There is a general truism that people become more cynical the older they get. This bit of common wisdom seems to make sense to us because it seems rational to think that the older you get, the more disappointments you suffer, the more experienced you become. These disappointments would then add up to make one more cynical about those experiences.William Blake did oppose Innocence to Experience after all.
This month, in the course of preparing some material for one of our elearning clients, I had the opportunity to take a form of the Myers-Briggs personality type test. The test gauges people along four dimensions:
introvert - extrovert
iNtuition - sensing
thinking - feeling
judging - perceiving
The first division is self-evident. The second, the difference between intuition and sensing represents the way that the person receives information. Those who score on the intuition range, tend to accept abstract or theoretical information, and tend to focus on how the information might be used in the future while those on the sensing end want to see concrete results and tend to be more focused on the present.
Thinking and feeling describe decision-making functions. Obviously thinking personalities rationalize decisions while those who score on the feeling end base decisions more often on emotion.
Judging and perceiving are a kind of meta-comment on the particular combination of the other three variables. What it does is define the strength of relation between the other three variables.
About a decade ago I took the Myers-Briggs type test and scored as INTJ. This shouldn't surprise anyone who knows me. But when I took the test this month, I scored as ISTJ. Now the 'S' percentage was low, which meant that I barely fit into the category. But the fact that my personality had shifted at all is fascinating.
I attribute the change to one of two things:
1) I have gotten more cynical and less future oriented (perhaps less optimistic/idealistic about the future?) over the last decade.
2) The ten years of continuing post-secondary studies led me to overthink the questions, giving an incorrect picture of my personality.
Either possibility is interesting. Either way, things have changed in my life, and I've obviously integrated those things into my life, including the way I take these kinds of silly tests!
1 comment:
Funny, I'm an INTJ. Most of the time I take the test, that is. Sometimes I'm ISTJ. But my path has sort of been the opposite of yours. I used to score ISTJ more often, and now I almost always end up INTJ.
Both types are rare, but it's not surprising that we're both like this, given how we met. Our type(s) gravitate toward academia.
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