Dr. Raymond Hawkins Discusses How Personality Type Plays Out in Theological, Cultural and National Settings
Earlier this year John Hackston, Head of Thought Leadership at The Myers-Briggs Company, conducted an in-depth interview with Dr. Raymond Hawkins, a Psychology Professor at The University of Texas at Austin, and co-founder of the Austin Stress Institute, the first private clinic in Austin to specialize in biofeedback and clinical health psychology.
In the last article we presented excerpts from the interview in which they discussed how Dr. Hawkins was introduced to the MBTI, as well as some of the myths regarding the instrument. In this article we present additional excerpts in which the two discuss research and also Ray’s professional experience regarding how personality type manifests itself in certain contexts and settings, including the church, as well as immigration, and various nationalities and cultures.
To watch videos of the interview, check out Cultural stereotypes and personality stereotypes and MBTI type in theology.
Hawkins: There are some beginning studies that are very interesting in looking at type and spirituality type and religion — some of them done in the U.S., and some excellent work done in the UK. I’m gonna forget his name — Francis Leslie — I’m not exactly sure…
Hackston: Francis Leslie, that’s right, yes.
Hawkins: He has done what we call ‘type tables’, which is looking at the proportions of the 16 types in different settings, like say for example in a church setting or in a theology faculty and so forth. And, not surprisingly, more Extraverted Sensing and Feeling types tend to be found in those settings.
But in a seminary the theology faculty — and I did do some teaching and counseling and site programming for a master’s in counseling that was spiritually oriented in an Episcopal seminary in the U.S — and the seminary faculty are INTs [vs. ISFs].
Why? Because in that setting they’re studying the theology. It’s a systematic theology.
Francis Leslie talked about what he called “practical theology”, and type is very useful in that context.
Hackston: I’ve seen myself with groups of people from different countries — groups of people from different organizations with very different cultures in those organizations — whereby when people of the same type preferences get together there’s a ‘this is my tribe’ feeling, regardless of whichever background they’ve come from.
Hawkins: The risk there is that one needs to be able to appreciate differences. And the risk when you get your ‘tribe’ together, your people so to speak, is that you can tend to stereotype the other groups — the other types.
And that’s why in the Myers-Briggs type process you have this very careful process of the ethics and values of using type appropriately.
And so we say ‘I’m not you’. I’m not better than you. You and I are simply different. It’s like different types of flowers.
Hackston: I couldn’t agree more. And I think in those exercises where you are together with people of the same type, it’s so important to see how those types differ from each other in a positive way, for the purpose of whatever that exercise was.
Speaking of those different groups, I saw there was a paper which I think you were involved in, looking at…I’m going to say the title of the paper…The Relationship between MBTI Types of Immigrants and The Stereotype MBTI Type of the United States.
Hawkins: Yes, well this is very preliminary work you know, I had one of my undergraduates whose background was from China, and she was wondering about immigration.
I had gotten permission to use a very large database gathered between 2010 and 2013 from the Center for the Application of Psychological Type which is a well-known organization that basically provides a library of Isabel Briggs Myers’ work and Mary McCauley’s work and so forth. So I had access to this with some 13,000 cases in it to do research and to train my students.
This [graduate student] wanted to go ahead and look at the types of individuals who describe themselves as immigrants. And with such a large sample we found two or three hundred of those and then compared them with various reference groups of individuals who were similar in gender and age and so forth, but were not immigrants.
And the student actually predicted…and then it came out…that immigrants would have a distinctive type. Not to say that all immigrants would have this type, but there was a preponderance — a significantly larger proportion — of ESTJs, or Extroverted Sensing Thinking Judging types that were found among the immigrants.
Now why is that interesting? In two ways. It’s interesting, and there needs to be more research on this too, because personality psychologists — not only with Myers-Briggs but with the Five Factor model, which is a trait-based model that is very similar to the Myers-Briggs for four of the five dimensions which are equivalent to the Myers-Briggs dimensions — that have looked at national differences. And they call them ‘national stereotypes’.
So for example the American stereotype is ESTP or ESTJ. You used to call us the Ugly American across the pond…I won’t ask you what you call us…
Hackston: I couldn’t possibly comment [laughs].
Hawkins: But anyway, the business types focusing on getting ahead and making money and materialism and so forth. And so that’s one perspective. That’s different, let’s say from France, which was actually more your [UK] type — INTP, in some studies. More individualistic, more thoughtful, reflective, and not so much interested in making money.
One little thing I can’t resist sharing with you — it’s humor — one of my ESTJ colleagues said that his father was ESTJ, and he said, “so my dad used to describe my type, he’d write E S T J, and then with the S he put two vertical bars through it a dollar sign.” So that’s the United States stereotype.
So this student of mine from China said, “Well it seemed to me that a number of people that want to come to the United States are more likely to want to come here for economic reasons. They want to be successful.” Well I think that’s known. I don’t want to over generalize it. But that might be one difference.
And it’s also known that people who are more Explorer types, who like to be outdoors, and to develop and explore areas and live outside of cities, tend to be Extraverted Sensing Thinking types — again I don’t want to over generalize.
Isn’t it interesting, though, that certain questions like this can be addressed with the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator? I think it just shows you the utility of a type model as a way of understanding human personality.
Interested in additional expert perspective on the MBTI from leading academic psychologists? Read John Hackston’s interview with Dr. Aqualas Gordon of Maryville College regarding how he developed his lifelong interest in Jung and personality type.
