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by dragonwriter 2076 days ago
If you have a system of four binary indicators, and swapping position on two of the four makes little difference, you probably have a very poor system.
1 comments

Not to be snarky, but this is spoken like someone who hasn't tried to understand the system at all - not that I believe in it either.

Typically MBTI personality tests measure you based on four indicators: Extraversion/Introversion, Sensing/iNtuition, Thinking/Feeling, Judging/Perceiving

Each combination of indicators is given a "type." There are 16 possible types.

The MBTI personality test also defines 8 cognitive functions, believing that everyone must absorb information (perceiving) and turn it into actions/decisions (judging). It states that there are four ways of perceiving, and four ways of judging... extraverted/introverted sensing/intuition and extraverted/introverted thinking/feeling.

Each personality type has four cognitive functions associated with it: primary, auxiliary, tertiary, and inferior. You will have both an extraverted and introverted perceiving function as well as an extraverted and introverted judging function. Your primary cognitive function will match your introversion/extraversion trait, and then will flip back and forth between introversion/extraversion for the rest of your functions.

Since there are only 8 cognitive functions, and each personality type has 4, it's not surprising that they will often share cognitive functions - it also means that types can behave more similarly than one would expect based on their indicators.