Thoughts on Myers Briggs
#8: What is a "DNA strand"?
A "DNA strand" is a way of representing one's preferences that illustrates that there is more to Myers Briggs than simply four letters.
Looking at someone's Myers Briggs type, it is easy to make the mistake of thinking that they only use certain aspects of their personality. For example, if someone's Myers Briggs type is "INFP", one might think that this person is someone who operates using Introversion, iNtuition, Feeling and Perception all the time. However, the Myers Briggs model of personality does not say this. In fact, within the standard theory, an INFP also uses Extraversion, Sensing, Thinking and Judgement.
As background, read the article on the dynamic model of Myers Briggs (at this site). This shows that the Myers Briggs model of personality is based on the use of four functions:
- Sensing
- iNtuition
- Thinking
- Feeling
Each of these functions can be extraverted or introverted. That is, they can be used in either the outer world (of actions and words) or the inner world (of thoughts and emotions). This gives rise to eight "function-attitudes":
- extraverted Sensing (written as Se)
- introverted Sensing (Si)
- extraverted iNtuition (Ne)
- introverted iNtutiont (Ni)
- extraverted Thinking (Te)
- introverted Thinking (Ti)
- extraverted Feeling (Fe)
- introverted Feeling (Fi)
In "Mental Muscle Diagram" terms, these "function-attitudes" equate to the bits of the mental muscles that are drawn to the left and to the right of the line.
"DNA strands" provide a notation for identifying your preferences from amongst the eight function-attitudes. To produce your DNA strand, you simply list the function-attitudes in the order that you prefer them. For example: an INFP's DNA strand might look like: FiNeSiTeFeNiSeTi or possibly FiFeNeNiSiSeTeTi.
A further abbreviation of the DNA strand can occur where the two attitudes of a function are adjacent. Eg: NeNi can be abbreviated to Nei. So the second example of the INFP DNA strand could be written as: FieNeiSieTei.
The term "DNA strand" was coined by Dick Thompson of High Performing Systems. You can visit his company's site at http://www.hpsys.com. He has also written a book which explains more about the function-attitudes, which is called "Jung's Function-Attitudes Explained".