Your MBTI Results

• Print/View PDF of Module 2

Your Self-Assessment Results
Based on your selections for each pair of preference dichotomies thus far, your Self-Assessed MBTI Personality Type is: E or I, S or N, F or P, T or J. The next step is to compare this to your Indicator Type as reported by the MBTI Instrument. When you receive your report, return to complete the learning module and verify your Best Fit Type.

Interpreting Your MBTI Profile Report and Indicator Type
The two-page MBTI Profile report is designed to help you understand your results on the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) assessment. Based on your individual responses, the MBTI instrument produces results that identify which of the 16 different personality types best describes you.

What’s Included on Your MBTI Profile Report
• The first page of the report conveys your four-letter Indicator Type (also referred to as your Reported Type).
• The Preference Clarity Index (PCI) on page 2 of the report indicate how clear you were in expressing your preference for a particular pole over its opposite. Higher numerical scores suggest you are more certain about your preference, while lower scores suggest you are less sure about that preference. These number scores do not measure skills or ability or degree of use for a specific preference, only preference clarity.
• At the bottom of page 2 of your report you can read a brief description of your Indicator Type.

Does the description seem to fit? Many people find that their Indicator Type description describes them quite well. Here’s the bottom line, though. The MBTI Profile Report does not tell you what you are. Usually the results of a psychological instrument are the final word. But with the MBTI instrument, your Indicator Type is a hypothesis that needs to be verified. Your continued self-assessment may result in you selecting a Best Fit Type that is different than the reported results.You are the expert on you and the final judge of your Best Fit Type.

Determining Your Best Fit Type
Best Fit Type is simply the four-letter type that you think best fits you. It’s the type that you feel represents your natural preferences.

Compare your Self-Assessed Type with your Indicator Type from your profile report. Are they the same? Congratulations! You’ve likely determined your Best Fit Type. Skip to the Full Type Descriptions section to read the description for your four-letter type and verify that the description fits.

The percentage of agreement between a person’s Self-Assessed Type and his or her reported type is 70% to 80%. Agreement on three of the preference dichotomies rather than all four is around 95%.

Sometimes circumstances of your life can lead you to answer the questions on the MBTI instrument so that your reported MBTI type does not reflect your true preferences.

Reasons Your Indicator Type May Not Be Your Best Fit Type
● You may still be developing your preferences (this is especially true of young people).
● You may have completed the MBTI questionnaire based on expectations or preferences of your parents, family, or friends.
● You may have based your answers on what you feel is required by your work or current situation rather than what you actually prefer.
● You may be worried that someone in authority will see the results and disagree with your preferences.
● You may not be acting typically because of stress or a crisis.
● You may be reacting to cultural pressure to have certain preferences (for example, planning ahead or being outgoing).
● You may be in your teens or early 20s and therefore still exploring your preferences, or you may be at midlife and working to develop the less-preferred functions. In terms of establishing Best Fit Type, either situation can confuse the issue.
● Your type may itself be the source of difficulty in getting to a best-fit type with which you are comfortable. For example, those who prefer Perceiving favor taking in more information rather than coming to a conclusion quickly; those with a preference for Judging on the other hand may rush to conclusions too early. Those who prefer Intuition may engage in too many possibilities; and those who prefer Sensing and Judging may feel the pull of duty to be a certain type.
 

Tips for Discovering Your Best Fit Type
Focus on your whole type, not on your individual preferences.
People often focus on pairs of preferences. But MBTI type theory is about whole types, in which preferences interact in ways unique to each of the 16 types. Start with what you are sure about. Read all the type descriptions that include the preferences you are sure of. At this point, you may find a type that you know is yours.

Suppose you are unsure whether you prefer, for example, Sensing (S) or Intuition (N), but the other preferences Extraversion (E), Thinking (T), and Judging (J) are clear to you. The real question at this point is not whether you are an S or an N, but whether you are an ESTJ or an ENTJ. The essences of those two types are very different.

● The ESTJ is focused on getting things done smoothly and efficiently. As an SJ, you have a core need for seeking the good of the community, a sense of belonging, and learning from the past.
● The ENTJ, on the other hand, is focused on implementing new ideas and challenges. As an NT, you are likely to be concerned primarily with competence and intellectual resourcefulness.

Opposite types may help you identify what you are not.
If you are, for example, hesitating between ISTJ and ISFJ, an MBTI practitioner may ask you to read descriptions of the two opposite types, eg, ENFP and ENTP. You may recognize very clearly the type you are most unlike, thus guiding you toward your own type.

Start observing yourself.
For example, if you are undecided about Thinking or Feeling, start noticing how you make decisions. Are decisions better if you trust your heart (F) or your head (T)? Notice when activities take a lot of energy and effort. See if you can identify which mental process you were using. It is often true that preferred processes seem effortless, and less preferred processes are more tiring.

If watching details closely for a long time makes you feel tired, cross, or nervous, you might investigate whether other sensing (S) activities are also hard for you. You could then look to see if intuitive (N) activities come more easily. If they do, you could consider whether intuition might be your preferred process. To test these ideas, you could ask yourself if your hunches, flashes of inspiration and other intuitions are generally accurate or trustworthy.

Think about family or community dynamics growing up.
What preferences did your parents expect you to show? Was noise allowed or was quiet required? Were you expected to be practical or imaginative? Did your parents emphasize logic or empathy? Were you rewarded for being planful or encouraged to be more spontaneous? Are you still operating on childhood “shoulds”?

Consider what others require of you.
What do significant others (spouse, boss, partner, etc) require of you—more action or thought; common sense or dreaming; fairness or harmony; plans or spontaneity?

Evaluate cultural influences.
What preference does your culture emphasize? For example, most American business organizations favor Extraversion, Sensing, Thinking, and Judging, so people with slight preference clarity indexes might consider whether their preferences are really for Introversion, Intuition, Feeling, or Perceiving or whether they feel pressured to be more like the typical business person.

Questions to Help Provide Clarity

1. Extraversion and Introversion. How long would you be comfortable on a silent retreat or being by your self?
2. Sensing and Intuition. How do you give directions—in a clear, specific Sensing style, or using vague directions with landmarks and distances?
3. Thinking and Feeling. How comfortable are you with giving critical feedback or with exceptions being made to rules?
4. Judging and Perceiving. Do you like having your weekends planned out or do you prefer to wait to see what turns up, what the weather is like, who else is in town, etc?

All too often, the Best Fit Type decision is a quick pro forma process, in which people either accept their MBTI Indicator results or puzzle briefly about one preference that doesn’t “feel” quite right. However, we encourage you to look in depth at your preferences and to understand the impact of type in all aspects of your life! The experience of verifying type can be very rewarding and enlightening and is very much worth the effort.

 Your Self-Assessment Results
Based on your selections for each pair of preference dichotomies thus far, your Self-Assessed MBTI Personality Type is: