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This INFJ FAQ
is intended to provide some immediate answers to the more commonly asked
"newbie" questions on the INFJ-list. The FAQ is mainly for interest,
so don't worry, we won't shun you if you ask these questions on the list
- if there's something on your mind, feel free to post. We look foward
to hearing from you!
INFJ
Personality
MBTI™, Type, and Temperament
Careers and Relationships
Statistics
The INFJ-List
Q: Are all of you
messy procrastinators too?
A: No. Some of
us clean baseboards and I'm sure a few of us even get things done early;
most likely our J kicking in to keep us on track. But we all tend not
to follow through on our dreams as much as we could.
Q: Do you people
have messy homes/offices as well?
A: You might be
surprised. As one INFJ said, "If you saw the way most of our houses
look, you'd probably feel at home. My office looks like a paper laden
bomb hit it." Generally speaking, J doesn't necessarily mean you
have a clean tidy office or house. J is more about having closure and
having things settled and decided. Nevertheless, most INFJs do feel
guilty about having messy abodes.
Q: Do any of you
think you might have psychic abilities?
A: Yes. Metaphysical
discussions of all types - from Christian theology to Tarot - are welcome
here, and we quite commonly pass through a phase of discussing psychic
events of one kind or another. It has been suggested that INFJs are
the most likely of all the yypes to have psychic experiences, although
on the INFJ-list there has been no real evidence to support this. Suffice
it to say that all types are capable of experiencing the paranormal.
Q: I know that
I'm INFJ, but I recently tested again and came out INFP. Help, what's
going on? Have I been fooling myself all along?
A: Not to worry.
This is actually quite a common occurence - quite a few INFJs test as
INFP sometime or another, especially with the less reliable personality
tests around (there are a lot of them). This happens because a lot of
INFJs can tend to leave things unfinished and lying around, despite
the J preference. Nevertheless there is a world of difference between
INFJs and INFPs, and if distinguishing between the two types via the
J/P preference alone doesn't work, then there are other ways to do this,
such as looking at the dominant and axuliary functions.
Generally speaking,
if you know in your heart that you are INFJ and you've accepted this,
then it's fairly safe to say that you really are INFJ.
Q: Are INFJs judgmental?
A: For some reason
the "judgmental" issue seems to pop up quite regularly in
type theory. The popular definition of the word "judgmental"
carries a negative connotation with it, since being "judgmental"
often means that you are some kind of nit-picking twit who despises
everyone and who finds fault with everything and anything. The more
correct word for that kind of person would probably be "cynic".
The more appropriate
meaning of "judgment" is to form an opinion about something
or someone based on the perceived circumstances at hand. With that in
mind, INFJs could be considered judgmental.
The INFJ auxiliary
function, Fe (Feeling extraverted/Extraverted Feeling),
is responsible for forming and expressing a range of feelings and emotions
about others. As Joe Butt's Typelogic INFJ profile says, "INFJs,
like many other FJ types, find themselves caught between the desire
to express their wealth of feelings and moral conclusions about the
actions and attitudes of others, and the awareness of the consequences
of unbridled candor."
This expression
of feelings is the so-called Fe-ing; and yes, ENFJs are rather good
at this too, since Fe is their primary or dominant function. INFJs tend
to Fe only to trusted friends or acquaintances.
INFJs, like all
NFs, tend to see mostly good in people, though if there is a person
that an INFJ dislikes, there will usually be a very good reason for
it.
Q: I just found
out I'm an INFJ, and now it seems like all my favorite authors, musicians,
and other heroes are also INFJ. Is this possible?
A: It's easy to
fall into the trap of claiming your hero as your own type. This is particularly
common among NFs. And as Robbie said, "We also tend to disown people
of our type who we dislike. Ask anyone on INTJ-L and they'll tell you
Hitler was an INFJ. Ask anyone on INFJ-L and they'll tell you he was
an INTJ."
It can be difficult,
though obviously not impossible, to type a celebrity/famous person.
The fact that the typing is usually being done through, at best, second-hand
sources makes it all the more harder and prone to bias. Typing authors
by analysing written works can also be tricky, since it's quite possible
and more than likely for the author to assume a different attitude and
mindset while writing.
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Q: Help, I tested
something other than INFJ, but the profile just isn't me. Am I deluded?
A: The MBTI™
Form G is wrong about 25% of the time. Other tests that you find on
the Internet have unknown accuracies. The best might be as accurate
as the MBTI™. The rest are probably worse. The reasons for the
innacuracies are many. The best thing to do is to read the type descriptions
for all the types you think you might be and select the one that fits
you best.
You know yourself
better than any test maker who never met you.
Q: I took a type
test and it says I'm right in the middle on T/F (or some other letter
pair), does this mean I'm balanced in that trait?
A: First, a clarification:
Type does not deal with traits, but rather deals with preferences or
dichotomies. A trait is something like aggression that is measured on
a scale, like 0 to 100. A preference is a choice of one over the other,
an either/or, discrete choice.
The MBTI™
and the other type tests that attempt to determine type force you to
choose between two opposite things. Sometimes the choice is easy to
make, other times it's tough to make. The instrument has no way of telling
how easy or tough it was to make.
A middle score
on one letter-pair doesn't necessarily mean you're balanced in that,
it means that when forced to chose between one and the other, 50% of
the time you went one way and 50% you went the other way. That could
be an indication of tension between what you want to be and what you
are asked to be in your job or some other part of your environment.
It could be that you're in the mood the day you took the test to express
that letter more than you normally are. It is possible that you didn't
understand the vocabulary of the test (very common in children before
the 8th grade and people taking the instrument in other than their native
language). Sometimes it indicates someone who is not completely aware
of how they think (not as common in INFJs as some other types). And
it could also mean that you have developed your expression of that preference
well enough so that it's difficult to tell the difference (this is more
common in people who have been out in the world a while and have had
the time to develop their less favored preferences, though there are
a few cases of younger people who do also).
Q: I have taken
the MBTI™ type test several times (or one or more of the other
available type/temperament tests on the Internet) and come out a different
type each time, or I come out a different type now than I did a couple
of years ago. Is my type changing?
A: The prevailing
theory is that you're born a given type. Many things can alter the expression
of that core type. These include environmental pressures growing up,
developing functions as you get older, and temporary demands to use
a different function than what would be your preference.
People usually
feel most comfortable and relaxed when they are using the functions
of their type. However everybody uses all functions at sometime. All
intuitives must focus on detail at some point, all feelers must reason
something out logically and apply an objective view at some point.
Some people have
grown up with an environment that discouraged the use of a favored function.
They have habitually learned to use a less favored function. Sometimes
at a psychological price, since they are living like a left handed person
who was forced to write right handed. Others have that same situation
forced on them in a work environment or home life as an adult.
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Q: What do you
all do and do you enjoy it?
A: Whenever this
question has come up, the answers have varied all over the map. We have
stay-at-home parents and people with Ph.D.s in scientific disciplines
and everything in between. INFJs can be found in just about any profession,
though ones which allow us to help others, especially in non-physical
ways (such as psychologically or emotionally) appeal to many of us.
Many of us who don't do any form of counseling as a living often find
themselves doing it with friends, acquaintances, and family. Job satisfaction
also varies, though our imaginations can always seem to dream up a greener
pasture than the one we're in at the moment.
Q: What types are
INFJs most compatible with?
A: It's been generally
agreed on that there is no such thing as an ideal "best match"
in terms of MBTI™ type, and rightly so: "You fall in love
with a person, not a type" (thanks for this one, Katie). While
it's probably true that certain types are less agreeable when paired
off than with others, it all comes down to the two unique individuals
and the special bond they create.
David Keirsey suggests
in his book Please Understand Me (known simply as PUM) the "opposites
attract" theory, which would mean an INFJ/ESTP or INFJ/ENTP pairing,
though studies and the experience of list-members shows that there generally
doesn't seem to be any particular pattern. In his later work Portraits
of Temperament (POT), Keirsey suggests a _NFJ and _NTP pairing. In both
POT and PUM2, Keirsey proposes that NTs and NFs belong together as they
complement each other.
Type and temperament
can be very powerful tools to use when trying to understand and analyze
a relationship - and INFJs tend to do that a lot! Knowing whether your
SO is an INTJ or an ESFP can help you predict, be prepared for, and
come to grips with the difficulties and miscommunications of your relationship.
(That said, most of the list folks seem to tend toward dating Ns, both
NTs and NFs.)
There is an interesting
article available
by the American Psychologists Association which gives some insight on
marriage and types. It's based on a survey so it's by no means rock-solid,
but it's interesting nonetheless.
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Q: Are most INFJs
female?
A: Latest US statistics
indicate that 1.3% of the male population is INFJ and 1.6% of the female
population is INFJ. So as is the case with all NF types, there are more
female INFJs than male (assuming that the total population is an even
split between men and women). See here for the latest
US MBTI™ statistics.
Q: Is it true that
INFJ is the rarest personality type?
A: Yep, it's official
- according to 1998 stats, INFJ is the rarest of the 16 types (taking
into account both men and women). See the latest
US MBTI™ statistics for more details.
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Q: Is the INFJ-List
a "family" list?
A: Not as such,
although it's not uncommon to have several family members subscribed
to the List at any given time. However, conversational topics are limited
only by the mandates of the INFJ-List Rules.
Q: What are your
predominant religious/spiritual beliefs?
A: "We have
agnostics, athiests, all different sects of Christianity, Gnostics,
pantheists, Wiccans, Jews, Catholics, non-Wiccan Pagans, people who
strongly believe in woo-woo and metaphysics, people who moderately
believe in woo-woo and metaphysics, people who believe woo-woo and metaphysics
is a load of hooey, Buddhists, Taoists, Existentialists, Baha'is, Nihilists,
people who believe in reincarnation, people who don't believe in reincarnation,
people who have no idea what they believe in, including reincarnation,
Humanists, people interested in Voudon, people interested in Hinduism,
people interested in Animism, people interested in Sufism, people interested
in Zoroastrianism, people interested in the Mithraic Mystery Cults,
people who practice Tantra, people who don't know what Tantra is...
the list goes on!" -- Holley
Q: About how much
traffic does the INFJ-List generate?
A: Traffic can
vary between as few as 30 messages a day when it's slow to 100 or more
posts a day when List discussions are going full tilt.
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"Why
should people bother to love
if all they're going to get is a broken heart?"
she asked.
"Because," I said,
"Love is what we do best."
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