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Originally Posted by DeathStorm  I don't know... I identify with some of the things they say, and not with others. For example, I don't understand why spending "time alone with oneself" ought to be mutually exclusive from "often going to nightclubs and parties". And there are other things which, in my view, seem to be unjustly "dualized", have a "natural opposite", etc. (I can be organized, follow a plan and - when I find something really nice - I can immediately break free from the schedule and pursue what I want randomly). |
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Originally Posted by DeathStorm What I'm asking is, which criteria did Jung use to separate all those features (A, B, C, D, ...) in two different polarities (intro, extro)?
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Why is the dominance between A and B looked for, instead of the dominance between A and C, for example? |
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Originally Posted by JimOfferman Yes, it's all based on a bunch of statistics. I haven't read Jung, but I expect that he is looking for A versus B, rather than A versus C, because of how he interpreted the results of his studies.
Human behavior is not really an exact science. All those models are just that: models, approximations of a problem that is too complex and has too many variables for us humble humans to solve. Maybe some day a very smart mind (human or otherwise) will be able to discern the exact algorithm that defines all human behavior and help us explain humanity's every single quirk... until that day, crude tools like Jung's models will have to suffice.  |
Like Jim I don't know the details of Jung's personality models, but I recently learned a little about the
Big Five personality traits, and I suspect the method used could have been similar. Or if not, at least it could help understand Jung's categories.
None of the categories of personality type are prescriptive. They're mostly determined by sub-categories which correlate with each other. This is where the Big Five grouping of personality traits came from; an analysis of the correlations between large numbers of personality traits in large numbers of people.
A few different researchers worked on an understanding of personality traits over many years. One psychologist Gordon Allport, and his colleague H. S. Odbert searched through a list of 550,000 words to put together a list of 18,000 words which could be used to describe a person. They then whittled that list down to 4500 proper personality traits (defined as observable, i.e., not related to cognitive function, non-physical, i.e., words like 'tall' were out, and non-transient, i.e., they had to describe a relatively permanent aspect of personality, so something like 'embarrassed' was out).
Later Raymond Cattell took the list, and by taking out synonyms, worked it down to 171. This was further reduced to 45 groups, then those 45 were used in tests to determine what traits people actually possessed. Next a statistical method called factor analysis was applied, which found correlations between sub-groups within the 45, producing a list of 16 personality factors. That is, specific personality traits tended to cluster into specific groups, so that the words used to describe people could, on average, be divided into 16 groups.
Further work was done on larger groups of people, and more factor analysis allowed the factors to be reduced to five. Eventually a consensus was reached on what those five should be named, and the Big Five is the result.
There are of course issues with the Big Five, but I'm not arguing for it, just giving a summary of how it, and possibly other measures of personality, were determined.