Myers-Briggs Framework: Part I

It’s no doubt that understanding personality types and traits has become widely popular. One method people have been using to identify these traits for decades is the Myers-Briggs personality types. It’s often referred to as one of “the most popular personality tests in the world,” with over 1.5 million people taking it each year in 115 different countries. The idea for the Myers-Briggs framework originated with psychologist Carl Jung’s personality theories, which date back to the 1920s. Fast forward to 1943, the mother-daughter duo Katharine Cook Briggs and Isabel Briggs Myers then took Jung’s concepts and used them to develop the first version of their own personality type indicator. Thus, the Myers-Briggs framework was born.

The idea for Myers-Briggs is that each personality type consists of four letters, and each letter refers to a specific trait. The combination of the four letters work together to represent different personality types and type groups. Here’s how those individual traits break down:

Extroversion or Introversion

How you’re energized

• Extroversion (E): gain energy through social interaction, outgoing, expressive, and feed off of your surroundings.
• Introversion (I): gain energy through spending time alone, reserved, easily overstimulated, and prefer interacting one-on-one or in small groups.

Sensing or Intuition

How you process and learn information

• Sensing (S): practical, realistic, focus on present matters, and make decisions based on tangible facts.
• Intuition (N): inquisitive, analytical, focus on big picture, and explore theories and patterns.

Thinking or Feeling

How you make decisions

• Thinking (T): objective, organized, rational, and make decisions based on logic and weighing consequences.
• Feeling (F): compassionate, emotional, care deeply for the people around you, and make decisions based on how it affects others.

Judging or Perceiving

How you approach structure and planning

• Judging (J): decisive, hard-working, structured, dislike surprises, and prefer to plan things in advance.
• Perceiving (P): flexible, spontaneous, slow to make commitments, and prefer making decisions along the way.

Completing the Myers-Briggs assessment shows where you fall on the scale under each of these categories, giving you a four letter ‘code’ signifying which type your personality resembles (e.g. ISTJ). Knowing your type can help you identify your strengths and weaknesses, and learn how your particular personality relates to each of the other types.

“By developing individual strengths, guarding against weaknesses, and appreciating the strengths of other types, life will be more amusing, more interesting, and more of a daily adventure than it could possibly be if everyone were alike.”
Isabel Briggs Myers

Don’t know your type yet? Take the Myers-Briggs assessment for free at 16Personalities and let us know what you discover @myuserguide. Learning your own type is only the first step though, so stay tuned to learn more about the Myers-Briggs framework.