Tag: sensing

Getting in Touch With Your Sensing Side (for INxJs)

Marissa

We’ve all gotten lost in thought and stubbed our toes or run into something because we weren’t paying attention (or is that just me and my friends?). But for some of us, keeping track of what’s going on in the outer world is actually quite a challenge. People who are Sensing types in the Myers-Briggs system are naturally “wired” to interact with the real world of sensory information, but Intuitives are more concerned with abstract thought and possibility. It can be quite a strength, but it has its downsides as well (perhaps there’s a reason only 30% of the population is Intuitive).

Getting in Touch With Your Sensing Side (for INxJs) | marissabaker.wordpress.com
Photo credits: Les Chatfield (Conversation With a Cat, CC BY), Eve Tisler (untitled, CC BY-SA), and my brother’s photo of me doing yoga

When Sensing isn’t your preferred function (or, in the case of INxJs and ENxPs, isn’t even your second or third function), it can be easy to loose touch with the outer world. Dominant Intuitives may forget to eat or exercise when they’re distracted by non-sensory concerns. We might zone-out and miss important things going on in the outer world. Sometimes we even get hurt and can’t remember how (if I had a dollar for the bruises, cuts, and bumps I notice and wonder “How’d that get there?” …). Yet as challenging as it is, getting in touch with our inferior function, and even befriending it in some way, offers rich opportunities for growth and stability. Read more →

Myers-Briggs: Fad or Science?

Marissa

Friends who know I blog about Myers Briggs types sometimes send me links to people critiquing the MBTI and ask what I think. The arguments in videos like “Why the Myers-Briggs test is totally meaningless” and articles such as “Goodbye to MBTI, the Fad That Won’t Die” tend to follow a similar pattern and hit the same points:

  • Kathryn Brigs and Isabel Briggs Myers had no formal training.
  • The test doesn’t allow for complex personalities or that someone can be a little bit of an extrovert and a little bit of an introvert at the same time.
  • Similarly, the judging-perceiving, thinking-feeling, and sensing-intuition “scales” don’t allow for people who use both.
  • About 50% of people who take the test twice within 5 weeks get different results.
  • Test fails to predict success in various jobs and doesn’t provide meaningful data.
  • The test remains popular because it only gives positive results. These results are vague and hard to argue with, much like astrology and pseudoscience.

Disclaimer: some of the links in this post are affiliate links. This means that, at no additional cost to you, I will receive a commission if you click on the link and make a purchase on that website.

Setting aside the first arguments for now, I think these points are a good criticism of some of the free tests going around which make people pick just between the four letter groups. None of this, however, takes into account the science behind Myers-Briggs. In fact, if the critics would bother reading Isabel Myers’ book Gifts Differing,* they would find most of their points have nothing to do with actual Myers-Briggs theory.Myers-Briggs: Fad or Science? | marissabaker.wordpress.com

The Truth About Extroverts and Introverts

The video I linked above correctly states that Jung’s theory allowed for people who didn’t fit neatly into a single category. But then they say Kathryn Briggs and Isabel Myers “took Jung’s types but slightly altered the terminology and changed it so every single person was assigned only one possibility or another. You couldn’t be a little bit of an extrovert or a little bit of an introvert.”

In fact, this a complete misrepresentation of Myers-Briggs theory. Read more →