Thinkers and Feelers

This is Part 4 of my series on personality types (character traits, if you will) based upon the Kiersey Personality Sorter. You can find Part 1 here, Part 2 here, and Part 3 here.

Remember, I'm an EXFJ.

Today I'm talking about the T(hinking) and F(eeling). From mine, you can see that I'm a Feeler. And since I've always taken the paper copy of the Kiersey, I know how many of my answers are Ts and how many are Fs.

Um, I'm not just an Feeler, I'm a flaming Feeler.

So what does that even mean?

Source: PowerPoint

Thinking: These are the folks who make decisions based upon logic, going for impersonal findings. They tend to be objective when making decisions and evaluate their options based on laws, principles, and policies. Good at arguments, they try to influence people using logic rather than emotions. They experience emotion just as much as the Feelers do but are less likely to show their feelings.

Feeling: We tend to make our decisions based on subjective reasoning and choose in the context of how our decisions impact ourselves and others. We don't usually hide our emotions. Our evaluations are usually in terms of circumstances, values, and good or bad. We can be very persuasive and appeal to emotions.

If you want to convince someone to do something, it comes in handy if you know if this person is a Thinker or a Feeler. Make your case to a Thinker using emotions or subjective reasoning, what do you think will happen?

In the communications class where I first studied the Kiersey, we were required to make three speeches. The first one was extemporaneous. The second one was to persuade using logic, and the third was to persuade using emotion.

I did okay with the first one. And I got an A with the logic speech, but the Prof said I knocked her socks off with the third one. You gotta play to your strengths.

An interesting tidbit about Thinkers and Feelers is how they react to strife. A Thinker boss facing the need to fire an employee will "feel" just as bad as the Feeler boss does. However, the Thinker boss is much less likely to have a sleepless night the day before. The Feeler has a harder time letting that kind of thing go. General office or family conflict tends to bleed into other aspects of a Feeler's life, much more so than it does to a Thinker.

Once again, there are degrees to which we may be a Thinker or a Feeler (or any of the other character groups). Someone who scores closely between the two will be different from someone like me who tests very high on the Feeler side.

So what about the main characters in your current WIP? Do you think they're Thinkers or Feelers? How might that impact how they handle the mean evil things you keep doing to them?

Personalities, Again

One of the goals I had for 2012 was to do a series of posts about personality types, based upon the Kiersey Personality Sorter, which I find fascinating.

Epic fail.

Not the Kiersery, but my follow through. Well, I'm going to try again. Someday, I'd like to write a novel where I base the characteristics completely upon the sixteen personality types. Which is kind of funny, really, considering that I'm a hybrid on one area. Keep reading to find out.

My first two posts will be repeats of posts I did last year.

I've been fascinated for years (all right, decades) with the Kiersey Personality Sorter. It was based on the MMPI, which is a comprehensive test, something like 600 questions. The MMPI is used a lot in dealing with mental illness, but for people trained in what to look for it tells a lot more about the people taking it than they would ever dream.

The Kiersey is much shorter and has many practical uses. They give it to department heads at work. There are no right or wrong answers to the questions, but merely give insight into how the taker views the world.

Here's a real life example from the business world. I used to work as the lead secretary for a department that oversaw physical facilities--buildings, etc. My old boss developed a health issue and retired. He was a detail-oriented person when it came to the budget and was very hands on. His replacement, however, was a big picture kind of guy. The finance director commented after the first budget meeting with the new director that he wished he'd known this about the new boss because he'd have prepared his presentation completely differently.

People's personalities change a lot as they mature, but settle in somewhere around age twenty-five. So for young people under that age, their results are . . . questionable. Once you reach twenty-five, your scores aren't likely to change much. Now, there can be traumatic things people go through that would impact how they answer the questions, but eventually things settle down again.

Some people also answer the questions differently if they're looking at them as they are at home as opposed to at work. When I had a coworker mention that, it floored me because I am what I am. I'm the same at home or at work. With me, what you see is what you get.

What does this have to do with writing? When you're creating characters, their personality traits are important if you don't want them to be flat. But what characteristics fit which personality types? The Kiersey would be a great tool for that.

So over the next few blog posts, I'm going to be talking about different aspects of the Kiersey and what it has to say about people. It separates people into sixteen different personality types. I'll start with me.

I'm an EXFJ.

The E means I'm an extrovert. (the other option is introvert, of course)

The X is going to be confusing because it means that I test dead even between the two options: S (sensing--dealing with information from your five sense) and N (intuitive).

The F means I'm a feeler. (the other choice is a thinker--don't even say it!)

The J is for judging. (the other option is perceiving).

If you have the time, I suggest you go and take the test and find out what you are. I'll start with the introvert/extravert topic next week.

ETA: I think it's important to know what your split is between the types, so if you're interested in taking the test to find that out, email me and I'll send you a pdf of the test.

Have you ever taken a personality test? If so what kind was it? What did you think of the results?