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Poll: Hacker News (Myers-Briggs) Personality Types

116 points| epi0Bauqu | 18 years ago | reply

What is your Myers-Briggs personality type?

If you don’t know you can find out at http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/JTypes2.asp or on Facebook at http://apps.facebook.com/my-type/.

For info on the types, check out profiles at http://www.personalitypage.com/portraits.html and http://typelogic.com/

I am interested to see how much we differ from the average population. The average #s appear in parenthesis after the choices, and were copied from http://www.geocities.com/lifexplore/stats.htm

Obviously only choose one type. (And none of the links above are associated with me in any way aside from the fact that I just copied and pasted them.)

136 comments

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[+] sah|18 years ago|reply
It's instructive to read the prose about all of the types this test partitions people into. Do it before you see your results. Can you pick the one that describes you ahead of time?

They're all flattering and describe experiences that I think most humans have at some point. The sense that something written for a very broad audience applies specifically to you can be deceiving. That's part of why horoscopes are popular.

I came out as an ENTP this time (I've scored as an INTP and INFP in the past) but the profile for ISFP also describes characteristics I'd like to think I have.

I'm suspicious of things like personality sorters. This one takes the more continuous and multifaceted range of human personality and quantizes it into four binary dimensions. Even assuming those categories represent some kind of tendency for human personalities to cluster around certain traits, are sorters like this helpful? Do they provide some genuine insight you didn't have before? Or are they just a more sophisticated variety of horoscope?

You answer a bunch of vague and general questions, and get a vague and general answer. Your input is 72 bits, and the output is only 4 bits. Were those 4 bits really such a mystery to begin with? Would the results be different if the test just briefly described both categories for each dimension, and had you pick the one that sounded more like you?

If you can pick your personality out beforehand by reading short descriptions of the personality types, what was the point of answering 72 questions? If you can't, are you still willing to accept that your type really describes you?

[+] JesseAldridge|18 years ago|reply
Well the questions can help you reflect on yourself as well as people in general.

Also, the fact that the responses to this poll skew massively toward INTP/INTJ tells you something doesn't it?

[+] dkokelley|18 years ago|reply
I once took a similar, but much simpler test consisting of choleric, melancholic, sanguine and phlegmatic, and scored near evenly in each category.

I was told that it was because I was a super-rare type of person, who was essentially capable of exhibiting whichever type of personality suited me at the time.

I think it was because I gamed the test.

While I can see the value in attempting to define the traits of certain people, I don't think that a set 4, 16, or even 200 categories will help you understand someone as well as spending a week with them will.

[+] tricky|18 years ago|reply
Who's to say studying the personality types before taking the test won't influence your answers? For many there is quite a disconnect between who you are and who you _think_ you are. The difference is even greater between who you are and who you want to be. I'd bet people who read the prose before taking the test would alter their answers (even if subconsciously) to conform to who they want to be.

Tests like these can help you gain valuable insight into your personality and may help you get a handle on others with whom you don't click. If you game the test, you totally miss out on any knowledge it may provide.

[+] Hexstream|18 years ago|reply
I scored INTJ in high school and I just took the web test and scored INTJ again. So the test at least seems to have some kind of consistency.
[+] prakash|18 years ago|reply
Here's the funny thing! I have been reading Erik Benson(Buster McLeod)'s blog from '04. I do't know what he started off as, but now he is a "ENTP" MEANING shit happens people change.
[+] mkn|18 years ago|reply
Between the Forer Effect (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forer_effect), confirmation bias (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias), and the fact that people routinely retest into different categories (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers-Briggs#Study_of_scoring_c...), I don't place much stock in Myers-Briggs. Add to that the dubious way in which the theory was developed, and I'm completely mystified by the appeal of this system to so-called hackers.

It just seems like you could take any 4 either/or categories and have a test that's equally valid. Do you like apples or bananas? Wear corrective lenses or not? Like dogs or cats? Rent your home or own your home? (I'm ACDR, for the record. My type is particularly rare, yet makes up a majority of CEOs and start-up founders. Yay, me!)

Can we please put a stop to this nonsense?

[+] bentoner|18 years ago|reply
You're missing the point. Myers-Brigg types are most useful for understanding other people, not for understanding yourself. Before I read about the other Myers-Brigg types, I just didn't understand why certain other people made decisions as they did, e.g., a member of a group insisting on a worse outcome for everyone to punish someone who'd offended them. I mean, it just wasn't logical!

You see, I was trying to understand/predict others' behaviour by projecting my own personality onto them. Much better is to understand/predict someone's behaviour based on how someone of their Myers-Brigg type would behave.

If understanding how others are different is what Myers-Brigg types are for, then the division into 16 types makes sense. It represents a trade-off between having too few types (and not having predictive power) and having too many (and having to learn too much information of less relevance).

[+] tokipin|18 years ago|reply
those issues have to do with testing, not the theory itself. it's not the theory's fault that humans are so... kaleidoscopic when they try to look at themselves

as expected, people here are overwhelmingly INTJ/INTP. you'll find that's the case in most scientific disciplines

it's not easy to see how the theory is good without having noticed how particularly similar people can be

these type combinations are not just 'any four categories', their effect on a type is greater than the sum of the parts. a bit more descriptive is the underlying Jungian functions. for example, INTJ is syntactic sugar for Ni-Te, introverted intution primary (the part that makes them so confident) and extraverted thinking secondary (the part that makes them logical). INTP is sugar for Ti-Ne, introverted thinking primary (the part that makes them absent-minded), and extroverted intuition secondary (the part that makes them look at the world for answers)

so by flipping the J to a P, the whole type is different. not all letter flips are that significant. I/E is the closest. for example, Feynman (ENTP) and Einstein (INTP) were Ne-Ti and Ti-Ne respectively. Feynman was driven by extroverted intuition, while it served Einstein. the nature of their discoveries is similarly 'playful' and creative

also, these four categories are not poorly-chosen. the most significant category is the S-N axis. it's basically this simple: if you meet someone who shares this same letter (you are both S or both N,) you will click. otherwise you won't

here's some forums where the type differences stand out

http://infp.globalchatter.com/messageboard/ -- fluffy

http://www.intpcentral.com/ -- levitous

http://intjforum.com/ -- dry

one thing to keep in mind is these aren't 16 "boxes." it's a bit complicated. for example, i suspect pg is INTP, but not standard-issue. he might be an Enneagram 3 INTP, for lack of a formal label. it's something he would share with Maddox ^_^

[+] epi0Bauqu|18 years ago|reply
Despite the drawbacks in MB, the poll results show an interesting and compelling deviation from expected (i.e. average) results.
[+] jrsims|18 years ago|reply
That's exactly what an INTJ would say. If you were an INTP, you wouldn't have posted that because you would've been second-guessing yourself. :)
[+] gruseom|18 years ago|reply
Myers-Briggs used to annoy me because there were always a lot of questions I could go either way on. The third time I took it I figured out what to do. I divided my answers into two columns. Anytime I had an unambiguous answer, I'd put it in both columns, but if I felt split I'd put opposite answers in each column. I was curious as to whether this would yield interesting results, and it did: I got a 50/50 split in two of the variables (that is, I'm evenly matched in IE and TF), and an extreme bias in the other two (I'm about as N and P as you can get). This matches how I feel about myself pretty well. I found another amusing way to verify the approach: if you combine the opposites to my extremes you get SJ, and the SJs turn out to be my arch-enemies. I read the description of SJ and it makes me squirm and think, why would anybody be like this? These people are neurotic bureaucrats. The world would be better off without them!

Edit: I'm joking, of course. SJ is so much my polar opposite that I have a hard time understanding or empathizing with them. I just find it ironically hilarious to read a typology that's designed to foster understanding and find myself dismissing 1/16 of humanity as basically adding no value.

Edit 2: As of this moment, the SJs are less than 3% of the respondents to the poll. Evidently I've come to the right place. :)

[+] rglullis|18 years ago|reply
Wow. 30 points for INTP, 13 for INTJ while I'm writing this.

The timing for this poll couldn't be better. Just yesterday I was wondering about three things:

- How much of an INTP Paul Graham shows to be through his writing and his attitudes in regards to the development of Hacker News (both the software and the community).

- How much of the "initial" community would be INTP. It seems to me that many people came here because of affinity.

- Given that INTX are the least common group in the population (less than 5%), and given the way that PG is not willing to change the community "profile", this site is bound to have few users. Not because of elitism, but just because there isn't that many INTXs around!

[+] wheels|18 years ago|reply
I've seen these run through various hacker communities in the past and INTJ is definitely the classical hacker, with INTP not too far behind.

When testing in high school I tended to test INTP, but I've drifted towards ENTP and now tend to test as a pretty strong extrovert.

[+] jkush|18 years ago|reply
These are interesting results. I'm an ENTP - which seems to me to be an extroverted version of INTP. If you lump those two together - it seems that the overwhelming people here are very, very similar.
[+] tricky|18 years ago|reply
for all you INTPs out there, have a look at this:

http://www.intp.org/intprofile.html

I was floored when I found that link. Describes me to a T.

[+] brl|18 years ago|reply
I know what you mean. Reading INTP personality profiles online was a life changing experience for me. Suddenly everything made so much more sense.
[+] watmough|18 years ago|reply
"Hence, it is common to see INTPs dabbling at many things, achieving competency, just enough to prove to themselves that they could become more proficient if they wished, but rarely actually bothering to refine their skills further. This is a point at which we begin to get a feel for the workings of iNtuition backing up Thinking. The INTP has a whole set of skills which he knows that he would be proficient at, yet other people may know little of this."

Yes, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up when I read this.

There's a great book by Radcliffe Hall called 'A Saturday Life' (Info on Radclyffe Hall http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radclyffe_Hall) that should be of interest, and also some good pulp SciFi Fantasy that I found pretty comforting while I was growing up.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_of_the_Five_Magics Master of the Five Magics by Lyndon Hardy about a hopeless wizard trainee.

[+] soundsop|18 years ago|reply
I took a "leadership" course at work recently and it was all based on Meyers-Briggs and learning what your personality type is and how to deal with other personality types. The Meyers-Briggs test and the whole "ecology" around it seems to me a way for some subset of the business training industry to make a buck.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers-Briggs_Type_Indicator#Cri... for criticism of Meyers-Briggs.

[+] sriram_sun|18 years ago|reply
([E|I][S|N][F|T][J|P]) Doesn't matter. Go write Code!
[+] eru|18 years ago|reply
Wow, I am an ([E|I][S|N][F|T][J|P]).
[+] jaxn|18 years ago|reply
I am an ENTP. E/I was only a 2 point difference, so I usually say I am an E/INTP.

Another question, how many people actually were administered the actual Myers Briggs test vs a web survey or classroom activity? (I took the test via a career counselor 10 years ago).

[+] josefresco|18 years ago|reply
I got to 25 before I bailed .. what does that say about me?

72 questions you got to be kidding me.

[+] LogicHoleFlaw|18 years ago|reply
Answer the questions as quickly as you can. Your first impulsive response will be the most accurate.
[+] davo11|18 years ago|reply
That is an amazing result, though not surprising when you think about it, few developers are serious extroverts,though if you're NT and an extrovert it is conceivable. you need to be intuitive to develop large software apps, It is difficult to make software by feeling you need to think and both perception versus judging could be considered valid and useful ways to make software.

Most developers would be NT and indeed INT. If nothing else this does seem to indicate there is some validity in the myers briggs tests.

The total lack of S versus N is also fascinating. (for reference I started life as an INTP when I first did this 20 years ago, a few years ago I was an INTJ, now today I'm an INFJ, not sure what this means, maybe I'm mellowing with age)

[+] elad|18 years ago|reply
Highest scores go to the NT's - ENTJ (20 points right now), ENTP (24), INTG (64) and INTP (71) together represent 76% of the total sample (179/235). It's not surprising though that hackers and entrepreneurs tend to be intuitives and thinkers. INTJ myself.
[+] MaysonL|18 years ago|reply
Those are in increasing order of superiority, aren't they?<gd&r>[INFP]
[+] tokipin|18 years ago|reply
i think Linus Torvalds is INFP
[+] DougBTX|18 years ago|reply
What's up with the percentages? Zero points gets 13%, 6% or 5% depending on the answer, while 122 points gets 1%, and 133 points gets 1%. I'm intrigued to know what the logic behind the percentages is, considering the solution is so simple (points/total*100) I'd love to know how the code was developed to get it so spectacularly wrong.

(It's probably the same code which gives you an "Unknown or expired link" message when you try and make a post after reading comments for more than five minutes... get those Reddit guys over here to sort this out!)

[+] Jesin|18 years ago|reply
The percentages have nothing to do with the results of this poll; they're the percentages for the population in general.
[+] dill_day|18 years ago|reply 

  I am interested to see how much we differ from the average
  population. The average #s appear in parenthesis after the
  choices, and were copied from 
  http://www.geocities.com/lifexplore/stats.htm
[+] schtog|18 years ago|reply
YOUR TYPE I N T P Strength of the preferences % 67 75 1 22

i dont get that. 1% thinking but yet

RANK of FUNCTION FUNCTION ORIENTATION Dominant Thinking Introverted ( Ti ) Secondary iNtuition Extraverted ( Ne ) Tertiary Sensing Introverted ( Si ) Inferior Feeling Extraverted ( Fe )

The consequences of the orientation and rank of each of the four functions for the INTP type is described in turn below.

thinking seems to be the most dominant of INTPs?

i myself consider myself a thinker. maybe with a direction towards more practical means though rather than philospoher.

[+] unknown|18 years ago|reply

[deleted]

[+] paulhart|18 years ago|reply
In theory these are default states - if external factors are removed, what would you revert to?

I default to INTP but can ramp up the E as needed (and these days I need it more an more). I can mess with the other values too, but I/E is the easiest for me to play with.

[+] martythemaniak|18 years ago|reply
I wonder how much of an overlap there is between the INTPs and INTJs. For example, I always score INTP on these tests, and yet the INTJ profile describes me far, far better.
[+] brl|18 years ago|reply
You really only need one question to test for INTP. Do you have a constant compulsive need to correct people for even very small errors in logical congruency regardless of the social consequences? Can you detect cognitive dissonance from like 100 meters away? Have you ever not really been listening to somebody but somehow still noticed that they contradicted what they just said two minutes ago? Have you already hit the 'reply' button to explain to me that four similar questions is not technically the same thing as one question?
[+] Jesin|18 years ago|reply
I've actually been thinking about this a lot lately, and I was glad to see it posted here. This poll also seems to have initiated (in my opinion) some of the best discussions I've seen on this board in a while. Although some polls and "Ask HN"s can be a bit stupid, the good ones are really good.

So, yeah, I'm an INTP. I've lately been acting a bit more E than usual, but I'm still definitely I (am all I am).

(Why oh why didn't Common Lisp abbreviate integerp?)