Personality Type and Political Orientation

An article on Alternet today, Can You Guess a Person's Politics by Their Personality? Psychologist Team Says Yes, by Maria Luisa Tucker, takes a look at how personality type relates to political affiliation: She looked at several gauges of personality, but oddly enough, did not include the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, which is one of the oldest and more popular systems of personality assessment, used most widely in vocational assessments. My response to the article follows below:

For those of you familiar with the MBTI, the sixteen personality types that stem from personality difference combinations in four key areas also show personality differences between liberals and conservatives.

The four continua are Introvert/Extrovert, Intuitive/Sensing, Thinker/Feeler, and Perceiving/Judging.

In my opinion the Intuitive/Sensing continuum and the Perceiving/Judging cotinuum most clearly show these differences, varying somewhat depending on which of the other two continua they are combined with, particularly the Thinking/Feeling continuum. Thinking/Feeling and Extrovert/Introvert, on their own, are pretty well represented on both sides of the aisle, however.

In the Intuitive/Sensing continuum, Intuitives are the introspective people who think in shades of grey. Sensing people are more concrete, take-things-at-face-value, black and white thinkers. Intuitives, then, tend more to be liberal and Sensors tend more to be conservative.

Similarly, on the Perceiving/Judging continuum, Perceivers are the laid-back types, those who do things by the seat of their pants, and tend to be on the disorganized side. Judgers are the organized, fussy listmakers, and in their extreme forms are the bean counters of the world.

Combine the two, and NP will tend to be the most liberal of the four possible combinations of the two continua, and SJ will tend to be the most conservative.

I'm an INTP, by the way.

There's a lot more to it than this, but there's no room for me to write a novel in the comment box here.

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As an aside, I've read that Barack Obama is an ENFP, which correlates with my observations.