The 8 Preferences

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“Become aware of your type biases (we all have them!) to avoid negative stereotyping.” - Isabel Briggs Myers

Your results from the MBTI instrument help you become aware of your personality preferences. A preference is what you like. You may like, or prefer, peppermint candy over butterscotch. You may prefer reading over watching movies. This doesn’t mean you won’t sometimes choose, or be pressured to choose, butterscotch candy or movies. But in general you will prefer to choose peppermint and reading.

There are no right or wrong preferences. Reading is not better than watching movies; each has its strengths and its problems. Most people have the ability to do both, even if they don’t like one or the other.

Personality type, also called psychological type, is what you prefer when you are using your mind or focusing your attention. Studies and experience have shown that there are consistent patterns for each person. There are many benefits to understanding your own preferences, including how they affect you, how they affect your style of communication, and how they are different from what other people prefer. Preferences allow us to have different interests, different ways of behaving, and different ways of seeing the world.

While all the preferences are equal, each has different strengths and different challenges. Knowing these personality strengths and challenges for yourself and others can help you understand and appreciate how everyone contributes to a situation, a task, or the solution to a problem.

The Eight Preferences   

How you prefer to get energized

Extraversion (E)
People who prefer extraversion tend to focus on the outside world and get energy through interacting with people and doing things.

Introversion (I)
People who prefer introversion tend to focus on the inner world and get energy through reflecting on information, ideas and/or concepts.

How you prefer to take in information

Sensing (S)
People who prefer sensing tend to notice and trust facts, details, and present realities. They like to take in information through the five senses.

Intuition (N)
People who prefer intuition tend to pay attention to and trust interrelationships, theories, and future possibilities. They are drawn to the big picture.

How you prefer to make decisions

Thinking (T)
People who prefer thinking tend to make decisions using impartial, logical, and objective analysis.

Feeling (F)
People who prefer feeling tend to make decisions to create harmony by applying person-centered values.

How you prefer to approach life

Judging (J)
People who prefer judging tend to like a planned approach to life and are organized, orderly, structured, and decisive.

Perceiving (P)
People who prefer perceiving tend to adopt a more spontaneous approach to life and are flexible, adaptable, and like to keep their options open.

Note: to avoid confusion, N is used as the abbreviation for Intuition and I for Introversion.

Four of these eight preferences (E or I, S or N, T or F, J or P) make up a person’s MBTI type, also called psychological or personality type. As you act on your type preferences, you create a unique approach to the world, to information, to decisions, and to other people. When the preferences are combined in all possible ways, they form 16 distinct personality types.