Type, Trait, Tomato, Tomahto – Just Call the Whole Thing Off?

by Cindy Stengel Paris on March 18, 2012

Do we really need to understand how, why or even whether, the MBTI® assessment is a type instrument rather than a trait instrument, or that Jungian psychological type is more than just a bundle  of traits? Does it really matter?  Is  there really that much of a difference?  Is it even worth talking about anymore?

I think the answer to this is a resounding YES!  “So what” you say?  Well, these differences may seem trivial to the novice reader, thus the title of this blog, but I can assure you, they are  not.  [Click  here to look at a really simple chart created by Danielle Poirier that  explains the differences.]

Let me highlight the differences between type and trait  from a personal story to see what you think:

In another life, I was part of a technology team that  did a day of MBTI team building.  The  entire team was at the table: the CIO and his deputy, my practice leader, and  my peers – all managers.  The first thing that the trainer did was to put our reported types on a type table (without the opportunity for self-selection).  The  entire team was in the upper left hand corner of the table, ISTJ, and my reported  type was ENFJ.  He walked us through our  “scores” (the graph that highlights preference clarity how confident we are of the results) and we were told to look at  the “scores” for E and I.  My preference clarity on the E-I dichotomy was Very Clear.  He said to the group, “Cindy is a strong, very extreme Extravert”.  The entire team laughed.  Then I heard the comments, “Cindy, is that why don’t stop talking?  Is that why you constantly blurt things out in  meetings?”  The trainer went on to  explain that he was a classic INTJ/P because he was sometimes “J” and sometimes  “P”.  I challenged him on this point and asked him if he could explain type dynamics to the team.  He didn’t know what I was talking about!  Then, he pointed to the obvious “elephant in  the room” – the team type table.  He  said, “Look at the types on the team.  Cindy, why are you even here at this firm and on this team?  You must not like your job very much.  I would imagine that it would be really hard  for you to produce technical documentation as an ENFJ.”  I will never forget those words.

Do I even have to highlight the obvious consequences  from that scenario?  What if the trainer had explained the nature of the dichotomies as  categories, explained to the team that people don’t behave in a certain way  because of their preferences and there are no good or bad types? Instead, I wonder what would have happened had he simply pointed out the gifts that someone with ENFJ preferences might bring to a primarily ISTJ team?

What happened at the session is a classic example of a practitioner not understanding the dynamic nature of type and treating type, and the components of type, as individual traits disconnected from the holistic system.  Implied in his presentation of type was the existence of strength of preference, cause and effect of type equating to specific behaviors (you can or cannot perform a task) and the “weaknesses” of being a particular way.  Negative stereotyping and misuse of type can damage people and their reputations.

Type experts have been writing about the differences between type and trait psychology for years in order to impart the importance of understanding the differences; to hit home the fact that the MBTI® assessment does not produce a set of standalone traits that can be quantitatively measured.  When examining types as defined within the Jung/Myers model, we are observing characteristics that are elements of a whole system, connected to theoretical underpinnings, which define the basic nature or quality of preferences.  When we observe people to figure out type, we look for characteristics that point to a preference.

One of the best explanations I have read comes from Naomi Quenk’s seminal article on the subject (Bulletin of Psychological Type,16:2, Spring, 1993) [Click here to read the full article].  Quenk says,  “The traits [type characteristics] involved are likely to be more or less related to each other since the underlying preference or  interaction of preferences will serve as the ‘glue’ that makes them cohere.”  In the type model there are no stand-alone traits.

In trait psychology, the number and kinds of traits that you have and the strength of those traits “add up” to who you are. Traits present themselves as  independent of a “main category”.  In type psychology, there are characteristics which develop as a result of habitual use of a preference that present as traits; these behavioral characteristics [traits] are expressions of type. Important to recognize is that there is no one characteristic present in everyone who shares a preference.  In other words, in type theory you cannot  say, “All people who prefer Extraversion are talkative”.

In trait theory, there is a “normal”, a “more than normal” and a “less than normal”.  Look at IQ for instance.  In trait terms, if you have the trait of Extraversion,  it implies you are strong in Extraversion and all of the behaviors that are normally associated with Extraversion – talking, socializing in general, being the life of the party –and  that you don’t have a lot of, or are weak in, the opposite thing, called “Introversion”.  In type terms, it means that you are born with being more comfortable in the outer world; it is where you get your energy and  how your energy naturally flows.

Myers’ created the Indicator to provide people with a doorway into what she considered to be a positive psychology; she wanted people to understand  and appreciate differences; she wanted to help people get along better  and come to understand themselves at a deeper level.  She wanted people to feel good about themselves, no matter their type.  In the Jung/Myers model, there is no normal type, therefore there are no “bad” types, worse types, abnormal types, weak or strong types (or preferences, attitudes, functions or function-attitudes).  There are appropriate ways of being in certain circumstances, and each type has associated gifts and blind spots.  All types are valuable.

Despite the best efforts of type experts and theorists over the years, the message that the MBTI® is a type, not trait instrument, has not taken hold in the public domain.  Take some time to read an illuminating article by Master Practitioner Vicky Jo Varner about the new type community on the internet and the implications for the future of type:

From my perspective, it is alarming to look at  psychological type through the lens of trait psychology because we are, I believe, in danger of losing the beauty of type theory and the richness for elegant applications, as well as the opportunity it provides for entering the lifelong development process that Jung called individuation. We are in danger of trivializing the instrument from which Jung’s rich theory can be accessed.

There are so many reasons for this pervasive misunderstanding of the MBTI instrument and Jungian typology.  Perhaps the problem stems from the fact that the study of psychology itself is a disciplined field of study, of which, most people are unfamiliar.  Perhaps it is the deceivingly simplistic nature of the 4-letters of the MBTI type code that leads people to believe they understand the instrument and type, just by looking atit.  I doesn’t help that there are thousands of imitation “tests” on the internet.  The reasons for misunderstanding are many and complex, but what is certain is that among trainers and layman who talk about type as if types were traits, there is no understanding of the dynamic nature of Jung’s theory of typology upon which the MBTI was constructed.  The MBTI has become so popularized that the surface is replacing the depth; and even the popular understanding of the surface is wrought with error.

When we pull apart a type code to analyze the workings of the attitudes (E-I and J-P), functions (S,N,T ,F) or functions-in-attitude (Se, Si, Ne, Ni, Te, Ti, Fe, Fi), and the characteristics associated with them, we have to consider them as integral ingredients which interact or combine to make a whole system.  There are no stand-alone or independent traits within a type.  We cannot pull apart a system to determine percentage, strength, or weakness of any of the elements because in the Jung/Myers model, they don’t stand alone and cannot be independently measured.

As an ENFJ, I am not 90% feeling and 10% thinking.  I am not 80% extraverted feeling and 20%  introverted intuition.  The way  I experience life is that I am naturally, and always, concerned about how people feel about me, and about how they feel about other people involved in a situation; and when it comes to making a decision, I value and consider those feelings and let them guide me in the right direction; I just navigate my life that way.  I am acutely aware and naturally tuned into how my relationships and others’ relationships and the relationships within my groups or systems (family, work, teams I coach) are functioning; if they are not working I serve as a catalyst for healing and change.  That does not mean that I am not able to see things in a more objective way, although it may take me a bit longer to get there because it is not naturally how I see life.

Herein lies the major difference – we are quite simply born into our type; we are who we  are.   Our type lies within us and cannot be dissected from us.  Within the model, who we are and the complexity of our nature cant be boiled down to independent parts that somehow “add up” to make us so; it’s the other way around.  We have innately different ways in which we see the world; in the way we experience and live our lives; we have different drivers; value different things.  In the words of Jung himself, “We naturally tend to understand everything in terms of our own type.” We can’t break down how we experience theworld into percentages, strengths, skills, or whatever terms you want to use.

And here is the beauty of that.  We don’t have to work to gain more of those independent “parts” in order to make us whole. We already are – in potentia (the inherent ability or capacity for growth, development, or coming into being) – whole.  Our work is to continually learn about who we are by opening our consciousness and becoming more aware of those parts of ourselves that we have kept in our unconscious – that we have disowned; this is Jungian individuation.  I find this perspective much more reassuring than a trait approach; it is easier to forgive myself and others when looking through this lens, for I know that we are all simply living from who we fundamentally are.

So, do we, “Just call the whole thing off”?  Do we stop trying to get the point across to the world that type should not be approached like trait psychology?  Is it just too hard, because those of us that know better seem to be swimming against the current tide of popular culture?  Do we stop our efforts to correct those that characterize Jungian typology as trait psychology? No! In the words of Danielle Poirier, “We don’t want to mistake one for the other [type psychology and trait psychology] but they do co-exist!”

To  extend my use of metaphor (ok, I may be stretching it too far…) “Better  call the calling off off”!  And just for fun, if you become frustrated when you hear someone saying something like, “I am a strong F and that is why I am so emotional”- or something else equally off-base, listen to Louis and Ella for inspiration!

 

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The Surprising Impetus Behind the Creation of the MBTI – World Peace?

by Cindy Stengel Paris on January 11, 2012

This holiday season we saw the return of our troops from Iraq after 8 long years of war.  The cost: 4500 American deaths, 100,000 Iraqi deaths, 32,000 US injuries and according to some experts, a price tag of over $3 Trillion.  The end of our military stay in Iraq was a holiday gift for our country and untold numbers of families and troops who were reunited.  But there is no arguing that the price of war is great.  We honor those who defend our country as we are simultaneously distressed by the human sacrifice.

Isabel Myers and her mother Katharine Briggs experienced this distress following the US entry into World War II.  As students of human behavior, they were determined to do something to help people resolve conflict rather than fight each other.  They also sought to help women contribute to the war effort by doing work that was satisfying to them. 

Thus, the mother-daughter team set out on a journey to construct a “paper- and- pencil” assessment that would help people gain access to finding their psychological type as outlined by C.G. Jung.  They chose to work with Jungian personality theory because they thought it to be the best model for understanding human nature that they had come across.  In fact, Katharine Briggs, who had been creating her own model for understanding people, said of Jung’s psychological types, “this is it”; and she proceeded to throw away her work!

From that point forward Isabel Myers worked tirelessly to create an instrument that would point us to an understanding of our psychological type.  She gave us a great gift by bucking the prevailing notion in psychology that we are all somehow mere deviations from “normal” (I am pretty sure this notion still exists!).  The Indicator and her later publication of Gifts Differing, continues to point us in that direction.

So, how might the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator translate to the possibility of world peace?  Stay with me for a moment…

It boils down to what Jung called “projection”.  Projection is a part of the human condition, and something of which we are mostly unaware.  It occurs when we take the qualities in ourselves that we have disowned and are unconscious of (our shadow) and “assign” them to another person.  In the case of negative projection – what we embody, but want to suppress – we attribute to others; we move whatever is causing us the problem outward, instead of looking inward to bring it to light.  Unconsciously, we experience cognitive dissonance (the feeling of uncomfortable tension from holding two conflicting thoughts in the mind at the same time); unable to resolve the internal issue, we blame, reject, judge, degrade, accuse, or otherwise malign the “other” in the situation.

Let’s take a simple example.  The other day, I asked my husband what he may have learned from understanding typology and living with someone that is his opposite in many ways.  He stated, “I have learned that some people are really not being rude, or discounting me or my opinion when they interrupt me; they are Extraverts; it’s their way of adding to the conversation.  I used to think they were not only rude, but arrogant and self-promoting – they thought their ideas were the best so they would just steamroll right over me.”  

I hear similar projections at the beginning of each and every workshop I facilitate.  Sensing types think intuitive types are “out there”, flighty, a bit nutty or unrealistic.  Intuitive types see sensing types as uncreative, slow, and boring.  Thinking types describe feeling types as being too emotional, too invested in people, wishy-washy, insincere, and “touchy-feely”, and feeling types see thinking types as cold, harsh, tough, and unfeeling.  Danielle Poirier, in her blog Typology, Seismology [Click here] said that her projections around the Judging preference were especially problematic and, “… the one imposing the deadline is, of course…the evil warlord, the despot, the fascist.”!  

So you see, in Myers-Briggs/Jungian terminology, we project negative words, thoughts and images onto anyone who presents an opposite preference; anyone with whom we are not naturally comfortable.  The process they are using conflicts with our identity – or with who we think we are and simultaneously with whom we think (mistakenly) the other person is.  We experience the function that the person is using as “negative” and define the person as so; it’s easier than having to wrestle with that inside of ourselves!  When we experience someone with the same preferences as we have, we tend to affirm them; when someone’s preferences are opposite to ours, we project.

That is because if you aren’t comfortable with a preference or a function, are not skilled in its use, and it primarily lies in your unconscious world, to use it feels as if you, yourself were being [put in all of those negative words] – it would be foreign to your identity and expressed with very little skill and discomfort – like writing with your non-preferred hand; think of how that would look and feel!

So, where were we, world peace?

You can see how these negative projections, even when not expressed outwardly, can be fostered and fester, and cause dislike, hate, and even be said to contain evil – toward the individual who has been the “object” of the projection.  The implications on an individual level are interpersonal conflict – wrought with misunderstanding, judgments and missed opportunity for people to come together – friends, family, spouses, children, teams, groups, Boards of Directors, political leaders, etc. etc.….

I have not found evidence to back this, but I believe that Isabel, as a student of Jung, understood what Jung said of the implications of projection when we move beyond inter-personal relationships to the collective. 

“It is in the nature of political bodies always to see the evil in the opposite group, just as the individual has an ineradicable tendency to get rid of everything he does not know and does not want to know about himself, by foisting it off on somebody else.” (Jung, The Undiscovered Self, p. 55).

In other words, at the collective level, projection leads to war.

Here is where Myers-Briggs Type within the context of Jungian psychology comes into play…(finally!).  It takes self-awareness or self-knowledge for each of us to remove our projections from others thus reversing the process.  Without that awareness, we don’t stand much chance of resolving differences or changing our negative thoughts about others; our conflicts remain unresolved, even if they appear to be resolved on the outside – those thoughts we have of the other surface again from time to time.  Understanding our type and how others are different from us fosters conflict resolution.  As Myers said in Gifts Differing (pg. 115),

“Disagreement suddenly becomes less irritating when Smith recognizes that it would hardly be normal for Jones to agree.  Jones starts from a different point of view and proceeds in a different direction…it is not from being willfully contrary, but from simply being a different type.”

Is it realistic to think that a tool such as the Myers-Briggs can lead to world peace?

Jung said that it may take hundreds and hundreds of years for man to come to the realization, on a collective level, that it is he who is the problem.  Yet we must move the psychic consciousness of the collective forward, one person at a time, or our fate as humanity will be sealed.  The MBTI and psychological type are tools that we can use to foster love toward our fellow man; our friends, family, spouses, children, teams, groups, Boards of Directors, political leaders, etc. etc.…As Jung said, “…nothing promotes understanding and rapprochement [his emphasis] more than the mutual withdrawal of projections….where love stops, power begins, and violence and terror.”   

One person at a time…

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Typology, Seismology

November 25, 2011

This blog was written by Danielle Poirier, Type  Expert and Author of the Magnificent 16 www.magnificent16.com who has agreed to be a regular guest blogger.  Enjoy!____________________________________________________________________________________________ By Danielle Poirier For some people, learning about psychological type is one of those everyday banal experiences that never overflows into their day-to-day life, like a feel good public service  [...]

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Remembering the Fundamentals of Type – Grounding Ourselves in the Basics

October 13, 2011

A while back I recall reading an article by a figure skater (I can’t recall the details of the story or the publication) who was constantly drilled by her coach to practice her basic jumps – over and over and over again.  At first, she felt as if she was being held back through this repetition as she [...]

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MBTI® Step III™ – The Fulfillment of Myers’ Dream

September 27, 2011

There is much buzz today about the MBTI® Step III™.  Charles Martin, V.P. of Research and Development for CAPT, and a trainer for the assessment, recently published a womderful article about the MBTI® Step III™ in the new APTi e-Bulletin: http://bit.ly/pQQX5W . Step III™ was featured in a 90 minute conference session at the APTi [...]

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Exploring the Individuality of Expression within Type Using the MBTI® Step II™

July 26, 2011

I have a clear preference for Extraversion.  Most people that know me would never mistake me for having a preference for Introversion; I am expressive and easy to get to know.  I am open and direct with my feelings and thoughts – people know where I stand on most issues.  I can be wildly enthusiastic and [...]

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Type Practitioners – Let’s Try to Speak the Same Language…

May 27, 2011

…and I don’t mean “Type language,” as in changing your communication style to flex to your opposite preference. What I mean is, let’s all get “on the same page” when we are talking about MBTI® Type to clients, to people who are not acquainted with the theory, or even when we post on social networking [...]

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Welcome to the New Face of MBTItoday.org!

April 7, 2011

By Katharine D. Myers Director Emeritus, MBTI Trust, Inc. It is with great joy that we are releasing the “new” mbtitoday.org! In collaboration with the Editor, Cindy Stengel Paris, and the design professionals at Smallfuel.com, we have created what we believe to be a powerful, accurate, in-depth site which maintains the integrity of the Myers-Briggs [...]

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