Carl Jung and the Myers-Briggs

Carl Jung – a colleague of Sigmund Freud, introduced one of the earliest trait theories that became one of the main concepts in personality studies. Jung was never completely sold on Freud's ideas, and soon left his side to develop his own theory. This is not the place to go into details, but one aspect of the theory concerned traits that Jung felt were inborn. These inborn, genetically determined traits are usually called temperaments.

Later on, two students of Jung's theory named Myers and Briggs - mother and daughter - developed a personality test based on Jung's temperaments called the Myers-Briggs Type Inventory, or MBTI. It has gone on to become the most famous personality test of all time.

These traits are seen as opposites, and the first set is introversion and extraversion. Introversion refers to a tendency to prefer the world inside oneself. The more obvious aspects of introversion are shyness, distaste for social functions, and a love of privacy.

Extraversion is the tendency to look to the outside world, especially people, for one's pleasures. Extraverts are usually outgoing and they enjoy social activities, but they don't like to be alone.

The majority of people in the world are extraverts, so introverts often feel a bit out of it. A society like ours is very pro-extravert, even to the point of seeing introversion as abnormal and shy people in need of therapy. There are some cultures, however, that see extraverts as the oddballs. We should note that it was Jung who first used the terms introversion and extraversion.

Jung believed that introversion-extraversion was either-or. You are born one or the other and remain that way for the rest of your life. Now you could, as an introvert, learn to behave more like an extravert, or, as an extravert, learn to behave more like an introvert. But you can't really switch. If this is true, that would suggest that introversion-extraversion is determined by a single gene, something that is pretty unusual even for more physical differences. Nevertheless, it seems that introversion-extraversion is a very significant and fairly stable trait.

Next, there is a contrast between sensing people and intuiting people. Sensing types, as the name implies, get all their information about life from their senses. They tend to be realistic, down-to-earth people, but they tend to see everything in rather simplistic, concrete, black-or-white terms.

Intuiting people tend to get their information from intuition. This means that they tend to be a little out of touch with the more solid aspects of reality - a little "flakey", you might say - but may see "the big picture" behind the details better. Intuiting people are often artistic and can be rather philosophical.

Again, the majority of people are sensing, and that can make intuiting people feel rather lonely and under-appreciated. Our society tends to be distrustful of dreamers, artists, and intellectuals - but other societies may be more appreciative.

After that, we have another contrast, this time between thinkers and feelers. Thinking people make their decisions on the basis of thinking - reasoning, logic, step-by-step problem solving. This works very well for physical problems, but can leave something to be desired when dealing with something as complex as people.

Feeling people make their decisions based on their feelings. While this doesn't work so well when trying to fix your car or your computer; feelings are a kind of intuition that works very well when dealing with people.

Half of all people are thinking and half are feeling, but the proportions differ when we start looking at gender: The majority of men are thinkers and the majority of women are feelers. This goes along well with old stereotypes as well as recent research: men tend to do better with step-by-step problem solving, especially involving mechanical things; women tend to do better in social situations. Some people have criticized Jung for this apparent sexism, but we should note that a good third of men are feelers, and a good third of women are thinkers, so it is not a simple "men vs. women" kind of thing. Plus, Jung said that there is no reason to value thinking over feeling - each has its strengths and weaknesses. Note also that feeling men may feel odd, as may thinking women. Stereotypes do the greatest harm when they prevent individuals from being what they in fact are.

The last contrast is judging versus perceiving. Judging people tend to be more like Freud's anal retentive types - neat, orderly, hardworking, always on time, scheduling things very carefully. College professors tend to be judging.

Perceiving people are more spontaneous. They prefer to do things as the spirit moves them. They are probably more fun than the judging types but, as you can imagine, they tend not to get things done. It often seems to us college professors that college students are all perceiving.

In general, the distribution of judging and perceiving people is pretty even - 50-50.