typing tests

Personality typing, that is. Jonathon Delacour has been blogging about MBTI and bloggers. He pointed me to the PTypes site...I took their test, but was "unclassifiable" the first time--equal scores on Idealist and Rationalist. (Found that rather gratifying, in some ways.) Second time, I was clearly on the Rationalist side. Mirrors my usual MBTI typing results. I'm off-the-scale E and N, borderline T/F, and pretty solidly J. Keirsey characterizes the ENFJs as teachers, and the ENTJs as field marshals. Both type descriptions fit me, though to varying degrees day to day.

In her discussion of typing, Shelley Powers describes one of the "classic" M-B questions--one that tends to elicit a strong "well, that's obvious" response from takers, regardless of which answer they think is "right":

In the Myer-Briggs test, I felt one of the best examples of this type of question was the one asking which the test taker valued more: justice or mercy. This question, to me, seemed a particularly strong one for determining whether a person is Judging or Perceiving.

I never took a class on personality typing, but I always thought that the justice vs mercy question was more about sensing/intuiting (or maybe thinking/feeling), not judging/perceiving. (The judging/justice similarity is a little misleading, I think.) So, who's been trained in M-B typing, and knows for sure which type aspect this question is a predictor for?

One of the things I've found this kind of typing useful for is understanding the disjoints in communication I sometimes have with my students. The biggest problem seems to come from my "N" tendencies, which conflict with the overwhelmingly "S" tendencies in my students. They want clear grading rubrics, detailed syllabi, lots of structure. I tell them I'll know A work when I see it, and that we'll probably wander from the topics on teh syllabus regularly when it seems appropriate to do so. :-) Now I warn them on the first day, and that seems to help a lot.