Don't Box Me In, Man!

[joreth]

Posted this as a comment and thought it deserved its own post:

For me, that's the real value of things like personality types. People want to put faith in the idea of a test that can categorize and box people in and then we'll have everyone figured out, and other people justifiably criticize systems for doing just that.

But the value in personality type systems is not in having a test that can magically sort you like a Sorting Hat and then stick you in a box forevermore, it's in giving people language to explain themselves and to finding methods of compromise.

That the test puts me as a J is less important than giving me a framework to say "there are different types of people out there who have different types of needs in interacting with people. I need these things, you need those things, now what mechanism can we use to get those needs met?"

Exposure to various personality type systems have given me words, labels, language, to explain things that even I, with my incredibly diverse vocabulary, was having trouble explaining before. Having a system with multiple types can (depending on how it's done) reinforce the diversity of the population and can also remove or reduce stigma for people who are "different from me".

For example, I'm a schedule-oriented person. It can be too easy to look at someone who is more spontaneous and see them as being "disrespectful" because they don't value my schedules. A spontaneous person can look at someone like me and see them as being too "rigid". But having a system that accommodates, not just for spontaneity vs. scheduling, but also for a variety of expressions of those two traits, can help to change "he's disrespectful of my time" to "he's not doing anything on purpose to disrespect me, he's just a spontaneous person with different values - it's just who he is".

Then, once we have established that our respective traits are about ourselves and not each other (it's not all about you, dude), we can reach for compromises that seek to get at the underlying needs, rather than focusing on the mechanisms. That's a lot fuzzier and gelatinous so I won't be going into examples right here. But a lot of people confuse "I need to feel this way" with "you must do this thing to produce this feeling that I need". Using the framework of the various personality type systems can help in getting us to the need part so that we have more solutions available to us that serve to actually get the need met without relying on the mechanism as if the mechanism itself were the need.

tacit has said things like ask yourself "what does doing this thing make me feel?" Then follow that up with "is this the only way to accomplish that?" That's very difficult and complicated work, to identify an underlying motivation and then seek multiple options for accommodating it. Even more advanced is seeking multiple options that *value the other person* in the attempt to accommodate. I find that personality type systems, even with all their flaws and legitimate criticisms, are a tool that serves this goal surprisingly well, providing that you look at the system as that tool, and not as a magic Sorting Hat.

Comments

[robin goodfellow (from livejournal.com)]

Ooh, this is a very good point. I love the idea that different personality sorting systems are tools for the vocabulary we need to convey our needs. It's definitely been how I've been using them (although the P/J distinction in MBTI still eludes me).

[joreth]

Part of the difficulty with MBTI is that, even though each letter has particular traits associated with them (usually dichotomous traits), each letter actually works in conjunction with the others.

So, the "p" traits of an ENTP will express themselves differently than the "p" traits of an ISFP, for example. I'm an INTJ, but I'm only just barely a J. Technically I'm a borderline J, but I am not INTJ-borderline-INTP. My "p" traits ONLY work within the context of ISTP.

What that means is that I'm fairly classically an INTJ, but when I step outside my INTJ box, it's into the ISTP box specifically, because the traits I have are classic ISTP traits and that fits me better than INTP does.

But the thumbnail sketch of the difference between J and P is that Js are all about schedules, order, organization, boxes, plans, categories, and Ps are all about spontaneity, flexibility, options.

One way to look at it is this: When it comes time to make a decision, do you feel better once the decision has been made, no matter what the decision is, just because the decision is made? Or do you put off making decisions because once you make a decision, then your options are closed and you can't choose the other choices now, so you'd rather keep on being indecisive because then all the options are still possibilities?

If you're more often the former, you're a J. If you're more often the latter, you're a P.

[corpsefairy.livejournal.com]

I like making decisions, but I also like to know what all my options are, so sometimes it can look like P behavior. I am fine with closing off the other options as long as I'm satisfied that I have found all of them. If I feel like I don't have enough data, or if there are options that I don't know about, I don't like to make decisions. Once all the choices are in front of me, though, I have no compunctions about picking one and abandoning the others.

...I guess it shouldn't be surprising that I am also on the J/P border.

[joreth]

What?! We are alike in some way?! How'd that happen?

#EvilTwins