Wednesday, October 20, 2010

ENTP, I disagree

I did an online Myers-Briggs personality test, at: http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/JTypes2.asp and got ENTP. I find the discription of ENTP sort of flattering, and apparently Q from TNG was ENTP and he was my favorite character so thats nice, but I dont aggree with it.

Now this got me thinking, the score that related to this is close to zero in all four values, so maybe i just confused the test by being inconsistant in my answers to the questions. There were some like "You prefer meeting in small groups to interactionwith lots of people" with Y/N answer, which i answer N, my personal answer would be "depends on how i feel on the day, but deffinitely choose both over staying home alone". Then this may add to the extraverted score, but my motivation would be more along the line of i might be missing out on something fun rather than i want to meet and socailise. which to my mind might be more a paranoid trait than extraverted.

Anyway, so the questions seem a bit flawed, thats ok. Next problem is, i try to answer truthfully, but there may be another question that is similar but worded differently, i answer differently because in its new form, i am motivated by a different idea. Maybe like "You get pleasure from solitary walks", which i say Y, but what i really mean "if i had nothing else on, and got my musics, then i can sing while i walk cos there is noone about to make fun of my bad singing" since when im bored/lonely i sing to myself because i like to and it makes me feel upbeat. So now i have two conflicting intravert/extravert answers. So this inconsistancy drives my score to mid-point, which is were ENTP sits.

So how do i get around this? I figured it out!

Get a few people who you feel know you well, and get them to answer the questionair with what they think you would say. Then that way you get a set of biased external results. Maybe it wouldnt be anymore accurate, but it would mean that you could learn how other percieve you, and if they all come back the same, then maybe you are. Although this could backfire when you find out how people percieve you if you dont like the results :P

Btw I know the devils advocate part of ENTP is dead on, so dont bother pointing it out :P but the optimist and friendmaking/charisma/ignoring the rest of humanity part i think is not accurate for me. Although... i have been trying to aquire new friends lately... but only to fill the hole left by Mel going overseas for 7 months, grrr!


Description of ENTP from http://typelogic.com/entp.html.
"Profile: ENTP
Revision: 3.0
Date of Revision: 26 Feb 2005

"Clever" is the word that perhaps describes ENTPs best. The professor who juggles half a dozen ideas for research papers and grant proposals in his mind while giving a highly entertaining lecture on an abstruse subject is a classic example of the type. So is the stand-up comedian whose lampoons are not only funny, but incisively accurate.
ENTPs are usually verbally as well as cerebrally quick, and generally love to argue--both for its own sake, and to show off their often-impressive skills. They tend to have a perverse sense of humor as well, and enjoy playing devil's advocate. They sometimes confuse, even inadvertently hurt, those who don't understand or accept the concept of argument as a sport.
ENTPs are as innovative and ingenious at problem-solving as they are at verbal gymnastics; on occasion, however, they manage to outsmart themselves. This can take the form of getting found out at "sharp practice"--ENTPs have been known to cut corners without regard to the rules if it's expedient -- or simply in the collapse of an over-ambitious juggling act. Both at work and at home, ENTPs are very fond of "toys"--physical or intellectual, the more sophisticated the better. They tend to tire of these quickly, however, and move on to new ones.
ENTPs are basically optimists, but in spite of this (perhaps because of it?), they tend to become extremely petulant about small setbacks and inconveniences. (Major setbacks they tend to regard as challenges, and tackle with determin- ation.) ENTPs have little patience with those they consider wrongheaded or unintelligent, and show little restraint in demonstrating this. However, they do tend to be extremely genial, if not charming, when not being harassed by life in general.
In terms of their relationships with others, ENTPs are capable of bonding very closely and, initially, suddenly, with their loved ones. Some appear to be deceptively offhand with their nearest and dearest; others are so demonstrative that they succeed in shocking co-workers who've only seen their professional side. ENTPs are also good at acquiring friends who are as clever and entertaining as they are. Aside from those two areas, ENTPs tend to be oblivious of the rest of humanity, except as an audience -- good, bad, or potential. "

3 comments:

Fodder said...

In case you didn't get my offline message on MSN, this is what I got when I tried to do the test as you:

Your Type is
ENTP
Extraverted Intuitive Thinking Perceiving
Strength of the preferences %
6 38 75 44

So not quite the same as you, as I had more extreme score, but I encountered the same problem you did with some questions, like the enjoy walking one. Based on what you've written in the past, I thought you enjoyed meeting in small groups than in large groups, mainly because it's easier to talk to and get to know individual people better in small groups, which seems to be your aim.

Jeffro said...

You could do it two different ways imo:

1. what u think the person would say
2. what u think best describes that persons actions

But i looked it up, Myer-Briggs are not really very sound metrics.

Fodder said...

One that gets used a lot in psych studies is "The Big Five", which has a scale for neuroticism, so you could find out how paranoid you really are. :P