you are what you write?

[syntheid]

Something that came up lately in a different personality typing community I'm still part of was the idea of typing people, literally, by the way they type (in this case into MBTI types). Personally, I find it interesting, and as a linguist, do think there could be styles of speech/typing that are common to particular types, but I have a hard time seeing this as a good means of typing itself. There are many types who would be inclined to deliberately change the way they type or who have the ability and tendency to mimic other types, for one, and various other environmental variables could affect the way you decide to interact on a particular community.

For an example, there is the website Typealyzer that tries to automatically type you by your blog text that you can play with, but I know at least for me, it's very far off on what it types me as.

So what I'm curious about is whether or not you think your writing reflects your type-- I know mine doesn't always, because I'm one of those who deliberately manipulates style for affect. Does the Typealyzer get it right for you and if it does, do you think it's a fluke or if there seems to be some truth to the algorithm's analysis? Also do you feel you can type others using the way they write?

Additionally, if your typing system of choice is MBTI/Jung, do you put more value on functions or individual letter dichotomies? Have you found a correlation of methods to types (like I've noticed INTx types have a tendency to prefer functions)?

Comments

[sakurablossom]

I'm an INFJ. I'm not sure how my writing reflects my type.

I tried the blog analyzer twice. My journal isn't public. It analyzed my profile and said that I'm:

ISTP - The Mechanics

The independent and problem-solving type. They are especially attuned to the demands of the moment and are highly skilled at seeing and fixing what needs to be fixed. They generally prefer to think things out for themselves and often avoid inter-personal conflicts.

The Mechanics enjoy working together with other independent and highly skilled people and often like seek fun and action both in their work and personal life. They enjoy adventure and risk such as in driving race cars or working as policemen and firefighters.

Next I added text from several locked posts into one public entry before attempting the analyzer. This time it said I'm:

ESFP - The Performers

The entertaining and friendly type. They are especially attuned to pleasure and beauty and like to fill their surroundings with soft fabrics, bright colors and sweet smells. They live in the present moment and don´t like to plan ahead - they are always in risk of exhausting themselves.

The enjoy work that makes them able to help other people in a concrete and visible way. They tend to avoid conflicts and rarely initiate confrontation - qualities that can make it hard for them in management positions.

[syntheid]

I suspect ESFx is common to get, especially if inputting a blog like a Dreamwidth or LiveJournal-style journaling blog, for the reasons seven said below-- the primary mode of the site is to connect with others and do so by describing yourself and your experiences. (I also got ESFP-typed by that thing on my public entries, heh.)

[seven]

In response to this post, before I go off and write my own thing... >>

Typealyzer typed me as an ESFP based on my journal. Which is pretty laughable if you know me, but does make sense in that I use my journal as a way to reach out to my friends (E), let them know what I've been doing recently (S), and subjectively describe my experiences (F). The person in the other community you mentioned who was offering text-typing said I was all over the map, but her best guess was INFP. Which again, makes sense in context, even though I am very much not primarily Fi.

So no, my writing does not necessarily reflect my type (INTP) at all. Which I think is pretty common with INTPs, in that it's frequently mentioned that we tend to mirror the tone of environment and the other people in it to an extent when we express ourselves.

But even though I don't think it's a particularly accurate way of typing someone, I do think that typing based on the language and grammar a person uses is an interesting idea.

I wonder if anyone's tried to do this for Enneagram numbers or any other typing systems.

[syntheid]

Post? >:|

I was kind of thinking about how/if it's possible to do so for Enneagram numbers. My first thought was that it's more difficult, due to the way the Enneagram looks at motivation/drive. But then MBTI is looking at the way you think, which is also an internal thing.

These things assume that the way you write/speak reflects without distortion the way you think, when that isn't the case. Especially when the way you think is already more roundabout.

Which, thinking about it now, makes daemonology more ideal for that kind of typing, because it focuses on what you do at least as much, if not moreso, than how you think. So it's much more likely to be accurate based on what you say/how you say it. Though of course, you can still only get into the broad categories with it, and I highly doubt you'd be able to pinpoint someone using only type. Hm. I mean that's a large part of it already, isn't it?

[juniperphoenix]

Interesting! I tried the Typealyzer on my journal and on a few of the fanfics I've written. It didn't type me correctly, but I can see why it came to the conclusion it did based on the way I use my journal. For the fanfics, it did a pretty good job of identifying the tone of each story — a story centered around musical performance tested as an artistic type, whereas a story told from the point of view of a computer tested as more analytical.

IMO, the algorithm seems to do a pretty good job of analyzing what it's given, but it has no way to deal with the reality that people may only blog about a small part of themselves (or, as you suggest, affect a certain writing style). I wonder whether it would be more accurate for extraverts (and/or people who are simply more open in their blogs).

[syntheid]

That's interesting to note-- that it was getting the tone of the fiction right. It doesn't seem to do too bad at typing the general/surface feel of writing. I wonder what it's actually monitoring, exactly, since if it's just word choice, that would make sense why it's okay at picking out general tone, but can't get any further. Grammatical pattern and sample variety take it a step beyond that, but having seen someone use that method and taking all that into account, it still seemed like there's another component to it that's missing.

I was going to say I hope an extrovert tries it and can tell us, and realized there are no extroverts on this community at the moment. Ah well. I'd guess, as I was saying to sakurablossom above, that ESFx is a common typing for that algorithm on sites like this due to the content, so it would be "more accurate" if someone happened to be an ESFJ/ESFP, but it seems almost like it's just guessing correctly on accident then. I should try putting some non-journal text in and see what it gets from that, though.