I revived this blog post for the benefit of those who just took the MBTI tests recently.

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Now is a great time to talk about personality because most of the year 6 students who reads this blog will know what I'm talking about... finally. Yes.. It's related to the MBTI test you took today. Year 5 will do it in term 2, so bookmark this page and read it after you take the test if you want.

Resources on Personality and Types online
http://www.keirsey.com - Personally, I think he got the personality stuff right... includes US presidential election stuff too. highly recommended

http://typelogic.com/ - Has good and detailed write up on different personalities. Includes US presidential election too but disagrees with keirsey's in their observations. Recommended

http://www.personalitypage.com/- Very detailed write up but webpage seems very outdated in design and information doesn't seem to be updated too. Seems to be based on MBTI works. Good reading materials.

http://www.socionics.com/prof/prof.htm - Has a short write up of the types based on MBTI's theory. Includes some other readings on type versus type but troublesome to navigate the pages. Has some really useless statistics too. Read if you are free.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keirsey_Temperament_Sorter - Wikipedia's version. Just a rehash of what others have said. Visit if you feel like contributing.

What is Keirsey Temperament?
I took my first MBTI test 10 years ago when I was in JC and I received a short description of my type and a seminar on how my personality would affect me and people around me and my career choices etc. I wasn't satisfied with the readings from MBTI, so I started to read up on books related to MBTI. But most books, like MBTI, were focused on the 'improving your life' with MBTI kind of idea, none of them seem to have a reasonable explanation in why and how the types interact in the way they do. Until I came across Keirsey's theory, which immediately made sense to me.

The problem with MBTI is they arrange the 4 characteristics linearly... like how strong is your E vs I, T vs F etc... but humans are multidimensional and I doubt that all the 4 characteristics are as important as each other. Keirsey had an unique theory behind how humans behave, and based on the theory came out with some useful comparisons and advices on how to improve your relationships with other people. If you are keen to find out more about the differences, the internet is a great resource to start with. Why don't you check out this page that talks about the differences between Keirsey's temperament theory and MBTI's theory and judge for yourself.

So what if I know my type?
The MBTI test is not a wonder test that can tell you what your career will be and who is likely to be your lifelong partner. It is a means for you to find out more about yourself and discover more about others. I have been applying Keirsey's temperament theory in life and found it very useful in understanding other people and putting myself in other's shoes. Plus, since I'm working on the Civics program for senior high, I will take this opportunity to bring in some of Keirsey's theories into the civics lesson to enrich it and make it more meaningful and applicable to the individual.

But bare in mind that the 16 personality types are just general descriptions of various types of personality. It is not possible for it to fit you or anyone perfectly. So don't take it as the gospel truth.

My MBTI type doesn't seem to describe me.
There could be many reasons why it doesn't describe you. Besides the statistical variation explanation, what could happen is that you were 'taught' to modify your behaviour from young. Keirsey termed it as the Pygmalion project. Perhaps you lived in an environment whereby you had to display traits of other personalities to be accepted. This could be due to parental influence, peer pressure or other reasons. Hence when you take the tests, you could have reflected your 'adopted' personality than your real one.

Does that mean that I'm born with my Personality?
Personalities are in born traits. After I observe the growth of xiaobudian and little princess, I observe that they display certain personality traits since as young as 2 years old after they learnt how to communicate their ideas to adults. If personality could be 'taught', then how could a young toddler learn it before they could communicate? If personality could be 'taught', then why identical twins could have totally different personalities if they were educated by the same parents going through the same experiences.

Character, on the other hand, can be derived from the environment and experience of a person. It is the product of your personality and your experience and the environment. This is the malleable part of a person's behaviour. Behaviour is the action that we can observe, so it is a combination of personality and character. We can apply a bit of physics here in that the product of the uncertainty in character and personality must be greater than the variance in behaviour. I shall called it the mastermind uncertainty principle. (Sorry... too much Quantum physics lately... after preparing 42 pages of lecture notes on QM)

Anyway, this is my own opinions and by no means a scientific truth.