# RKS: MORE ABOUT PERSONALITIES (I) - Attitude Determinants

      

# RKS: MORE ABOUT PERSONALITIES (I)

ATTITUDE DETERMINANTS 

RKS / 2025-2026 / Ser 7 / Blog 4

1st July 2025

DETERMINING LIFESTYLE FUNCTIONING

ANALYTICAL vs EMOTIONAL CHARACTERISTIC

Dear Reader,

The Myers–Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is a self-report questionnaire that makes pseudoscientific claims to categorize individuals into 16 distinct "psychological types" or "personality types". The MBTI was constructed during World War II by Americans Katharine Cook Briggs (1875-1968) and her daughter Isabel Briggs Myers (1897-1980), inspired by Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung's 1921 book Psychological Types. 

Fig: Inventors of MBTI personalities.

Briggs began her research into personality in 1917. Upon meeting her future son-in-law, she observed marked differences between his personality and that of other family members. Although Myers graduated from Swarthmore College in political science in 1919, neither Myers nor Briggs were formally educated in the discipline of psychology, and both were self-taught in the field of psychometric testing. 

Briggs embarked on a project of reading biographies and subsequently developed a typology wherein she proposed four temperaments: meditative (or thoughtful), spontaneous, executive and social. 

The MBTI for personality classification is based on the influential theory of psychological types proposed by Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung in 1921, which was partially based on the four elements of classical cosmology. Jung speculated that people experience the world using four principal psychological function - sensation, intuition, feeling and thinking - and that one of these four functions is dominant in an individual, a majority of the time. 

After Myers' death in May 1980, Mary McCaulley updated the MBTI manual, and the second edition was published in 1985. The third edition appeared in 1998. 

MBTI 

The 16 MBTI types are typically referred to by an abbreviation of four letters - the initial letters of each of their four type preferences (except in the case of intuition, which uses the abbreviation "N" to distinguish it from introversion). For instance:

ENTJ: extraversion (E), intuition (N), thinking (T), judgment (J)

ISFP: introversion (I), sensing (S), feeling (F), perception (P)

Fig: MBTI personality basis.

Hence, personality of an individual depends on ATTITUDE as well as LIFESTYLE PREFERENCES.

BASIS OF MBTI PERSONALITY

EXTRAVERSION (E) vs INTROVERSION (I)

• Extraverted are action-oriented, while introverted are thought-oriented.

• Extraverted seek breadth of knowledge and influence, while introverted seek depth of knowledge and influence.

• Extraverted often prefer more frequent interaction, while introverted prefer more substantial interaction.

• Extraverted recharge and get their energy from spending time with people, while introverted recharge and get their energy from spending time alone; they consume their energy through the opposite process.

World population incidence: E = 49.3% vs I = 50.7%

SENSING (S) vs INTUITION (N)

People who prefer sensing are more likely to trust information that is in the present, tangible and concrete: that is, information that can be understood by the five senses. They tend to distrust hunches, which seem to come "out of nowhere". They prefer to look for details and facts. For them, the meaning is in the data. 

On the other hand, those who prefer intuition tend to trust information that is less dependent upon the senses, that can be associated with other information (either remembered or discovered by seeking a wider context or pattern). They may be more interested in future possibilities. For them, the meaning is in the underlying theory and principles which are manifested in the data.

World population incidence: S = 73.3% vs N = 26.7%

THINKING (T) vs FEELING (F)

Those who prefer thinking tend to decide things from a more detached standpoint, measuring the decision by what seems reasonable, logical, causal, consistent and matching a given set of rules. Thinkers usually have trouble interacting with people who are inconsistent or illogical, and tend to give very direct feedback to others. They are concerned with the truth and view it as more important.

Those who prefer feeling tend to come to decisions by associating or empathizing with the situation, looking at it 'from the inside' and weighing the situation to achieve, on balance, the greatest harmony, consensus and fit, considering the needs of the people involved. 

World population incidence: T = 40.2% vs F = 59.8%

JUDGING (J) vs PERCEPTION (P)

The types with a preference for judging show the world their preferred judging function (thinking or feeling). Those types who prefer perception show the world their preferred perceiving function (sensing or intuition). 

Judging types like to "have matters settled", while perceptive types prefer to "keep decisions open".

World population incidence: J = 54.1% vs P = 45.9%

COMMUNICATION

The ability to communicate is a cornerstone of human experience. These two communication styles are:

• CONCRETE: People who communicate in a concrete way discuss external reality. This includes facts of their daily lives, the news, and other things going on in the world.

• ABSTRACT: People who communicate in an abstract way discuss internal ideas. This includes their dreams, fantasies, beliefs and theories about what is or what could be in life.

Although all people have both concrete and abstract perceptual abilities to some extent, each person is usually comfortable using one more than the other. It is very likely that the people who are extrovert, sensing, thinking and judging have preference for concrete communications whilst the abstract interactions could be attributed to those who are introvert, intuitive, ‘feeling’ and perceptive.

CONCLUSIONS

The accuracy of the MBTI depends on honest self-reporting. Unlike some personality questionnaires, such as the 16PF Questionnaire, the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, or the Personality Assessment Inventory, the MBTI does not use validity scales to assess exaggerated or socially desirable responses. As a result, individuals motivated to do so can fake their responses. So one needs to be honest.

But personality evaluation is complex and there are many classifications available for the common man. In the April 2021 blog 'All About Personalities' there were described types 'A', 'B', 'C' and 'D' as were initially identified by Hippocrates and later refined by American cardiologists Meyer Friedman (1910 - 2001) and Ray Rosenman (1920 - 2013). In the upcoming blogs more interesting details will be shared with respect to personality traits differentiation and the Sigmund Freud classifying will indeed be enlightening.

DR R K SANGHAVI

Prophesied Enabler

Experience & Expertise: Clinician & Healthcare Industry Adviser

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