Using Myers–Briggs as a guide for character development?
Edit: I looked at What are some ways to get to know your characters? and while I noticed similarities, I think that question asks in broader terms about what tools can be used for developing characters. I tried to narrow this question down to specifically the Myers–Briggs method, it's usefulness and limitations.
For a while I've been fascinated with the different personality types, studying the letters, function stacks, and how they play.
I've done tests to find out what types my characters are and spent hours reading up on that particular type, how that type thinks, their work habits, relationships, how they react to stress, whatever is available to find online (for free mostly).
That said, I tend to come up with my characters first and then figure out what type they are. It seems the more I get familiar with my POV characters, the less they seem to fit any particular type. Is this realistic or a fault in developing my characters?
I'll use my soldier character as an example. I tested him and he fell in the "ENFJ" category. (Extraverted, intuitive, feeling, judging) The more I read up on the type, the more I realized this type "can't" be a soldier. I put "can't" in "" because I'm sure there must be real life exceptions, but internet research is pretty limited, so I can't go 100% sure one way or the other. Long term wise over the arc of the series this type does appear to be the closest fit for the character and his development. Though early in the story he has his "mask" so it may be hard to type him with that mask on.
But then I noticed my character also plays up an "alter ego" or "work personality" (aka his mask) as a way to shut out his feelings and keep focused on his surroundings, and help achieve his missions/ battle tactics as a soldier.
Is this a bit unrealistic?
I decided to test my character again (factoring his work personality, the mask he puts on, how he carries out his actions rather than how he feels inside about what he is doing) and came out with an ESTJ. An ESTJ would be a more fitting type for a soldier, but he still has contradictory traits that make him swing between that, an ENFJ or even a possible ENTJ. (he does want to believe in abstract stuff, thinks towards the future, but because of a rough upbringing with his first father figure and a falling out with his second father figure, he shuns such beliefs initially and favors the belief to show fear (or emotion in general) is a sign of weakness.)
I'm wondering how much can I/should I rely on the Myers–Briggs system? Are such contradictions natural and realistic? I see myself as a contradiction being unsure if I use T or F as my dominant, swaying between INFP and INTP. I tested my own "work personality", the mask I tend to put on at work and came up with INTJ. The description of an INTJ doesn't fit me quite, but I can see things I can relate to, even more so when I read up on an INFJ. I notice I have a stronger judging preference at work than I do at home. At work I can't stand clutter, inconsistency, like to complete tasks, but at home I'm the opposite.)
Considering my real life example vs my character, is it that unrealistic for my character(s) to not fit cleanly in the "box" or do I have major work ahead of me to sort out my characters? (and perhaps myself in the process?)
Or do you make up the characters and if there are contradictions, you just let it go and try not to worry about it too much? (and that being what I need to do with mine?)
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/32469. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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You're overthinking it too much. The Myers-Briggs can be nice (I have a friend who did - sorta - an extensive research on it) and surely its good to know your character so well that you can type them (also, most personality types come with examples of behaviour, nice descriptions, and good material whatsoever).
I'm no psychologist, but no one "fits cleany in a box", no matter how intricate and personalized your box system can be.
My two cents: the Myers-Briggs can give you insights, but shouldn't be taken as the absolute truth. Do that and you'll be toying with a more complex looking horoscope.
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I have found the Myers-Briggs assessment to be more useful for its process than the end result. As I go through the questions for each character I have to decide how they will deal with certain situations and I gain insight into their motivations.
I don't think any tool like this should be the soul decider of character personality. If you try to box your character into a certain personality type they will lose their uniqueness and become predictable.
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/44474. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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I think it is "natural" for us to at times suppress some of our traits and rely on others. Yes, a woman can be intuitive and feeling and empathetic and sympathetic, she can desire fair outcomes. But in a stressed situation, still shoot and risk harming innocent people if it is the only way to protect her child from harm.
A soldier can feel the same. He may not really be cut out for it, I know that because I was in the military myself as a teen, thought everybody I met dumb as a rock, hated it, hated their logic, and suffered through my stint in it. I had no blood lust or desire to kill anybody. But, that said, I was an athlete with extreme control over my body and mind. I trained on the weapons, I was the fastest runner (but not the fastest sprinter), I was the best marksman in my group, I was the best student in self defense. I also had the highest IQ, and was the most cynical and argumentative with idiotic policy.
And though I was never in battle, I do believe in a true battle situation I could easily kill many enemy soldiers to protect the men around me, not out of hatred for the enemy but out of love for my brothers in arms.
That's just a fact of psychology, when it comes to kill-or-be-killed, our "family" takes priority over strangers.
I enlisted as a grunt (non-officer) in the military as the most practical, fastest way to pay for my full education (the GI Bill in the USA was quite generous). Your soldier, like me, may have joined the military for one reason and discovered they are not a good fit, psychologically. That may be the source of much regret and psychological pain. Yet his performance as a warrior, that mask, can be anywhere from incompetent to consummate.
When it comes to battle, many people freeze (unable to make a decision because fear and adrenaline have impaired their frontal cortex) and may be killed for it; but those that don't have typically also shut down higher level thinking and are acting through muscle memory and instinct to become merciless killers, protecting their own lives and those they feel responsible for (not necessarily in that order of priority). I've read actual soldiers saying they did not feel like they hated or wanted to murder the enemy, but were trying to stop a threat to the rest of their squad. They WERE killing the enemy but it felt like protection and self-defense of their brothers and/or 'country' (the civilians they love at home in most soldier's minds), not an invading attack, even though they were part of an invading force.
This is why military leaders often dehumanize the enemy (or in the bugfolk story perhaps demonize would be a better word), and emphasize 'family' ties in soldiers (eg. these are your brothers and sisters, worth dying to protect against predators that are just killing machines that are literally no more than animals that would destroy everyone you love).
Under battle stress, the complexity of personality can fade, interacting parts stop interacting, things become simple and instincts take over. If your character is 'judging', that aspect can dominate. Love for family and friends can dominate and make them killing machines. Or fearfulness can dominate and make the cowards.
Besides the horror of battle and losses, I think some of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is for soldiers that have to deal with something they did in battle under stress that haunts them when they regain their moral and thinking faculties.
For example, consider a soldier primed during a house invasion to expect hostile terrorists that will fire upon him. Busting into the house, the first person he sees is a five year old girl that poses zero threat to him, but instinctively he shoots and kills her, acting without thought, his muscle memory and primed expectations do the shooting, adrenalin had shut down his judgment. Then it turns out their information was wrong, there are no terrorists, not even a male in the house.
Later, when his thinking returns, He cannot get this little girl out of his mind, he has nightmares and keeps reliving this episode, the shooting of the little girl followed by her screaming and wailing mother, he just killed her child for no reason at all. He just cannot square who he thought he was with who he became in that second, out of fear and adrenaline and false certainty. The fear component may make him feel he acted as a coward. It may even be he judges himself guilty of murdering a child, and finally punishes himself according to his own value system: He takes his own life.
In short, I don't think you have a problem at all, as long as your characters and masks have at least some justification. Humans (and I presume your characters too) are of at least three major minds, in order of true control: Instinctive, Emotional, and Rational. Rationality serves emotion, but it is a late add-on evolutionarily speaking, always a servant to emotion and easily overridden by emotion, which is why people do things in anger, fear, lust or addiction that they would never do if they could think about the consequences and ramifications of what they truly wanted out of life.
And though emotion and instinct are closely intertwined, in the end instinct and muscle memory can override emotion, out of the same time constraints: animal instincts are far faster than translating emotions into actions.
I would say the main thing is to ensure that what you do in writing these departures from Myers-Briggs (which is far from the only structure used to judge personality distinctions) is NOT a deus ex machina, an improbable departure to make it easier for you to get through the next plot point or scene. Avoid that kind of departure, if anything ensure your plausible departures create conflicts, they do not avoid it. Don't use them to make your authorial task easier!
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