Mbti study

For anyone looking to study the mbti topic/field. To share in that study.

I've studied it myself for nine years now, with further years of study in broader psychology. Not to claim I know anything, but after all this time I do have strong thoughts and opinions on things, including how I see the broader field of mbti and how people come at it.

I do not know of many people who have studied it fairly seriously, and those who have I've never gotten much sense they understand as much about the topic as they claim to. Perhaps I do not either. But I do have fairly set and clear views on how mbti exactly works or should. And I'd like to share in some of those understandings with (somewhat) like minded individuals if there is anyone out there with that level of interest. Maybe someone even just starting out that'd be fine too, but nowadays it is hard to imagine anyone coming at it with a certain level of interest, that level of desire to understand.

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After years at it anyway there are a couple of things I would share with anyone receptive. Anyone who has studied mbti or has an interest in studying it. Out of hundreds if not thousands of thoughts and concepts derived over significant time and effort, I'd point to two of them. This gets into gobbly gook, for only those fairly serious about it:

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One, there is a gold standard in mbti that should be made the gold standard if it isn't already. To be able to type most people with high accuracy. Without a test but just by getting to know a person. Cold typing, is the term. Without going into how this works or would work, being able to identify type correctly in the vast majority of people has to be the absolute minimum standard to be met before mbti can have any real credibility. And if/once people are able to do this they have to be able to show or demonstrate how it is done.

But once we can establish type consistently and broadly, then we can find out which personality traits are actually tied to each type rather than the other way around, which is to say X traits are tied to Y types (based on what exactly?), which is how mbti currently works and the reason it is flawed. In other words, instead of saying you act this way so must be that type, you study hundreds and thousands of people of known types and come away with the qualities that appear consistently across all those people, across each type to know actually how each type works/presents. If you want to know the ESFP type for example, study one hundred if not one thousand known and verified ESFP's, and come away with the qualities that are fairly consistent across every one of them. Qualities also not shared by the other fifteen types but are distinctive to them. If you can do this with all the types over thousands of people mbti can be legitimately understood, which is not how it is presently done from what I understand. This is how science works through the use of numbers and verifiable observable data, not by intuition and gut feelings. Intuition plays a role, but science and the scientific method are not reliant on it.

The second and only other thing I would want to point out from my years of contemplation and study is how the structure of each mbti personality type actually looks. To define each type comes down to remarkably little, to just 8 letters in its shortest form, even if within those letters lies so much more. To use ESFP again, to truly define what is ESFP, is to define it as Se Fi Te Ni. That's it. In that order. Se-1 Fi-2 Te-3 Ni-4. Se paired most closely with Fi, Te with Ni. Ultimately, to understand mbti at its most broken down state is to understand the 64 unique functions, with each type possessing 4 of those 64 functions. The ESFP possesses Se-1f, Fi-2s, Te-3n, Ni-4t that only they utilize and no other type does. They also do not utilize any of the other 60 unique functions. FROM THERE, everything else is to be understood, can be. This is where the study comes in.

Extraversion / introversion is the easiest trait/axis to understand, just to point to one other thing, even though it isn't easy to understand at all when you really try to. But what is it really, in mbti terms. It is this in terms of type: You are an 'extravert' if your first and third functions are 'E' functions, and your second and fourth functions are 'I' functions. So an introvert is defined simply as having your first and third as 'I' functions, and your second and third as 'E' functions. That's it. ESFP are extraverts not because of that 'E' in ESFP, but because their first and third functions are Se and Te (extraverted functions), and their second and fourth functions Fi and Ni (introverted functions).

If there are two things I would want to share/introduce to any mbti-ers old or new, it would be those two thoughts. One, that there has to be a gold standard to reach for/achieve. And two, the definition of each type comes down to just what was shown. Just eight letters, but when combined with the 64 unique functions there lies tremendous complexity. And that's it. If anyone out there is at all interested whatsoever in what I may have laid out above, came up with in my time studying the topic. And if not that is pretty much expected is cool.