Myers-Briggs and Socio-Economic Status

I've found MBTI personally quite useful over the years, particularly in helping myself and others to think about how we pray and whether there are ways of praying that might enable us better to relate to God more regularly and with better senses of ease or 'fit'. I know that there are issues with the scientific robustness of the indicator, though I do feel it captures something helpful, even if at this point we aren't quite sure how best to frame what it does do. Personally, I think that I'd feel it might be better at capturing the dynamics within different gestalts we find ourselves 'in' rather than necessarily being a died-in-the-wool once-and-for-all-time diagnostic. However, I know that's heresy to Jungians from whom this tool originates. Nevertheless, it has served me well in identifying ways to pray and reflecting on how my shadow side might come out of the shadows as I age.

So, what about this infographic? Well, I'm interested to see how some of the characteristics play out when seen on a grander, aggregated, scale in society. I'm assuming this is for the USA (and I wonder if it would be different for other societies, I suspect so).

The four types are a standard grouping of the 16 types which correspond, supposedly, to the classical 4 temperaments phlegmatic-choleric-melancholic-sanguine. You'll see the MBTI groups are _S_P, _S_J, _NF_ and _NT_. These four temperament groups are  used in thinking about temperament and prayer.

I suppose it's interesting then to see how these temperaments seem to correlate to other stuff. Some of them it seems relatively easy to see possible reasons. For example household income: ENTJ's seem to be the biggest earners forlloweb by ESFJ, ESTJ, INTJ, ENFJ and ISTJ. Interesting to note the commen factor is the J and I would suspect that something about organisation and giving energy to it. Though it's not a universal, the only time that a _J combo is outfinanced by a _P is ISFP vs ISFJ and I can think of no particular explanation in general terms for that.

There is a gender difference, which I had heard of before. And it might be expected: men are slightly more likely to favour rationality over emotionality and women are the other way round. And while that's interesting and corresponds to folk 'wisdom'. yet we should note how many people that this doesn't encompass -and the characteristics described certainly don't justify sexism even if they were absolutely isomorphic with gender; it would be hard to justify holding leadership (for example) to one gender or another on the basis of these characteristics. It would be hard to say that a leader should prioritise 'level headedness' over 'emotional intelligence' for example, even if one could conceive of such things being relatively unrelated (surely it is the ability to balance them appropriately that is important).

I note that ENTPs seem to be the lowest educational attainers. I wonder whether this reflects a greater tendency to be 'maverick', creative and perhaps less patient with going through the motions and ticking the boxes. And that is to say something about our education systems as much as about personality types. We ought to be able to devise education in a way so as not to disadvantage any personality type. It's no surprise to me that ENTJ's seem to come out as the biggest educational attainers: the combination of rationality, logical approach, ability to be more fully part of the social scene of the classroom and a greater likelihood of approaching their education in an organised fashion; all of these seem to be slightly advantageous.

It's intriguing to wonder why the types are not more statistically evenly distributed. I find myself wondering whether culture tends to fashion things directly and indirectly so that certain types are more likely to emerge from childhood. That's not something I've looked into, just something I'd be interested to know more about. And of course, considering how it is that certain traits might be preferred or enabled to succeed more frequently by the values and ways we work out our social organisation.

See the full infographic here: I've copied it into this post in case at some point this one's address should be changed.
Myers-Briggs Personality Socio-Economic Status | Visual.ly