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Thursday, November 20, 2008

A bit of fun 

According to the typealyzer, my current writing here in this blog is representative of
ESTP - The Doers
“The active and playful type. They are especially attuned to people and things around them and often full of energy, talking, joking and engaging in physical out-door activities.

”The Doers are happiest with action-filled work which craves their full attention and focus. They might be very impulsive and more keen on starting something new than following it through. They might have a problem with sitting still or remaining inactive for any period of time.”

I can identify with the stuff about outdoor activities and not sitting still, but playful? Talking and joking? Nah… that’s not me.

Although the site doesn’t say so explicitly, the categories used appear to be the Myers-Briggs types, derived from Jung’s work. Last time I did a Myers-Briggs, I was an INFJ – the exact opposite of the above.
"Quietly forceful, original, and sensitive. Tend to stick to things until they are done. Extremely intuitive about people, and concerned for their feelings. Well-developed value systems which they strictly adhere to. Well-respected for their perserverence in doing the right thing. Likely to be individualistic, rather than leading or following."

Intrigued, I decided to try putting some archive pages through the test. The first came up INTP – half way at least to an INFJ. I tried some more archives – and was surprised by the consistency of the result - INTP 7 times out of 8, on archives from 2003 to 2008

INTP - The Thinkers
“The logical and analytical type. They are especially attuned to difficult creative and intellectual challenges and always look for something more complex to dig into. They are great at finding subtle connections between things and imagine far-reaching implications.

”They enjoy working with complex things using a lot of concepts and imaginative models of reality. Since they are not very good at seeing and understanding the needs of other people, they might come across as arrogant, impatient and insensitive to people that need some time to understand what they are talking about.”

Still not really something I’d recognize as being me. At any rate, I hope those occasional bouts of insensitivity are indeed only occasional...

Curiously, my long-abandoned but not deleted other (anonymous) blog comes up with INTJ “The Scientist” – which is what my Myers-Briggs type used to be 20 years ago, until I lost faith in analytical thought and began to trust my feelings more - which makes me wonder whether, were I to do a Myer-Briggs test today, I’d have reverted to the INTJ type, having now seemingly abandoned feelings.

Now, I don’t suppose there’s really very much to read into a machine-based interpretation of a small sample of writing, but the consistency of the results suggests that maybe it at least isn’t totally bogus.

If nothing else, it’s prompted me to think once again about how external behaviour reflects the inner self, and to wonder whether I put too much control on my external behaviour, and don’t allow full expression to the inner self.

Hat tip to Andrea for the link.

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