

Giftedness Is Statistically Associated with Particular MBTI Results - mdakin
http://www.sengifted.org/articles_social/Sak_SynthesisOfResearchOnPsychologicalTypes.shtml

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RyanMcGreal
I'm either INFJ or INTJ, depending on the test.

As a kid I was identified as gifted-lite (the diet coke of giftedness: just
one calorie, not gifted enough :) after taking the CTBS/CCAT tests. Apparently
I was at or above giftedness cutoff on two of the parts but below it on the
third part.

But I showed them: my assessed quasi-giftedness was no match for my persistent
lack of motivation.

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alexfarran
Credulity statistically associated with people who take MBTI seriously.

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AndrewDucker
So, would you care to explain how it can be correlated with something in a
series of studies and still be meaningless?

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ewanmcteagle
Star Trek viewing correlated with higher IQ. Now what? Anytime you divide a
population that's large along any category or measure you will find many many
correlations.

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AndrewDucker
Now you know that liking Star Trek is non-random. You could then try and
understand what the basis and rules behind this liking is. You can then apply
that understanding to things like this: [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ellen-
ladowsky/pedophilia-and-...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ellen-
ladowsky/pedophilia-and-star-trek_b_5857.html) and see if any useful
conclusions can be reached.

The question is whether MBTI _is_ a measure. If you're saying that it's a
measure, but not one you care about, then that's fine. If you're saying that
it's not a measure, and that the results are purely random, then you have to
explain why there are correlations between said random data and non-random
data.

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duairc
I'm in INFP or sometimes INTP depending on the test I do. I don't really how
understand how thinking and feeling are supposed to be at opposite ends of a
spectrum...

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logic
Speaking only for myself (as someone who consistently scores on the far end of
T), viewing it as a spectrum of F<->T makes a great deal of intuitive sense,
and directly mirrors my personal observations. Just as I tend to quickly write
off very emotional people as irrational, I suspect someone leaning strongly
toward F would similarly write me off as a heartless bastard.

From your perspective, as someone sitting mid-way between the two, I can
appreciate how that distinction might not seem as clear-cut. It's something I
hadn't considered before; thank you for that.

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hop
HN readers are about 7x more likely than the norm to have NT intuitive
thinking traits from this poll last week -
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=943722>

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bendotc
That's not really accurate. It would be safer to say that people who respond
to that poll on HN self-report having NT intuitive thinking traits at about
seven times higher than the usual distribution would predict, assuming no one
voted multiple times.

Which is to say, it's really silly to draw much of anything meaningful from an
internet poll.

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hop
Yeah, I was thinking the same - not a perfect cross section, but the Black and
white way it's distributed makes it very telling.

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antipaganda
Does "gifted" mean intelligent? Or is this a case of the horse following the
cart?

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j_baker
This quote from the article may help:

"However, according to McCauley and Myers, this is not necessarily related to
intelligence; rather, it is related to the match between the academic
characteristics of IN types and the content of aptitude tests. When gifted
adolescents are compared to general high school students according to their
preference for intuition, they are more likely to enjoy solving new problems
and dislike doing the same thing repeatedly. They also are conclusive,
impatient, and interested in complicated situations. They might be more
interested in novelty according to the type theory."

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ewjordan
_When gifted adolescents are compared to general high school students
according to their preference for intuition, they are more likely to enjoy
solving new problems and dislike doing the same thing repeatedly._

My take: they've become bored as hell, conditioned over the years of idiot
level race-to-the-bottom schooling to hate doing what they're assigned the way
they're supposed to do it because they don't require as much repetition as
other people apparently do in order to "get" things. To get any intellectual
enjoyment, they had to find interesting stuff on their own.

I'd also suspect that the introvert part comes about mostly because of the
various social stigmas against doing well in school; later in life, a lot of
people that were silent outcasts in school really come out of their shells
once they're around people that value skills other than throwing balls around.

In other words, my take is that there may be a causal relationship here, in
that "giftedness" (whatever that really means) tends to force people towards a
certain personality type in most high school environments.

I'd be very curious to see if these results continue to hold in cultures where
there is less teaching to the bottom and more respect for academic talents.

~~~
j_baker
I think you're confusing introversion with shyness.

People who are shy are afraid of other people. People who are introverted just
don't enjoy talking with a lot of other people.

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joubert
I'm no expert, but: MBTI criticism - [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers-
Briggs_Type_Indicator#Cri...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers-
Briggs_Type_Indicator#Criticism)

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pradocchia
Intuitive and perceiving say "right brain" or non-linear thinking to me. The
Greeks might have called this function the muse.

What of the non-gifted student? Is he deaf, or is his muse mute?

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mdakin
See Table 5. Discussion is interesting too.

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ludwig
INTP.

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dangrossman
INTJ.

