Post a Comment On: Internal Monologue

The "Typealyzer" claims to be able to determine your Myers-Briggs personality type by analyzing your blog. It thinks I'm an ISTJ. I've taken versions of this test numerous times, and I almost always come out INTJ, and I feel that describes me well. So getting 3 out of 4 isn't bad. I tried feeding different months of my blog into the Typealyzer to see if I got different results. Here are some:
March 2006: ISTP
April 2006: INTP
May 2006: INTP
...
Jan 2007: INTJ
Feb 2007: INTJ
March 2007: INTJ
...
May 2008: INTJ
June 2008: ISTJ
July 2008: INTJ
August 2008: ISTJ
September 2008: ISTJ
October 2008: ISTJ
November 2008: INTJ

Interesting to note: It does seem to get me right quite often, and it usually isn't too far off. Never does it call me an extrovert (E) rather than an introvert (I) or a feeler (F) rather than a thinker (T).

I also find it interesting that my personality type from August 2008 to October 2008 is labeled the "The Duty Fulfiller". This is around the time when we got Quinn's fragile X syndrome diagnosis. My "resting" personality type is "The Scientist". Certainly, I have recently felt a lot more like the former than the latter.

Question: Does the change in personality type represent random noise in my "blog signal", or does it represent actual shifts in my personality? I know personality is supposed to be a stable thing, over time. But maybe if there are persistent conditions in one's life, these can be hard to distinguish from personality traits. E.g. is Jill cranky, or is he just chronically sleep-deprived? Is Bob's depressed state an inherent trait, or just due to persistent relationship trouble?

Another interesting experiement: What will the Typealyzer think of Love and Survival with Fragile X, a blog to which both my wife and I contribute? It says ISTP. Now, I think my wife's type is ENFP. So it would appear from Typealyzer's point of view that my personality is "dominating" the blog. This is strange, because more of the posts are hers than mine. What does it think of Food Without Quotes, my wife's cooking blog? ESTP. But is that because a blog that has a lot of procedures and recipes is going to be more Sensing (S) (i.e. practical), than iNtuitive (i.e. theoretical)? And more Thinking (T) than Feeling (F)?

I'd love to know more about how this thing works.