Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Personality Types and the Internet

Today at our department meeting, we were talking about various personality typing indexes. The most well-known of these is the Myers-Briggs index, which determines your personality type or style based on four "opposing" sets of characteristics:

  • Introverted vs Extroverted
  • Sensing vs iNtuition
  • Thinking vs Feeling
  • Judging vs Perceiving
These four characteristics can then be mixed and matched in up to 16 different combinations. I've taken Myers-Briggs tests numerous times, and while the first letter (I or E) seems to change depending on the mood I'm in, I almost always wind up with NTJ as my last four letters.

Which is why I was utterly astonished to discover, when I tried out this tool for analyzing a website's content based on the Myers-Briggs index, that both my main site and this blog have exactly the opposite final three letters. My sites, it seems, are all Sensing, Feeling, and Perceiving! (My website is an introvert and my blog is an extrovert, which I guess makes sense, lol.)

Anyway, I thought this was very interesting. When I tried the tool out on some of my friends sites, I was impressed by the degree to which their sites seemed to match what I think of as their personalities. Of course, some of them I only KNOW through their websites and blogs, so perhaps that doesn't mean much. Still, it was intriguing...

Anyway, if you're interested in finding out the Myers-Briggs type of your website and those of your friends, favorite authors, what have you, it's here: http://typealyzer.com.

1 comment:

B.E. Sanderson said...

Heh. I've taken these tests several times. I'm solid on the I, the T and the J, but my S and N waver. The typealyzer says my blogs are ISTP. Interesting.

Thanks, Jackie. That was fun.