In this season of midterms, most Graphic readers are probably too bogged down with carefully scheduled study regimes to think about ambitious things to cross off their Pepperdine bucket lists. So, I present to you an activity that can be done behind a computer screen, with an air of completely consuming studiousness. Type “Myers Briggs” into the search bar, and prepare to take an unexpectedly long study break for a Pepperdine student’s favorite activity: self-analysis.
Some would say the Pepperdine experience isn’t complete without an international experience or Great Books or a senior year surfing class. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) personality test has taken just as essential a place in the undergraduate experience, for it helps to earn the ubiquitous invisible nerd glasses that grace the cheekbones of Pepperdine students. If you and your social circle haven’t take the test, you are missing out on a thrilling genre of conversation in which you could be comparing your personality types with friends, placing bets on the types of acquaintances and understanding the nuances of others’ thought patterns through hard social scientific fact.
The test uses a series of behavioral and emotional evaluation questions to assess four areas of personality — introvert (I) vs. extrovert (E), intuitive (N) vs. sensing (S), feeling (F) vs. thinking (T) and judging (J) vs. perceiving (P) — and assigns users to one of 16 possible four-letter combinations.
After your answers to a questionnaire are processed by an all-knowing psychologist computer program, you can take your personality type and find out the causes for all of the behaviors toward which you instinctively gravitate. A test I took last year told me I am an INFJ. This type is termed by different evaluators the “protector” or “counselor.” Of course, the potential pitfall of the MBTI is that invites users to pigeonhole others according to a type or, equally dangerous, to adjust their own personalities to reflect the test’s result.
I’ve found that I’ve developed an attachment to my type and to those who share it.
According to www.personalitypages.com, “INFJs are gentle, caring, complex and highly intuitive individuals. Artistic and creative, they live in a world of hidden meanings and possibilities. Only one percent of the population has an INFJ personality type, making it the most rare of all the types.” This explanation is convenient in justifying my behavior when no one else understands the rationale behind it. We INFJs are just too complex to be understood or appreciated by the more common personality types.
In order to guard against the peril of tying four letters on a computer screen too closely to my identity, I retook an online version of the test the other day to see if any of my personal experiences from the last year had changed my result.
As I started answering questions about the messiness of my desk and the way I express my feelings, I realized I was anxious about receiving my result. What if it changed? I had identified with the INFJs so strongly since first being categorized that I felt I would lose a familiar piece of myself if the result came up with new letters. The sounds of INFJ form one word when I rattle off my type to friends, but I would stutter over a type that contained an E, S, T or P. Worse, I would have to forsake the dashing imaginary ENFP that Personality Pages told me would be my most compatible mate.
I resisted the urge to manipulate my evaluation, forcing myself to answer honestly and trying to distance myself emotionally from the impending result. I could learn to be an E, I thought. I’ll just have to enjoy parties more and get some better jokes. But please, don’t take my N away. I promise to be more tolerant to the Ps if I get to keep the N.
I breathed a sigh of relief upon seeing my old INFJ pop up on the results page. Identity crisis averted, it seemed silly that to put so much stock in a computer-generated response to my list of yes or no answers. Though it can be useful to analyze, we need to avoid constructing cages for ourselves and others that lock up our identities and restrict our personalities, a part of us that should be able to shift and grow according to our learning experiences. So don’t get too caught up in studying yourself; I doubt it will help with midterms.
