I was SO lucky that I was never told any of those horror stories when I was diagnosed. I did learn about complications, but was basically told, “It’s really important thtat you keep good control of your diabetes, otherwise these things could happen.” This was in 1991, before the DCCT study was finished, but I’m guessing maybe early results had been released at that point, or maybe I was just lucky and happened to get doctors who held that belief without it being proven yet.
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Ok, ESFP it is for me. I’m the past, I was a full on ENTP…so not too different. I definitely know as I’ve aged my answers to some of the questions have changed.
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I came in as ESTP. I did this a few times 10-20 years ago, before I had diabetes, and frankly can’t remember the results. I don’t feel like my personality has changed since then but who knows? Coincidentally I recently read an article about the early years of Myers Briggs testing. It was more heavily used in the corporate world during the 80’s and 90’s than today. Unfortunately not able to link to that article right now…I think it may have been a book review? Sorry to space out about that. If I can find a link I’ll post it.
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This is accurate, and mostly because any test that is a typology will have terrible psychometrics. I have a rant on this that comes up often for me when I teach, because of the popularity of the Myers-Briggs:
Basically, any personality trait tends to be normally distributed, with the majority of people around the population mean. So most people are somewhere in the middle of all of these traits. This test creates a split point right down that, as though someone who is at the 49th percentile is meaningfully different than someone at the 51st, and to the same degree as someone at the 10th percentile would be. Obviously that’s not the case—those two at the middle are basically the same, and very different from the one way at the end, yet one of the two middles is getting lumped into the same category as the end person. Furthermore, while that person on the end should reliably keep scoring the same over time, those middle folks (who again, are most people) will get very unreliable test scores that change each time, because any little variance will push them one way or another across that arbitrary divide. So the Myers-Briggs is NOT taken seriously by any psychologists, despite being used as a tool by many career counselors, and research shows it to be a poor assessment tool. Something like the NEO, that measures the Five Factor Model of Personality (Extraversion, Neuroticism, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, and Openness) as continuous traits, is much much more valid, even if that means results are a little harder to describe because it’s not a typology (but humans don’t actually fit in boxes, so). You can take a free version of it here: This page has moved
That said, if you are at the extreme ends of what the Myers-Briggs tests on, you are more likely to have a reliable (consistent) score and the descriptions will probably match you better. I’m pretty far on all of the traits as an ENFP, and I get that every time, and I would say it describes me fairly well. I know lots of folks who have some parts of it they are on the extremes for and thus reliable on and some they are toward the middle on (so like an E/I NT J/P, for example) and those people will probably resemble several of the typologies to a much less robust degree.
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You mean like the choice to sneak a rum baba out of the tin in the fridge and nibble around the edges and then put it back in the tin so the nibbled edges would turn dark in the syrup and no one would know? Or the choice to lift an After Eight out of the middle of the box but leave the sleeve in place so adults would think it was just a factory glitch? Or the choice to use all your allowance money to buy all the Hershey’s bars you were supposed to sell for the school band and eat them all yourself in the space of a week? You mean like those choices?
The New Yorker recently had an interesting piece on the Myers-Briggs by Louis Menand: What Personality Tests Really Deliver | The New Yorker
And the letters in response:
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I will never admit to the “crimes” I committed, to get some of the forbidden candy.
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I was just browsing GoodReads and got lost in their recommendations and lists, and came across this book. Looks interesting for those who are interested in the history of the Myers-Briggs test.
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Actually found this pretty interesting. ISTP. Like Clint Eastwood and Burt Reynolds. I like it. The characteristics sounded pretty fitting.
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It’s discussed in The New Yorker article in the link above.
Oh dear. I’ll never look at a fur rug the same way …
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I have thought the same thing. I think diabetes education and management should be geared to personality types and learning styles. I am an INFJ and although I consider myself knowledgeable about my condition, I am frustrating for my health team who think that if I do not know exactly how many carbs are in 1/4 cups strawberries that I am not taking my condition seriously. Nothing could be further than the truth though. I am not naturally a detail person and I look at the big picture first. This is great for noticing overall patterns and tendencies but bad for day to day carb counting. INFJs make most decisions based on feelings and intuition. I found this is a bad way to determine how much insulin to take lol. I love all of the graphs I can make with the data for m my freestyle libre though!! For me diabetes management is more an art than a science. There are so many factors that influence my blood sugar levels that to reduce the condition to getting the correct carb:insulin calculation is too simplistic. I imagine many health professionals are sensing/thinking types and INFJs amd INFPs must drive them nuts!!!
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I think many (most, all?) of us have come to the same conclusion, regardless of the Myers-Briggs score !!
I confess to not counting carbs or using the bolus wizard in AGES. (Carryover from days of the exchange diet, so I eat approx same quantity carbs for common meals) As long as I avoid/minimize lows and keep A1C in my target range, I will keep doing what I’m doing.
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