Sometime around Christmas, I offered up a diary that included a poll asking readers to report their personality type, as measured by the Myers-Briggs personality test.
If you've never taken the test, you can find one here.
As several commentors pointed out in that original diary, these tests are far from perfect. But I was curious to see if there might be any trends in this community that were so strong that they might reveal something useful.
There might be. If you're interested read on...
Unfortunately, I never recorded the results of the poll, and much to my distress, I have just found that the diary seems to have disappeared (too old?). But about 80 people took it, and I clearly remember there was one unmistakeable trend in it. dKos readers who took that poll were overwhelmingly iNtuitive.
According to Keirsey, those with the iNtuitive trait make up about 15% of the general population. But they absolutely dominated the dKos poll takers - as in roughly 85% if I remember correctly. In other words, if my informal poll is to be believed, then by and large, we're pretty different from society in at least one important way.
What does that mean? You can read a discussion on iNtuitives here. Some interesting quotes from this discussion (iNtuitives are the "Introspectors" in this discussion):
Now, if we look at Myers's type descriptions, people are either more observant than introspective, or more introspective than observant. Observers (SPs and SJs) seem more at home when looking after the particulars of everyday living, attending to concrete things -- food, clothing, shelter, transportation -- and to practical matters such as recreation and safety, and are likely to leave the more abstract issues to others. In turn, Introspectors (NTs and NFs) tend to be more content when these concrete concerns are handled by someone else and they are left free to consider the more abstract world of ideas. This does not mean, of course, that Observer types are without an inner life -- far from it -- but simply that their introspection takes a back seat to their observation. Nor does this mean that Introspector types are unaware of the objects around them -- not at all -- but simply that they are more inclined to become absorbed in their ideas.
To put this difference another way, Observers might be called "earthlings" or "terrestrials," concrete, down to earth beings who keep their feet on the ground. These persons see what is in front of them and are usually accurate in catching details. It is said that "they don't miss much." Observers want facts, trust facts, and remember facts, and they want to deal with the facts of a situation as they are, either in the here and now, or as recorded in the past. They focus on what is happening, or what has happened, rather than anticipating what might be, what would happen if, or what might occur in the future.
In contrast, Introspectors might be called "extraterrestrials," abstract beings who live with their head in the clouds, strangers in a strange land who wonder about the curious antics of the earthlings. Absorbed as they often are in their internal world, Introspectors tend miss a great deal of what's right around them -- current reality is merely a problem to be solved, or a stage of development toward some future ideal. Not only can they miss details, they can also lose track of where they are, and for instance drive right past their highway turn-off. "It's only reality" they sometimes say, to register their relative disinterest in the merely concrete. But more than disinterest, Introspectors can be discontent with reality, even bothered by it, and speculate about possible ways of improving it.
Because of their tenuous grasp of reality, Introspectors can appear to Observers as flighty, impractical, and unrealistic -- the dreamer or absent-minded professor who can't be bothered with the nitty-gritty of living. For their part, Observers can seem to Introspectors as unimaginative, concerned only with trivial pursuits, and exasperatingly slow to consider implications and possibilities. Both views are exaggerations. Indeed, both kinds of people are capable and even creative in their own way -- it's just that they attend to very different sides of life, with the other side getting short-changed.
Hmmm. Extraterrestrials that hate reality? That kinda hurts! Funny how labels can come back to haunt you...
Is all this useless navel gazing? Maybe, maybe not. It seems clear we see the world in a fairly different way than most others. What seems obvious to us seems "head-in-the-clouds" to others. We might be right in what we think, but if we can't make it real to the earthlings, then we may have to be content to remain a bitter minority.
It also might help us understand our candidates better. John Kerry is an Observer. Go back and read the bolded quote above...
Happily, the old poll revealed there are earthlings among us. Not many, but they are there. If you find yourself among those, you're probably unusually important to this community. Perhaps if you help the extraterrestrials frame things in a manner that the earthlings can accept, we'll all go far.
The poll is repeated below. Was the original one a fluke, or are we really an Alien Nation?