What Is Personality Type?
Personality type is a nonjudgmental tool that looks at the strengths and gifts of individuals. Knowing your personality type will help you understand and apply your personal preferences in a positive way and appreciate the preferences of others that are different from yours. Using information on this site, you can then learn about and appreciate your natural communication style and adapt your style to communicate effectively with others.
Personality type describes the characteristic ways people prefer to direct and receive energy, take in information, decide and come to conclusions, and approach the outside world. The MBTI® assessment identifies two opposite preferences in each of these four areas of personality, for a total of eight preferences. Although each of us uses all of the preferences at least some of the time, we naturally prefer one in each pair to the other. Each preference is represented by a letter. There are 16 possible four-letter combinations and thus 16 different personality types.
However, personality type is more than the sum of four preferences. A four-letter type not only shows how a person prefers to direct his or her energy and approach the outside world but also provides an order and pattern for how that individual takes in and evaluates information. From a four-letter type you can discern a person’s favorite (first), second, third, and least favorite (fourth) way of processing information. As a result of these type dynamics, each of the 16 combinations of letters represents a unique way of relating to the world. Someone with an ISTP personality type will be quite different from someone with an ISTJ personality type, even though three of their four letters are the same.
It is essential that you don’t use personality type to categorize, label, or limit yourself or others. The descriptions of the 16 personality types are general, so not all statements will apply to you or any other specific individual. They are provided as a guide to your self-assessment and understanding. The preferences you express and develop are greatly influenced by your situation and experiences. You may have disregarded your natural disposition and learned to use the skills and attributes of a different preference in order to be successful. You also may be at a point in your life where you need to or choose to develop preferences you have not used much in the past.