ENTRY 10: My MBTI Profiling Misadventures
Last semester, I enlisted Anthro 182—Culture and Personality or, as my prof insisted was a better title for the course, “Psychological Anthropology”.It was lots of fun. It was the perfect blend for me because I was interested in both Psychology and Anthropology—not to mention that my prof is a cool person who makes the subject even more interesting than it already is.
One of our most unforgettable and usable lessons is the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator Profiling. It consists of categorizing people under the different types given in this personality inventory. It was really fun because placing people under categories made me feel…professional. Like I knew enough to be able to tell a person’s personality just by observing them.
Unfortunately, however, it wasn’t as easy as I thought. Almost all of the time I judge someone as Type this but when I make them take the test, it turns out that their type is something else. Like one time, I judged someone as ENFP but the test revealed that she was ISFJ. And another time, I profiled two characters in a movie but found that I got none of it right. It hurts that I rarely get more than one letter right. It’s like telling me that I have little to no profiling skills at all.
But there is hope for me I guess. Practice makes better after all. Maybe I’ll profile some more people, read more about MBTI, study more about the profiling process. I might finally get it right one day if I just work harder.
P.S.: Just in case you're interested, here's a link to my MBTI Inventory results.
