A Little Bit of Personality is not Myers-Briggs Type Indicator.  We say so right there in the intro video…and in lots of posts on here, posts with words.  We started there, as we’ve said before, because we were just having fun and we, like so many, presumed that MBTI was a reliable, scientific system.  Yet as we’ve said before, we gradually came to see more and more ways in which MBTI is inconsistent, in which it does not work, in which it encourages and even relies on stereotypes and superficial simplifications of people.  And what was worse, we started to see that many, many people apparently wanted those stereotypes and simplifications.

We started to see how much “personality typing” was used as a petty weapon in infantile campaigns to put down anyone whose mind worked differently.  We cringed more and more whenever we saw four-by-four grids that listed insultingly shallow sets of qualities for each of the sixteen types, and which portrayed some types as clearly better, smarter, more reliable, more successful, more creative, more visionary, more concrete, more compassionate, more practical, or simply of greater worth and value than the others.  Personality typing had become a shallow and subjective mudfight through which people tried to compensate for their own unresolved personal insecurities by putting down others who made them feel inadequate.  Apparently, there are a lot of second-graders online who are quite skilled at writing up passive-aggressive four-by-four grids.

So we went back to the beginning, because we knew there was so much good here!  We, like so many of you guys, had gotten excited about personality typing for a reason.  It was exciting to see how our minds worked, and how others’ minds did too.  It was so cool to try to figure out the personality types of fictional characters, or of historical figures or celebrities we liked.  But now that we had seen how personality typing had become such a putrid and subjective cesspool, we had to go back to the basics to figure out what was good and what was brain-damaging.

We’ve talked about this before, in several posts that use words.  We’ve described how a clarification of basic definitions is one of the first indispensable steps in any effort to replace subjectivity with objectivity.  We’ve talked about how we didn’t have to throw out the baby with the poisonous bathwater, and so we were able to use the brilliant original work done by Carl Jung and by Katharine Cook Briggs and her daughter Isabel Briggs Myers (all of whom died long before the internet), without the simplified dangers of modern MBTI.  On aLBoP Phase 2, we go into far greater depth about our scientific process, how we were able to clarify definitions that made Cognitive Typing into a reliable and repeatable hard science, rather than a subjective and dubious soft-science.  But all those posts use words, words that invite you guys to see “Hey wait, this is different. This isn’t what I thought I already knew.”

A Little Bit of Personality is part of a larger endeavor, which we call our “Twenty-Five Year Plan,” a plan to simply help make life better for as many people as we can.  As I’m writing today, we’re a bit more than eleven years in, on the fourth of eight stages.  This is all stuff that’s explained in depth on the full Phase 2 site.  It’s really exciting to us, and though we did not initially expect to use Cognitive Typing or anything like it as a tool in this plan, aLBoP has become a powerful way for us to reach and help so many awesome people!  Yet originally, we didn’t plan to have Phase 2 be a separate website; we were just going to put all the information right here on one site, for all the internet to see.  We’re very glad now that we didn’t.

There is nothing secret on any of our sites, and all the information on all three of our sites (Phase 1 here, Phase 2 Intro, and full Phase 2) is all completely free of charge.  But we realized that we had to separate our content into multiple sites when we saw the bizarre and aggressively cruel reactions of so many people to even the comparatively basic concepts of Cognitive Typing.  I’m not referring to insightful and engaging questions; for instance, a lot of cool people have asked very good questions, like “How do you have a large enough sample size to make sure your conclusions are accurate?” “Why don’t you submit to scientific journals?” “What exactly is your experimental process?” etc.  Those sorts of thoughtful questions are the sort of thing that we’ve had to save for the later websites, because we realized that even the introductory information here on Phase 1 seems to be far too much for some people to read.  Too many words.

We wanted an engaging and active forum where we could talk back and forth with people, instead of only posting articles on a website, but it soon became clear that if we went ahead and put a forum here on Phase 1, open to the internet, then any potential discussion would be buried under arrogant assertions and bitter argument.  In fact, when we started a forum on Phase 2, it was astonishing how rapidly that happened, how quickly it became a toxic atmosphere where thoughtful, intelligent people grew ever more wary to post anything.  If we didn’t do something, our forum was going to become yet another place on the internet where the discourse was dominated by the bone-headedly obnoxious.

As I’m writing this, I have an online game open in the background, where one of my characters is happily crafting food for me.  But I usually play most games with the general chat channels turned off, because while there are a lot of sweet and helpful people in a lot of games, the general chat channels tend to get dominated by the least common denominator.  When we first started our Phase 2 forum, some people were convinced that it couldn’t possibly be any different from anywhere else on the internet, calling us naive for trying to create a place online where people could feel safe to freely share ideas, where the thoughtful majority didn’t have to remain silent or risk setting off the irrational blowhards.  Yet now, on the full Phase 2 site, we have an awesome and active realtime chat forum where everyone feels safe to think, to work through problems, to discuss ideas, to share their lives and make precious friendships.  I’m actually making them wait right now while I write this, but Calise and I thought that this little post was worth taking the time for.  Yet that forum would have been impossible if we hadn’t first created a safe place insulated from the wild, aggressively-asserted opinions and jaw-dropping simplifications on the internet.

We wanted to put all of it on one website, and perhaps we could have, were it not for the apparent fact that the current culture of the internet trains us not to read.  Trains us not to think.  Not to stop and digest.  Not to sit back and make sure we understand things before moving on.  And it certainly seems to train people to post comments before, you know, reading.  We wanted to do videos as well as posts, and we did make a few before moving them away to Phase 2.  We wanted to do podcasts, which are a ton of fun but we only do them for Phase 2.  This is not meant to be an advertisement for Phase 2 (especially because we are very, very, very behind on responding to Phase 2 invites, really sorry about that!), but rather a challenge to read what’s here on Phase 1.  If people can’t do that, then how could they possibly read more anyway?

It’s gotten to the point that I wasn’t sure I should even take the time to write this, because I wondered who would read it?  Not that we don’t have plenty of traffic, but I wondered how many people would do more than skim.  One of our closest friends, whom we met through aLBoP, told us that when he first stumbled across Phase 1, it was a real shock to him because he had to slow down to really understand it all.  He told us that he had grown accustomed to being able to skim most things online, that most articles were fairly simple ideas expressed in way too many words, so he’d gotten used to skimming.  But with aLBoP, he had to seriously re-adjust his expectations; he had to take time and think about the content.  Another of our friends, upon reading the first Super Simple Series post, said “That’s not simple at all!”  We’ve done our best, heh, and we hope that it really is pretty simple and straightforward, but it is also new stuff, not just the same old familiar repetition, so it can’t be simply skimmed.

A couple weeks ago, someone walked up to me and declared that I was an INFP.  I tried to be diplomatic and inviting, telling him that I’d be interested to hear what made him say so, and I asked what definitions of the letters he was using.  He seemed confused and a bit bothered by the question, and said he was just using MBTI.  I still don’t know what made him think that he could so confidently assert someone else’s type like that.  Of course, on aLBoP we do quite confidently assert the Cognitive Types of both real and fictional people, but we can only do so as a result of using concrete, clear definitions that leave no subjective wiggle-room.  There’s no uncertainty about whether someone is a Cognitive Introvert or Extravert; the definitions are very clear, they leave no room for fudging or gray areas, yet they are also not the same soft and elastic definitions of current MBTI.  We have said so, over and over, using words.  And yet we still get comments by people unilaterally asserting “Nope, you typed that character wrong,” based on definitions that we are not using, definitions we cannot use for reasons that we have explained repeatedly.

The problem is in the assertiveness, the astounding certainty with which people treat their own points of view as objective fact.  There’s nothing wrong with asking questions, with re-examining and re-questioning over and over, with constantly re-checking and revisiting even the things that seem the most well established.  Sometimes you might find a mistake, like the time on the Phase 2 Typing Library, when I accidentally put ESTP(ep) Usain Bolt on the library pages for two different Cognitive Types because his picture had somehow got copied over into the wrong folder.  Just this morning, someone pointed out a typo where I had said “our” when I meant “or.”  And we get so many sweet comments where people ask questions rather than assert opinions as fact.  “Why did you type Gandalf as an F instead of a T?” shows a mind that wants to think, to understand, to hear feedback and decide whether or not it makes sense.  Yet when someone flippantly comments “No, Gandalf is INTJ like me,” then that shows such a closed unwillingness to question or examine one’s own point of view.  No wonder current politics are such a nasty echo-chamber.

So when people assertively tell us “I’m an ENTJ,” “I’m a Ne dom,” etc, it makes us wonder if they’ve really read much of anything before commenting.  We do not use the simplistic “dom” system because it turned out to be tremendously subjective, with apparent “dominance” depending far too much on potentially cherry-picked factors that are all too easily used to weigh the result toward a preferred conclusion.  As someone once said to us, and as we’ve quoted before, “Personality typing is just horoscopes for people who think they’re too smart for horoscopes.”  In other words, it’s all subjective fluff that can be applied equally well to anyone, of any type, as long as people are eager to adolescently define themselves in a way that parodies the real work of finding oneself.

But then, as soon as we mention that, we get sincere comments telling us that astrology is real too.  Perhaps it is, perhaps it is not; personally, I have seen many, many reasons to believe it is not accurate or reliable in any fashion, while I have not yet seen anything to suggest the contrary, so far.  Yet I have to wonder: what makes someone feel equipped to say that astrology definitively does work, or does not?  As soon as we start treating our own personal experiences as universal truths, as soon as we start treating our own opinions as objective facts, and as soon as we make the incredibly self-centered error of saying “I have no experience of such-and-such, therefore it’s crap,” then we shut off our ability to think, to learn, to approach anything in any sort of rational manner.  That quote about personality typing being mere horoscopes in disguise, displays its own form of narrow and lazy thinking, by asserting that all “personality typing” is this way, painting life with such a broad brush.  It’s this sort of simplistic thinking that leads to racism, sexism, or any other form of prejudice, that says “I’ve seen dumb religions, therefore all religions are dumb,” “I’ve known vile men, therefore all men are vile,” “I only hang around with dishonest people…and I am one myself…therefore nobody is honest,” etc.  It’s a lazy and anecdotal simplification of the complexities of people’s lives, hearts, and hopes.  It’s mean.

But just because the internet trains us to make everything simplistic and skimmable, just because the current online culture trains us to view our own personal opinions as objective fact, that doesn’t make it our fault.  We can learn to see outside our own points of view.  We can learn to recognize the powerful lenses of emotion, pain, and desire which skew and distort how we see every experience that happens to us.  We can explore just how not objective we are, and then learn to grow past that subjective isolation.

This is why Calise and I have had to de-prioritize Phase 1 for a long time, though.  We’ve been working feverishly, constantly, but most of it has not been here on Phase 1.  We did put eight months of work into The People of Stranger Things post, we put so much thought and feeling into it, so much care and planning, for a total of more than fifty thousand words.  There’s a lot of great stuff in there, but it has produced hardly any results.  How can we justify prioritizing the addition of more information here on Phase 1, when people repeatedly show us how little they’ve read of what we’ve already written?

We love our Personalized Typing service, we love seeing people’s faces and hearing about their lives, we love connecting with them, and it’s a great way to find thoughtful, good, decent people.  And yet, over and over, it’s an uphill battle to remind people who order typings that we are not MBTI, that we do not use those definitions, as we’ve said so many times in so many posts.  Whenever we send out a typing, we always caution people that if they look up their Cognitive Type online, then they are going to find things that are very different, and likely demeaning and limiting.  And yet we still get replies of people saying “No I can’t be this type, because here’s what MBTI says about it, and that’s not me.”  The Cognitive Orientation Guidebooks, which we package with each typing, spend a fair amount of time explaining and reiterating precisely how each Cognitive Type is different from the popular stereotypes. We really hoped words would get that across.

Yet we know what the internet culture is like, and we know that sometimes we all need to be reminded that it’s okay to slow down and process thoughts instead of living life through reactions.  Sometimes I find it intriguing to hop between news networks as they cover the same story, to see how differently each network portrays the very same events.  Which bits of video do they show, which do they edit out, and which do they repeat endlessly?  Which adjectives and adverbs do they use, to influence viewers’ conclusions?  What information do they focus on, what information do they downplay, and what information do they conveniently fail to mention entirely?  Like the proverbial blind men and the elephant, the same event and the same data can be interpreted in wildly different ways even when people have the most honest of intentions.  So when people are less honest, when people have an agenda, a worldview, an ideology or attitude that they want to push, how much more careful do we have to be before we draw any sort of confident conclusions?

It’s our hope that, by taking a few hours away from other work to write this, maybe this might help nudge aLBoP Phase 1 toward being a site where we can post more information, more Type Heroes, more character spotlights, and just more fun articles.  I’ve been wanting to do an article about Winston Churchill for years now, titled “How an ENFP Saved the World,” because he really did, and yes he was unequivocally an ENFP(ip), but how can I justify taking the time to write that, time I could be giving to other people, when so many readers here on Phase 1 won’t, well, read?  I worry that so many internet skimmers wouldn’t get past the title before firing off comments authoritatively declaring “He wasn’t ENFP!! He was [roll the dice and insert any number of different types here]!”  We owe Gwen and Phil 20 bucks, since someone did indeed leave a comment (one of the many that we decided to leave unapproved) assertively stating that, because Lord Shen has a grand vision, he is therefore INTJ.  Wow.  So that’s how we’re defining these complex variables of human thought and desire, now?  And so none of the other fifteen Cognitive approaches to life can have a grand vision?  Seriously?  Sorry Elon Musk, no ENFJ(ij) for you, you gotta be INTJ I guess.  The all-knowing internet decrees it thus.

We really hoped, and I still do hope, that by bringing the subject of Subtypes here to Phase 1, it would be a quick way to immediately show people “Hey look, see those two little letters in parentheses?  Then maybe, just perhaps, this is something a little bit different from what you’re already used to.”  We hoped that would help the Personalized Typing service more easily show people “Hey this isn’t just MBTI, see?  We’re giving you six letters, not just four.”  There are actually more than six letters, more than eight; it seems to be a magnificently reiterating fractal of complexity, with each new layer of sub-typing adding ever more clearly definable nuance to the intricacy of consciousness, but we figured that the basic idea of Subtypes was plenty enough for Phase 1 right now.  I worry that even by dangling that little hint of more information, it might lead people to leap to conclusions and simplifications.  Fair enough, but I also hope that this can encourage more of you to read a little more carefully, to ponder a little more than you already do, to consider, to question, to dig deep, to see outside your own point of view and become a voice for understanding instead of adding to the cacophonous chorus of cartoony, rigid simplifications.

TL;DR: aLBoP is not MBTI.  But more accurately, if you really want a “Too Long, Didn’t Read,” then why are you even here?  There are plenty of skimmable websites that will be more than happy to let you simplify people into shallow little subjective boxes.  This is not a blog, though it did start as one over on blogspot, but pretty quickly we realized how much aLBoP could help us find and help cool people, honest and thoughtful people, people who are willing to expend the labor of time and energy to earn what they learn.  That’s the sort of person we love to meet.  That’s the kind of person we love to learn from, exchange ideas with, and see how we can help them add to the world in their own way, in their own life.  That’s what we’re all about.

The post aLBoP is not MBTI appeared first on A Little Bit of Personality.

See, the full post about subtypes is on aLBoP Phase 2, and even that post is just the intro to the topic.  Phase 2 goes into far more depth about, well, everything!  But as you might expect, it kinda requires and presumes that you’ve already gotten familiar with everything here on the starter site.

Which, right, before I go on…  If you haven’t checked out at least the basic information here on aLBoP, I’m afraid you really should go read that before diving into this.  Watch the intro video if you haven’t already, and then get your bearings with the Super Simple Series.  Remember, aLBoP is not MBTI, so it’s probably best to go back to the start so you can get a handle on everything.

Okay!  Got that covered?  At least a bit?  Cool, so like I was saying, we go into much more depth and detail about subtypes, what they are, why they are, and how they work, on the Phase 2 site.  However, we really really want to talk about subtypes on our upcoming Stranger Things post!  Also, it’s nice to be able to put people’s subtypes after their main cognitive types, partly because it immediately shows “Hey, look!  This is something different, so maybe drop your assumptions about typing at the door.”  And then, hopefully, maybe, if wishes were horses, we might get fewer people strolling in, glancing at a few pictures, and leaving a “nope that’s wrong” comment without, you know, reading stuff.  We can dream.

So on then with the subtypes crash course!  To start with, putting it simply, subtypes are kinda just what they sound like: a subset, a personal focus within each cognitive type. 

There are exactly four subtypes for each and every cognitive type, because of reasons.  Very cool reasons, really neat stuff that says so much about people, the world, and intelligence itself, but that’s for Phase 2.  That’s where we talk about the How and the Why behind all kinds of things; for here, we’re just gonna focus on the basic What.

I will say, though, that the reasons there are four subtypes for each cognitive type were totally outside anything we planned or expected.  And that makes it super cool, because it ended up displaying really neat and complex patterns that we had no idea were even there!  Here, I’ll just copy some of Calise’s explanation from the old, original Phase 2 forum:

“When Justin and I began noticing how wonky the generally accepted definitions of the letters were, we realized if we wanted definitions that *always* fit for a person and didn’t change throughout your life, the definitions couldn’t be definitions of merely habits and behaviors (or even skills as the stereotypes make them out to be), but something of the same caliber as genetics that doesn’t change throughout your life.

“Though plenty of people throughout history have tried to develop and find facial typing systems, without accurate definitions of the consistent, lifelong cognition behind a face, there wasn’t much hope of demonstrating how people’s faces reflect their cognition.  Like I mentioned in What If I’m Not the Type I Thought I Was?, if people’s faces changed as often as their behaviors, they’d be like shape-shifters.

“But as soon as our patterns were consistent enough to be true throughout a person’s life, matching facial patterns began to emerge.”

Interrupting Calise for a second here.  I want to emphasize what she just said: the patterns began to emerge.  We weren’t looking for this; we didn’t expect it.  It wasn’t an “Aha!  Eureka!” moment, but rather a “Huh, that’s funny…” moment.  We weren’t expecting to find any sort of facial correlation with cognition; it just sort of came up.  Like she said, as soon as we actually got our definitions 100% consistent, reliable, and repeatable, with zero exceptions, suddenly we started seeing recurring facial structures with each different type.

Letting Calisey talk again:

“At first we just noticed little things, like Justin mentioning that SFPs’ eyes looked like they’d been popped in an oven and melted just a little bit at the corners (his words).  And I began noticing patterns in nose tips (I like noses.  In college I started a nose connoisseurs club, though we did nothing).  And for a while we thought, ‘At some point we’re actually going to have to nail these down for real.’  And at one point I did… and I had a slight nervous breakdown because it demonstrated how even close friends whom I thought I’d typed correctly I was totally wrong on.  It was a rough week and I was temporarily afraid I’d been embarrassingly wrong about *everything.*  But science had to go on!  And I learned new and useful things like how I was mistaking ESTJ and ISTJ for each other, something that in retrospect I feel like O_o at myself.

“But as we went forward to nail down and distinguish the sixteen different faces (which, boy, were we in for a treat I’ll get to in a minute), we realized that in order to be sure we had a consistent system, it had to meet certain qualifications:”  Which she went on to list, as follows.

Scientific Requirements

Facial Typing needed to work across:

Age
So an ISFJ face would have to still be an ISFJ face regardless of age, from infant noob to elderly raid-boss; if a person’s facial type changed throughout their life when their cognitive type did not, then clearly that’d be a problem!

Ben Schulz (aka LEEROY JENKINS) and Jules Verne (aka 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea guy, which is cool too), both ISTP(ip)

Ethnicity
So, an ISFJ face is an ISFJ face regardless of race.  It’s really awesome to see, how the same facial patterns and structures occur, in every ethnicity!  And it really blows a hole in mentalities that think any ethnicity is better, worse, or just “weird.”

Denzel Washington and Kenneth Branagh, both incredible actors, directors and ENFJ(ip)s with some serious class.

Gender
Same thing: ISFJ face has to be ISFJ face regardless of gender.  Also super cool to see in practice!  The gender differences are totally there, and yet the facial type remains exactly the same.

General George Smith Patton Jr. and Madonna, both ISTJ(ej) despite their discrepancy in name-quantity, and y’know, gender.

Multiples
Like twins and triplets; even identical twins don’t necessarily have the same cognitive type, so how can they be *identical* and yet have different facial types?  And yet, once you see it, you can’t unsee it.  Even “identical” twins – even *conjoined* twins – can have different facial types!

Phelps Twins, known for playing the Weasley Twins in Harry Potter: Oliver (left), INFP(ip) and James (right), ESFJ(ip)

The Hensel Twins: Abby (left), ENFP(ep) and Brittany (right), ENTJ(ij)

Weight
Same thing as age; an ISFJ face has to still be an ISFJ face, no matter how gaunt or… portly.

Jorge Garcia and Colin O’Donoghue, both ESFP(ej) and studly (says Calise)

The entire population (no one is left out)
A high goal, but an absolutely necessary one.  If we could find anyone, anywhere, past or present, whose face didn’t fit any of the cognitive types, then we’d have a problem.  Everybody thinks, everybody cognates, and everybody’s face matches their cognition with magnificent exactness.

Absolutely repeatable and *always* lining up with cognition and choices
Now dude, this is just basic science.  When there are exceptions where a theory doesn’t always quite line up, that’s nature’s way of saying “Nice hypothesis, but give it another go.  You can do better.  I believe in you.”  We wanted to be able to use this in practice, so if we ran into any exceptions, if it ever failed to line up, even just once, with people’s actual in-practice cognition, choices, and desires, then we wouldn’t have a reliable tool.  It had to be repeatable and consistent, with no exceptions, special cases, or roundabout justifications…as fashionable as those may seem sometimes.

Okay back to Calisey again.

“But we were in for a big surprise when we tried to isolate the 16 facial types.

“One day, as Justin and I tried to nail down the faces, Justin said, (not verbatim), ‘Hey Calise, I think there may be two of every face… and I think they may line up with differences in the cognition of each of the types.’
I said, ‘No there couldn’t be.’
He said, ‘Why not?’
I said, ‘Because then I’d have to explain it to everybody!’

“But despite my fears of people crying, ‘There’s a fifth variable?!  How many are you guys going to make up??’ we pursued the data and suddenly had 32 types.  *Thankfully* (because I might have died otherwise), we discovered that while these ‘subtypes’ affect our approach to cognition, they do *NOT* affect the cognition process or order itself.  There are only 16 cognition processes after all. *whew*”

Got that?  Subtypes do not change the order of cognition steps.  They aren’t our cognition, but rather, they’re how we *approach* our cognition.  This approach is more readily seen than our underlying cognition, and people often mistake subtype for actual cognitive type without even realizing it.  Subtypes deal with our behaviors, while cognition deals with our root desires that motivate those behaviors.  So when people take a behavioral-psychology approach to cognitive variables, it makes sense that a lot of the misconceptions, simplifications, and inconsistencies that arise, are a result of mixing up type and subtype.

But again, they are not the same thing.  We explain on Phase 2 how subtype and cognition deal with entirely different areas of our minds, but for now it’s enough to say that our subtype is our behavioral approach to our cognitive type.  Our cognitive type is a result of what matters most to us, deep down.  It’s a result of what we desire most, which is a powerful reflection of who we each are, while our subtype is a result of how we approach that desire.

Okay, back to Calise, she was telling how we first noticed only two subtypes per type:

“But we noticed these two subtypes affected how each type approached their Type Angst, and the shorthand we began using was ‘That’s right I’m [Type Angst]’ vs. ‘I guess I’m [Type Angst].’  So, for ENTP, half the ENTPs would approach their Type Angst as ‘That’s right I’m bad and irresponsible!’ while the other half would approach their Type Angst as ‘I guess I’m bad and irresponsible…’

“A friend suggested we use ‘Sharp’ and ‘Flat’ as terms, like musical notes… but nobody wanted to be ‘Flat,’ including myself who would be ‘ENTP-flat’ according to that terminology.  This was followed by Justin and me coming up with V/U or ‘Venturer’ and ‘Urbane’ (which worked definitionally, but mostly we liked how the letter shapes got across the differences in attitudes).  So by that definition, approaching my Type Angst in an ‘I guess I’m…’ fashion, I would be an ENTPu.

“Of course, as is usually the case, as soon as we were getting a handle on the complex effects of V and U and recognizing both the facial structures and cognition in action… we tried to group faces into 64 folders of each type, U/V and male and female.  It was a messy, chaotic folder!  But of course nature wanted to screw with us again, so we suddenly realized there was still too much variation; distinctly twice as much, as there were two distinct faces for each V/U subtype!  We seriously considered calling them VV, VU, UV, and UU… I’m not even joking.  I thought, ‘Holy crap this is getting so bloated how am I possibly going to explain this usably?!’  There was mild panic and major grumbling; science temporarily tees me off sometimes.

“But then, one day, (I believe Justin was in our wingback chair… I want to say on the phone with someone?), I remembered how the Four Types of Information applies to ALL THE THINGS and everything clicked.  There were four subtypes of each type… maybe the world made sense after all!”

Okay, remember this was from the original Phase 2 forum.  To be brief, on Phase 2 we’ve been explaining more and more how the 4ToI do really apply to *all the things*, it’s really incredible.  Like, everything everything.  And again, it’s because of reasons, which are very cool.  A little more from Calise:

“And this, my very patient friends, is how we came to realize that not only are there 16 types with 4 subtypes each, making 64 subtypes that work brilliantly across genders, ethnicities, ages, etc., but they work *perfectly* with how each subtype approaches its Type Specialization.”

Yay!  So there’s the quick background.  Now, for the subtypes themselves.

The Subtypes

Like Calisey said, the subtypes ended up perfectly fitting the 4 Types of Information.  The implications of this are huge, but for here we’re keeping it short…ish.  When applied to subtypes, these 4ToI take the form of:

Motives and Character, and how they affect individuals: (ep)
Data and Details, and the situations in which they occur: (ip)
Actions and Consequences, and how they affect people as a group: (ej)
Principles and Trends on a worldwide, even cosmic scale: (ij)

Each subtype approaches their cognition according to one of those four ToI.  Of course, just like with cognition, this does not limit us; rather it’s our preferred starting point.  (ip) subs will always, always, always approach their cognition in an (ip) way first, but that does not in any way prevent them from branching out to learn and gain the strengths of all the other subtypes as well.  Yet also like with cognition, when we try to force ourselves to be a different subtype without first developing our own, we tend to lose the strengths of our own sub, while gaining only the weaknesses of the sub that we’re pretending to be.  Everyone of any type or subtype can do *everything*, but only when we first come to understand, accept, and grow into the person who we’ve already always wanted to be, deep down.

This is the point of aLBoP: to help people understand themselves and others, to *remove* limits and barriers, not to place new, contrived ones.  That’s why we’re so wary of silly, insulting, ridiculous stereotypes and simplifications.  The human mind, and the human potential for growth and improvement, are far more complex than the divisive stereotypes would have you believe.  And in all that complexity, intelligence still turns out to be so astoundingly orderly and consistent in retrospect.  Not simple, not force-fit into any petty little boxes, but remarkably elegant in a magnificent consistency of complexity.

This was a quote from the original subtype post which didn’t make it here, but it’s worth sharing anyway and Calise already made the picture so…

So as we go into a quick(ish) runthrough of the basics of the four subtypes, these are not descriptions of boxes from which we can never escape.  Subtypes display our preferred approach to our behaviors, attitudes, habits, and even our talents.  They’re a part of us, but not as deep, foundational, or subconscious as our cognition; subtypes tend to be the deepest down our conscious thoughts and feelings get, which makes them much easier for people to notice than real cognitive types.

So if some of the descriptions of subtypes start to sound a bit like behavioral personality typing, that’s because it is!  Behaviors are, well, behavioral.  Most popular forms of attempted personality typing deal with behaviors, not our real cognitive types, even if they sometimes mix them up.  But that doesn’t mean that behavioral typing can’t be done right.  Now going back and using our foundation of consistent, reliable cognitive types, we can at last make a thoroughly solid exploration of behavioral subtypes!

Each of the four subtypes takes a different approach to everything.  This means that not only do people think differently from each other (cognition), but that even people who think in the same ways, with the same cognitive type, may still approach that same cognition differently!  We live in a culture where so many people imply, or outright say, “If you don’t think the way I do, then you don’t think!”  What a narrow way to limit oneself.  Yet the more we come to understand how everyone thinks, and approaches how they think, based on the same recurrent 4ToI, the more we can get out of life, the more we can be a benefit to ourselves and everyone around us, and the more we can enjoy even genuinely unhealthy people, instead of being limited to seeing only our own point of view and thinking everyone else is just dumb.

So much for a short post, lol, but still we *are* avoiding going into so much that’s best left till Phase 2.  That being said, there’s a lot that I can simply quote verbatim from the Phase 2 subtypes post.  In that post, we use the analogy of a car’s steering and pedals to describe how subtypes approach life:

“We like to think of (e) and (i) as being like the gas and brakes of a car, determining the speed of how we approach our decisions, conclusions, and everything.  (e)s are constantly observing outward while the decision-car cruises at its own speed, while (i)s pay more attention to the inside of the car, controlling the speed of decision as they choose.  This lets (e)s look out and see things that (i)s might miss, while (i)s speed up to act decisively or slow down to act more carefully as needed.

“And we like to think of (p) and (j) as being like the decision-mobile’s steering, charting a path of decisions intentionally (j) or letting autopilot take us on a tour to show us new options (p).  (p)s are able to relax and pay attention to all the many things happening outside the windows of their mind-car, while (j)s get to be more deliberate, yet also less aware of unexpected options and opportunities that pop up around the car.”

As always happens with the 4ToI, everything balances out, and we all end up needing the strengths of every other approach.  We didn’t plan for that, we didn’t force such a happy and inclusive result; it’s simply the way things apparently work.  It’s fascinating that, when people have a psychological ax to grind due to their own refusal to see outside their own way of thinking, that seems to be when they come up with pessimistic, divisive psychological ideas that suggest that some types are better, more rational, more caring, more reliable, etc etc.  Yet those sorts of theories never seem to fare well in the harsh light of results and reality.  As soon as we step back and let go of any expected result, it’s pretty cool to see how reality ends up showing that, while not everyone chooses to be healthy, every actual cognitive type and subtype is unavoidably equal with every other.  But that’s straying close to Phase 2 topics again, with how and why the 4ToI are inherently equal and unavoidable, so yeah, raincheck on that.

But now we’re finally ready to take a quick overview of each of the four subtypes!  I’m gonna start with (ep) sub, and…yeah, awesome, I think I can pretty much quote more straight from the Phase 2 post!  I’m just gonna rearrange the order of some paragraphs, and cut out references to stuff that’s covered in the Phase 2 Intro…but yeah, cool, here we go!

(ep) sub: The Natural Approach

So after we described the car analogy, where (e)s are looking out the window, observing outward while their car speeds up or slows down on its own, and (p)s let their self-driving car steer them on an unexpected, unpredictable tour of life, we put it together to get (ep) sub:

“Putting these together, (ep) subs are the most natural, and the least deliberate, of all the subtypes.  As much as Calise might complain about this, it’s a powerful advantage.  When (ep)s allow themselves to relax and be not-deliberate about the speed and subject matter of their decisions, they come to realizations and discoveries that would otherwise remain unknown.  Trading deliberate direction and speed-control for a close trust in their personal self, (ep)s of any cognitive type can approach their Type Spec in a natural, relaxed way, confident that it will lead to huge, new and unexplored vistas of their Type Spec.”

“(ep) subtypes are also the most “natural” about their approach to life.  They’re used to things coming naturally to them, in a talents-oriented way.  Yet this means that when something does not come naturally to them, it can be especially frustrating!  And since (ep)s are used to doing what comes naturally, they tend to assume that everyone else does too; this means that when they see someone of a different subtype excelling at something through deliberate focus, they might assume that the other person’s success just came naturally to them…and that can seem really unfair.  Yet (ep)s’ natural ability is a huge advantage, giving them the widest versatility and adaptability in their Type Spec.  (ep)s aren’t supposed to focus on deliberate approaches to things; they can certainly learn to use deliberateness, but they’ll fare best and be much happier as they let themselves approach everything in a natural, talents-oriented (ep) way.

“No matter what their cognition type is, (ep) subs approach it through the (ep) motives-based ToI, which causes them to observe the way things naturally work, rather than trying to change things.  (ep) is always about observation.  This lets (ep) subs sit back and observe things that other types might miss…but only when (ep)s allow themselves to sit back and be (ep)s.  When they feel the need to be more intentional instead of natural in their ideas, plans, actions, and abilities, they tend to close off and stop observing.  This can make them feel rather lonely, confused, and grumpy.”

“This doubly-natural approach to their Type Specs has an inverse effect on (ep)s’ type fears.  While (ep)s are very unintentional and un-deliberate about their desires, this interestingly makes them doubly intentional and doubly deliberate about how to handle their fears.  Having such an intimate connection to their own selves, (ep)s are much more aware of their type’s fears, and how those fears might sprout up in their lives in the form of Type Angsts.

“Often, this makes (ep)s a bit more resigned to the effects of their type fears.  Being so well acquainted with all the ways that their Type Angsts can crop up and get in the way of, well, everything, (ep)s are kinda like the old, grizzled, paranoid veteran of the subtypes, who’s all too aware of the reality of danger and perhaps a little too pessimistic of the chances of overcoming it.  Jumping at possible fulfillments of their type fear everywhere, (ep)s can be quick to overthink things and see their fear in any potentially worrisome situation.  This can make them feel resigned to having to live with the sheer size and resilience of their type’s fears.  Yet this also has the advantage of making (ep)s the most familiar with all the ins and outs of their type fear, which can equip them to beat those fears effectively and doubly-deliberately.

“On the whole, though, (ep) subs are free and natural in their approach to life, decisions, and their own type.  Each different cognitive type is so different, yet it’s pretty adorable seeing how the (ep) subtype of each brings such an adaptive openness to any and every type.”

(ip) sub: The Comfortable Approach

“With a focus on situations and their specific data and details, (ip) subs end up naturally gravitating to the behaviors they enjoy, the activities they prefer, and the circumstances where they’re the most comfortable.

“Comfort is a big thing for (ip) subs.  They like approaching their Type Specs in a relaxed, cautious way that makes the most use of their accustomed techniques of behavior.  With (p)’s auto-steering allowing them to pay closer attention to interesting and unexpected surprises along life’s branching roads, and (i)’s deliberate control of the decision-mobile’s speed letting them slow down to examine particularly intriguing choices, or speed up to hurry through rote or uninteresting decisions, (ip) makes for a very comfortable ride through life.  Their deliberate (i) naturalness (p) means that (ip)s intentionally *choose* to approach their Type Spec in a natural, relaxed way; they’re “deliberately natural.”  That’s what best helps them learn and improve their accustomed toolbelt of behaviors.  Different individuals are different,  yet all this causes healthy (ip) subs to tend to be quite chill and laid-back about their Type Specs and about life in general.”

“(ip) is always about situational details.  No matter what the cognitive type, (ip) subs approach it through the (ip) data-based ToI, paying attention to the situations of life and smoothly adapting to them.  This lets (ip) subs slow down and focus in on important details relating to their Type Spec, but only when (ip)s allow themselves to chill and be (ip)s.  When they feel pressured to be more driven or self-directed (self-directed isn’t always a good thing, it’s just a (j) thing), they tend to neglect their carefully honed and perfected behaviors and overlook precious situational details.  This can make them very dissatisfied with life, others, and especially themselves.

“This deliberately natural approach to their Type Specs has an inverse effect on (ip)s’ type fears.  While (ip)s are intentionally relaxed about their desires, this makes them unintentionally focused and attentive, or “naturally deliberate,” about their fears.  This unintentional deliberateness means that (ip)s can’t help but be focused on and even preoccupied with their fears!  Having such an attentive awareness of the situational details of their Type Spec, (ip)s are unavoidably aware of how each situation prods at their hidden fears and insecurities.

“This inescapable awareness frequently causes (ip)s to react by running the other way, *trying* to escape by attempting to hide their worries from their own selves, like the ‘don’t worry, be happy, and wear some smooth shades’ dude among the subtypes.  They want to be chill and comfortable, not harassed by gnawing fears that might seem to undermine their entire Type Spec.  So, (ip)s tend toward various forms of denying that their type fear really even bothers them.  They may deny that the fear is true — and usually, it isn’t true! — or they may deny that the fear is even there to begin with.  But denial is not the same as facing a fear and growing to understand, overcome, and even benefit from it.  The more (ip)s unintentionally shy away from exploring their type’s fear and Angst, the more they’ll end up falling victim to their Type Angst in more pronounced and debilitating ways.  Yet the more they learn to take the power of their detailed awareness and focus it on their most uncomfortable fears, the more perfectly they can exemplify all the strengths of their Type Spec without any of its weaknesses.

“Overall, (ip) subs are the most intentionally free and relaxed in their approach to life, decisions, and their own type.  Among all the many different cognitive types, the (ip) subtype of each brings such a comforting, attentive peacefulness to any Type Spec.”

(ej) sub: The Supercharged Approach

“With a focus on action and the consequences that lead to desired experiences, (ej) subs are always sharply aware of which habits they need to improve in order to get the consequences they desire.

“This causes (ej)s to become a bit compulsive about fulfilling their Type Spec.  And that’s a good thing!  With (e)’s natural, automatic approach combined with (j)’s intentional focus, (ej) subs become “naturally deliberate” — unintentionally, inescapably focused on their Type Spec.  Focused whether they like it or not.  Using the metaphor of the decision-mobile, (ej)s have deliberate, self-directed control of their steering (j) but not of their speed (e).  They can plan and choose where they want to go, but not how fast or slow they want to go while getting there; their decision-engine is always set on one speed: forward!  There is no slowing down to study things more carefully, only a constant (and often frantic) attention to steering as they pilot their careening decision-mobile down the paths they determine.  There’s no time to stop and observe, only an absolute focus forward in order to avoid crashing into things.  Everything is a challenge to be assaulted deliberately!  This makes (ej) subs a relentless force for fulfilling their Type Spec, when they’re healthy.”

“Whether an (ej)’s Type Spec is about edifying or enjoying, about practical use or expectable results, they’re always active in plotting a course and building habits to make it happen.  They can’t turn it off.  They may be quietly determined, patiently calculating, or loudly enthusiastic, but they never lose sight of a full-thrust attack on their Type Spec’s main desire.  Even when they want to.  (ej) subs who try to fight their Type Spec, trying to leave it behind in order to be a different type, are plagued with a sharper internal conflict than other subtypes because their Type Spec is still set on turbo, whether they like it or not.  All the power and ferocity that gives (ej)s their drive, also means that their deepest desires won’t be quashed by any mere passing fear or insecurity caused by their Type Angst.  Their deepest desires will come to the fore, even when contradictory fears tear them in two.

“Fortunately, as an apparent balance to this potential for soul-rending conflict, (ej)s are also the most naturally comfortable with their Type Angst.  Healthy (ej)s tend to embrace their type’s fears with the same enthusiasm as anything else, finding joy and excitement in the challenge.  As the inverse of their Type Spec’s un-turn-off-able “natural deliberateness,” (ej)s are deliberately natural about their approach to their type’s fears.  They’re the swaggering, charismatic goofball of the subtypes.  They deliberately choose to relax and go naturally with the flow of their fears, turning that flow into a constant source of passion and drive.  Their fear comfortably motivates a constantly renewed push on their Type Spec, impelling them higher and faster.  This makes healthy (ej)s a source of safety, a blazing example of their Type Spec, and a ton of fun.

“When unhealthy, however, all this fire causes (ej)s to burn themselves and others.  Unhealthy (ej)s tend to project their type’s fear onto others rather than embracing it themselves, accusing those who make them uncomfortable of having the very failings that they’re so aware of in their own private selves.  This does not make unhealthy (ej)s any worse or even any more damaging than unhealthy people of other subtypes; it just makes them quite noticeable about it.

“In everything, (ej)s tend to be noticeable!  In their fears and desires, in doing and being, whether they’re trying to make a splash or trying to blend in, (ej) subs burn bright with their sharp, ultra-focused approach to everything they do!”

(ij) sub: The Deliberate Approach

“With a focus on universal principles and the trends that demonstrate them, (ij) subs become closely familiar with the fact that our attitudes shape our thoughts, feelings, evaluations, and reactions to everything that exists or happens in the world.  Because of this awareness, (ij)s seek to control and cultivate their attitudes intentionally, recognizing that otherwise, their attitudes will end up controlling them.

“Control of self is everything for (ij)s: control of one’s own desires, biases, liabilities, and strengths, and particularly control of one’s approach to their own Type Spec.  When faced with the vast, complex, and so often seemingly contradictory trends of each Type Spec, healthy (ij)s seek control and caution of their own attitudes in order to maintain as much clarity and impartiality as they can.  By paying attention to the way that our attitudes totally alter our interpretation of every event, every experience, every thought and idea and every scrap of information, healthy (ij)s seek to broaden their understanding of their Type Spec by taking careful control of their own attitude-lens.  Unhealthy (ij)s, by contrast, seek to control their attitude-lens in order to produce conclusions and interpretations that they like, deliberately skewing the world in whatever way is convenient to their own twisted version of their type’s desires.  Unhealthy (ij)s live and breathe to fool themselves and then fool others via one-sided attitudes, while healthy (ij)s live every moment trying to compensate for and cancel their attitude’s biases in order to see everything more clearly.

“Everything is about principles and trends for (ij) subs, approaching their Type Spec through the (ij) principles ToI in order to see and understand what makes their type work. … The world is a fabulously complicated realm, which means that easy, simplistic, one-sided attitudes lead to poor results in practice.  There are plenty of bickering, one-sided attitudes these days already; the world could use some healthy (ij)s of every type to deliberately develop inclusive, accurate attitudes.

“(ij) subs are the most deliberate of the subtypes, wielding the intentional, planned steering of (j) as well as the deliberate speed control of (i).  They’re ‘doubly deliberate’ in their approach to everything.  They may choose to slow down to study an interesting moment, or speed up to move on to something else, while also choosing which roads, detours, or undiscovered vistas they want to steer their decisions toward next.  This total control may sound nice to other subtypes, but it comes at the cost of constant attention to both speed and direction.  Sure, (ij)s are free to slow down and consider details when they choose, but their deliberate attention to speed and steering makes it harder for them to notice such details in the first place.  While they don’t need to be as direly focused forward as (ej)s, their attention is spent primarily on control of the decision-mobile, making it easy for them to miss options and ideas that might seem totally obvious to less deliberate subtypes.

“(ij)s’ double-deliberateness means that they approach their Type Spec entirely by choice.  They *choose* to love the things that matter most to them.  They choose to care most about their own type’s central desires; healthy (ij)s wouldn’t have it any other way.  Sure, they could try to force being a different type and tear themselves apart by attempting to bury their own most precious desires, but healthy (ij)s *like* their Type Spec; it’s a pure reflection of who they are.  In dealing with their strengths, weaknesses, growth, learning, anything, (ij)s are always consciously aware of their every move.

“While such deliberate control helps (ij)s chart the path of their own growth, that growth is best served when they focus on developing strong, complex inward attitudes.  When (ij)s feel pressured to focus on deliberately developing outward habits more than inward attitudes, they end up stifling their own powerful and special capacity for self mastery.  This leads to depression, searing inner conflict, and a haunting worry that their true potential is entirely unrecognized and unrealized.  Yet when (ij)s allow themselves to approach life, goals, others, and especially themselves by cultivating inner attitudes most of all, they grow capable of deliberately learning the strengths of other subtypes without suppressing their own.

“All this double-deliberateness becomes the opposite, however, when it comes to (ij) subs’ type fears and the Angsts that those fears cause.  (ij)s are doubly natural, doubly unintentional, about their fears and insecurities.  While they approach life with such control, that same control leaves them extra vulnerable to the unexpected and the unknown, to the crucial yet overlooked sides of the world outside the scope of their own carefully cultivated attitudes.  In deliberately choosing to love their Type Spec, (ij)s are helplessly locked into the fears that come as part of the deal of each type; they can’t have one without the other.

“This helplessness often causes (ij)s to feel especially torn regarding their fears.  On the one hand, they can still approach their fear with control, developing attitudes that help them face and overcome their fears.  Yet on the other hand, in spite of all their accustomed control, the fear simply won’t go away.  They may enjoy precious victories over their persistent fears, deliberately learning new things about life and themselves, and yet like comic book supervillains, the fears will still always be back next time.  (ij) subs are the tragically flawed heroes among the subtypes, constantly battling on when the real foe is their own inner demons.  Fortunately, these undying fears can become an asset instead of a liability, but only as we face them and grow.  Life for (ij) subs is the constant coexisting duality between light and dark, strength and weakness, victory and catastrophe, growth and stagnation.  They are the living embodiment of the eternal principles that define their particular Type Spec.

“On the whole, (ij)s’ doubly-deliberate approach to life and everything draws them to a continual attempt at balance between comfort and ferocity, outward direction and inward introspection.  Yet this comes at the cost of constant control, leaving them the most helpless of all the subtypes against the incessant stabs of their type’s fear.”

And boom, there we go!  Now we can talk about subtypes here on Phase 1!   Whew, so this was not a short post after all…actually it’s a bit longer than the full Phase 2 version!  But hey, I had to talk about facial typing and stuff here, and I quoted Calise’s explanation from the old forum.  Phase 2 posts are able to go into more depth about exactly why and how subtypes are what they are, but this should be good for here.

In the original Phase 2 post, after each subtype section, we gave a list of examples of people of that subtype, one for each cognitive type.  We’re much more cautious about doing that sort of thing here, though, because we get tired of people cruising in, saying “nope, that’s wrong, because [insert demeaning stereotype here.]”  For example (paraphrasing), “Nope, [Shen] is INTJ, because he has a vision.”  What the…?  So only INTJs can have great, ambitious vision?  Oh no wait, I used the word “ambitious,” and only ENTJs are ambitious, right?  “Nope, Rapunzel is an E, because she’s outgoing.”  “Nope, Mulan is an F, because she cares about people.”  “Nope, Marble Hornets’ Jay is a P, because he stinks at planning.”  “Nope, Harry Potter is ISFP, because he’s lazy about schoolwork but he’s good at Quidditch.”  All real comments we’ve gotten.  I am not making this crap up.

I just…yeah…  So only Es are social, only Fs ever care about people, only Ps have trouble with planning and schoolwork, and only Ss are athletic?  May INTP(ip) Michael Jordan come smack you in your sleep.  How is this science?  How is this okay?  I wish I were exaggerating, but people talk this way so unabashedly.

Yet over and over, we meet sensible, cool people who just want to *understand* themselves and everyone else, and, well, stereo-typing is simply the best option they’ve known so far.  That’s who we’re writing for.  There’s not much hope in trying to “convince” people who *want* the ugly, nonsensical stereotypes, who cling to them tenaciously because the simplifications make them feel better than other people.  No, we’re here for the awesome people who want self-understanding rather than self-justification, who want to face and solve problems rather than point out somebody else’s, and who want the real versions that actually work and can actually be used in daily life, rather than bizarro four-by-four charts that boil down the complexity of human minds into a vapid list of traits that could kinda apply to anyone.

Heh, but enough of that, we have plenty of posts laboriously explaining the issues with the inconsistencies and stereotypes.  For this one, I’ll just say that the types I’m about to list are not mere subjective opinions based on selective cherry-picking of a few quotes or anecdotes.  What’s awesome about having reliable, repeatable definitions that always apply, is that they always work.  There’s no wiggle room for subjective fudging; if there were, then our definitions would be flawed.  In addition, the ironclad reliability of facial typing is like a hot knife cutting through the sludge of stereotypes.  Okay that’s gross, but it’s true.  And it’s so cool.

So now without further ado, here’s a parade of subtypes to give a glimpse at how each sub approaches each cognitive type!

Natural (ep) subs:
– ENFP(ep): Charles Dickens
– ESFP(ep): Andrew Zimmern
– ENTP(ep): Will Smith
– ESTP(ep): Conan O’Brien
– INFP(ep): Benito Mussolini (who says INFPs can’t be evil?)
– ISFP(ep): Michael Jackson
– INTP(ep): Albert Einstein
– ISTP(ep): Jennifer Lawrence
– ENFJ(ep): William Shakespeare
– ESFJ(ep): Reese Witherspoon
– ENTJ(ep): Anthony Bourdain
– ESTJ(ep): Neil Armstrong
– INFJ(ep): Aaron Sorkin
– ISFJ(ep): Carrie Underwood
– INTJ(ep): Christopher Columbus
– ISTJ(ep): Ayn Rand

Comfortable (ip) subs:
– ENFP(ip): Winston Churchill
– ESFP(ip): Oscar Wilde
– ENTP(ip): Viggo Mortensen
– ESTP(ip): Alexander the Great
– INFP(ip): Stephen Hawking
– ISFP(ip): Alfred Hitchcock
– INTP(ip): Mark Twain
– ISTP(ip): Socrates
– ENFJ(ip): Martin Luther King, Jr.
– ESFJ(ip): Maya Angelou
– ENTJ(ip): Thomas Edison
– ESTJ(ip): Bill O’Reilly
– INFJ(ip): Mohandas Gandhi
– ISFJ(ip): Jonah Hill
– INTJ(ip): Leonardo da Vinci
– ISTJ(ip): Charlotte Bronte

Supercharged (ej) subs:
– ENFP(ej): Nikola Tesla
– ESFP(ej): Jay Leno
– ENTP(ej): Benjamin Franklin
– ESTP(ej): Ernest Hemingway
– INFP(ej): Helen Keller
– ISFP(ej): Rosa Parks
– INTP(ej): Marie Curie
– ISTP(ej): Les Stroud (Survivorman)
– ENFJ(ej): Lewis Carroll
– ESFJ(ej): Alan Tudyk
– ENTJ(ej): Katy Perry
– ESTJ(ej): Queen Elizabeth II
– INFJ(ej): Fred Astaire
– ISFJ(ej): Anderson Cooper
– INTJ(ej): Henry Ford
– ISTJ(ej): Christopher Lee

Deliberate (ij) subs:
– ENFP(ij): Julie Andrews
– ESFP(ij): Eleanor Roosevelt
– ENTP(ij): Jimmy Fallon
– ESTP(ij): Samuel L. Jackson
– INFP(ij): Daniel Radcliffe
– ISFP(ij): Christopher Nolan
– INTP(ij): Abraham Lincoln
– ISTP(ij): Scarlett Johansson
– ENFJ(ij): Stan Lee
– ESFJ(ij): Anna Kendrick
– ENTJ(ij): Napoleon Bonaparte
– ESTJ(ij): Jamie Hyneman (Mythbusters)
– INFJ(ij): James McAvoy
– ISFJ(ij): Bruce Willis
– INTJ(ij): Steve Jobs
– ISTJ(ij): Pablo Picasso

This makes me want to list more, both real-life and fictional too, to show more about how amazingly and diversely each type thinks!  How well they all work, how marvelously consistent they are, and how much we all need *all* of them.  To quote the Phase 2 subtype post one more time:

“Each needs all the others, each fills holes and covers weaknesses of the others, and each shines the brightest when benefitting and learning from the unique approaches of each other subtype.

“And every subtype can learn to gain all the strengths of all the others.  Just as with … cognition, if we try to force being a different subtype due to pressure or fears, then we’ll gain only the easily acquired weaknesses of the other sub, while neglecting the strengths of our own.  Yet as we allow ourselves to embrace life as the subtype we naturally are, we grow to overcome all its weaknesses while also gaining the strengths of other subtypes.  And the more we grow to understand ourselves and others, the happier, more effective, and more beneficial we become, able to lift everyone and show them how awesome life can be.”

On the aLBoP Guided Tour?  You’ve reached the last stop for now! :'(  But don’t worry!  That means you’re ready to invite yourself to Phase 2!  And believe me, there’s plenty to read over there!  Thanks for sticking around and showing us your love! <3s

The post A Little Bit of Subtypes appeared first on A Little Bit of Personality.

Thank you guys for everything you do! aLBoP is made worthwhile by you guys, and we seriously couldn’t ask for better friends than the ones we’ve found through this amazing journey

See the original video here.

Music credits:
Locally Sourced – Jason Farnham
Sunny – Bensound.com
Dance – Bensound.com
Pop Danthology 2012 – Daniel Kim
Funny Song – Bensound.com
Ukelele – Bensound.com
Clap and Yell – Bensound.com

The post Bloopers Video to Celebrate 4 Years of aLBoP! appeared first on A Little Bit of Personality.

Hey!  This is Justin!  Since I’m gonna be doing a lot of Phase 2, it’s probably good for me to say hi.  It’s been awesome getting to talk to you guys over chats and emails, and I’m excited to finally get to do some character spotlights!

For this first one, we’re going to be focusing especially on how to type people.  A lot of you have asked for help with typing people yourselves, so let’s walk through the process!

We’ve also convinced a couple of stick people, Gwen and Phil, to sacrifice their dignity and show us how *not* to type.  They’re going to do their best to type correctly, using oversimplified, stereotypical methods and definitions, and we’ll see how they do.

For this tutorial, we wanted to type a cool, engaging character who’s also kinda obscure.  That way, we shouldn’t have to worry much about preconceptions of the character’s type.  We wouldn’t want to start out with Darth Vader, say.  (We’ve seen Lord Vader typed as pretty much every single type :P)

That’s exactly the sort of subjectivity that we’re excited to get past here!  Regardless of whether we’re typing someone’s behavior or their cognition, if it all ends up coming down to subjective arguments over what type they are, then there’s something wrong with our methodology.  A reliable, repeatable, useful science needs to be objective, no matter who’s looking at it.

This kind of independent objectivity isn’t something a lot of people would associate with personality typing.  All too often, personality typing gets misused as a vague, horoscope-ish way of boiling people down to a simplistic little list of traits that could really be true of almost anyone.  Gwen and Phil are gonna demonstrate how this vagueness doesn’t work.  Aren’t you, guys?

We, on the other hand, are all going to show these two the consistent roots of cognitive typing.  We’re going to walk through how the cognitive definitions of the letters leave no wiggle room for subjective fudging; once we know how the letters work at their root, then every typing becomes clear.

So who’s our lucky, obscure victim for this demonstration?  Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, I give you…

…a peacock.

But not just any peacock.  This is the nefarious Lord Shen, the brilliant and, in my estimation, very charming villain of Kung Fu Panda 2.  Yes, there really is a movie called Kung Fu Panda, if you didn’t know.  Two of them, actually, with a third on the way.  And they’re really fantastic, with excellent themes told in a skillful way, and very good plot structure, and also very pretty. 

So we’re gonna type our peacock, step by step.  What’s he gonna be?

Gwen and Phil: INTJ!!

Wait, huh?

Gwen: Villain, therefore INTJ.

Phil: Done.  Next?

Okay…  Well, he might be, we’ll have to go through it and see.  Trying to type someone based on broad generalizations about what any type is like is dangerous, and probably kinda hurtful to people of that type.  I’m sure real INTJs never get tired of being called villains and soulless monsters, after all.

Any type can be villainous, heartless, devious, selfish, etc.  So if we start saying that anyone who’s villainous must be INTJ, when in reality any of the 16 types can be villains, then we’re only going to be right about one-sixteenth of the time, through sheer luck.

Likewise, if we start saying that anyone who’s thoughtful, private, creative, or heroic must be INFJ, then we’re going to be wrong fifteen-sixteenths of the time.  If we say that anyone who’s fun, bouncy, and lives in the moment must be ESFP, then we’re going to get it wrong fifteen times out of sixteen.  These sorts of generalizations are too vague, because in reality, anyone of any type can sometimes fit them.

Can INTJs be bouncy and live in the moment?  Absolutely; they’ll just do it in an INTJ way, which is usually distinctly adorable.

Okay Gwen and Phil, so we can’t just shout out four-letter combos based on generalized caricatures.  Sound good?  When we do, we often neglect any coherent definition of the letters themselves.

So first, let’s start with E and I.  Which is Lord Shen?

Gwen: I!

Phil: E!

Ooh, a disagreement!  This is why we picked these two.  Alright, let’s start with Phil.  Why do you say Shen’s an Extravert?

Phil: Did you even *see* how many henchmen he has?  The guy’s always surrounded by followers.  He loves the attention.  Can you imagine him sitting alone with a book?  Totally not his style.  He’s a diva, an attention hog, he even wants his enemies to be there to see him win.  Absolutely an Extravert.

Gwen: Wrong.

Okay Gwen, why do you say he’s an Introvert?

Gwen: None of those henchmen are his friends.  He wants to be alone.  He hates his family, he doesn’t respect anyone, and he wants all the glory for himself.  He’s obviously well-studied, which says Introvert to me.  Who invented firearms?  He did, alone.  When everyone else was watching fireworks, he was in his room, figuring things out.  Lord Shen is an Introvert.

Phil: Oh come on, what about—

Alright, let’s stop right here.  This is the problem, guys.  See the subjectivity happening here?

Gwen: No.  I’m just saying it how it is.

Phil: Yeah, right!  You’re totally ignoring, like, everything!

This is what we mean, both of you.  Picking and choosing scenes, situations, lines of dialogue, whatever you can find to support your view.  That’s subjective, because each viewer may focus on different things.  You both make interesting arguments that bring out important parts of Shen’s character.  If we invited a few more stick people to join you, I bet they’d each have even more different reasons for saying E or I.  At this rate, sixteen different stick people might type Shen as sixteen different types!

This is often how it goes all over the internet, where there are a lot more than sixteen people.  And this is a large part of the reason why some people consider personality typing to be unscientific, because guys, subjective picking-and-choosing isn’t science.  You can’t test it, you can’t verify it, and really of what use is it?  What predictions does it make about Shen, or about anyone?  What does it do besides divide people into little boxes?

Gwen, you mentioned that Shen must be an Introvert because he alone invented firearms.  Do you realize that you just accused half of humanity of being unable to invent new things on their own?

Gwen: Well, I…

You are an Introvert, or at least you identify as one, so you are used to inventing things in an Introverted way.  You’re used to doing so many things that way.  This does not mean that Extraverts cannot invent things just as well, it means only that they’ll do it a bit differently from the way you’re used to.  This is another problem with subjective personality typing: it can give us an attitude that anyone who doesn’t think the way we do, doesn’t think.  Or at least doesn’t think very well.

This sort of subjectivity usually means that there’s a problem with the definitions we’re using.  Poor definitions leave room for subjectivity, for bias and fudging.  In any discipline, useful definitions give us a clear idea of what we’re working with, so we can build upon them to reach reliable conclusions that will apply accurately in all the complexity of life.  Unreliable definitions become less helpful, because we can’t really depend on them to guide us when we need definite, clear answers.  These kinds of fuzzy definitions can be great as a stepping stone to more coherent ones, but they’re not good for depending on in practice.

So Gwen and Phil, what definitions were you using to determine whether Shen is an E or an I?

Gwen: May I remind you, you told us to use stereotypes and oversimplified definitions?

Phil: Ya bro, what gives?

Oh right, sorry guys.  Okay, what definitions did I talk you into using, while you did your best to type Shen correctly?

Gwen: Not the easiest task.

Phil: You know the drill, who doesn’t?  Extravert means fun, social, likes to be the center of attention at parties.

Gwen: And draws energy from interacting with others.

Phil: Yeah, that too.  And Introvert means drawing energy from being alone.  Likes books, sitting alone thinking, writing, dreaming…antisocial stuff.

Once again, you guys see how fast it becomes a little insulting?  Antisocial isn’t necessarily a good thing, even if someone does prefer to be alone with their own thoughts.  In the same way, even if someone likes being around others more, they may not appreciate being portrayed as a vapid party animal.

And this brings out one of the immediate flaws in these definitions: they’re a little too limiting.  What if I like being social sometimes, but not always?  What if I’m feeling really social at the moment, but a few hours ago I really wanted to have time to myself?  Perhaps we can fudge with the definitions to make room for this sort of nuance, but already that’s a bad sign.  When we have to fudge with definitions, that probably means we need to reevaluate how reliable and comprehensive our definitions are in the first place.

Strong definitions leave no room for exceptions, which usually means they end up being binary, covering opposite sides of a clear dichotomy.  For example, if I say that E means red and I means blue, then that does not cover all possibilities.  Where would a green person fit in?  Or a yellow one, or a gray one?  We could fudge and say, “Well, if you’ve done your reading, you’ll know that gray people are grouped more on the blue side, and yellow are grouped closer to red…”  Alright, but what does “closer to red” mean?  How much of the definition of red do they get?  If we’re saying that E means red, then exactly how E are yellow people?

This is an example of a shaky, clumsy definition, because it isn’t binary.  And that’s why it needs all the extra justifications and special cases about people who aren’t quite red or blue.  Red and blue are not opposites, even if they’re very different from each other.  And because they’re not opposites, they let a flood of exceptions through.  And where there are exceptions, it gets harder to make predictions, which means everything becomes less scientific and more subjective.

Alright, then suppose we define E as red, while I means not-red.  Okay, now everyone of every color will fit squarely within either E or I, with no subjective doctoring needed.  Either you’re red, or not.  Very simple.  Binary.

Yet this brings up another problem!  Are these definitions of E and I consistent with reality?  Well, that depends what we’re trying to show with our definition, but I expect that if we actually tried to define E as red and I as not-red, then most people would find that very useless in terms of psychology.  And we’d probably end up with a whole lot more Is than Es, because there are a lot more not-red things in the world than red ones.

So yes, we need to make the definitions of E and I binary, so they don’t invite subjective fiddling by letting exceptions through.  But we also need to make the definitions of E and I true to reality, so they don’t leave anyone feeling limited or oversimplified.  And that takes a whole lot of patient observation and experimentation, and means we have to allow our budding definitions to evolve to become better verbal reflections of what nature’s already been doing all along.

So after some care, we ended up with the definitions of E and I that we’ve been using here on aLBoP:  That E means cognitive Extraversion, which entails looking out at the world in order to gather information and ideas, while I means cognitive Introversion, which entails looking inward to consider information and ideas.  That’s fairly binary as it is, outward vs. inward, but an important part of the equation is that everyone does both, yet each person prioritizes one before another.  If Es do outward-then-inward, while Is do inward-then-outward, then that seems very neatly binary.
But what if someone does outward-then-outward?  Where would that fit?  Or what if someone looks outward first sometimes, but inward first at others?  This is where we have to see if our definitions pair up with reality.  In practice, it seems that not only does everyone do both, never just doing the same one twice, but also that a person’s cognitive preference never deviates!  It’s pretty amazing, but apparently it’s the way cognition works.  Everyone wants to look outward, and everyone wants to look inward, but each individual wants to do one a little more than the other, deep down.  Due to what each of us secretly desires most, our psyches will consistently prioritize Introverted pondering or Extraverted observation, one or the other, in the same way in every situation.

These definitions were not arrived at out of thin air; we simply dug down to find what was really going on behind Extraversion and Introversion.  What was the root cause that resulted in all the behavioral symptoms?  A cold may give you a cough, but the cough is just a symptom, and many things besides a cold may give you the same symptom.  Digging down to the root cause, we can find out what a cold actually is, and what cognitive Extraversion and Introversion actually are, demonstrating what causes the symptoms without being confused by them.

And because we’re defining root causes rather than symptoms, we don’t end up limiting anyone.  No one should be made to feel limited in their behaviors, choices, aptitudes, or anything about the person they want to be.  Since these definitions get down to the cognitive root, we avoid exceptions and subjectivity, we keep close to reality in actual practice, and we reflect the way people already approach the world without limiting anything that they want to do or be.

Phew!  So…yeah.  Definitions are one of the absolute most important, and most neglected, aspects of any discipline.  Shaky definitions lead to shaky science and hurtful oversimplifications, while strong definitions lead to clear understanding, accurate predictions, and no insulting stereotypes!

So guys, let’s see how our clarified definitions of E and I fare.  Does Lord Shen look outward at the world first, then consider things in his mind?  Or does he consider things in his mind first, then look outward?

Phil: Hm…

Gwen: Uh…can we watch the movie again?

Yeah!  Okay, so the first time we see him is in the intro montage.  He’s a happy young peacock living with his parents, who rule the city.  They’ve invented fireworks, which makes everyone happy.  But Shen sees destructive potential in the black powder.  We don’t get to see how this realization occurs, so here we have to admit that we lack sufficient information.  That’s very important to do, when necessary.  Maybe Shen figured this out by pondering in his own mind, Introverted, or maybe he figured it out by watching how things work, Extraverted.  We just don’t get shown, so we have to say we don’t know.

Score: I – 0, E – 0

 Then, worried about his budding nutball-ness, Shen’s parents consult a soothsayer to find out what to do.  The soothsayer warns that unless Shen changes, he’ll one day be defeated by a warrior of black and white.  And there’s a cool yin/yang symbolism evoked.  But Shen can read foreshadowing as well as we can, and he thinks, “Pandas!”  And he reacts.  Violently.

This says Extravert, at this point.  Why?  Because Shen is choosing his action based on what he’s observed outside.

Gwen: But couldn’t an Introvert do that too?

Sure, everyone of any type can do anything!  Yet they’ll each do it in different ways.  An Introverted Shen, upon overhearing the soothsayer, would consider how her words matched up with what Shen had already considered in his own mind.  Observation of the soothsayer’s words would be secondary to his own previous thoughts.  He might arrive at the same course of action, but it would be motivated by his own thoughts, not immediately by the soothsayer’s words.  An Introverted Shen would have gone away, thinking, then hatched a violent plan and gone forward.  This Shen, on the other hand, hears the words and reacts!  It’s the words of the soothsayer, an external source of information, which impel his action, not his own internal pondering.  Make sense?

Gwen: I suppose, so far at least…

Phil: This is just a montage, though.  Maybe he went and thought and we never saw it?

Yes, this is a quick montage, so that is still possible, Phil.  But be careful of adding scenes that aren’t there.  In good storytelling, we get a well-rounded view of a character by seeing the choices they make, and how they make them.  That’s what makes well-crafted fictional characters a great place to start typing!  So far, it seems the story is showing us that Shen reacts to external information, rather than internal.

Score: I – 0, E – 1

So Shen gathers his wolf cronies, and commits genocide against all the pandas.  And then here’s what’s really interesting: he comes home, expecting his parents to be proud!  This shows how messed up he is, yes, and anyone of any type can be.  Yet this also shows a distinct focus on others’ opinions.  This again suggests Extravert, seeking information from outside, in this case from other people.

An Introverted Shen, by contrast, might still intensely crave his parents’ approval, but he would not seek it as a way to validate or justify his actions.  He would not seek outside opinions or approval to show him that what he’d done was good.  Rather, when he came to his parents in triumph, he would have already determined that what he’d done was good or necessary.  Their love would be what he’d want, and if he believed that their love depended on their approval, then he might seek their approval for its own sake.  But he would not expect their approval to validate his choice of action.

 The movie’s Extraverted Shen, on the other hand, bursts in triumphantly, clearly expecting his parents’ pride to endorse his decisive, fate-defying action.  And so when he sees their horror, it crushes him.  When they banish him and all his wolf henchmen, he is being cut off from the most precious source of external information he has: his parents, and his home.  All his reactions to this show a cognitive Extraversion, looking outward to understand life.

Score: I – 0, E – 2
 

One last bit from the montage:  When Shen is banished, he vows revenge.  Okay, what kind of revenge?  Does he swear to return and destroy them all?  Or maybe take over the city?  Well he sure seems to intend that, but what he says is interesting.  That someday he’ll return, and everyone will bow at his feet.  Again, this is Extraverted.  His version of revenge is entirely external, centered around what others do and how they view him.  It isn’t motivated primarily by what he can get for himself; it’s all centered around what he can do to others, and how he can force them to view him.

Score: I – 0, E – 3
 

 Wow, this is being pretty consistent so far!  And notice that none of it is determined by *what* Shen does, but by *how* he does it.  In every instance, an Introvert could do the same actions, but they’d do it with entirely different motives and goals.

This method of considering both options, Introvert and Extravert, and then seeing which matches with the actual character, keeps us safe from subjective cherry-picking.  All too often, people watch movies, read books, or look at real people and cherry-pick only the actions or words they want in order to suggest the type they want.  But once we recognize that anyone can do or say anything, regardless of their type, that kind of subjectivity falls apart.  Then we have to look at how and why the person does or says what they do, and consider how they might do the same action differently if they cognated differently.  If you think a character or person is a certain letter, then ask, “What would they be like if they were the other letter?”  Explore both, and see what happens!

And so the movie goes on.  And over and over, Shen displays an entirely consistent focus outward, at others’ opinions, their actions, and their estimation of him.  This is not to say that Extraverts are insecure; Introverts can be just as cripplingly insecure, and either can be healthy and chill, yet as always, they’ll do it in different ways.
 

When Shen finally does return, you can tell he’s rehearsed the whole grand entrance.  He wants to make his enemies pay.  Then when he gives his private victory speech, with only the soothsayer as audience, he points out how much he’s rehearsed this moment.  Soon after, when he learns of the existence of one last panda, we see him nervously rehearsing a scripted “At last we meet!” speech.  This kind of rehearsal shows how much Shen cares about the way everyone sees him in an Extraverted way, focusing outward on their opinions even more than on his own victories.

This awareness of others’ opinions doesn’t make Extraverts weak or shallow; on the contrary, their focus on others can give them perspective that Introverts might overlook.  Their outward awareness can make it easier to know others’ needs, and easier to have a thick skin against others’ opinions, having a clearer awareness of the motives behind those opinions.  While unhealthy Extraverts like Shen may be quite insecure in their awareness of how others see them, healthy Extraverts can be all the more calm and confident for it.

Interestingly, rehearsing also lets Shen feel almost Introverted, motivated by his own predetermined script rather than feeling vulnerable to others’ words or opinions.  Yet the sheer fact that Shen has to keep rehearsing shows how much that kind of Introverted action does not come naturally to him.  He can learn to do it, just as anyone can learn to do anything, but it is harder for him.  Just like observing others and reacting accordingly is a bit harder for Introverts.

This also brings up an unfortunate tendency of less healthy Es.  Shen rehearses and rehearses, but when he finally meets Po the Panda, the meeting doesn’t go at all as he’d expected.

When Extraverts rehearse without having a correct image of their audience in mind, it’s a sign of unhealthiness, of being stuck in their own heads while flailing at the outside world.  Even healthy Es can do this, but when they do, it’s a sign that they’re slipping into quite unhealthy attitudes.  When Extraverts go off on a subject without considering their audience, when they rant on social media making others wonder who they’re trying to talk to, when it seems as if they’re shouting at a wall in long, pre-scripted tirades, then that shows they’re being closed-off, and in fact clinging to insecurities about their last cognitive step.  This inevitably leads to erroneous attitudes, ideas, and harmful decisions.  Introverts can do all this too, of course, but they’ll do it in a different way, becoming obsessed with how others see them, in fact paying too much attention to their audience!  Yet as always, the more both Es and Is learn to focus on their first step instead of their last, the more they’ll snap out of it and actually talk *to* people, instead of talking *at* them.

Back to our buddy Shen, he keeps the old soothsayer around, obsessed with what she has to say about his future, even when it remains unchanged after all his years of planning.  He needs to see her proven wrong.  He needs her to admit it.  And so she trolls him, knowing he’ll be hanging on her every word.  Shen views the soothsayer as a vital source of external information, a window into the future which Shen feels so desperately powerless to affect.  In a way, the future and its immutable consequences are the ultimate external information.  So everything Shen does is meant to beat the future, to change it, to force it to conform to his actions as a final way of validating them.  All entirely Extraverted.

I’m not sure what the score would be by this point in the film, but it’s looking like a shutout with E trouncing I.  In every interaction, every choice, Shen shows a persistent focus on external information.  He acts as if his entire success or failure depends on external opinions.  He’s not only more Extraverted than Introverted; he seems purely, entirely Extraverted!

This is actually how it’s supposed to work, in real life as well as in fiction.  The writers of this movie didn’t know to make their villain a pure Extravert; they just wanted an interesting villain with realistic, identifiable motivations.  In the same way, the clearer definitions of E and I show that everyone is always all one, or all the other.  In every situation, decision, thought, or action, Extraverts will look outside themselves for information first.  Every time.  And Introverts will start by looking inside their minds first, every single time.  Again, this isn’t a limit on what we can do; everyone can get good at everything, yet Extraverts naturally think in an Extraverted way, and Introverts think in an Introverted way.

If, instead, we found that people tended to come off as more of a mix, then that might suggest that our definitions needed some work.  The fact that it’s always consistent shows that we’ve gotten down to the roots of how we think, beneath all our changing behaviors and attitudes.  Inconsistency would suggest inaccurate definitions.

What this means, though, is that a real test of cognition should never say, “Well, you got 6 points of E and only 4 points of I, so overall you’re an E.”  That kind of mixed result shows a problem in the definitions that the test is using for its letters.  So when you run into tests that give mixed results like that—and I don’t really know of any other kind of test for these letters—then you can be pretty sure that the test is at least a little inaccurate.  Faulty definitions lead to faulty conclusions.  A thorough, cohesive definition of the letters will yield thoroughly consistent answers.  Even behavioralism can be made to meet this standard, once it derives robust, dependable definitions of behaviors.

Anyway, Shen here certainly seems to be coming out as a pure cognitive Extravert, which helps us better understand all his behaviors and attitudes.

Phil: Okay, that’s all actually really cool, but…he’s a bad guy!

Gwen: He’s right.  Aren’t bad guys usually Introverted masterminds?

Shen certainly seems to qualify as a mastermind.  Plotting, controlling, moving each chess piece for years.  But why does mastermind have to mean Introvert?  Why does someone have to look inside their own mind for information, in order to cunningly craft a devious strategy?  Here we come to limitations again.  Stereotype might tell us that villains must be Introverts because only Introverts can create a competent villainous scheme, but that’s just insulting to Extraverts.

One of the reasons we chose Shen for this first spotlight was because his four-letter type goes against all kinds of stereotypes!  And here’s one stereotype we can defy right away: he’s an Extraverted mastermind, constantly looking outside himself as he proceeds with his master plan.  This makes Shen “POP” as a villain, breaking away from the clichés we’ve grown used to.  Not that Introverted villains can’t be made to POP in their own ways, but Shen’s Extraversion is quite engaging.

Okay, so we’re good?  Lord Shen is an Extravert?

Gwen: It appears so.

Phil: Booyah!  Rack up one point for Phil, I was right!

Well your answer was right, but that doesn’t mean you understood why, Phil.  Since each of you chose one of the two letters, one of you was gonna get it right!

Phil: Yeah, but it was me!

Gwen: Sheer luck.

And lucky guesses aren’t science, since they don’t help us make predictions.  They don’t really help us understand anything.  But now that we’ve gotten down to the comprehensive definition at the core of Extraversion, you can understand the reasons behind it without having to rely on guesswork.  And that’s much nicer, yeah?

Phil: Yeah, it makes a ton more sense, actually.  It’s not what I’m used to, like, at all.  But you’re right, it makes it so I don’t have to just kinda guess and hope for the best.

Gwen: Much more concrete.  Even if you made us start out with unreliable definitions.

Yeah…  You’ve both been great sports.  And as for what you’re used to, remember that this definition is the root of all the actual symptoms of Extraversion, while losing the stereotypes that were never really symptoms of anything.  By these definitions both E and I are fundamentally equal, because everyone does both, just in opposite order.  No more can we say that one is less healthy, less thoughtful, less friendly, or less intelligent than the other.  Anyone of any type can and should be free to be whatever they choose.  Each different way of approaching life is equally valid and effective.

Phil: Phil 1, Gwen 0.

Alright, we gotta move on!  Next we’ll see whether Shen is a P or a J.

Phil: Wait!

Gwen: Aren’t S and N next?

Yeah?  Why’s that?

Phil: Because…they’re next.

Gwen: After I and E, comes S and N.

Ohhh, right.  See, here’s the thing.  That letter order is kinda arbitrary, but we’ve gotten used to it, so, yeah.  Calise and I often find it more useful to focus on first and last letters together, since they represent a type’s Scope.  If we could start over fresh (tempting, but far too confusing), we might write it as IJ-NT, instead of INTJ.  That’s actually how we sometimes say it in private, in fact.  IJ-NT gets across that the first pair is the Scope, the primary focus of the type which determines its first cognition step, while the second pair is the Objective, the secondary focus that gets applied to the Scope.

We still say INTJ because, hey, we don’t want to be confusing.  And Calise kinda likes the sense of “balance” that comes from having the Scope letters on the outside, like bookends.  She says it feels like a castle, with little towers on the outside.  But either way, when we’re walking through how cognition works we can go in any order we like, and focusing on Scope (first and last letters) followed by Objective (middle letters) tends to be far more informative.

We did have one reader once who seemed to think Calise was saying that the cognition steps go I-N-T-J, in that order.  And there’s nothing wrong with being a little confused, but when someone comes on a website to declare that it’s wrong, they’d probably be well advised to actually consider the content.  Even a brief glance at the pictures, without even bothering to read, should have shown that the order of cognition steps has nothing at all to do with the arbitrary order of the letters; that’s not even how cognition steps work.  But when people seem uncomfortable about any topic, it can be amazing how much reading comprehension turns off.

Phil: Word.

Right!  So, we’re okay hitting J and P next?  See what our boy Shen’s Scope turns out to be?

Gwen: Sounds good.

Phil: Yeah, because he’s gonna be a P.  I am on fire!

Don’t burn yourself just yet.  Let’s let Gwen go first this time.  Gwen?

Gwen: Lord Shen is a J, because…you really want me to do this?

I promised you candy!  All you have to do is use the usual, simplified definitions, and see how well you can manage to type.

Gwen: Candy, right.  In that case, Lord Shen is a J, because he gets things done.  He makes plans and he sees them through.  His whole life is about plans.  He knows what he wants, and he does whatever it takes to get it.  Everything has to be perfect, everything has to be just the way he pictured it.  And he’s very judgmental about everyone around him.  Therefore, he must be a Judger.

Phil:  Pfft, yeah right.

Your turn, Phil.

Phil: Shen is totally a P, because he’s funny!  He seems like he’d be a lot of fun to be around, if only he wasn’t evil.  And he’s a P because all his plans keep going wrong!  They keep blowing up in his face, and every time he tries to change fate he just blunders into it over and over.  Sure he’s got style, but he clearly has no idea what he’s doing.  Totally a Perceiver.

Ouch.  Good job you two, but gosh, where do we even start?  Gwen, you implied that—

Gwen: That only Judgers can get things done, only Judgers plan and see it through and get what they want.

Yes.  And also that “Judger” means judgmental of others.  I know, you’d think that the word Judger would mean judgmental, but that’s the difficulty with choosing words to adequately represent what’s already going on in the human mind; almost any word might have inaccurate implications.

And Phil?  What did you imply?

Phil: I’m on it.  My definition made it sound like only Ps are fun, and that our plans always have to go wrong.  That we’re pretty incompetent at planning, really, and just wander around clueless.

Gwen: Well, don’t you?

Phil: Now listen, you!  We…yeah, we do, sometimes.

Yes, you do.  Sometimes.  But then so do Js, sometimes.  Believe me, I’m a J.  As always, any healthy person of any type can have every healthy habit and attitude, and anyone of any type can have any weakness.  Perceivers can plan effectively, and Judgers can be fun and spontaneous.  And both can blunder around ruining their own plans, and both can be overly judgmental.

As with Extravert and Introvert, this suggests a problem with our definitions.  If anyone can be either, then there’s room for subjective fudging, which means our definitions don’t adequately reflect reality.

Deciphering the root definition of J and P is actually not too hard; we mainly just have to cut past all the belittling stereotypes.  Once we do, we end up with this clear, binary definition: that Js prefer to take action first and consider options second, while Ps prefer to consider options first and take action second.  There are times for both, and either can result in every ability and aptitude; they’ll just do it in different ways.

Now, like with E and I, we consider how Shen would be if he were a J, and then we consider how he would be if he were a P.  And then we see which matches up!  So you two, what would Shen be like if he were a Perceiver?  If he naturally preferred to consider options first, then take action after.

Gwen: You take this one.

Phil: Alright, starting where Shen meets Po…  Hm, I think I see where this is going, because if Shen were a P, he’d probably act differently from how he does in the movie.

How so?

Phil: If he were a P, he wouldn’t be so stilted and pre-scripted.  He’d roll with things better, and wouldn’t be so surprised when Po throws him curveballs.

Of course a healthy J can learn to adapt and roll with things.

Phil: Yeah, but I think if Shen were a P, he’d probably bounce off of Po’s surprises pretty naturally.  And if he was clinging to a script—because hey, sometimes even I like having a plan—I think a P Shen would be so focused on following his script that he wouldn’t even notice Po messing it up.  I mean, that’s how I get when I’m trying to follow a plan to the letter, I kinda get oblivious, because scripted isn’t normally how I roll, so I have to cling hard to the plan or just let it go.

Very observant!  Of course, a healthy P could learn to be less clingy to their plans, but you’re right, it would be harder.  Now Gwen, same situation, where Shen first meets Po.  What would a J Shen be like?

Gwen: As a J, Shen would always have *some* kind of plan, even if it’s a really adaptive one.  And when Po messed up the plan, Shen would be surprised and maybe a little hesitant, trying to figure out what to do.  But he wouldn’t be oblivious to Po messing up his perfect script, because he’s used to having plans, so he wouldn’t be clinging as hard to it as, well, Phil would.

Phil: Yeah, we know it’s true.

Alright, so how does Shen in the movie compare?  Is he all P, all J, or a mix?

Gwen: He appears to be entirely J.  At no point does he even come close to observing first; he’s always acting first and then observing after.

Phil: Yeah, she’s right.

Sounds good!  Now, if our definitions are consistent, then this evaluation should remain true for everything Shen does and says throughout the whole movie.  This is because well-written characters are consistent yet complex, the way real people are.  If we just look at one scene in isolation, we might get in danger of cherry-picking scenes that seem to support the answer we want.

But instead of walking through every single scene in the movie, I’m going to click on a random place in the movie and see what comes up…

Okay, that’s Po eating noodles.  Let’s find a better scene.

Here we go!  Po confronting Shen inside Shen’s factory, after Po has found out that Shen killed Po’s parents.  Shen has no script this time; he hasn’t been able to rehearse this encounter.  And yet every time he taunts Po, it’s all very deliberate, first speaking and then seeing how Po handles it.  A Perceiver Shen, by contrast, would be distinctly more fluid in his taunts, constantly observing Po and poking him in just the right places, rather than firing off a carefully calculated jibe and then waiting to see how Po responds.  A Perceiver Shen would be constantly reacting to Po, just as Po is always reacting to everything.  Observing first, then acting.

Certainly, a Judger could learn to be fluid in the moment, and a Perceiver could learn to be deliberate and proactive, yet they’ll still naturally prioritize the one their mind cares about most: action or observation.  Here Shen consistently prioritizes action first, both in taunting Po and in fighting him.  He acts first, and only afterward observes the results.

The same ends up holding true throughout the whole movie.  In every scene, Shen consistently acts first before observing and considering results or alternative actions.  Every single time.  Just as he’s purely Extraverted, he’s also purely a Judger.  That’s the way solid definitions are supposed to work.

So now we have two of the four letters!  And these are perhaps the two most important letters, displaying a person’s Scope, the primary form of information they focus on most.  Shen is an Extraverted Judger, an EJ.

And now that we have two letters, we can see what their combined effect is.  By exploring the way letter combinations work, we can verify whether the individual letters we’ve arrived at are correct.  If our definitions are accurate and consistent, then Shen, as an EJ, should display all the characteristics we expect from EJs in general.

There are four EJ types: ENFJ, ENTJ, ESFJ, and ESTJ.  What do these four types have in common, unique among all the other types?  Of the four types of information—Principles, Motives, Action, and Data—EJs focus first and foremost on Action.  For all four EJs, Action is their first cognitive step.  And no other type besides the EJs starts with Action.  This is because Action is what matters most to EJs, deep down.  Going forward and just doing what needs to be done.  As Judgers who look outward at the world for information, EJs are constantly concerned with how their own actions can affect the lives of themselves and others.

Also, all the EJs have the same weakest area, the same last cognitive step, which their mind naturally cares about least, and so focuses on the least.  This is Data, the ability to notice details in situations, and draw correct conclusions from those details.  Of all the types, EJs are naturally weakest in noticing details and drawing correct conclusions.  They may simply fail to pick up on details, or they may make dangerously oversimplified and inaccurate conclusions from the details they see.

So, if we’re right that Shen is an E and a J, then he should also be an EJ, focusing first on Action and last on Data.  Is this what Shen does?

Gwen: Well the guy is all about Action, isn’t he?  To a fault.  He’s a Judger, sure, but more than that, he’s always about going forward and doing things right away.  I’m a Judger too, but as an IJ I’m more about making things work in general, while Shen is all about charging forward and doing things immediately.

Phil: Two words: “Keep firing!!”  I mean, come on, the panda is hurling your shots back into your fleet, destroying all your ships!  If you stop firing, the panda’s got nothing.  Just stop firing, you dolt!  But no, Shen has to keep *acting,* he can’t just stop and evaluate.  If you’re doing something that’s literally blowing up in your face, then by all means, keep doing it harder, right Shen?  /facepalm

Gwen: Also, his whole motivation seems to be based on faulty conclusions.  He’s convinced his parents hated him, because they banished him.  He missed all the details that would be obvious to most people, like the reasons why his parents banished him…like genocide, for instance.  His parents wanted to prevent him from destroying his life.  They failed, but they still loved him.

Phil: And all the time, Shen keeps jumping to conclusions overeagerly.  First he’s sure he killed all the pandas.  Apparently a whole ton of them got away; talk about missing out on your details, Shen!  Then he draws the rash conclusion that no one can stop him, because he missed the little detail that there are still pandas.  Then when he finds out about Po, he jumps to the conclusion that the panda must be some fearsome nemesis.  And then he keeps thinking Po is dead, over and over.  And so on.  He keeps jumping to conclusions with the soothsayer, and he actually thinks that if he takes enough decisive Action then he can cancel out her unpleasant Data.  He tells her, “Then I will kill him, and make you wrong.”  Okay, the future-seer has said your only way out is to stop being evil.  So you think being more evil is gonna change that Data?  Wow, bro.  He’s so busy doing Action that he can’t slow down and learn anything whatsoever.

Wow, nice guys.  Remember, though, that Shen is an unhealthy EJ.  Any healthy EJ can get good at understanding Data and conclusions; it’ll still be hard for them because it’s what their mind focuses on least, but they can learn to get good at it.  And while unhealthy EJs like Shen may blow up their own lives due to their rash Action, healthier EJs learn to be decisive and powerful without hurting themselves or others.

So then, Shen does seem to be an Extravert, a Judger, and also an Extraverted Judger, showing the typical qualities of EJs.  We won’t take time to walk through how different Shen would be if he were an EP, an IP, or an IJ!  But it’s still a cool mental exercise.

Now, for the middle letters!  We’re getting close, we know Shen is one of four types: ENFJ, ENTJ, ESFJ, or ESTJ.  Now, guys, let’s go back to S and N.  You ready?

Phil: I was born ready.

Gwen: Shen’s an S.

Phil: Hey no fair, I wasn’t ready!  Okay, Shen is totally an N.  How could you possibly think he’s an S?

Gwen: Are you kidding?  When he first comes back, did you see the way he took out all the city guards in one swipe?  And then he takes on three kung fu masters, by himself!

Phil: Ah, you’re using the “Sensors are more athletic” definition, huh?

Gwen: Justin’s giving me candy.  So yes.  Also, I’m using the “Sensors are more practical” stereotype, and Shen is clearly practical!  He has no time for anyone’s ideals.  His whole premise is the practicality of guns over the age-old ideals of martial arts.  He may be a little too practical and concrete, even.  So yes, Sensor.

Phil: Alright, I’ll see your stereotype, and raise you an “iNtuitives are smart” stereotype of my own.

Gwen: Oh gosh, here we go.

Phil: You’re right, Shen is all about guns.  Because he invented them!  Sensors can’t invent things; they’re mostly assistants, grunts, and mechanics.

Gwen: Did you seriously just say—?

Phil: I get candy for being a jerk too, so bear with me here.  Shen has to be an iNtuitive, because he’s always thinking in the abstract.  That’s how he came up with guns when everyone else was looking at the fireworks right in front of them.  That’s how he sees his plans through.  Sensors don’t do that.

Gwen: I am going to throw my candy at your head.

Phil: I’m still right.

Alright!  This is how it starts, all the anger and bitterness.  This is how all the spite on the internet gets started, because simplistic definitions can quickly become insulting.  Any healthy person can be both inventive and practical, both athletic and abstract.  Therefore, if any healthy person can do both, then we don’t have solid, binary definitions here.  We need to find out what’s really at the root of S and N.  What causes all the real symptoms of S and N?

Cutting through the demeaning stereotypes, we eventually arrive at this fundamental definition of S and N:  Sensors focus first on actual experience, and draw conceptual understanding from those experiences.  iNtuitives do the reverse: they focus first on concepts, and then apply those concepts to help them understand their experiences.  Everyone does both, everyone understands abstract concepts and concrete experiences, but Ss focus first on experiences, while Ns focus first on concepts.  You can’t do both first; you have to choose one, and do the other second.  This makes the definition clear, clean, and binary.  There’s no wiggle room, no exceptions, and no overlap; either you’re an S or an N.  And in practice, Ns will always, consistently focus on concepts first, while Ss will always focus first on actual experience, due to the innermost desires of each.  Every time.

All the familiar symptoms and tendencies of S and N end up resulting from this core definition.  Are Sensors more concrete?  Often times, yes, because a focus on actual experience naturally results in a focus on concrete, literal things.  iNtuitives can learn to be concrete-minded too, but it’s not where they naturally focus.  Are iNtuitives more abstract?  Often, sure, because a focus on concepts results in a more abstract mindset.  But Sensors can learn to be abstract too; it’s just not where they naturally focus.  Everyone can do both.

So the fact that Shen invented firearms tells us nothing at all, because both Ns and Ss could do that.  We can find times when he thinks in the abstract, and other times when he thinks more concretely, because everyone does both; we just focus a little more on the one we’re most used to.  His martial arts prowess does not make him an S; it’s not about what he can do, it’s about how he approaches doing it.  Everyone can do everything, we just approach it in different ways.

Yet once we get down to the actual, clear definitions of S and N, what will Shen turn out to be?  Remember, if our definitions are effective and accurate, then Shen should be purely S or purely N, with no overlap or exceptions.  So, does he focus first on experiences, and derive concepts from them?  Or does he focus first on concepts, and apply them to his experiences?

Gwen: Experiences, all the way.

Phil: Yeah…she’s right.

Gwen: Gwen 2, Phil 1.

Phil: I’m ignoring that.  Because yeah, everything about Shen revolves around his experiences.  He got burned in the past, so now he’s out to burn the world.  He views all his conceptual beliefs through the lens of his experiences, not the other way around.  Even when he wants to know the future, he wants to know what events and experiences are going to happen, instead of wanting to know what concepts are worth fighting for.

Speaking of the future, though, what about this?  Shen comments, “The dead exist in the past, and I must turn to the future.”  Isn’t that an N thing to say?  Isn’t that a focus on the future, while Ss think more about the past and present?

Gwen: What, are you saying I’m incapable of thinking about the future?

Well, are you?

Gwen: No!  Sure, I do think of the past and present more often.  That just makes sense, because the past and present have really happened!  But that doesn’t mean I can’t think of the future, it just means I think about it a little less often, that’s all.

Phil: Also, even though Shen says he’s looking to the future, it’s all an escape from the past.  He’s motivated by the past.  All his plans for a Shen-tastic future full of peacocky goodness are all motivated by the past.  He lives in the past, no matter how much he tries to hide from it.

So you’re saying it’s not unhealthy to live in the past, it’s only unhealthy to hide from it?

Gwen: It’s unhealthy to hide from what your mind wants to focus on.  When you try, you’re only fighting yourself.  Shen’s deepest desires cause him to think as a Sensor, focusing first on experiences.  If he tries to hide from that, then he’s fighting his deepest desires.

Phil: No wonder he’s cranky.

Gwen: Hiding from the past is no worse or better than hiding from the future, or the present.  It’s the denial that’s the problem.

So, even though Shen insists he looks to the future, you’re saying he’s wrong?  About his own self?

 Gwen: Absolutely.  Often we’re the worst judges of our own selves.  We usually can’t see what everyone else can.

Phil: For bad or for good.

Gwen: Yeah.  Shen would probably insist that he’s an N, because he’s desperate to escape the past.  But that’s not how his mind works, because it’s not what he wants most in his hidden heart.  The very essence of what it means to be Shen is manifested in his core desires, which result in him being a Sensor.  The more he fights that, the more he’s fighting his own better self.

I’m glad I don’t have to send him a personalized typing.  I would not want to hear his outrage.

Phil: No surprise here, that a guy who lives too much in the past, denies that he does.  Never seen that in real life…

So that’s good for S and N, right?  We could go on exploring the movie, but once again, in every situation, every choice, and every interaction, Shen draws conceptual understanding from his experiences.  Experience comes first, and concepts come from them.

That’s three of his four letters!  Lord Shen is a pure ESJ, with no deviation or exceptions.  This places no limits on what he can do or choose; it only shows the way he does and chooses everything.

So what’s he going to be?  The ESTJ Cannon, or the ESFJ Cavalry?

Phil: Okay, candy or not, why do I have to do F?  Is there really any doubt at this point?  The guy’s a monster!  He’s totally a T!

Gwen: Excuse me?

Phil: And come on, ESTJ is the Cannon.  The Cannon!  Could anything be more appropriate for Lord Shen, the guy who uses cannons as his own personal Death Star?  I mean, come on, it’s not like he’s going to be an ESFJ.

Yeah?  Why’s that?

Phil: Well…no offense to ESFJs, but they’re really lame.

Oh, why would they be offended to hear that?

Phil: It’s true, though.  They’re a bunch of nannies and superficial party girls.

Gwen: If you kill him, do I get his candy?

Maybe.  But before we go and define F and T, let’s be careful about four-letter stereotypes again.  Remember, don’t just shout out four-letter combos due to the oversimplified, inaccurate caricatures you may have heard about them.  You might be surprised, Phil, at how many monolithic titans of history have been ESFJs.

But is Shen among them?  Or is he an ESTJ?

Gwen: Phil’s reasoning may be weak, but his answer is still correct; Shen is a T.

Phil: And I guess I’m obligated to say he’s an F.  Gwen 3, Phil 1.  Poop.

Alright, Gwen, why is Shen a T?

Gwen: Well, going by stereotype, because he is a heartless, murderous monster.  He hears that pandas will get in his way, so he goes out and slaughters them all.  He doesn’t care about the pretty fireworks, he only sees the potential for a weapon.  Any time anything gets in his way, he removes it.  He doesn’t *care* about anything or anyone.  He is hard, cold, and cruel.  This makes him an unhealthy T, but a T all the same.

 And Phil?  Why do you say he’s an F?

Phil: Actually, now that I think about it, he really could be an F.  Stereotypically speaking, I mean.  He’s whiny, he can’t get over how his parents hurt him, and his whole life is pretty much one big tantrum.  He’s a diva.  He’s obsessed with how everyone sees him, always needing everything to be perfect.  Personally I still know he’s going to be a T, but I can totally picture someone using simplified definitions and thinking he’s an F.  Because yeah, he really is a diva.

Okay guys, now what did your stereotypes imply?

Phil: Me first, please?  I gotta wash out my mouth.

Gwen: Be my guest.

Phil: I just said that Shen is an F because he’s whiny and petty.  I mean, seriously?  That’s how we’re defining half of all the types?  I’ve seen so many characters typed as F simply because they’re emotional.  That implies that Fs are overemotional idiots (thanks, by the way), while Ts are emotionless machines.

Gwen: And I implied pretty much the same.  That all Ts are emotionless monsters.  Yeah, that makes me feel really good.  The stereotypes say that Ts don’t care about anyone or anything, that we’re cold and logical and somewhat inhuman.  Personally, I do keep my emotions inside a bit more, but that’s not because I’m a T, is it?

There are lots of cognitive reasons behind every behavioral tendency, usually resulting from a combination of letters.  Both ISJs and ITJs tend to guard their tender hearts a little more cautiously, so as an ISTJ you get the tendencies of both!  But ISFJs are often just as guarded as INTJs, while some kinds of Ts are downright effusive with their emotions!  The combinations of the letters result in such cool patterns, without falling victim to oversimplifications and limitations.

Now before we apply the root definitions of F and T, I just want to point out that you two just typed Lord Shen as being all sixteen of the types.

Phil: We did?  Is that good?

Phil you said E, while Gwen said I.  Phil said P, while Gwen said J.  And you both gave very believable arguments for each, constrained by the stereotypical, simplified definitions of the letters that we see all over the place.  Not good arguments, not scientific arguments; they were entirely subjective, yet entirely believable as the kind of reasoning we find in personality typing.  Phil said N and F, while Gwen said S and T, and again, you gave reasoning that I could certainly imagine finding online.  In fact, neither of you two ever said anything that I haven’t actually seen online!  All your simplified arguments were actual reasons we’ve seen over and over.

So, according to you guys, and therefore according to popular, simplistic versions of personality typing, Shen could be any type.  Any at all.  This is the problem with subjectivity.  Remember, I said that we’ve seen Darth Vader typed as pretty much every type?  This is why.  Subjective cherry-picking and caricatures eliminate all sense of consistency, repeatability, or predictive value.  This is why some people call psychology a pseudoscience, because when people approach it with subjective, shaky definitions, it’s just not science.  I’ve heard personality typing referred to as “horoscopes for people who think they’re too smart for horoscopes,” and I wish that were wrong.

But getting back to the root of things, working out what goes on underneath all the symptoms and simplifications, it’s amazing how quickly the subjectivity melts away, leaving us with a clean and consistently predictive science.  We’ve already worked out, by the root definitions, that Lord Shen is simply not an Introvert, a Perceiver, or an iNtuitive.  In contrast to the internet typing Vader as all the types, there’s no room for subjectivity once things are well defined; Shen is purely ESJ.  So if we get to the root of F and T, then it should become absolutely clear which one Shen is.

And that root ends up being about use versus meaning.  Every healthy person cares about both, but which does our mind naturally want to focus on first?  Do we care first about the use of things, the benefits that come from them?  Or do we care first about the intrinsic meaning and significance of things, apart from any immediate usefulness?  Thinkers find meaning in usefulness, while Feelers find usefulness in meaning.  Everyone does both, but we have to do one first.

So healthy Thinkers will care intensely for things, but always as a result of how beneficially useful things are.  Likewise, healthy Feelers will be rational and composed, but always with an eye toward the intrinsic meaning of things.  Unhealthy Thinkers and Feelers both have an *equal* tendency to be uncaring and cold, or overemotional and irrational, or sometimes both at the same time.

So what about Shen?  Does he focus first on the use of things, and then on meaning?  Or the other way around?  Let’s check by considering what he’d be like as a T, and what he’d be like as an F.

Gwen: If Shen were a T, then he would view his banishment as ruining his life because of all the opportunities it took from him.  When he says his parents “robbed me,” it would be in the sense of taking from him everything he could have accomplished if he had been allowed to stay as their heir.  He would view Po as an obstacle that prevented him from attaining his useful, beneficial goals.  Beneficial to Shen, I mean.  Everything Shen did would be about clearing the way to accomplish useful goals, rather than trying to prove something about meaning.  A Thinker Shen would care about meaning too, but only as a result of use.

Phil: Hm, not bad.  If Shen were an F, he would still view his banishment as ruining his life, but for different reasons.  It wouldn’t be because of lost opportunities, it would be because his own meaning was impugned.  It would be more about the insult than the inconvenience.  When he says his parents robbed him, it would be in the sense of taking from him his dignity, his rightful place in the world, and all the adulation he thinks he deserves.  And as for Po, he’d view him as an obstacle that prevented him from reaching that rightful place of dignity and praise.  Everything Shen did would be about proving his own meaning and significance, especially by fixing all the hurts he’d suffered.  A Feeler Shen would of course care about the use of things, but only as a means toward reaching his meaningful ends.

Nice!  So, which one matches the Lord Shen we see in the movie?

Gwen: Not T, actually.  Congratulations Phil.

Phil: Wait, you’re serious?

Gwen: Look at how Shen does things!  Everything is all about his own personal meaning.  He wants to rule China so that everyone can see that he deserves it, so everyone can see how meaningful he is.  He has no plan at all for what he wants to do *with* China once he rules it!  He just wants everyone to see his preeminent significance.  Every time he talks about how his parents banished him, it’s like he doesn’t even consider how much they took opportunities from him.  It never even comes up.  It’s always about how they supposedly hated him, and he projects that fear onto Po, telling Po that his parents didn’t love him either.  He’s managed to build a cannon-powered army even while banished, but never seems to pause and say, “I could have done so much more had I not been banished.”  Never even a hint of that.

Phil: Woah, yeah.  He’s always about the meaning he’s lost.  Like, every time.

Gwen: I still think a Thinker Shen could have been cool, but that’s not the Lord Shen we see in the movie.

Phil: Hey, the Feeler Shen is really smooth and stylish!  All his focus on meaning makes him kinda compelling.  All his goals, fears, and methods are all about the gain or loss of meaning, and that makes the idea of his triumph very…meaningful.  In a scary way.

Woo!  So now we’ve typed him!  We typed a guy!  Lord Shen is (drumroll please, guys)…

ESFJ!  A very intriguing example of Dark Cavalry!

Phil: It’s still hard to believe.  Shen is too cool to be ESFJ!

Gwen: I slap you.

Phil: Hey, we tied!  Phil 2, Gwen 2!

Yeah, what are the odds?  And Phil, that’s one of the reasons we chose Shen for this tutorial, because ESFJs get misrepresented and oversimplified all the time.  Pretty much every type does, actually.  But ESFJs are stereotyped as…how did you say it?

Gwen: Nannies and superficial party girls, wasn’t it, Phil?

Phil: Maybe…

Now I’m hesitant to mention real historical ESFJs here, because Calise and I have gotten tired of people strutting in and declaring, “Nope, that’s wrong,” without reading any of the content.  We hoped the three dictionary posts would help, and they really have, but not everyone reads carefully before commenting on things.  But now after this tutorial, I hope it’s safe to mention a few real-life Cavalries here!  There are tons of powerful ESFJs in history, including several American Presidents: James Monroe, James Buchanan, George H.W. Bush, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and John F. Kennedy, all ESFJs, Phil.

Phil: That cannot be right.

Well according to stereotypes, it wouldn’t be!  But using the actual root definitions that reflect how cognition naturally works, it ends up being a remarkable insight into how these people lived, thought, and came to decisions.  It shows the complexity of people, rather than limiting them into superficial boxes.

Other prominent ESFJs include Catherine the Great of Russia, Simon Bolivar of Venezuela, Prince Charles of Wales and the current German Chancellor, Angela Merkel.  Also Arnold Schwarzenegger, Oprah Winfrey, and even the current Pope, Francis.  And the list really goes on.

Phil: Wow, okay.  So then, if all those people are seriously ESFJ, uh, what on earth does ESFJ really mean?

I’m so glad you asked!  Hang on, let me swing over to the COG for the ESFJ Cavalry, and grab a few quotes:

“ESFJs are often portrayed as superficially social, needy, bossy, rule-obsessed and self-absorbed, so you may have been tempted to think you couldn’t possibly be ESFJ.  Well good, because those sorts of oversimplifications are simply untrue.  They’re stereotypes that have nothing at all to do with cognition, coming from shaky definitions of the letters that end up contradicting themselves and falling apart under the rigors of experience.  Human thought is far more complex than that!

“…What matters most to you [ESFJs], deep down, is taking action to create experiences that will bring true happiness, comfort, and peace to those you care about.”

Reading about the presidencies of Roosevelt and Kennedy, it’s neat to see how all their decisive actions were in pursuit of bringing joy (as they knew it) to themselves, their country, and especially to the people they were close to.  I was recently reading a conversation between ESFJ Franklin Roosevelt and INFJ Adolf Hitler, and it was so fascinating seeing how each of them demonstrated their respective deepest desires, natural strengths, and hidden fears.

But how does this apply to Lord Shen?

Gwen: Well for starters, he seems like an interesting inversion of a healthy ESFJ.  He’s willing to destroy the joy and peace of everyone in pursuit of his own.

This is very true, and it’s what unhealthy people of any type do: they seek the destruction of their own deepest desire in the lives of others, as if that will help them attain it in their own lives.

Phil: Yeah, Shen is all about happiness, which is surprising in a villain.  I’m used to villains who roll their eyes at the idea of happiness at all, but Shen doesn’t.  But he believes that to get his own joy, he has to stomp on everyone else’s.  “Happiness must be taken,” he says, “and I will take mine.”

This also brings up an interesting side of Shen as an EFJ.  All the EJs end up being very group-oriented, championing and defending the needs of those on their team.  But for EFJs in particular, it’s all about the meaning of their group.  And that is what Shen feels ultimately robbed of.  His group.  His family.  His inheritance and home.  “My parents hated me.  Do you understand?  They robbed me.  And I will make it right.”  He’s all about taking action (EJ) to fix past hurts of his own meaning (SF), in a ruthlessly destructive way.

Does he try to reconcile his memory of his parents?  Does he seek healing, or try to learn from the experiences of others in order to understand his own?  That’s what a healthy person of any type should do, but instead, Shen goes out of his way to destroy his own deepest desire in the lives of others.  In Shen’s mind, nothing is of greater value than bringing joy and peace to your own group, so therefore, in his mind, nothing is of greater injury than destroying that joy in others’ groups.

He hurls his father’s throne out a window, then gleefully destroys his parents’ palace in an attempt to kill Po.  “You just destroyed your ancestral home, Shen!” the soothsayer reminds him, and how does Shen reply?  By burning a map of all China.  This is Dark Cavalry.

Now in Phil’s defense, ESFJs are often portrayed rather poorly in our culture.

Phil: Yeah!

When Calise made the collage for the ESFJ Cavalry Type Hero, it was hard because so many of the fictional examples of ESFJs are actually quite lame.  We’re proud of a lot of the ones we did find, and it’s unfortunate we didn’t know about Shen at the time, but still, it was hard finding compelling, heroic, mighty ESFJs in fiction.  This is not at all a reflection of real ESFJs, it’s only a reflection of how our culture tends to view them.  So don’t worry, ESFJs!  As you learn more about how you already think, you can find the heroic, decisive, unstoppable force you already have inside you, and show the world how to be truly happy and successful.

This brings up ESFJ’s Type Angst: the Leslie Knope Marathon.

You can read more about that in the COG, but in short, it’s a tendency toward frantic action as a result of the fear that you’re not naturally gifted.  Deep down, as a result of their deepest desire, ESFJs fear that they’re not naturally talented, and so have to work twice as hard as everyone else just to keep up.

Gwen: And so, he invents firearms.

Yes!  And he always gloats about how superior they are to martial arts.  Shen shows incredible kung fu mastery, and he’s almost always practicing, even while talking.  But he still seems to feel inferior, and so this kung fu master wants to eliminate kung fu.  Guns are his way to do that, and he will use them to show once and for all that he doesn’t need talent.

I expect that Shen would deny that this fear is even there, just as we all might do at times, because our Type Angst is often the part of ourselves that we least want to see.  And yet, even while denying it, his every word and action would probably demonstrate his fear.  He never moves a muscle that isn’t motivated by his Type Angst.  Yet as we each come to understand our own deepest fears, then and only then can we grow entirely free of them.  If only Shen had done that from the beginning, he might never have gone wrong in the first place.

Shen’s obsession with his own meaning is brought into sharp focus by contrasting it with his opposite letters, as demonstrated in The Incredibles’ INTP Syndrome.

Like Shen, Syndrome wants to be seen and praised, but for entirely opposite motives.  Shen wants to be praised for his own meaning, while Syndrome wants to be praised for his ability, his usefulness.  He too is insecure about his own natural ability, but not in terms of skills; it’s the idea of natural superpowers that bothers him.  They’re too big and too meaningful, showing that there are sides of the wide world that he doesn’t understand.  While Shen resents the acquired, earned skill in others’ kung fu, Syndrome resents the inborn, unearned powers in supers.  Shen resents the usefulness in earned skill, while Syndrome resents the meaning in being intrinsically “special.”

Both Syndrome and Shen turn to machines to heal their insecurities.  Syndrome casually invents machines to give him manmade powers, while Shen invents a machine to help him beat kung fu.  Yet each focuses on opposite sides of their own accomplishments.  For Syndrome, it’s all about ability.  Usefulness.  In a sense, it’s his way of saying, “See what I invented?  That makes me more super than you.  I take your usefulness away, and that makes you meaningless!”  It’s from this more-useful-than-you attitude that Syndrome draws his meaning.  As with all Thinkers, it’s usefulness first, with meaning derived from it.

By contrast, for Shen, it’s all about meaning.  Shen never once brags, “Hey, look!  I invented firearms!”  Never once.  He’s not focused on ability or usefulness; the whole point of his weapon is to make others meaningless.  It’s his way of saying, “You think you have meaning?  You think you have joy?  You think you’ve earned it?  With this weapon, I take your precious meaning away, and that makes you useless!”  And from this more-meaningful-than-you attitude, Shen draws his sense of usefulness.  As with all Feelers, it’s meaning first, with usefulness derived from it.

We could go on talking about other letter combinations and how they apply to Shen, but the point is that there’s always more to explore!  There’s always so much to see about how each type thinks, how they live and what matters most to them.

For a quick example, all EFs look outside themselves to understand meaning.  This has the result of causing them to want others outside of them to see and validate their meaning.  Whether it’s for their own self or for their group, they want everyone to know that they’re meaningful!  This does not have to be bad or competitive at all.  As an ENFP, Po is an EF like Shen, and Po wants his meaning to be seen too, but only in a way that builds up others.  For Po, showing his own meaning is a way of showing that anyone can be meaningful.  If he doesn’t show it, then how will anyone ever get encouraged by it?

But for Shen, he wants to destroy others’ meaning in order to build up his own.  And he needs that to be seen.  Even when he has his enemies captive, he needs to wait until everyone’s watching before he can kill them.  “Such sad, sad faces.  But now is a time only for joy!  You are going to be part of something beautiful.  Once we reach the harbor, in front of all the world, you and your precious kung fu will die.  And China will know to bow before me.”  Yes, it’s the classic villain handicap of keeping the heroes alive, but in a distinctly EF way.

SF is of course an interesting combination, because as middle letters, it represents a person’s Objective.  Sensing Feelers are all about the meaning of actual experiences.  This causes them to focus on bringing about real joy and peace, and protecting it wherever they can.  That’s the Objective of all the SFs.  When combined with the outer letters of Scope, this takes on different effects:  For ISFJs, it’s about creating and protecting happiness on a world scale.  For ESFPs, it’s about the happiness of individuals as they already are.  For ISFPs it’s about the joy of situations and details, and then for ESFJs like Shen, it’s all about the joys that can be attained through Action, for the benefit of their group.

When turned dark, though, this joyful Objective gets nasty.  It’s not enough for Shen to kill Po; he wants to scar him, to break him.  And as a result, Shen is the one who ends up broken.

As he’s lying in the shambles of his fleet, he looks up at Po and demands, “How did you do it?  …How did you find peace?  I took away your parents!  Everything!  I scarred you for life!”  This is the dark inversion of the group-oriented joy of ESFJ.  In Shen’s mind, nothing could be worse than taking away someone’s family and home.  “I took away your parents” means “I took away your joyful group.”  To Shen, this truly is everything.  That should be sweet, but Shen makes it violent and bitter.

It’s not that this doesn’t hurt Po.  It has indeed scarred him, and Po has spent the entirety of the film working through that.  But because Po is healthy, he is able to fulfill his ENFP Type Specialization of finding who he is, and everything he can be.  His healthy Type Spec overcomes Shen’s unhealthy inversion of his own.

This also brings up a really interesting cognitive twist in the movie.  The whole story is about Po finding who he really is.  He’s a panda raised by a sweet old goose as his adoptive father…and yet he’s never really put it together that he’s adopted.  By the goose.

Po’s father, Mister Ping, really shines for the short time he’s in this movie.  While in the first film he represented in part Po’s self-doubt and humble beginnings, in this one he embodies love, belonging, and the importance of having a place in the world.  He’s the paradox in Po’s search for who he is: he’s the most loving person in Po’s life, and yet he’s a living demonstration that Po has no roots.  Po wants to know his origins in order to know who he is, while his father is afraid that he doesn’t deserve to keep Po.

The interesting twist is that Mister Ping is ESFJ, a very healthy one after his experiences in the first movie.  He’s entirely centered around bringing joy to people close to him, including his customers, but especially Po.  So in this movie all about Po figuring out who he is and learning about his origins and his parents, who’s the villain?  An ESFJ.  The dark version of everything Po knows as loving, safe, and reliable.  The dark side of his search for himself.  This is just really cool.

While Po’s father reminds him that he has a place, that he’s his son, Shen taunts Po that he’s nothing and was abandoned by unloving parents.  While Mister Ping spends the whole movie worried sick about losing Po, Shen spends the whole movie worried about how to get rid of him.  Shen isn’t just hate, and he’s certainly not apathy; he’s the motivated, relentless inversion of love itself.

Of course that wasn’t intentional on the part of the writers, but perhaps they did intend to have Mister Ping and Lord Shen represent opposite poles that pull on Po.  Or maybe they were just observant of what sort of villain Po needed, without being conscious of why.  In any case, it’s always neat to see how the interplay of characters’ cognition brings out themes and observations about how real life works for all of us.

And Po shows all of us how to come through our scars safely.  He tries running, he tries ignoring, he tries denying, but only by looking at the pain fully, for the first time in his life, does he find who he really is.  As he says to a beaten Shen, “You gotta let go of that stuff from the past, because it just doesn’t matter!  The only thing that matters is what you choose to be now.”  Now there’s a true ENFP theme, if ever there was one.

Shen needs Po’s ENFP insights, just as Po needs his father’s ESFJ perspective.  This is the premise of the Type Heroes: we all need each other.  Po needs Tigress’s advice, and she needs his encouragement.  The beaten masters Ox and Croc need Po’s inspiration, just their tales always inspired him.  This is the way healthy types work together, each needing all the others, each benefitting from the unique strengths and perspective of all the others.

Unhealthy people resent other types, just as Shen resents and belittles everyone.  This is why we want to work so hard to show the reliable, scientific power of cognitive typing, because it builds everyone up.  I think it says a lot that in order to tear others down, we have to resort to simplifications and stereotypes.  When we let reality speak for itself, it ends up showing all of us how fantastic we already are, and how heroic and effective we can become.  We don’t have to try to force cognition to be a positive thing; all it takes is getting to the reliable root, and then reality shows the rest.

I’d like to thank Gwen and Phil for sticking with us through this typing tutorial!

And now that we’ve walked through how typing works, and how it doesn’t, we’re going to stick our necks out and type all the major characters in both Kung Fu Panda movies!  And if, inevitably, these pictures invite people to come and declare “Wrong!  Shen is an INTJ villain!” then at least we can all be pretty sure they didn’t read the post.

Phil: Ten bucks says that happens.

Gwen: Twenty.

Thanks again for reading!  Now it should be easier to do character spotlights without having to worry about dispelling stereotypes every time!  With Phase 2 almost ready to launch (and when you see it, you’ll know why it took all our energy for so long!), we’re looking forward to being able to do more actual posts again!  We love you guys, and all the support and encouragement you give us!  And if you haven’t seen already, you can use Patreon to get more stuff sooner, and vote on what that stuff’s gonna be!  Stay tuned, there’s so much more to come!

On the aLBoP Guided Tour?  Your next destination is What if I’m Not the Type I Thought I Was?

The post Typing Tutorial (plus Character Spotlight!) appeared first on A Little Bit of Personality.

This time we have lots of quotes from a bunch of *different* PPPs, about the common misconceptions people have about Feelers’ relationship with logic, and what defines F in general.  All these quotes happen to be by my INFJ because, even though we read through your emails, determine your type, and figure out bullet points of what you need to hear, together, he has been writing the vast majority of the PPPs themselves to free me up to write blog posts, comments, social media stuff in general, and not go out of my mind with laundry.  Also, he happens to be an excellent writer and has a sexy grasp of principles.  But, you know, that’s why I married him   (Well, that and he’s a good kisser.)

The post PPP Show and Tell: Feelers and Logic appeared first on A Little Bit of Personality.

Good morning boys and girls!  {Good morning Ms. Calise}  Today we have a very special lesson on the Scientific Method from our favorite guest teacher, my INFJ!  Aren’t you all excited to know about how the scientific method really works in practice and how to apply it to anything in your life so that any topic can be scientific? {class cheers, roses are thrown}

But little Bobby is unimpressed.  Bobby reads science magazines and writes on internet forums; he’s got this crap.  He knows how to wield black holes and Occam’s Razor like a boss, so that the other kids look stupid.  Yeah, that’s right!

But what Bobby doesn’t understand is, just because something sounds like “Science!” doesn’t mean it follows the scientific method.  Bobby may be good at Troll Tactics that make it look like his argument holds up, but if the other kids were to follow the scientific method, they would be able to see that what Bobby calls “Facts” are really hypotheses that don’t hold up under experimentation.

Don’t be like little Bobby; understand the scientific method so that you can apply it to every area of your life, not just “sciencey” stuff!  Check out the playlist of all three videos below or go here to watch them on YouTube.  For Science!

The post The Scientific Method: What It Is and Why It’s Awesome! appeared first on A Little Bit of Personality.

The second thing I’m here to do is to introduce a new series on the aLBoP YouTube Channel, “Tactics by Trolls,” talking about some of the most common and predictable tactics internet trolls use to make it seem like they have an argument, when really they got nothin’.  Here are 5 new videos and this time they star my INFJ so you get to see him on video too!  (I think he’s pretty cute, but you can’t have him ;D)  It’s the internet and trolls are everywhere, but that doesn’t mean you have to feel beholden to their foundationless arguments.  Watch to see how.

The post aLBoP Shorts: Tactics by Trolls appeared first on A Little Bit of Personality.

Hey all!

This is Justin, “Calise’s INFJ”  It’s a little weird writing on here, but it’s cool!  Calisey’s exhausted so I volunteered to throw out a little update to let you know that she’s eager to get back to you all on your emails and comments, and she will!  First, tho, she’s taking care of a few prerequisites.

See, there’ve really been only two kinds of emails she’s been getting.  The first, and decidedly the most numerous type, have been so real and personal, and they’ve really made her day.  It’s gotten her so excited when people have said, in essence, “Wait, so you’re saying I really can be type XYZB?  How can I be an E, I’m not social!  How can I be a J, I’m not organized!  You’re saying that’s okay?  You’re saying I don’t have to listen to the mean little things people say about my letters?  My type can really be that heroic?  Psychology doesn’t have to limit me?”

The second type of email probably needs little description, it’s just the usual fare you’d expect from the interwebs.  Interestingly, even this minority of negative, self-important emails are almost never negative toward Calise; they’re usually quite negative toward other personality types.  To paraphrase, “Hey Calise!  I’m so glad that you and I are both better than everyone else.  I’m so glad I’m type HJKL, which is better than other types because…  However, I have to disagree with you because you said that type LKJH is good at such-and-such, and they’re not, because all they’re good for is yadda-yadda.”  These second kinds of emails literally bring Calise to tears; it gets tiring to see people being brazenly dehumanizing to other people.  When you see how amazing people can be, all types of people, how unspeakably incredible, complex, and surprising every kind of person can be, then the contrast of seeing others try so persistently to insult, limit, and demean entire types of people becomes overwhelming.  This is why she does this blog.

This is why answering emails has been starting to take much more time than writing new posts for the blog, because Calise has had to explain to the cool, genuine emailers why they don’t have to feel demeaned.  In each email response, she’s had to re-explain different sides of why each emailer doesn’t have to feel bad or dumb or irresponsible.  She loves showing people that they don’t need to listen to junk-psych, that the mean oversimplifications aren’t accurate, that they can feel free to fly as themselves.  So, in order to keep moving forward on the blog without neglecting emails, we decided she needs to write a couple basic posts that hit all the most common misconceptions.  This way, she’ll be able to quote these primer posts when she has to clear up most misunderstandings, rather than having to reinvent the wheel in each email.

So, the new version of What Do All These Letters Mean Anyway is now something she can go to and quote as needed, and she’s currently working on another foundational post about type specializations.  After she’s done with that, then she’ll be free to reply to all of you much more rapidly!  She’ll be able to spend more time writing personal responses, while quoting these posts to help people see that they don’t need to worry about the misconceptions, all while moving forward on more posts!

She has so much that she’s so eager to share!  She’s so excited to get more Type Heroes finished, and that’s just the basic introductory series!  I’m sooo excited for when she shows you Facial Typing, it’s so cool, so awesome and funny, and it’s awesome how much it says about each type.  The little videos and gifs she’s making for the Avengers post are looking great, and that’s just the first type-comparison post she’s got in the works.  She’s got a big and exciting list of the posts she’s mapping out to do soon, and that’s not even touching the things she has planned after these introductory topics are finished!

To do all this, she’s gonna be changing the way she does emails.  If you’ve already emailed her, don’t worry, she’s going to get back to you once she’s finished this next post!  After that, though, she’s going to start doing more elaborate responses  Each emailer is going to get a personalized pdf explaining their personality type to them.  These aren’t going to be the same for each ENTP or each ISFJ; they’re going to be individually written for each person, showing them why they are the type they are, and how they can soar!  Because of the time this’ll take, she’s going to ask $5 for personalized typing, and that will also likely cut down a bit on the less-pleasant emails.  {Update: We’ve added more price points.  Check it out here.}  If you want help but can’t pay, no worries, she’ll work with you; the whole point is to enable Calise to respond more, and more quickly, while still creating new posts!  There are going to be other goodies included with the personalized pdf, like desktop backgrouds for each type, and other stuff she’s still working out.  She’s gonna be real about it, she’s intent on making it exciting, helpful, and fun, all while enabling herself to do it without exploding.

It means so much to her how patient you’ve all been while the blog’s been going through these growing pains!  She’s got plans, and plans within plans and schedules upon schedules, but like any good P, she’s having to be observant and adaptive.  For instance, obviously getting these basic posts done by New Year’s didn’t work out, but that’s just the way it goes with wide and complex plans, and she’s quickly adapting to keep everything coming in whatever order is best for each situation.  Working with people means being happy to change plans to fit people’s needs!  She’s so excited to talk to each of you, she loves talking to you all so much, even with how sad the rough stuff can be.  So yeah, thank you all for your great and insightful and sweet comments and emails!  She says it’s all very exciting!

The post Is This Thing On? appeared first on A Little Bit of Personality.