The world is full of a different individuals with different personalities. But, ever thought about how many types of personalities is the world divided into. If not then let me tell you that there are people in the world who have been curious to find this out and have done work on it long long ago. Here are some excerpts from their findings.
Carl G Jung is the one whose indent curiosity led to finding about personality types as per the following –
ATTITUDE
Introverted or Extroverted
PERCEPTION
Sensing vs Intuition
JUDGING
Thinking vs Feeling
Jung’s area of preferences are dichotomes viz bioplan dimensions wherein every pole represents a distinct preference. Jung did state that one of the aforementioned four functions are present in a person be it judging or perception. Further more one of the researchers called Brigs Myers proposed a fourth dichotomy as Judging vs
Perceiving. According to her the personality criterians are as follows –
1. Extravert – Introvert – It symbolizes a person’s energy expression’s source and direction. While people having their energy directed towards their own internal world are called introverts, people with their energy directed towards the external world are called extroverts.
2. Sensing – Intuition – It symbolizes how someone perceives information. Sensing represents a person who believes in information obtained for the real or external world while intuition represents
3. Thinking – Feeling – It depicts how people process information. They either do it based on logic viz thinking or based on what they feel like doing about it.
4. Judging – Perceiving – It represents the implementation of the received information after processing it. Judging is when a person will organize all life events and will stick to all the plans. Perceiving is more about exploring alternatives and improvising on existing ones.
The above four dichotomies are said to yeild 16 different personality combinations or types wherein it represents either of the two poles in each dichotomy of the four dominated in a person, thus deriving 16 separate personality types. To study more about the personalities or denote personality types often every type is assigned a 4 letter acronym. For example
ISTJ – It means Introverted, Sensing, Thinking, Judging
ENFP – It means extroverted, intuitive, feeling, Perceiving
Similarly the other fourteen are derived.