10 Signs That You Might Be an INTJ Personality Type

24 December, 201923 December, 2019Marissa

INTJs are among the rarest of the Myers-Briggs® personality types, and they’re also among the most misunderstood. If you’re wondering whether or not this might be your personality type, here are ten signs that you might be an INTJ.

Individually, the signs listed in this article are true of more than one personality type. There are 16 different types in the Myers-Briggs® system and many of them share a number of similarities that can make it challenging to tell them apart. But if most of these points sound like you, then there’s a good chance that you’re an INTJ.

1) Your Mind Works Differently

INTJs are a rare personality type. Intuitive types only make up about 30% of the population, and your preference for Sensing/Intuition affects how you process the world and learn new information. A natural consequence of this fact is that INTJs’ minds work differently than most other people they’ll meet and interact with.

You’ve probably already figured that out, though. INTJs tend to think deeply about things and many are very aware of the fact that their minds work in a fundamentally different way than many other people. This difference has to do with the way the INTJ type uses their preferred mental functions. Read more →

How Do Other People See INTJ Personality Types?

16 December, 201916 July, 2021Marissa

When we talk about the INTJ personality type, stereotypes are often the first things to come to mind. INTJs are the mastermind personality, smarter than everyone else. They’re also the villain type counting such characters as Moriarty, Emperor Palpatine, Maleficent, and Jaffar among their ranks. Common descriptors include aloof, intelligent, blunt, sarcastic, loyal, and cold.

Clearly, the people who claim Myers-Briggs® types feed you an unrealistically positive view of yourself didn’t read very many INTJ articles. Even the ego-stroking articles that highlight INTJ’s intellect almost immediately mention drawbacks like loneliness because of how they come across to others with their “take-no-prisoners” attitude.

I suppose it’s not surprising, then, that I’ve talked to quite a few INTJs who assume people don’t like them. I’ve also seen quite a few people online bear this out, saying they “can’t stand” INTJs because some aspect of their personality rubs them the wrong way. Even INTJs themselves perpetuate the stereotypes. For example, my INTJ sister suggested (half in jest) that I title this post “Are INTJs really unfeeling bastards?” and answer simply: “Yes. Yes, they are.”

With all that said, you might think this post is just going to be about how much people dislike the INTJ personality type. But once you step off the Internet and start meeting INTJs in person, many people find that they really do like being around people with INTJ personality types. And many INTJs find that they often make better impressions on people than they expected they would.

Intelligent

“Wow, you’re so smart” is a comment the typical INTJ hears quite often. The INTJ may or may not believe this. Some soak in the praise and think of themselves as intellectuals or geniuses. Others will deflect such comments, saying they simply work hard and that other people overestimate their intelligence. Read more →

How Do I Know If I’m an INTJ or an INTP?

18 November, 201917 November, 2019Marissa

After learning about Myers-Briggs® types and taking a few tests, one question you might have is how to tell which of two similar types you are. Taking multiple online tests often gives you several different results, so that’s one way this question can come up. Or maybe you started reading about the types and realized more than one sounds like you.

If you’re trying to decide whether you’re more of an INTJ or an INTP type, I hope this article helps. Just looking at the letters in these two types, we might think the only difference between them is that one’s a perceiving type and one is a judging type. This is only party true. When we dive deeper into the cognitive functions each Myers-Briggs® type uses, it become easier to see the differences and similarities between these two types’ mental processes more clearly.

If you’re not familiar with cognitive functions, click here to read “The Simplest Guide to Myers-Briggs® Functions Ever.” INTJs and INTPs might look similar at first, but they use completely different functions, as shown in this graphic:

The way these cognitive functions work together makes INTPs and INTJs similar in some ways and very different in others. They might seem near-identical times but their underlying thought patters and motivations don’t look nearly as much alike as you might think. Read more →

5 Things We Can Learn about INTJs and ENTJs from Fictional Villains

6 November, 20196 November, 2019Marissa

One of the most common stereotypes around Myers-Briggs® types as they relate to the world of fiction is that most villains are NT types. Not all of course (I even have a whole post about the comparatively rare NF-type villains), but it does seem that an unusually large percentage of bad guys in fiction have an NT personality type. Specifically, we see the INTJ “Mastermind” filling the ranks of villains probably more often than any other type. ENTJs might come close, but they’re less often stereotyped as the villain. Maybe they just have better PR teams.

Magneto, Voldemort, Moriarty, Hannibal Lechter, Tywin Lannister, Emperor Palpatine, Rumplestiltskin, The Master, Saruman, Light Yagami, Lex Luthor, Scar, Maleficent, Jaffar — they’re all iconic villains from fiction who are typically typed as INTJs or ENTJs. When taken to a villainous extreme, these clever, calculating personality types can be absolutely terrifying. I even included one villain on each of my lists 7 Fictional Characters You’ll Relate To If You’re An INTJ and 7 Fictional Characters You’ll Relate To If You’re An ENTJ because they villainous versions of these types are such an integral part of fiction.

Casting these types as villains makes for some of the most calculating, clever, and creepy antagonists in fiction. But what (if anything) does it tell us about real-life INTJs and ENTJs? Are they secretly as evil as their fictional counterparts? Or do we stereotype these personalities as “evil” because we simply don’t understand them?

Every person has the potential to use their talents and gifts for good or evil; to choose the light or the dark. This holds true for INTJs and ENTJs, and we do them a great disservice if we assume they’re evil or treat them as the villain without getting to know them as they truly are.

There some great posts out there (like this one from Introvert, Dear) combating the whole “INTJs are villains” thing. Today, though, I want to take some of those villainous stereotypes and see if we can use them to learn something about the real-life INTJs and ENTJs in our lives. Read more →

How Do I Know If I’m an INTJ or an ENTJ?

28 October, 201928 October, 2019Marissa

When someone’s looking for their Myers-Briggs® type I usually suggest they take several different tests and compare results. But what happens when you get different results, say, INTJ in one test and ENTJ on another? Or maybe you take the tests a couple months apart and get different answers, or start reading about the different types and discover more than one that sounds a lot like you.

If you’re trying to decide whether you’re an INTJ or an ENTJ, I hope this article will help. Just looking at the names of these personality types, we might think the only difference is that one is more extroverted than the other. That’s only party true, though. When we dive deeper into the cognitive functions that describe the mental processes each Myers-Briggs® type uses, it gets easier to see the differences and similarities between these two types more clearly.

If you’re not familiar with cognitive functions, click here to read “The Simplest Guide to Myers-Briggs® Functions Ever.” INTJ and ENTJs both use the same cognitive functions. They just use them in a different order of preference, as shown in this graphic:

The way these cognitive functions work together makes ENTJs and INTJs very different in certain ways and very similar in others. Thankfully for those wanting to figure out which of these two types they are, several key differences in how INTJs and ENTJs learn information and approach the world make it possible for us to tell these types apart. Read more →

Intuitives Abroad

24 October, 201924 October, 2019Marissa

I’ve safely returned from my trip to France, though not without a few complications. Flying with a nasty headcold scores a 0 out of 10 and I would not recommend it. Thankfully my brother and sister were healthy and navigated the airports for me so I could just follow them around in a congestion-induced stupor and focus on breathing.

That was only a shadow over the last couple days of trip, though. Most of the experience was fantastic. Before this, I’d never been any farther outside the United States than the Canadian side of Niagara Falls. Then all the sudden I’m getting on a plane in Detroit, waking up the next morning in Paris, and walking down streets older than the country I live in. We had one day in Paris, then flew to Nice and took a bus to Saint-Raphaël. We were there on the Mediterranean coast for about a week, during which we also visited Saint Paul de Vance (pictured in the featured image for this post), Monaco, and Cannes.

Visiting Paris with Mark Twain

I took this trip with my siblings, so our little group consisted of an INFJ, INTJ, and ENFJ (hence the title of this post, which I’ve been planing on using for a while now and am still endlessly pleased with). I started reading Mark Twain’s Innocents Abroad while on the trip, mostly because I wanted to nod to it in a blog post title once we got home. I love the books by Twain that I’ve read, but even though this was the one that sold best during his lifetime I hadn’t read it before.

It’s interesting to read Twain’s record of his visit to Paris in 1867 with our own visit 152 years later. Our experience with French food was similar, with unfamiliar dishes accompanied by “wine with every course, of course, being in France.” Like Twain, on visiting Notre Dame “we recognized the brown old Gothic pile in a moment” even with the recent fire damage making it impossible for us to go inside. We also visited the Louvre like Twain and his companions, though we seem to have been more impressed by “its miles of paintings by the old maters” than he was. Read more →