For the unindoctrinated, MBTI (Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator) is a psychometric that classifies people into one of 16 profiles. It is primarily used to help people get along better at work (along with staples like Wacky Bowling and Ropes courses). So, what is Jesus’ MBTI type? Does Jesus’ personality type create a subtle bias against religious leaders (or even followers) with different personality traits?
In MBTI, participants complete a 20 minute questionnaire to gauge their preferences between 4 dichotomous pairs. MBTI is based on the premise that people tend to prefer one of each pair more than the other. The 4 pairs are:
- Extraverting (E) vs. Introverting (I) - this pair describes where a person gets his energy and focuses his attention. Extraverts (E) tend to be outgoing, energized by people and the world around them. Introverts (I) tend to be deeply involved in their inner life with a handful of intimate friends.
- Sensing (S) vs. iNtuiting (N) - this pair describes how a person likes to gather information. Sensers (S) like things that are concrete, realistic, practical, and experiential. Intuitors (N) like things that are imaginative, seeing connections between things, using analogies, and understanding the big picture.
- Thinking (T) vs. Feeling (F) - this pair describes how a person makes decisions. Thinkers (T) like to make pro and con lists, use objective means to decide, and consider facts and principles. Feelers (F) like to make decisions based on personal values, how things impact people, and they tend to be more accepting and accomodating.
- Judging (J) vs. Perceiving (P) - this scale describes whether the person prefers to operate in “information gathering” mode or “decision making” mode primarily. Judgers (J), those with a decision making preference, tend to be more decisive, organized and planful. Perceivers (P) like to be flexible, keep options open and live in the moment.
(Image: www.myersbriggstypeindicator.co.uk)
MBTI is regarded by various people to be as insightful as the I Ching or as meaningless as a horoscope. Others object to MBTI as being a simplistic way to pigeonhole people. Practitioners of MBTI often like to “type” fictional and historical characters, often with differing opinions.
So, what is Jesus’ MBTI type? Most who’ve attempted to answer this question prefer to keep their options open, approaching Jesus as a role model or deity rather than a person. Because all types have different “gifts” they bring to the table, Christ would have to have ALL the gifts (so their logic goes). Therefore, He is described as being both extremes simultaneously. Personally, that feels like a cop-out to me. Others theorize that if all people continue to develop and grow over time, they will eventually be able to progress and use all functions of type (Source: From Image to Likeness by W. Harold Grant, no relation to Heber J. Grant).
I’d like to believe that Jesus had an actual personality, and I’m interested in understanding the type of person Jesus was when He was on the earth living His life. Here’s my guess, and my rationale (below): INFP.
Introverted - where did Jesus get his energy? Evidence for introversion: 40 days in the wilderness. Come on–an extravert would have gone nuts with no other people around for 40 days. I personally would have struck up a friendship with a volleyball after about 48 hours. Jesus often retreated after being around all those people. He also quite literally felt the energy (virtue) go out of him when he was touched in a crowd; one could say He literally found crowds to be draining.
iNtuiting - how did Jesus gather information? This is the one with the strongest evidence, IMO. Intuitors like to speak in analogies, and Jesus spoke almost non-stop in analogies (parables). He frequently spoke with double meanings (”he that hath ears to hear, let him hear”), and He was visionary, having to remind disciples that He wasn’t there to save them physically but to redeem them spiritually.
Feeling - how did Jesus make decisions? Feelers make decisions based on their personal values & how things impact people while Thinkers prefer to maker decisions using logical, objective analysis. Personally, I feel a case could be made for either on this one. There is not a lot of direct information about Jesus’ decision-making process in the Gospels, perhaps for a couple of reasons: 1) introverted intuitors rarely share their internal thought process with others, so there is less material to work with, and 2) Jesus doesn’t seem to go through a decision-making process much in the Gospels, and the few decisions He does make are made under extreme stress and may not be typical (e.g. atonement).
Feelers tend to be more accomodating and compassionate making compassionate exceptions for individuals, while Thinkers tend to be more critical and direct, preferring fairness and consistency. There are examples of Jesus taking both approaches in the Gospels. At times, Jesus is moved by compassion (e.g. loaves & fishes, calming the storm), and he makes exceptions (e.g. “neither do I condemn thee” to the woman taken in adultery); yet there are also many examples of Him being very direct and provocative (e.g. cleansing the temple, announcing “this day is this scripture fulfilled” and then continuing on in a pretty direct speech that really ticked people off); if those characteristics are more prevalent, that would make Jesus an INTP. I let the atonement itself tip the scales in favor of considering Jesus a Feeler, and as a sinner, I’m really hoping he’s an “exceptions” decision-maker more than a “fairness” decision-maker.
Perceiving - how did Jesus approach his life? Planned and orderly or “go with the flow”? His ministry seems very “go with the flow” to me. There was no time table, seemingly no schedule to their days. There was a lot of wandering. Also, the loaves & fishes incident smacks of a lack of planning (but just like a Perceiver, it all works out anyway!). Jesus was nothing if not flexible in His schedule, IMO. Ironically, many Christian churches have a much more “J” style–hierarchical, organization-focused, tightly scheduled.
Does anyone care to disagree with me and take a crack at Jesus’ MBTI? For MBTI novices, there are many sites with easy to read descriptions of the 16 types like this one.
If these are the characteristics Christ had, does that also color our perception of the suitableness of other personality types to be religious leaders? Let me further hypothesize that we are probably more critical of religious leaders who don’t fit this type, especially those who are outgoing or extraverted or boisterous, who are less theoretical and more hands-on. Again, I could be totally wrong, but I would go out on a limb to suggest that Joseph Smith was an ESFP. ESFPs are very sociable, tend to be athletic and fun-oriented, may be very charismatic, and like to live in the moment. Not exactly a “man of sorrows” personality type.
BTW, lest I be accused of type bias, I only have one letter in common with INFP, so my assessment is not based on a belief that my way is the way, the truth, the life (literally, in this case). I also only have one letter in common with ESFP.
Great post! I qualified on the MBTI a couple of years ago and interpret it for students at the university level once in a while.
It’s tricky to identify other’s types for them, as the strength of the MBTI is self-verification. Also, while I can accept that Jesus’s human side had conceivably an MBTI type, does his divine nature have one as well? Wouldn’t God transcend the MBTI? I guess if He has a certain hair color, He could have a certain personality…
I know a lot of INFPs who are turned off by LDS Church culture. That’s an interesting observation if you connect it with Jesus and Joseph…
I would also say the current Church culture favors extraverted intuitive feeling judgers, but that’s my weird perspective.
This is interesting. It points out the problem with considering Jesus (or any other human) as a deity. Human attributes like personality are not divine. Another way to say this is that there can be no single human exemplar because human experience is too diverse.
I would say that by the very divine characteristics that God and Jesus are EISNTFJP.
Otherwise how could they intimately relate to each person? The only way I think to argue otherwise is to say only people of certain personality types draw to God, and hence because God is like them. (But then, even that’s tough, because one could claim people could draw to God because He so ideally _different_ and attractive than their own self. The whole “opposites attract” thing.)
I’ve been classified as both INTP (The Thinker) and ENTP (The Visionary) in separate professionally proctored tests. Either way, if that doesn’t explain my answer on this question, maybe so for those who know me from other threads…
That is the wonderful this about Jesus is that he can be seen as being “all things to all people…”
Great post Hawgrrrl….really makes one think doesnt it. I have my own ideas of what Jesus is like and I enjoy the anarchist, peacemaker, and personable interpretation of Christ’s personality.
One of the cool things about the MBTI is the idea that though a person is might be more comfortable or natural on one side or other of each of the four vectors, as we mature in adulthood we may develop skills on the other side. Frex, I think I rocked the highest “T” scores ever seen in 1994, but I’ve learned to understand and even use the “F” mode since then. Somewhat. I keep hoping.
So, I’m going to think that, even in his humanness, Jesus was perfectly and comfortably capable in all vectors. I love how you argued from the scriptures for INFP, since I’m an INTP. But I think it reads that way because the writers of scripture tend to be those #$% ESTJ, who would be most shocked and impressed with how Christ made the opposite modes work.
My own response is colored by my experiences with this and other personality tests. Here goes:
I always test almost dead-center, balanced, middle of the road on these tests. It baffles the testers - simply because of the original bias mentioned at the beginning of this post. (”the premise that people tend to prefer one of each pair more than the other.”) I really love to be with others (in person or on-line), but I also love to sit all by myself and read. I am the life of the party for half the party and sitting quietly talking with a friend or my wife the other half. I love History and English, but I am a natural mathematician and musician. I analyze everything, but often act based on my feelings and impressions. I have no problem “wasting time”, but I am doing something all the time. yada, yada, yada . . .
I also hate these tests because of the practical application for which they often are used. Different versions (including this one) have been used on two separate occasions to deny me a job for which I was applying. Seriously, I was told that I was the leading candidate twice, but after the test results were analyzed I was told that the companies were looking for the “right personality type” - which I wasn’t. This was despite the fact that I had been extraordinarily successful in the exact arena for which they were hiring. I had proven my ability, but that ability was discounted in favor of personality type.
Those experiences have colored the way I look at these tests and the way they are interpreted. There almost always is a conscious or unconscious bias involved whenever conclusions are reached about the practical meaning of the results. (I’m sure you recognize that, hawkgrrrl, given how you phrased your post, but I just felt it needed to be said.)
I look at the scriptures, and I see a story in which I simply can’t classify His personality. I see someone who weighed each situation and acted accordingly - who doesn’t appear to have had a set paradigm within which He always operated. I see a real balance. Furthermore, we have such an incredibly sketchy picture of His life even during His ministry that it’s hard to have any confidence that we are getting an accurate view of His personality.
I look at the Sermon on the Mount, and I see a blueprint for perfection (whole, finished,fully developed character) that transcends personality types. I read of His life, and I see examples of each characteristic listed there - but I also see instances where He acted outside those characteristics. Therefore, if I had to pick a personality type from this measurement, I would agree with JfQ: the whole, finished, fully developed EISNTFJP.
“I also hate these tests because of the practical application for which they often are used. Different versions (including this one) have been used on two separate occasions to deny me a job for which I was applying.” Just a quick note on this, Ray. When I qualified on MBTI in 1996, I had to sign an ethics agreement that I would not allow the instrument to be used in this manner. I’m not a litigious person by nature, but this is a clear violation of hiring ethics and the hiring company is at risk should you choose to pursue. One of the basic tenets of MBTI is that preferences don’t equate to skills, and you can do whatever you choose to do; this just tells you what you like to do. On the other hand, as a business person I would advise that being known as someone who sued a company is never a good position to be in. Just thought you should know.
I am an INFP and that was my guess too. Does that mean I have a Messiah complex? For the record, I am not totally turned off by church culture, whatever that may mean, either.
hawkgrrrl, I didn’t press it for one reason: I didn’t want to work for a company that would use such a test in that way. It showed a clear shallowness of judgment and deeply entrenched CYA complex that would not have been a good fit for me.
I also figured they’d deserve whoever they hired. *grin*
Ray - I wouldn’t want to work at such a place either! But, we like your kind just fine here.
Doc - Being an INFP doesn’t give you a God complex, but maybe being a doctor does!
One tenet of MBTI is that there is no type that is better than others, and you can work well with all types if you are aware and open-minded enough. The Kiersey sorter (a derivative of MBTI) tells more about the types by identifying patterns of behavior across types: SJs tend to be preservers of traditions & laws (SPs hate that), SPs like to be daring and adventurous and break the rules that they don’t like (SJs hate that), NFs tend to be idealists with causes and may be viewed as unrealistic by other types, NTs are great strategic thinkers but can also be seen as know-it-alls who make you feel seen through. I have to think McConkie was an ISTJ. I would peg Talmage as INTP.
Hawkgrrl,
I am an ISTJ and am about as far as you can get from Bruce McConkie’s positions on most doctrinal issues you can name. Maybe that’s why I can relate to people like him.
Of course, as the theory goes, every ISTJ is different from every other ISTJ, and so on. I suppose my thinking on McConkie is because he wrote Mormon Doctrine with the assumption that he was just recording for everyone what they already knew was right. It was also very detail-oriented, focused on the minutae of daily living as a Mormon. It’s a very “preserving traditions” approach. But ISTJs could have different views and different traditions from one another. Plus, I could be totally wrong!
I’m also an INFP, sweet. Sometimes I’m “turned off” by church culture when I don’t see the point of it. That’s the case with a lot of traditions for me, really.
I hate to do this, since everyone seems to be having so much fun, but…
How about we speculate about a psychometrically valid personality inventory that generates useful (eg, predictive) results, such as the NEO-PI-R? Or any other Big Five inventory? Let me just say, for the record, that I do think the MBTI has its uses in certain settings, but any idiot using it as part of a selection battery deserves to have a lawsuit the size of China handed to them. It simply isn’t a predictive measure designed for looking at job performance. However there are personality measures that are, and there are personality measures, such as various iterations/adaptations of the NEO, that are equally useful for the things that the MBTI are used for.
As a trained Industrial/Organizational Psychologist (that is, I don’t just use these tests, I develop them). My current job is developing noncognitive measures (such as personality inventories), so I’m pretty close to this sort of thing. Trust me when I say that the MBTI is not well respected among psychometricians for very valid reasons. It is used in business settings primarily because it is easy to use, understand and compare. One thing that some psychometricians are bad at is developing tests that are both psychometrically valid and easy to use and understand. That is a challenge that is supremely difficult.
Now, as for Jesus personality type on the Big Five? There are five factors–Openness to Experience, Concientiousness, Extroversion, Agreeableness and Neuroticism (or Emotional Stability, depending on how you think about it). For the sake of simplicity, we will say that these are scored from 1 to 5. Christ showed a willingness to venture outside the normal mores of his society, which is a mark of Openness to Experience. In fact most of his ministry involved breaking the centuries of prohibitions built by the Jewish traditions. So I give him a 5 on this. Christ was supremely conscientious. He never failed in his duties, was always true to his loyalties, so I give him a 5 on this. Extroversion is, as hawkgrrl noted, a bit trickier, and for similar reasons to hers, I am going to give him a more neutral score (and this is one of the reasons that the Big Five continuous scores are more psychometrically valid than the MBTI) of 3. Agreeableness is an area where I think that we can easily say that Christ was very agreeable–although there were times when his reasons and ideas were inscrutable, and his occasional righteous anger and aloofness mar this a bit. I still give him a 5. Finally, Neuroticism. We will think of this as Emotional Stability and give him a 5–he was very stable and did not have any noted or notable mood swings or difficulty controlling his emotions, even when under extreme stress.
So that’s my take on it. Feel free to disagree. I’m not going to classify him on the MBTI as I consider it false doctrine.
Ben O,
One of the strengths of the MBTI when it is used correctly is it’s description of the interplay of one’s different personality preferences and it’s avoidance of norm-setting. It seems like the metric you are using has definite norms of psychological health and adaptation to society. For instance, Extroversion and Openness to Experience are “good” things, am I right? The MBTI is only designed to be used with relatively healthy individuals, mentally speaking. Neuroticism isn’t measured by anything on the indicator. Neuroticism could be classified by type theory as perhaps “life not supporting you in your innate preferences”. That said, how can we classify Jesus, as God, as anything less than perfect on all of these metrics you list?
I’m an INFP too. It’s the only personality type I’ve read much about, but from what I’ve read, it makes sense that Christ could be one. To a certain degree. I don’t know how great of leaders use INFPs make.
Ahhh, the old MBTI. I’ve been tested a number of times and I always fall near the center. Usually I’m the most centered in the group. My calling card is ENFP, which at times has been ISTJ (or any combination)….hence my problem I’m usually just one or two points from the center. I’m an extrovert, but I enjoy reading and meditating, I love the bigger picture but drive my husband crazy with the details. I like to logically think through concepts, but melt away with mushy shows. I like to make decisions and move on, but can take forever to find the right accessory for our furniture.
I suspect Christ finds this humorous…trying to define him in our terms. He’s probably wondering, when will we ever grow up.
The thing we keep coming up against in this discussion (it seems to me) is the inability to separate Jesus as a person from His role. We are so subjective in our experience of Jesus because He is our advocate and our Savior, that it’s just next to impossible to imagine sitting down at a cafe with Him and sharing a diet coke or going for a “non-footprints-in-the-sand” walk along the beach with Him. This is why I like the MBTI for this exercise - there is no “good” or “bad” type - it’s just descriptive of personality.
Even if the Savior is INFP, we should not try to become INFPs. I personally disagree with the notion of type development (that eventually we will all be all types, therefore perfect). Adaption to other “types” doesn’t mean we become that type–we just have a high degree of self-awareness and social skill (emotional intelligence, not MBTI). A Savior of any other type would still love us and redeem us.
hawkgrrrl, look at how Jesus himself defined “perfect”. (the beatitudes, then Matthew 5:48, footnote b) It’s not “type development”; it’s more “character acquisition”. I think the point is to transcend our “natural personality type” and develop completeness.
John 17: 3 “And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.”
There is Jesus the Man, and there is Jesus the mission (the Savior of mankind). I don’t think knowing one is automatically knowing the other. We can know him both as a person/friend and as our Savior. Knowing Him as our Savior always ends up being about us, though.
hawkgrrrl, Have you read Albert Nolan’s “Jesus Before Christianity”? It’s fairly short and straightforward. I recommend it highly.
Ray - Sounds interesting. I will give it a go. (Just ordered it - I love Amazon Prime!)
Nice work, hawkgrrrl. This is a very interesting post. I agree with your conclusions. It seems, however, that our church that bears His name doesn’t reflect Jesus’s personality type very well. I’ve read the book by Bridges, “The character type of Organizations.” It’s a fascinating application of Jung’s ideas (that underlie the MBTI) to organizations and their cultures. This organization feels more ESTJ. Though I understand and agree that no type is inherently good or bad, I wonder how our church migrated so far from its roots?
Gorgeous - There is a cultural bias in our country toward ESTJ, so we are all confronted with ESTJ messages throughout our lives. Introverted children are told to make friends and be outgoing. Intuitive children, until recently, were not catered to at all in the educational system; most children’s reading lists are very literal books (e.g. Old Yeller, Where the Red Fern Grows, Little House on the Prairie) with very few imaginative or ambiguous stories (how many science fiction books did you read in elementary school?), and learning is presented in a very step-by-step manner. Making decisions through logical means (show your work! what steps did you follow?) is valued over Feelings decisions. And “P”s are told they need to plan ahead and start early. Yet, other cultures have different norms (ESFP in Mexico, ISFP in India). Those cultural norms cause a lot of disconnect, for example, when Americans work with Indians.
Someone above posited that the church felt ENFJ to them, which is the classic “HR Manager” type. I’m not sure the church is ESTJ, but it’s easy to perceive it that way because: 1) ESTJs like to take charge and are outspoken, 2) ESTJs are the “preservers of tradition”, 3) SJs (all 4 SJ types) comprise 40-45% of the population and are the cultural bias in the US, and 4) ESTJs are organization-oriented (they like hierarchy and formalizing structure). The other types usually allow them to do this because they aren’t that interested in those activities. INFPs (if that is Jesus’ type) are not generally creators of organizations. They would inspire people around them to do things. I suspect most churches would characterize themselves as ESTJ with the exceptions of those that have very distinct non-mainstream dogmas (e.g. Scientology, Hare Krishna, etc.). I’ll have to keep an eye open this conference weekend to see what organizational MBTI indicators I catch.
The other difficulty is that local wards probably differ greatly in terms of organizational type. So even if the twelve have a type bias (I think I see a few different types in there), that may play out differently in our local wards. I would probably peg Monson as an ESFJ. Uchdorff, hmmm, maybe an ENTJ. Eyring–INTJ (I think, a researcher type). Packer seems classic ESTJ. And I doubt Peter, James and John were INFPs (because INFPs aren’t as common as other types), although there is little information to go on.
Hi,
I own and run http://www.myersbriggstypeindicator.co.uk I noticed that the image for the 4 dichotomies has been pasted on this website. Google now links to this site for my image. I would be grateful if one of two things would happen. Either the image to be removed, or for it to be credited to the website with a hyper link http://www.myersbriggstypeindicator.co.uk
Many thanks,
Dan
Dan (and Hawkgrrrl) - I went ahead and credited the image in the post.
AdamF
I couldn’t understand some parts of this article Personality Type (MBTI)? at Mormon Matters, but I guess I just need to check some more resources regarding this, because it sounds interesting.
This was an awesome post! I can honestly say I never thought about it lol. I agree, hopefully more exceptions and less justice oriented would be great lol.