Show the Hidden Depths of Your Personality
These exclusive designer T-shirts and sweatshirts, manufactured, printed and supplied internationally by Spreadshirt, not only look good but they say a lot about your personality and will intrigue your friends. There are different shirt designs showing the Mental Muscle Diagram for each personality type.
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How do I work out the personality type code from the shirt?
The simplest way to work out the personality type from the shirt is to look at the diagrams (above right)!
There is a more in depth explanation in our online introduction to personality type (46 slides).
Or you can askthe following questions:
- Is the large ellipse at the top shifted to the left or to the right?
If it is shifted to the left, this represents Introversion (I). If it is shifted to the right, it represents Extraversion (E). This gives you the first letter of the personality type code.In the example (right), the largest ellipse is shifted to the left, so the first letter is "I".
- What are the capital letters in the top two ellipses?
This gives you the middle two letters of your type code.In the example above, the two capital letters are N, in iNtuition, and T, in Thinking. The second and third letters are therefore "NT".
NB: Sometimes the letters might be reversed, eg: the top ellipse might be T and the second N, but in Isabel Briggs Myers' personality type theory this is always written as "NT", never as "TN". - What is the highest ellipse that is shifted to the right? If it is Feeling or Thinking, the last letter is J. If it is Sensing or iNtuition, the last letter is P
In the above diagram, the highest ellipse that is shifted to the right is Thinking (although iNtuition is higher, it is ignored because it is shifted to the left). So the last letter is J.
What other meanings do the pictures have?
There is a lot more to Isabel Briggs Myers' personality theory than just four letters. Whilst the diagrams convey the four letter type code, they also convey, pictorially, much more of the depth of personality. Below is some brief explanation of those meanings, but to understand them fully you may need to read books such as "Gifts Differing" by Isabel Briggs Myers and "Personality Type: An Owner's Manual" by Lenore Thomson Bentz:
| Ellipses | Each ellipse represents one of four "mental muscles": Sensing, iNtuition, Thinking and Feeling. These mental muscles form the basis of Carl Jung's 8 psychological types and Isabel Briggs Myers' 16 personality types. All personality types use all four mental muscles, but they have different preferences for how they are used. |
| Size | The size of each ellipse represents how much you prefer to use that mental muscle. In the diagram above right, iNtuition is the largest ellipse, showing that the mental muscle of iNtuition is the one that an INTJ prefers to use most. |
| Left/right position | There is a axis in the middle of the picture representing the divide between the inner world (of thoughts, ideas, beliefs, etc.) and the outer world (people, things, situations). When a mental muscle appears to the left of the line, the person uses it in an introverted way. When the muscle appears to the right of the line, the person uses it in an extraverted way. The diagram shows that all the mental muscles are used to both introvert and extravert. However, an INTJ uses iNtuition mostly in an introverted way, and Thinking mostly in an extraverted way. |
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Up/down position (= front/behind) | The vertical position represents which mental muscles take priority in the personality. In the above example, iNtuition appears at the top, so it is "dominant". Also, iNtuition appears above (and in front of) Thinking, so intuitive ideas are regarded as more important than pure logical thought. |