Your book has helped a lot! I had a lot of questions as I went through the three tests and tried to figure things out, and your book answered most of them. I am still not 100% certain whether I’m a P or a J, but I’m either INFP or INFJ, and the description (especially for INFP, I think) resonate with me, so I do feel that I’m on the right track.

Note that some introverts are very chatty, they just usually talk about things other than themselves. This is one factor that can cause I/E confusion.

Thanks for ordering my ebook, and let me know if you have any questions!

Now I’m really certain that I’m an introvert. It’s only in the past year that I’ve come to this conclusion. I’ve spent a lot of time being confused about this, and still am, and it took me months and months before I accepted that I wasn’t actually an extravert. Of course I found out that my close friends were surprised that I had ever had any doubts about this.

I think I was answering the tests as who I wanted to be, or something like that, just not consciously. Maybe I’m just really bad at these tests…I’m going to check out your ebook to see if it makes anything clearer to me!

And I like your excellent point about how anyone can be anything.

@ cb, J vs. P still gives me a hard time too, though I’m much more likely to consider a deadline a drop dead date if I’m the one who determines it.

@ Keena, my, how flexible you are!

@ Akemi, I remember one person in my workshop who seemed to want a different type. I didn’t know her very well, but other people were saying she definitely wasn’t what she was trying to convince herself she was.

The first time you take the test though, you’re least likely to be biased. When I take the tests now, I’ll think “OK, this question is a matter of J vs. P. How am I going to answer that today?”

@ Armen, the MBTI actually makes a point of saying it’s about preferences rather than strengths. In practice, these are probably very similar, because if you like certain things, you probably have some talent for them, and you’ll be motivated to develop your skills further. But I think they want to stress that anyone can be anything, for example, an introvert like Johnny Carson can become a TV host, even if that’s outside his expected comfort zone.

This is pretty cool because it is sort of like finding out the psychological phenotype of our genes and neuronal network through experimentation, with more tries giving a better idea of which categories to fit in.

The long-term value of this is having a solid idea of where one’s strength’s lie, as you already know, but I just thought about.

Cool material.

When I took the MB workshop, which not only tested my type but also explained each point into details, there were quite a few attendants who were unhappy with their test results. For instance, there was this woman in pretty high management level. I don’t remember her type, but probably something like ESTJ. I do remember it said how she is capable of making well-thought-out decisions, how good she is to keep the organization in order and in a fair way, etc. It was great, esp for her position. But she was unhappy. She wanted to be something like ENFP, which she thought was more feminine and intuitive — it was obvious she was craving to be seen as such.

Left alone, she probably took the test several more times until she got the result she wanted to see.

Of course, there is no “better” personality type. So it’s important to take this test with clean, open mind and with fresh curiosity.

So, revel in your uniqueness!

Blessings,
Keena

The chemistry.com test you suggested in your The Science of Seduction post was really a cool test too – I liked that we could just react to a lot of the questions and not have to interpret the meanings so much.