MBTI Personality Test

A Comprehensive Personality Test

The MBTI personality test is designed to measure preferences in how people perceive the world and make decisions. It is one of the most commonly used and recommended personality test.

Two and a half million Americans a year take the MBTI personality test and eighty-nine companies out of the US Fortune 100 make use of it for recruitment and selection or to help employees understand themselves and their co-workers.

Understanding your employees or your team member’s Myers-Briggs type can provide deep insights to the different personality types of team members. This should be imperative for anybody with a managerial role since test results would be beneficial in understanding how other personality types think differently and how to work with those differences to have a win-win outcome.

This can make your leadership more effective because you would be able to more effectively manage relationships amongst team members and also becoming more discerned in task allocation.

Type provides a framework for understanding individual differences, and provides a dynamic model of individual development, which can translate to many other functions that compose an organization.

The MBTI uses a series of forced choice questions in which the individuals have to choose only one of two possible answers to each question. The choices are a mixture of word pairs and short statements and are chosen to reflect opposite preferences.

The MBTI personality test basically classifies people into types based on 4 preferences.

The 4 Dichotomies of the MBTI

Extraversion-Introversion (E-I)

This dichotomy distinguishes a preference for focusing attention on, and drawing energy from, the outer world of people and things versus the inner world of ideas and impressions.

Extraversion basically means “outward-turning” and introversion means “inward-turning.”

People who prefer extraversion draw energy from action: they tend to act, then reflect, and then act further. If they are inactive, their motivation tends to decline.

To rebuild their energy, extraverts need breaks from time spent in reflection. Conversely, those who prefer introversion expend energy through action: they prefer to reflect, then act, then reflect again.

To rebuild their energy, introverts need quiet time alone, away from activity.

Sensing-INtuition (S-N)

This dichotomy distinguishes a preference for gathering data directly through the senses as facts, details, and precedents (Sensing) versus indirectly as relationships, patterns, and possibilities (INtuition).

Sensing and intuition are the information-gathering functions. They describe how new information is understood and interpreted.

Individuals who prefer sensing are more likely to trust information that is in the present, tangible and concrete. They prefer to look for details and facts.

On the other hand, those who prefer intuition tend to trust information that is more abstract or theoretical, that can be associated with other information.

They tend to trust those flashes of insight that seem to bubble up from the unconscious mind.

Thinking-Feeling (T-F)

This dichotomy distinguishes a preference for deciding via objective, impersonal logic (Thinking) versus subjective, person-centered values (Feeling).

Thinking and feeling are the decision-making functions, which are used to make rational decisions.

Those who prefer thinking tend to decide things from a more detached standpoint, measuring the decision by what seems reasonable, logical, causal, consistent and matching a given set of rules.

Those who prefer feeling tend to come to decisions by associating or empathizing with the situation, looking at it ‘from the inside’ and weighing the situation to achieve, on balance, the greatest harmony, consensus and fit, considering the needs of the people involved.

Judging-Perceiving (J-P)
This dichotomy distinguishes an outward preference for having things planned and organized (Judging) versus a flexible style based more on staying open to options than deciding (Perceiving).

It basically suggests that people also have a preference for using either the judging function (thinking or feeling) or their perceiving function (sensing or intuition) when relating to the outside world (extraversion).

Possible Personality Types

After you have done the MBTI personality tests, your personality type would be determined according to your preference in each category, which can be expressed as a code with four letters.

These are the 16 possible personality types expressed.

ISTJ ISFJ INFJ INTJ
ISTP ISFP INFP INTP
ESTP ESFP ENFP ENTP
ESTJ ESFJ ENFJ ENTJ

If you are deeply interested in Personality Type, please visit my other site, Personality Central.

The descriptions of the 16 personality types can be accessed here.

A free version of the personality test can be accessed here. (Do note this is NOT the official MBTI questionnaire)

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