Uncovering Personality //

There are many different types and methodologies of personality tests out there. Some of the most common ones include the MBTI, the Big Five, and Enneagram. Many of us, myself included, have taken all of these and likely more that we can’t remember. Some of us, myself included again, have taken these same tests multiple times over the years. However, I never felt truly connected with my results. There were always similarities between what I read and what I knew of myself, but the similarities always seemed superficial to me. I also knew that during high school, I tried to hide some of my personality traits.

This is the reason I titled this “Uncovering Personality” instead of “Discovering Personality.” This endeavor has been much less like finding my personality and more like revealing it from underneath the guards and walls I have put up to cover it. For a long time I have struggled with depressive and anxious thoughts that tend to influence how I behave and present myself. Many times I try to convince myself that I am already some kind of ideal that I have about personality, but in truth my ideals don’t often describe who I actually am. Adding on to this, I was a teenager when I took my first personality test. Most people are probably teenagers when personality tests are introduced to them, and the most commonly used test is likely the MBTI. You receive one of sixteen designations of four letters based on how you answer questions, and this result is meant to help you navigate life. Unfortunately, the teenage years are perhaps the most turbulent time of life. From the ages of 12 to 25, so much development occurs in the body and mind of each of us. Is it unexpected then, that we could be mistyped?

When I first took the MBTI, my result was INFP: The Healer. Since then, my results have been nearly everything under the IN– umbrella, with occasional dips into IS–. From results alone, I’ve been relatively certain that my first two letters are IN: Introverted, iNtuition. What about the last two letters? Nearly every test I took had a near 50/50 split on the last two letters, just barely leaning one way over another. For a while I had believed I was just a cusp, a unicorn. However, studying a little more into Jung types and personality psychology shows that there are fundamental differences between the personality types that cannot cross. This discovery led me back to the question I’d already been asking myself for years. What is my personality?

It sounds like a simple, easy question to answer. Nobody knows my personality better than myself, right? But we can be shockingly good at suppressing our own tendencies from ourselves. Recently I decided to get to the bottom of this mystery, I believe am quite close to a solution, if not at it already. My formula began with taking multiple tests from multiple websites. Then I compiled the results and read on every personality type, eliminating them as I came across descriptions that did not align with me.

The seven personalities I had to research were the following:

INFJ - The Counselor
INFP - The Healer
ISFJ - The Protector
ENTP - The Visionary
ISTJ - The Inspector
INTP - The Architect
INTJ - The Mastermind

In the first round of study, three personalities were eliminated. The first was INFJ, and it was eliminated very quickly. I didn’t even finish reading the first paragraph of the first page I had on INFJ and I knew that it wasn’t describing me. The second to be eliminated was ISFJ. This type made it further and stood out to me as being in many ways idealistic; the description sounded like who I wanted to be, but not who I am. The third was ENTP. Interestingly, there are a lot of superficial habits I shared with this type that I believe to have picked up from my dad. However, the deeper characteristics did not reflect my own.

With those three out of the way, I had to more deeply study the four that were left: INFP, ISTJ, INTP, and INTJ. INFP had special relevance for me due to its primacy, as it was my first result. Studying the Healer revealed that I do find many connections with it, however, there was one glaring problem that could not be reconciled. Over and over, throughout the pages I read on the INFP, was the idea of non-judgment. This is certainly not me. I am one of the most judgmental people I know. If someone does not meet my criteria for a friend, I am extremely quick to remove them from my life as best as I can. Does that sound like a “Healer” to you? It doesn’t sound like one to me. So with great sorrow, I eliminated INFP from my potential results. Then ISTJ came under scrutiny, and it did not stand up to it. While it passed the first round of my initial reading, containing many similarities to myself, in the second round I found a couple of problems. Firstly, the ISTJ is characterized by an ability to stay calm in hard times. While I may be able to present myself as calm occasionally, I become distressed easily. Secondly, the ISTJ expects others to follow extremely strict protocols, and I do not believe I expect this out of anyone.

All of that leaves us with two personalities for the final round: INTP and INTJ. A difference of one letter, Perceiving versus Judging, and yet quite different in motivations. In the first round, INTJ pulled ahead because the introductory description connected with me better. However, the INTP still gave a strong enough connection to move on to the next round. In the second round I studied them both more deeply, and what I expected to widen the gap between them actually closed it. Lastly, in this final round the result is…

Inconclusive. The last round is still ongoing. The more I study them both, the more I connect with them both. I may end up paying for a type-clarifier, at which point I will share the results, but for now I will say this: while I haven’t come to a conclusion, I am beginning to lean towards one over the other. These types share many similarities, expressions, and interests, but it is from looking back at the very beginning that I find myself favoring INTJ over INTP.

To clarify exactly what I’m talking about, consider the inversion of type functions and how this inversion affects how each type views the world. The INTJ has a dominant function of introverted intuition and an auxiliary function of extraverted thinking, while the INTP has a dominant function of introverted thinking and an auxiliary function of extraverted intuition. What this means for the INTP is that they begin with logic for the sake of logic and internally analyze before reaching a conclusion. Then they openly explore ideas and aren’t driven to come to a conclusion out of necessity, but can more easily point out the problems with other people’s conclusions. Contrarily, the INTJ tends to have an internal intuition and develops a conclusion first without understanding why or how they arrived at it. This doesn’t mean that they are illogical, but that they unconsciously see connections and come to a realization. Once they have the realization, they work to understand it. They will pick it apart, analyze it, organize it, compare it to known facts and methods of logic, and make a decision.

For myself, I believe that most often I find myself with an intuition, hunch, or idea about something that I have no idea how I came to believe. After I realize this, I attack it logically. This simple reason is why I am leaning towards understanding myself as an INTJ. However, there are many other issues where I find myself agreeing with the INTP. Perhaps these things are merely fog obscuring what I already know to be true. Maybe I will take the type-clarifier and it will confirm my hunch. It could also be possible that by dwelling on this I will come to a conclusion on my own. We will see.