am not knowledgeable enough on this subject to go into any more detail on these categories. Search for “Briggs Myers Personality Types” for more detailed info.)
At any rate, I took the test. I answered each question as honestly as I could — including ones that asked about “feelings” — and this was my result:
From the four categories, this test determined that my personality type is
INTP:
I — Introverted
N — iNtuition
T — Thinking
P — Perceiving
My friend (who is ENTP) pointed out that my overall score on the “T/F” section was pretty close to 50%. Nonetheless, for no good reason whatsoever, I felt somewhat vindicated that “T” popped up in my quiz results over “F”.
The INTP personality description was pretty on-point, for the most part, and seeing as how the website listed “Albert Einstein” among the most famous INTPs from history, well, I can’t deny that I liked my test results.
Something else kinda stood out: INTP personalities are (I think) the most rare of the 16 types on the scale. Something like 3% of the population has the INTP type, I think I read.
Long story short, a couple weeks ago, after I took daytime cold medicine at night and couldn’t go to sleep, I got up and played around online, looking for entertainment.
I ended up taking the personality quiz again. And bear this in mind:
The first time I took the quiz was in the middle of a work day. My brain was geared up for thinking, acting rationally, doing what’s best for the company I work for, etc. And remember, I got “INTP” with the “T” just beating the “F”.
The second time I took the quiz (a couple months after the first time), my nose was running, I had a fever, I was loopy from cold medicine, and it was about 3 in the morning.
Long story short, this second time, the results were a little different. This time around, I got “INFP”, or
I — Introverted
N — iNtuition
F — Feeling
P — Perceiving
as my result. And again, the “T/F” section was pretty close to 50%. The other categories — like the first time I took the quiz — were all skewed heavily to one side.
So, based on these two tests, the “I” part is a definite yes, the “N” part is a definite yes, and the “P” part is a definite yes. The variable is “T/F”.
The description of the INFP personality type was also pretty on-point, vis-a-vis yours truly. There was only one thing I took issue with:
INFPs, according to the website that had the quiz and whatnot, always see the good in people. They believe that all people are good at heart, and so on and so forth.
I do not — do *not* — believe that. I believe that some people are just basically rotten. I believe — actually, I know — that some people wake up in the morning looking for a way to screw people over. I know that a great many people in the world screw people over every day that goes by and feel absolutely wonderful about it.
There are, in fact, terrible, terrible people in the world, people who absolutely salivate over the suffering of other people. People who thrive on that suffering, people who are even motivated by it.
But at the same time, I recognize that these people *must* have something fundamentally wrong with them. It may be something genetic that makes them be awful, maybe they’ve been hurt before and are now taking it out on others…
And etc. etc. etc. blah blah blah.
It isn’t exactly that I “see the good” in “bad” people…
It’s more like I pity them.
And I guess if you get right down to it, the difference there is merely semantics.
Again, though, something stood out about the INFP personality type as well:
It’s also pretty rare. 4% of the population, I think the website said. And the most famous INFP from history (which how they determined this is even more of a mystery than how they determined Einstein was INTP)?
Shakespeare. As in William.
And no, I ain’t no Shakespeare. But with my liberal arts background, and my abilities with verse and whatnot (I can iambic pentameter with the best of em), well, I am closer to Billy Shakes than I am to Allie E. any day of the week.
Either way, I’m somewhere in between two of the most uncommon personality types, INTP and INFP.
And I have to say… looking back on my nearly 37 years…
That explains a whole hell of a lot.
Etc. etc. etc., blah blah blah.
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