10 ms·
Poll HN: What is your personality type?
Just curious HN.
What is your personality type?
If you're not aware of the 16 personalities learn more here[1,2].
If you have not taken the test, do here[3].
Don't forget to up vote the poll to get more data.
Inspired by, http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2013/08/fun-friday-what-is-your-myers-briggs-personality-type.html
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personality_type
2. http://www.personalitypage.com/high-level.html
3. http://www.16personalities.com/free-personality-test
Visualize this poll: http://hnlike.com/hncharts/chart/?id=7033047
- alex_c 13y agoIt's been different every time I've taken the test.
- wingerlang 13y agoThis kind of test annoys me to no end, when they rephrase the same questions over and over and over again. I am sure there is some point to it, and the profile I hit very close to home. I don't really care for it though, especially since the site is obviously just trying to make people buy the full-depth profile. Fun, I guess.
- angersock 13y agoI consider myself dynamically-typed. Comedy answer: single and unloved. EDIT: Last time I took this, ENTJ. Now, ENFP. I'm apparently going soft.
- igravious 13y agoMy personality type is the "I don't believe in personality types" type.
- cgag 13y agothats so intj
- zxcdw 13y agoWhat does believing and not believing in pesonality types mean exactly? I mean, as a generalization, as a very introverted person I sure as hell won't get along too well with a very extroverted person unless I really have to. Of course exceptions exist.
- sliverstorm 13y agoPerhaps it means believing each person is complete, unique, and un-classifiable? The We-Are-All-Special-Snowflakes belief.
- dietrichepp 13y agoYou're in luck, most personality tests have a bin for that.
- sp332 13y agoIt's on the floor under the desk...
- alttab 13y agoSo you're an asshole? Clearly I'm joking, but people have tendencies and knowing the general buckets of tendency-groups makes it easier to interact with a wider variety of people (and not just introverted engineers).
- DanBC 13y agoIs there any actual research evidence for that?
- octo_t 13y agoI was under the impression the Meyer-Briggs was essentially pseudo-science?
- sk5t 13y agoThe test is rubbish. On the other hand, much like a horoscope, it provides a basis for conversation and reflection.
- reinhardt 13y agoGiven that it apparently was (is?) being used as an HR screening tool, I'm afraid it's not always harmless conversation fodder.
- agoandanon 13y agoEh, just learn the test well enough that you can figure out what they want, and then give them the result which gets you hired.
- bgilroy26 13y agoIn general, investing energy in deceiving people would have a greater cost than landing one job vs another would have a benefit.
- andrewcooke 13y agonot it wouldn't. it takes no effort at all to see what people expect or game these tests.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- solox3 13y agoYes, no, and maybe. The typical MBTI only reveals to you exactly what you had told it moments before, so it is very accurate. Test results will change, however, because you change over time.
- tpae 13y agoare all hackers INTJ..?
- nathell 13y agoNot at all. I'd wager a guess that when you're a startup founder, it greatly helps to be an E.
- mgkimsal 13y agoI consistently rate as an I, yet most people I meet would consider me an extrovert/E. Part of this is because when I'm meeting with people, I can be E, but it's not necessarily my default behavior (or what I'm most comfortable with, to be honest).
- measure4 13y agoIf it's not what you're most comfortable with, that means you're not actually an extravert. An extravert is someone who is energized by dealing with the external world, and an introvert is energized by dealing with their internal world. There are introverts who are very outgoing and good with people. It just tends to take a lot out of them.
- mgkimsal 13y agoI know - I was replying in the context of the parent's comment: "I'd wager a guess that when you're a startup founder, it greatly helps to be an E." Not sure if it necessarily helps - it's going to depend on what your other skills are and who, if anyone, else is on your team. I'm an I but get mistaken for an E.
- kaonashi 13y agoOnly the Randite faction.
- dkuntz2 13y agoSome. INTP is also highly represented, what with the "MUST UNDERSTAND SYSTEM" drive. I think I heard somewhere that pg's an INTP, but that could be wrong.
- pstack 13y agoI don't need a test to know I'm an asshole.
- voxxx 13y agoI thought the same thing when I saw this. It's rather interesting though if I might add, to see how those insensitivities carry over to a logical environment like a weighted survey. The test is really simple, it's four weighted boolean elements, and a result. That seems to engage people.
- lakesta 13y agoSo far we're proving the %'s wrong with all of these INTJ's (2% worldwide or something)!
- michaelfdeberry 13y agoWhile I don't agree with the science behind these test, I would assume that INTJ's would have similar interest and likely gather at a place such as Hacker News.
- edwardrs 13y agoWe are just proving that a lot of INTJ's visit hacker news.
- robinhoodexe 13y agoI've taken this test 4 times or so over the past 5 years, each time with a different result. Not quite science in my book, but definitely something to reflect upon.
- _sputnik_ 13y agoI get the same on all test I have done over the years
- cabbeer 13y agoI think the my result will change depending on the mood I am in when taking the test. Describing yourself accurately, not just truthfully, (even in the constraint of the test) is very hard to do.
- seiji 13y agoWhich one is "caustic bastard?"
- mhurron 13y agoI was wondering something similar, but for 'asshole.'
- MartinCron 13y agoAnd my first instinct was "misanthrope" which I guess is just an asshole with motivation.
- joelgreen 13y agoAs a programmer / startup founder, I feel like I oscillate between INTJ and ENTJ.
- blooberr 13y agoI don't put too much belief in the tests, but when all your close friends are INTJ and you're the only ENFP.. the test helps you recognize why you're a little different from the rest of them.
- dec0dedab0de 13y agoI've taken 4 or 5 versions of this test many times over the last 14 years, and have always gotten the same result. Even when I went back and answered differently for questions I was on the fence for. The description was always very accurate too, but I don't like the Idea that there are only 16 models of people.
- sliverstorm 13y agoI don't like the Idea that there are only 16 models of people. Are you also upset that there are only 2 genders for people? I mean, who is Biology to pigeon-hole us like that? Joking aside, it's just a loose classification. P.S. If you spend some time among people, it becomes clear there really aren't a million different "types" of people.
- mikeash 13y agoI give it an hour before you're flooded with comments about "two genders".
- merloen 13y agoI get the I/E distinction, I understand the F/T dimension, but I've never read a good explanation of N/S and J/P. Anyone care to explain?
- lxt 13y agoI apologize in advance for the hand waving vagueness, but here's how I think of it. N=abstract thinker, likes ideas and concepts and big picture S=concrete thinker, likes real things and details J=likes rules and systems and binary partitions P=thinks in terms of guidelines and heuristics and rules of thumb and grey areas. Most programmers are Ns, but I have met quite a few DBAs who are Ss. I'm a P (could you tell) although close to the middle. I like to make the joke that Ps are always 5 minutes late, but don't think of that as being late ;) Hope this helps.
- jakebellacera 13y ago> I like to make the joke that Ps are always 5 minutes late, but don't think of that as being late ;) As someone who got "INTP," I would say that is probably accurate.
- samd 13y agoN's tend to be big-picture, conceptual thinkers, whereas S's are detail-oriented and concrete. J's are to-do list sorts of people, they enjoy finishing tasks, tend to "get a lot of stuff done", but can be stressed if there isn't a plan. P's prefer starting projects to finishing them, they tend to work off-the-cuff, probably appear to get less done, but are more capable of dealing with changing circumstances and priorities.
- xux 13y agoN/S: Sensing is paying attention to facts, literally things you can hear, see, feel. Intuition is prediction, what do the facts mean? J/P: Judgement is about planning, making concrete decisions. Perception is leaving options open, doing things on the fly.
- umren 13y agotypical INTJ most of the time :(
- pmelendez 13y agoInteresting but not surprisingly INTJ has most votes being one of the rarest of the personality types.
- USNetizen 13y agoI could have sworn INTJ is supposedly the rarest of types, found in only about 1% of people, and yet it has by far the most votes here.
- poulsbohemian 13y agoIf these things are to be believed though, INTJ is more likely to be found among engineers/scientists. There are some who say INTJ is the most "independent" type - one could draw a correlation between the personality type and that of an entrepreneur striking out on their own and/or freelancers. It's then easy to make the argument that you'd have more INTJ's interested in something like HN.
- cowmoo 13y agoUhh, I really hate INTJ personalities, most are so uptight centered on being judgmental. The "worker bee" personality that I see at IT/software places. INFP ftw, feeling up and perceiving people over thinking and judging people!
- dkuntz2 13y agoYour feelings make you weak. All joking aside, definitionally feelers are going to place higher weight on their personal feelings, which makes discussing technical subjects difficult, because they're less willing to evaluate different things on their merits alone.
- gojomo 13y agoAs an INTP, I hear ya, INFP! But those $@!%#& hyperliteral nit-picky TLDR-craving conclusion-jumping downvote-happy INTJs have a clear plurality here. We're going to need a ?N?P coalition — INFP, INTP, ENFP, ENTP — to retain a little space for some poetic truth and beauty on HN. There are barely enough ?S?? here to be worth courting. They're probably out dancing and drinking themselves to death during prime HN submission/comment hours, anyway. But just in case any S are reading this, all I have to say to you is: herd immunity and antibiotic resistance are real things! Use some protection! (Ah, damn, that was a little J of me. Sometimes I put on a J or E mask, but it's just for laughs, honest.)
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- igorgue 13y agoHahaha I hate them too (INTP here), unfortunately lots of people I interact with are INTJ, which is why I like to be alone, I think, well maybe that's not the only reason. They are perfectly described by Miguel de Icaza in this article: http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2011/Feb-17.html http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2011/Feb-17.html
- gpcz 13y agoI'm feeling pretty judged by this comment.
- tokenadult 13y agoObligatory references on the subject of the unvalidated Myers-Briggs Type Indicator®: http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/on-leadership/myers-briggs-does-it-pay-to-know-your-type/2012/12/14/eaed51ae-3fcc-11e2-bca3-aadc9b7e29c5_story.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/on-leadership/myers-b... "Now, 50 years after the first time anyone paid money for the test, the Myers-Briggs legacy is reaching the end of the family line. The youngest heirs don’t want it. And it’s not clear whether organizations should, either. . . . . "Yet despite its widespread use and vast financial success, and although it was derived from the work of Carl Jung, one of the most famous psychologists of the 20th century, the test is highly questioned by the scientific community." http://www.skepdic.com/myersb.html http://www.skepdic.com/myersb.html http://www.psychometric-success.com/personality-tests/personality-tests-popular-tests.htm http://www.psychometric-success.com/personality-tests/person... "Overall, the review committee concluded that the MBTI has not demonstrated adequate validity although its popularity and use has been steadily increasing. The National Academy of Sciences review committee concluded that: 'at this time, there is not sufficient, well-designed research to justify the use of the MBTI in career counseling programs,' the very thing that it is most often used for." http://www.indiana.edu/~jobtalk/HRMWebsite/hrm/articles/develop/mbti.pdf http://www.indiana.edu/~jobtalk/HRMWebsite/hrm/articles/deve... http://www.amazon.com/Cult-Personality-Testing-Annie-Murphy/dp/0743280725 http://www.amazon.com/Cult-Personality-Testing-Annie-Murphy/... Please, ladies and gentlemen who participate on Hacker News, do yourselves the favor to read some psychological research literature that was written after you were born, so that you find out that the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator® was never widely accepted by psychologists and that it now languishes on the ash heap of history. For a long time now, factor-analytic models of human personality have been the fruitful research paradigm, and currently the Big Five model http://www.tc.umn.edu/~cdeyoung/Pubs/DeYoung_Intelligence-Personality_Chapter.pdf http://www.tc.umn.edu/~cdeyoung/Pubs/DeYoung_Intelligence-Pe... enjoys a fair amount of research support across multiple countries with some good confirmation by multiple researchers. The Big Five theory still needs work, but it is much more productive of understanding human personality than the Myers-Briggs model ever was. Don't forget to up vote the poll to get more data. Note that the HN poll here suffers BIG-TIME from all the usual problems of voluntary response polls, just like the Literary Digest poll that failed in predicting the result of the 1936 United States presidential election despite a high response rate.
- gjm11 13y agoThose lamenting the fact that "asshole" isn't one of the available types might like to try instead the Lipson-Shiu Corporate Type test: http://www.andrewlipson.com/lstest.html http://www.andrewlipson.com/lstest.html "The Lipson-Shiu test attempts to remedy this and other oversights by classifying along four alternative axes: Intelligent-Stupid; Lawful-Chaotic; Important-Unimportant; Good-Evil."
- igorgue 13y agoThat's what INTJ is.
- bcoates 13y agoWhat are the distributions on the answers? I always get xxxP where the first three are always around neutral and I'm P off the charts, whatever the hell that means.
- swalsh 13y agoI love how INTJ is described as "rare" but is by far the highest one here.
- chrisabrams 13y agoWe still are rare, but we're the norm here ;)
- elwell 13y agoHN is a rare breed.
- zw123456 13y agoICIE
- mh_yam 13y agoNot surprised at the number of INTs. Fair number of ENT as well.
- BjoernKW 13y agoWhy is that important exactly? To know in which pigeon hole I belong? Don't get me wrong. It's vital to be aware of one's traits, strengths and weaknesses but I'm not a D&D character. Defining people by four-letter groups seems just weird to me.
- bennyg 13y agoENTP all day, all night.
- adnam 13y agoOn the one hand, Myers-Brigg is "pseudoscience". On the other, most HN-readers are INTP or INTJ, as expected.
- IgorPartola 13y agoOff-topic: My personality type is such that I click upvote randomly on HN polls. </joke> This has been the obligatory reminder that HN poll results are meaningless. All ESFP's are just asleep at this time of day. On-topic: No surprise INTJ is fairly well represented. Logical introverts are a stereotype of our industry.
- jeremyswank 13y agomelancholic, with a soupçon of wry derision.
- criswell 13y agoThe "rarest" personality type (ENTP)[http://www.16personalities.com/intj-personality http://www.16personalities.com/intj-personality] has the most up votes. I don't know why I saw that coming but I did. A very interesting community here.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- brandonhsiao 13y agoEveryone saying "I don't need to take a test to know what kind of person I am" is missing the point of MBTI. It's not a test you take to judge yourself, but one that helps you understand other people. The sixteen types aren't buckets that people fall neatly into. What they represent are sixteen hypothetical extreme individuals. The model ENTJ would be exactly as described on personality type pages--demanding, unfeeling, unafraid to tell others what dumbshits they are. But no one is a complete ENTJ. The helpfulness of MBTI is that when someone does things that a complete ENTJ might do, it helps to know what their motivation might be, and why they're driven to be that way. When the same person acts like an ENFP, same thing.
- alexmic 13y agoEven thought I generally think these sort of tests are rubbish it turns out I'm, quite accurately, an ISFP.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
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- ankitoberoi 13y agoOh great, I'm a ENTJ just like Steve Jobs & Jim Carrey. So, Steve and Jim both were similar in personality?
- aaronsnoswell 13y agoInteresting, the website links states that INTJ's are less than 2% of general population, yet they consist of about 30$ of responses to this poll, confirming HN is not a standard subset of the general populace.
- schpet 13y ago"the INTJ may become obsessed with mindless repetitive, Sensate activities" http://www.personalitypage.com/INTJ.html http://www.personalitypage.com/INTJ.html
- etfb 13y agoI'm a QWBX - that's the personality type for people who think pseudoscientific bullshit like the MBTI doesn't belong in the boardrooms, factory floors and minds of the human race.
- sliverstorm 13y ago... and minds of the human race. Wow, you really have zero tolerance for things you don't like, don't you.
- etfb 13y agoOnly for things with zero value. Why, what worthless things would you inflict on people in the name of tolerance?
- crorella 13y agoSo many INTJ I guess it makes sense given the kind of website we use :D
- concone 13y agoINFJ
- discostrings 13y agoHere are some statistics for each trait as of 16:00 PST: I 71.77% - E 28.23% (General population: I 50.90% - E 49.40%) N 90.73% - S 9.27% (General population: N 26.90% - S 73.40%) T 77.16% - F 22.84% (General population: T 40.40% - F 59.90%) P 49.57% - J 50.43% (General population: P 46.00% - J 54.30%) And the personality types reported here in comparison to the general population (from the MBTI Manual, 3rd edition, published in 1998): ISTJ General 11.60% - HN: 2.37% ISFJ General 13.80% - HN: 0.97% ISTP General 5.40% - HN: 2.05% ISFP General 8.80% - HN: 0.86% ESTP General 4.30% - HN: 0.97% ESFP General 8.50% - HN: 0.65% ESTJ General 8.70% - HN: 0.65% ESFJ General 12.30% - HN: 0.75% ENTJ General 1.80% - HN: 7.44% ENTP General 3.20% - HN: 9.91% ENFJ General 2.50% - HN: 1.94% ENFP General 8.10% - HN: 5.93% INTJ General 2.10% - HN: 31.36% INTP General 3.30% - HN: 22.41% INFJ General 1.50% - HN: 4.96% INFP General 4.40% - HN: 6.79% Edit: Updated statistics at 16:00 PST
- austenallred 13y agoThis is a really difficult poll for me, and honestly it changed once I started learning to code (3 or 4 months ago). I used to read comments and articles of people that liked quiet space and time to think, or of people who hated open office spaces, and think, "They probably just don't like being around people," or even "They probably just don't like people." I thought that the idea of being "wired in" was just as ridiculous as someone calling themselves a "rockstar," or "killing it," and was something that most people pretend to do because it seems cool in the movies but nobody really does. Then I started to program. Nothing earth-shattering and no big data, just simple applications with a little bit of logic behind them, and everything changed. The little chat and text notifications would kill my concentration and make me lose large chunks of time and thought. A good pair of headphones wasn't just for music, but for blocking out the rest of the world (even soft, classical music was too distracting to my thought process). There was some really cool stuff happening, and I had created it. And sometimes, to be frank, the code is more interesting than the social situation I tend to be in. It's not that I don't like people, but even though I consider myself an extrovert (or I used to be an extravert?) I would rather be in a quiet room coding. My parents say they saw at an early age how intense I was when I played video games (and how agressive I became), and forever banned them at my house and in my life. I feel like that was a major determining force in my personality and who I am today. Now it feels like there are two people fighting inside of me. I can still go to a party and really enjoy myself, I'm still late all the time, and I still am on the more extraverted side of a lot of the answers and laugh it up and have a very wide circle of friends and barely-acquaintences I love to keep in touch with, but sometimes (and a growing amount of the time) I just want to be left alone so I can figure things out. And I don't crave to be around people like I used to. It's not hard, when taking a test like this, to see which personality type the answers are lending themselves to, and most of the time when taking them I am thinking to myself, "It depends." I really don't know anymore. And interestingly enough, I feel like my personality is more a result of the things I do than who I am. For the record: I scored Extravert(44%) iNtuitive(62%) Feeling(62%) Perceiving(67)%
- farinasa 13y agoI find it interesting that you feel a struggle yet your scores show a very solid personality. I have the same struggle. I have always been right in the middle. Used to be a class clown and popular but also had extended bouts of depression where I didn't want to interact. Nowadays, when working, I want to shut everything out and just code. But I used to be the opposite. Was in service and loved talking to people. Even if I'm not very good at it. When I was in service, I would usually only hang out with a core group and only occasionally. Now that I'm coding, I want to experience everything in my free time. Meet people and be uncomfortable. Although I did answer "it depends" to probably 75% of the questions, I think my results reflect somewhat accurately. The only thing that is solid is intuitive. The rest are right on the fence. Extravert(22%) iNtuitive(62%) Feeling(12%) Perceiving(22)%
- usetheinternet 13y agoENFJ
- jagbolanos 13y agoNot sure if this happens to others but in my case some times I'm ENTP and others INTP. I guess I'm somehow in the middle and it might depend on the day.
- dmak 13y ago32% of HN is part of the rarest personality type? I cannot help but laugh.
- igravious 13y agoI got my mother to do it and entered her result, does that count?
- erobbins 13y agoI always get either ISTP or INTP, depending on the N/S questions. I like to understand the risky situations I find myself in.
- derleth3 13y agoINTJ
- bobosha 13y agoThe "I"s have it
- kintamanimatt 13y agoC'mon, HN is better than this psuedo-science. If it were a poll asking for sun and rising signs it'd get flamed and flagged to death. People need better critical thinking skills.
- yc-kjh 13y agoThere is a better way to visualize it. Do click on the link: http://hnlike.com/hncharts/chart/?id=7033047 http://hnlike.com/hncharts/chart/?id=7033047 Unfortunately, this chart is arranged badly. But you can glean the information by comparing columns. First huge difference: N > S (biggest of all!) Next difference: T > F (more pronounced amongst Ns) Next difference: I > E (more pronounced amongst NTs) Note that there is almost no difference along the J/P axis.
- woohoou 13y agoINTP
- yvsong 13y agoWho are "hackers" here? Software engineers? Curious about the type distribution of IT entrepreneurs (founders, co-founders, CEO's, and CTO's).
- yvsong 13y agoAnother thought: Is the distribution the consequence of natural selection/evolution? Does it mean that hackers are losers in the survival game?
- ahamino 13y agoINFJ