This blog has a personality. It is a Doer. This blog is like a cool chick wearing shorts and two pony-tails, bouncing a ball. Doers are:"The active and playful type. They are especially attuned to people and things around them and often full of energy, talking, joking and engaging in physical out-door activities.
The Doers are happiest with action-filled work which craves their full attention and focus. They might be very impulsive and more keen on starting something new than following it through. They might have a problem with sitting still or remaining inactive for any period of time. "
This verdict was delivered by a web site which analyzes blogs and maps them to a psychological (MBTI) profile. Moonballs from Planet Earth is an ESTP blog: Extraverted Sensing Thinking Perceptive.
This is not what I am like in real life. My preferred operating mode, as measured on most MBTI instruments, is INTJ: Introverted iNtuitive Thinking Judgmental. INTJs are like the geeky guys who wear glasses and struggle to get dates:
"The long-range thinking and individualistic type. They are especially good at looking at almost anything and figuring out a way of improving it - often with a highly creative and imaginative touch. They are intellectually curious and daring, but might be physically hesitant to try new things.
They enjoy theoretical work that allows them to use their strong minds and bold creativity. Since they tend to be so abstract and theoretical in their communication they often have a problem communicating their visions to other people and need to learn patience and use concrete examples. Since they are extremely good at concentrating they often have no trouble working alone. "
What's going on here?
One possibility is that the blog analysis tool is pure bunkum; a very real possibility.
Another interesting but speculative possibility is that this reflects the fact that I'm an amateur blogger.
I picked up the blog analysis tool from Greg Mankiw's blog. Mankiw is a professional economist. He is also an INTJ, an unsurprising personality type for a professional economist. His blog is linked to his work as an economist; it started as a teaching aid for his introductory economics class at Harvard. It's not surprising that his professional persona is reflected in his blog.
I am a professional analyst, a credit policy wonk. My time at work is spent wrestling with financial data, regression models and dodgy forecasts. I am blessed: I quite enjoy my job, it fits my INTJ preferences. The company I work for is dominated by NT personalities. But...the point of my blog is to get at stuff my mind wants to play with, but is not related to my work.
Maybe it's natural for extra-curricular activities to be coloured by people's shadow personality.
3 comments:
or maybe, this blog just "completes" you... nice one :-)
p.s. interesting that the "T" doesn't change at all
p.p.s. i'm off chasing shadows next year, so watch this space
INtruiging. I tried my blog and came out as ISTP - The Mechanics
[ISTP]
The independent and problem-solving type. They are especially attuned to the demands of the moment are masters of responding to challenges that arise spontaneously. They generally prefer to think things out for themselves and often avoid inter-personal conflicts.
The Mechanics enjoy working together with other independent and highly skilled people and often like seek fun and action both in their work and personal life. They enjoy adventure and risk such as in driving race cars or working as policemen and firefighters.
....
vs. a 'normal' style of ENTP. So, only one off from normal. And I am an Engineer, a mechanic and an inveterate hacker and fettler, so maybe not so bad!
Interesting point about the T remaining constant. My shadow F faculty probably comes through at home with the kids, rather than on my blog.
I suspect the typeanalyzer algorithm is just a language-pattern recognition software or neural network; the model which doesn't actually "know" about MBTI.
A common problem with such pattern recognition models is that they are very sensitive to mis-matches between the build sample and the analysis. So if the build sample had a big representation of professional or classroom writing, which is most of the writing most people do, this tool would systematically mis-predict on amateur blogs.
A systematic mis-prediction is still interesting, as long as no one has a lot of money riding on the model :)
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