A Study in Personality

It wasn't so much the need for an answer, but the desire to quench my curiosity that found me taking the Myers Briggs personality test over the summer. In all reality, I should have foreseen the oncoming obsession, given my almost laughable love of psychology, and habit of becoming so enthralled in a topic, I can focus on little else. It wasn't, though, any of these things that fueled my infatuation with this test- but its undeniable accuracy. At the end of the page with my results, I found a link to a page; it described to me all the traits attributed to my personality type. It was like looking in a mirror. Each paragraph was like a friendly little wave, the words on the page weaved together into a better understanding of me than any human had ever possessed. It knew everything down to my need to understand, to my complete inability to comprehend the reasons for, human nature, but, ever the stereotypical INTJ, I was determined to destroy inaccuracy wherever it lay. After taking multiple tests, time and time again, unwavering in my quest to seek out and exploit every shred of variability I found, in the end, I was forced to acquiesce- the Myers Briggs personality test was, wholly, ineffably, perfect. How wrong I was.

Upon my return to school the following August, I found my zeal for the test no less ardent. Urging my peers to take the test, feeling the need to understand their minds as I now did my own. The results were alarming. By late August, I noted results that consistently presented the type INFP in 70% of the participants (a far cry from the recorded 4%) of what had quickly become an experiment in personalities. Naturally, I set out to find the error in my data. My first theory was conditioning. In reviewing the answers that would present the results if found a direct correlation between the responses and what we are made to believe is a "good person." In conjecture, this made perfect sense. All those who results I recorded were of the ages 13-15, only the most mature achieving unique results. The concept that we're being modified by society to fit a predetermined mold was not a new one. For a time, I thought I had cracked it. Mid-September, it occurred to me that if there is a correspondence between the type INFP and the early teenage years the result would not be apparent in only one middle-school in the Mid-western region of the United States. Convinced that with one simple search, I would find hundreds of others, enamored by the same, remarkable outcomes I was. I didn't discover even one study to support my findings.

It was near this time that I came across Jennifer Ouellette's article: "Study: people tend to cluster into four distinct personality 'types.'" This piece, as indignant as it made me, opened my eyes to something, it made me realize how the world perceives personality. It brought to light the variability that was, inevitably, present in studies of this nature. The "personality clusters" were an eye-opening proposition; it brought something else to light- the reality in perception. Here I saw an algorithm for external personality endeavoring to discredit one displaying internal. The results of an examination taken only in a controlled environment striving to undermine results from an investigation that has been subject to the rigorous antagonizing of the public. No, this didn't sit well with me. If these two, so very different systems may be even compared, then personality must, at least in its roots be a combination of these two criteria. The truth was, a method for determining external personality could always be disproven by the taker. Similarly, a process for affirming internal personality could always be disproven by the conductor of the experiment. This does not mean that either algorithm is unobjectively correct or incorrect. No, because personality is complex and one-dimensional, it is situational and constant, it is intricate and simple. Personality is, at its very core, contradictive. It is an ever-changing phenomenon, comprised of perception and variability. Personality is an asset, but nothing more. Only when it is expected to define a person does it become a danger.