OUR THEORY Often the very rst question people ask after completing our

personality test is What do these letters mean? We are of course referring to

those mysterious acronyms like INTJ-A, ENFP-T, or ESTJ-A. As you may have
already read in the free Type Descriptions (/personality-types) or additional
articles available on our website, each letter refers to a specic trait, with an
additional variant listed at the end. But before we discuss those traits, lets rst
take a brief historical detour. Since the dawn of time, we have tried to describe
and categorize ourselves in many ways. From the four temperaments
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_temperaments) of the Ancient civilizations
sanguine, choleric, melancholic and phlegmatic to the latest advances in
psychology, people have been restless in their pursuit of a good, reliable way to t
something as complex and uid as human personality into a well-dened model.
We are still some time away from being able to do that, although the current
models account for the majority of our personality traits and can often predict
with a high degree of condence how we are likely to behave in specic
circumstances. That said, it is important to bear in mind that regardless of which
model we rely on, our personality is just one aspect of many our actions are
also inuenced by our environment, experience, and individual goals. In our Type
Descriptions and Premium Proles (/premium-proles), we describe how people
belonging to a specic personality type are likely to behave however, remember
that these are just indicators and tendencies, not denitive guidelines or answers.
Theres a big dierence between scoring 10% on a trait, and scoring 80%. This
information is meant to inspire personal growth and better understanding of
others, not to be taken as gospel. Our approach has its roots in two dierent
philosophies. One dates back to early 20th century and was the brainchild of Carl
Gustav Jung, the father of analytical psychology. Jungs theory of psychological
types (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_Types) is perhaps the most
inuential creation in personality typology, and it has inspired a number of dierent
theories, including our own. One of Jungs key contributions was the
development of the concept of Introversion and Extraversion he theorized that
each of us falls into one of these two categories, either focusing on the internal
world (Introvert) or the outside world (Extravert). These terms are usually dened
dierently nowadays, with Extraversion being synonymous with social prowess
however, the original Jungian denitions focused on where the person tends to get
their energy from. In that sense, Introversion does not imply shyness, and
Extraversion does not necessarily mean good social skills. Besides Introversion
and Extraversion, Jung also coined several additional concepts. The ones most
relevant to us are the so-called Judging functions (either Thinking or Feeling) and
Perceiving functions (either Sensing or Intuition). According to Jung, each person
prefers one of these cognitive functions
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jungian_cognitive_functions) and nds it most natural
to rely on it in everyday situations. However, other functions also have their
place and can emerge depending on the circumstances. These functions are also
dened by the persons Introversion or Extraversion e.g. someone whose
dominant function is Introverted Feeling is likely to think dierently from someone
with Extraverted Feeling at the helm. In the 1920s, Jungs theory was noticed by
Katharine Cook Briggs, who later co-authored one of the most popular
personality indicators used today, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers%E2%80%93Briggs_Type_Indicator). Briggs
was a teacher with an avid interest in personality typing, having developed her
own type theory before learning of Jungs writings. Together with her daughter,
Isabel Briggs Myers, they developed a convenient way to describe the order of
each persons Jungian preferences this is how the four-letter acronyms were
born. There were four possible pairs of personality traits: Introversion (I) or
Extraversion (E) Intuition (N) or Sensing (S) Thinking (T) or Feeling (F) Judging (J)
or Perceiving (P)