buckyhoneypls asked: Hey i don’t know if this has been asked before but how do you type people irl? Like the celebrities that you certainly don’t know? I’m asking about the method that you use!

How do you determine type? I know you analyze body and facial movements but is there a particular method that helps you sort out types. I find it so interesting. Thank you.

1. Find people who are basically the stereotype of their type and/or people I know who I’m pretty sure about (these have sometimes been wrong, which I end up fixing in step four).

2. Match other people to these people.

3. Find people who do not match and either wait to find someone who does match or make a tentative jump, based on type dichotomies (e.g. are you most likely to be a P or J?) and going with my gut feeling.

4. Re-evaluate when it becomes clear that a person/persons are not fitting the categories I’ve assigned them to.

5. Repeat 1-4.

Do you think it’s true that intp’s are generally lanky, and round shouldered with flat cheekbones? I read that somewhere and was surprised how well it fit me but it seems so specific. Since you type using physicality, I thought I’d ask.

The visual typing thing is socionics, I think. I am using muscle tension, which can be similar but is a little different.

I don’t think that every person in a type ends up with the same kind of body, or silhouette, although occasionally similarities do crop up (and certainly some INTPs look as you’ve described). I do think that if you have two people from the same type performing the same activity, they are likely to use their muscles in the same way to accomplish that activity.

In this way, I think expressions and movements tend to be more similar across type than physical features.

do you have any criterium about the people you type first? do you type people you like first and then the others? it´s no judgement, just a question. Kisses.

Lol, no. I’m an Fi dom. My priorities for typing people are how I’m feeling that day, which I can separate into three categories:

1. Lazy. Trying to fill the queue by exerting the least amount of effort, so I’m watching people I already have an idea about (not necessarily in my asks).

2. Diligent. I’m working through the list of asks, trying to keep a decent variety of types, genders and races. FYI I am asked most often for white ES men, so I also spend the most time not typing white ES men. By the same token, if you’ve asked me for someone you thought was an INFJ and I haven’t posted them, I couldn’t tell what they were, but it wasn’t INFJ.

3. Highly motivated. I’m off list and hunting for introverted N types, probably.

I don’t tend to spend very long trying to type anyone, so if I can’t figure someone out quickly, they don’t get posted. I am, however, more likely to match their type to someone in the future.

And to answer your other question, I have typed many people I found unpleasant to watch. I decided when starting this blog that I wouldn’t exclude anyone based on my moral judgement of their nature (although if anyone wants me to include a tag so you can tumblr saviour yourself from looking at rapists, etc., that is a thing I can try to do). I think there are many reasons why people would be interested in the MBTI of people they don’t like and I also find analyzing my own reactions to the people I don’t like interesting.

can you type someone if they don´t speak english?

Ish. Not really a language thing, but I can sometimes type people from body language alone, if they are a perfect physical match in some way for someone I’m already sure about.

Or if there’s a bunch of people performing, say, one sport at at the Olympics (like sprinting, or long distance running), I can sometimes pick out some of the types based on comparative similarities and differences in performance style. It’s harder if I can’t see faces or bodies – group sports where it’s difficult to focus on specific players or sports with helmets or masks, or full-body gear.

It’s pretty flukey, though, so I prefer to let it happen when it happens.

Actively trying to type people who speak different languages is complicated because of cultural cues and norms that I second-guess or miss entirely. It’s a massive time waster for me at the moment, unfortunately, but maybe someday…

How do you identify a female intj? what traits do you look for?

Ooooh, no. Okay. I can tell you it’s not by looking for traits.

There isn’t a single INTJ in the tag (with maybe the exception of Jesse Eisenberg and Margaret Atwood) who I didn’t find with some sort of combination of luck and perseverance. Luck being sent asks, or accidentally watching INTJs in other videos. Perseverance being picking a job I thought INTJs might occupy
(or targeting people INTJs might work with or be related to – the point of desperation, let’s be real)

and scouring it for possible INTJ candidates by image search and/or by watching videos. Same for the INFJs. To a lesser extent, also the INFPs and INTPs, and the ENFJs. I suspect I’ll have to do some of this to fill out the ISFJ men as well.

Looking for traits kind of implies that if I put together a list, I’d be able to pick a group of people and find a person in that group who embodies them. My experience is that this is not totally unreasonable when thinking of ESFJs, but INs are not equally represented in so many groups – particularly in entertainment, which is where it’s easiest for me to look. It’s hard to type the people who aren’t there.

There are four INTJ (white, male) actors in my tag, and trust me, it’s not because I haven’t been looking. On the other hand, I haven’t really been looking for ESFJ men, but I can think back through every tv show I’ve watched, and expect to find one in most of them, if not as main cast, then as supporting cast or a guest star. I’m not especially running through the ESFJ men traits’ list I made up, but it would probably work ok to smoke some out.

I can tell you that INTJs (there’s not a whole lot of difference between the men and women as far as typing goes, except for societal expectation) are quiet people with big hearts and a bigger work ethic. They’re very measured, collected speakers with organized, steady speech patterns and understated humour.

But all that’s just a description and has very little to do with how I’m actually typing any potential INTJs I find, which is… ugh, tension around the arms and neck, the way their body and face moves, the rhythm of their arm when they speak, the quality and regularity of their smile, their interactions with others. And yes, okay, also the speech patterns.

Hi. I’m not saying this tumblr is wrong, but….I’m very confused by your typing. I’ve seen typing here for celebrities that I have seen no where else. For example you typed Paul McCartney, Kate Blanchet, Tilda Swinton all as ENTPs. What? How did you come up with that conclusion? These three are standard ISFP and INFJs (respectively) examples on other sites. Why are these so different? Just curious-not hating. I’m just scratching my head ?

http://mbti-sorted.tumblr.com/tagged/typing-process

That’s most of the relevant posts on my process – if you get bored, the “not a typing post” tag might have more.

Basically, I am typing by comparing behaviour. They are typing by…. other means. Sorry to be shady about that, but I’m not sure it’s been clarified how the standard lists were created. I am assuming some functions-typing, since I highly doubt the MBTI test was administered to all the celebrities, particularly the long-departed ones.

Could it be possible that your MBTI typing looks right because you go off how people look?

I’m going to break down “how people look,” because I think that depending on what you mean by that, my answer is very different.

1. Genetics. I think being immediate family is actually a good indicator that you are not the same MBTI type. Every person on this site is in a different type tag from their parents, children and siblings, including all the twins. I’d be interested to know the MBTIs of twins raised apart, or the MBTIs of families of 16+ people, but generally speaking, familial resemblance does not equal an MBTI match.

2. Clothing/hair/makeup. While reflective of culture, etc., your personal style is in part due to the choices you make. That two people of the same MBTI type might have similar ideas and priorities regarding their appearance is not an unreasonable assumption.

3. Muscle tension. I do think that the way you move and hold your body is indicative of type. This is always easier to tell when you can see a person actually moving, instead of frozen pictures of people smiling, although that can be useful as well.

So yes, I think appearance is useful for typing, and I often check people out because they look like other people I’ve typed in a picture. I also often post pictures (when available) that look like other pictures I’ve already posted as a reminder of why I thought a person belonged in the tag. It can be nice to find similar pictures of people in the same type since the photographers are clearly thinking about them the same way as well. If someone doesn’t look right in the tag, I usually end up feeling uncomfortable when I scroll past them in the tag until I recheck them.

The thing I don’t do is type only by appearance, mostly because I’ve tried it and it didn’t work.

So I guess to answer your question: no, or not entirely, but I’m pleased that you think so.

I was reading something really interesting the other day (can’t remember the source). Someone pointed out that everyone that helped develop type-theory (Freud, Meyer Briggs and um, the other guy) was an N type and that, it led to confusion/misinformation about S types. It really got me wondering if I understand sensors. How do you interpret the difference between S and N types?

I have been thinking about this for weeks – and what I can tell you is that I don’t have just one answer. I don’t even have just one answer when I narrow it down to being in regards to how I think about S and N while typing (which I’m going to do, because otherwise this is going to turn into an essay).

The truth is, I prefer not to bring S vs N into typing wherever possible – if I can type someone based on their voice or the way they walk or the muscle tension in their face when they smile – does that specific thing map directly on to someone I’ve already typed? – I’d take that any day.

It is useful, though, when I don’t have enough people to compare to, to be able to reduce to S-ish and N-ish stereotypes – are you a jock or a nerd? Or maybe historically, are you a warrior or an intellectual?

Unsurprisingly, this has huge limitations. There are people who comfortably fit both, and people who fit neither. People I type this way tend to be tentative until I can find enough people who are like them to tie them more firmly to the tag.

The stereotyping tends to make things go particularly awry when you get to people who are shadow-functioning (which amongst other things can mean that they aren’t comfortably fitting into S or N). Everyone’s got the potential to use both their N and S functions well, so since I can’t actually mind read for thoughts and motivations, I try to look for the things that are untrained, or are harder to change – body language, muscle tension, speech patterns, etc.. You can teach yourself academic lingo, you can train your body in any number of athletic pursuits, you can learn to give speeches and how to project your voice, you can figure out how to effectively dress yourself. The trick, I guess, is trying to figure out what is learned (or thrust on you) and what is a default setting. Sometimes people grow more out of their type, and sometimes they grow more into it.

Thankfully, I have not only stereotypes, but my own experience of Ns and Ss to draw on – I think sometimes it can be easier to tell in person, just because of the way you bounce off each other. And then there’s the fun and exciting benefit of being able to ask leading questions.

I think maybe the best way to think of S or N (for typing purposes, anyway) is as a starting point, or maybe as a balance tipped more in one direction.

(…bar graph? ….pie chart?).

Seeing that you usually type people by comparing them to other people of a certain type, do you often wonder if you even typed those people right in the first place? I kind of do the same and it’s difficult not to get caught in a loop. Do you have like a few people in each type that are rock solid, and you never doubt their typing, and they can help you get back on track? Would you mind sharing a few? Thanks a lot!

I get many people wrong by group, often, so yes, all the time. The only tag that I guarantee is completely 100% right at the moment is the INFJs.

I don’t really find that having one rock solid person helps, because there’s so much variation within a type – usually the people I’m unclear on are different enough from the people I’m sure about that I’m mostly going on Te by the time I post them (ie. are they an E or an I, an F or a T, etc.). What does help is finding enough people of one variation that it becomes clear that they are all definitely one type and not another. Also lots of review and watching a pile of video in a row by tag, which makes it easier for Fi to get a sense of the type as a whole and pick out which characteristics are type-related and which aren’t.

So… quantity is key, pretty much.

In terms of people I’m rock solid on… I’ve already kind of refused to do this once – I’m not very comfortable pointing to people as the ‘most’ their type. Also who knows, I’m probably wrong about some of them.

I guess I’ll keep it personal: I just typed the INFP most like me, and that is Benjamin Hochman if he were neither male nor Israeli and were somewhat more introverted. enfjpuppettheatre is like if Miss Irenie Rose grew up to be Sasha Cohen, and infj-zen is most like Jessica Stern. I think I mentioned on her post that JK Rowling is pretty much my mother.

Out of all of these, I think maybe having infj-zen and Jessica Stern as examples helped to fix up the INFJ tag when I got tempted to fill it with other types – the INFJ tag is probably the least celebrity filled tag, though. The rest of us are not especially like a lot of the rest of the people in our tags – or not enough for me to pick up on instantly with Si and map onto other people.