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[PATV] Wednesday, August 21, 2013 - Extra Credits Season 6, Ep. 24: Myers Briggs and Character Creat
I've never understood the dichotomy between Sensing / Intuition and Judging / Perceiving.
With the other two categories, the division is much more clear, and the changes in behaviour between the two linked types much more marked. Introversion approaches things in a very different way to Extroversion, and Feeling to Thinking, so much so that you can almost see the gear change.
Look at Sensing/Intuition, on the other hand, and Intuition naturally becomes dominant in any area where there isn't any data, and Sensing becomes dominant in any area where the person is unfamiliar and has no preconceived ideas or correlatible experiences. Every person is going to shift between these two different states at some point, and it's a matter of subtle degree more than anything. Same for Judging/Perception. Leaving options open and looking at the wider picture is great and all for discovering new things, but eventually that's all got to collapse so that you can move on and devote energy to a single task.
So while Introversion/Extroversion and Feeling/Thinking have the luxury of being completely different and valid ways of solving a problem, everyone is going to move through Sensing/Intuition and Judging/Perceiving and to tar any person as one or the other just strikes me as nebulous at best (how often do you lean towards Sensing to be called Sensing) and ignorant at worst.
But this could just be personal bias due to being borderline both in S/iN J/P, so maybe I'm just not seeing the extremes.
Here's an additional thought. From a psychological perspective, this ties in very closely with the previous episode about the hero's quest. The process described in that episode (or a generalized version of it, anyway) is kicked off when a person is going through an internalized period of crisis or transition. One of the most powerful, and most often overlooked, aspects of MBTi is that it actually provides a way of predicting, at a high level, those major transitional periods. Of course, it can't say much about what you're actually going through in your life. What it does is give an overview of what psychological resources you have available to deal with those issues and - here's the key point - in what order you develop those resources. And the hero's quest is what happens to you when you are going through the difficult process of attempting to develop a new resource. It's the process of going into the darkness within and coming back up with a new, previously unrecognized piece of the puzzle.
Figuring out the functions and their order for a personality type can be tricky, but there are summaries online where you can look it up. But I'll give mine as an example. I'm an INFP - Intorverted, iNtuitive, Feeling, Processing. That gives me four basic dominant functions that develop in the following order: Introverted Feeling, Extroverted Intuition, Introverted Sensing, Extroverted Thinking. Of course they're always there, but think of "developing" as meaning "this part of you starts to grow up and really do its job."
Having taken this test four separate times, each years apart, I can say that it's interesting how environment and time alters your answers to the yes/no questions and thus the results.
I've never had the same archetype come up, but it's always the same two indicators switching things up.
Pretty good analysis of the MBTI overall, and I love that you've applied this to story-telling! I think it has a great application in writing for character creation.
One quibble though: Introversion-Extraversion is not about what people value (their thoughts vs. people), it's about where they get their energy from.
An Introvert (especially INFJ, the "Protector" archetype) can care a great deal about people, and may often make it his/her life's cause to do things that show a great deal of value towards others. But they will also need a lot of alone time to gather their thoughts and "recharge."
Introversion/Extraversion is a much better indicator of what "downtime" looks like for a character. It helps to illustrate what a "state of rest" would look like for that character (i.e. hanging out with friends vs. reading a book). It's often misunderstood as "being a people person" or "being a loner," so your confusion is understandable, but that's not really what it's about.
Other than that you guys did an excellent job on this one. Keep up the good work!
@discrider: yeah, I think you're just seeing your own lack of a strong bias there. The distinction between Sensing and Intuition is not "are you able to make choices with/without data to back them up"? It's more "are you comfortable doing so?".
In the same way that an Introvert can survive in a crowd but finds the experience draining, a Sensing person can make decisions without data, but will not be comfortable doing so.
Sensing/Intuition is kind of a blurry and grey section, but if you want a really simplified version it comes down to what you'll tend towards first when trying to solve a problem with half the data you need and a bare-bones understanding of the subject. If you try to get more data and use that to make your decision, you're more Sensing. If you try to get a better understanding of how the system is supposed to work, you're more Intuitive.
For example, an engineer might be trying to solve a problem with an assembly line making bars of soap, where every 168th bar is horrifically mangled, but then the machine walks right to spec before sliding back out again. The sensing engineer would tend towards compiling more data on the machine's output, including a more comprehensive history of its failure rate and production speed, and cross-reference those with similar data from other machines. The intuiting engineer would tend towards better understanding how the machine controls the dimension that's walking out of spec. Both engineers are going to come to the same conclusion, that it's an aliasing problem and two parts of the machine are running at different but semi-compatible speeds. Like maybe the bars are made by pressing a block between two roller dies, a top and bottom. And the top die has 24 molds on it and runs at 7 rpm, but the bottom die has 28 molds running at 6 rpm. Those patterns alias, so at the beginning you'll have perfectly synced molds, but halfway through the patterns are completely misaligned before walking right back together. Both engineers are actually going to use both sides, getting data and understanding the mechanics, it's just a matter of which they do first. The sensing one would get the data, see it's cyclical and only showing up at this run speed on this machine, and would then go out to the machine to find out what's different and what that's causing. The intuiting one would go to the machine and find out what portion is controlling that spec and therefore the probable fault, and would then collect the data that proves why.
I wish you mentioned Enneagram. It fits neatly into MBTI types giving even more depth to the personality type. And what's more important, it deals directly with motivation (e.g. if you're a dominant enneagram type 4 your dominant goal in life is to find yourself and your significance (build an identity), if you're an 8 your goal is to have security and support etc.), while MBTI is more about processing and doing things in a certain way.
In a baseball game while wearing a glove where you are expecting to catch a ball, yes. In real life if someone tossed you a set of keys, more often then not you'd catch them with your dominant hand even if that meant reaching a little bit across your body to the non-dominant side.
Taking one of the free online MBTI tests in the mindset of one of your characters is a great exercise. I just did it with one of mine and it really forced me to fill out some personality traits that I simply hadn't considered deeply yet because they hadn't come up in the story so far (and might not ever). I find the character is much more three dimensional in my own head now. What a great idea.
ExistentialExistenceException: Your thread encountered a NULL pointer and entered a state of non-being.
Very good episode! I`ve always loved personality-based psychological theories such as this, and watching your show has shown and explained a number of them to me. And for that, I thank you.
P.S: What you did there, with the example `introverted feeler` art, I see it.
HELL yes. I'm a creative writer and literature grad student, and I find MBTI so, so much more useful as a writer and a reader than any literary theory I've had to learn in school.
Interesting... Too bad you don't utilize episode notes space better - you could for example use it to link to wikipedia or some other sites about subject you talked about.
Hello James and all ! It is nice that you found a way to handle the MBTI use for story-telling in such a short length of time. About empirical and scientific validity of this theory, have you heard of the work of Dario Nardi based on EEG (http://youtube.com/watch?v=MGfhQTbcqmA) and of the Cognitive Type Visual Reading initiative (http://youtube.com/watch?v=LdIEDNUOhUY) ? I find it very promising !
As a programmer (and an INFJ), I can't help but wonder if this could be systematized in code for procedurally generating more interesting NPCs and optimizing AI solutions for those things where sixteen buckets is sufficiently granular.
A hands-on, practical tool for creating games/stories.
Excellent. More of this, please.
Alot of this series suffers from "Tell, not show."
"Be intrinsic!" - ok... but, how? Walk us through how you would create an intrinsically rewarding game. Don't just say, "Here is a vocab word. Do it."
The Meyers-Briggs test is actually well known by professional psychologists to be completely worthless. This is because most of it is utter nonsense, and, as it turns out, the distributions are not bimodal, but normal - in other words, most people fall into the middle of the scale, so the idea that there are 16 personality types in the system is utter bunkem - in reality most people in the system would fall in the middle, but are arbitrarily assigned categories based on very slight variations.
Indeed, it is noted that of the bits of the scale, the only part of it which is even remotely consistent is the introversion - extroversion bit, and even THEN, most people are in the middle - they aren't introverts or extroverts. I wouldn't put any credence on it.
For those of you talking about giving your characters the test, be warned - the test is known to be highly unreliable, and if you take two tests a month apart, you're reasonably likely to end up in different categories.
I generally find that using such tools is actually really the opposite of how to approach a character - while they can be useful if you're trying for cardboard cutouts, I think that the best way is to actually think about how a character reacts in a given situation, rather than the other way around, as that is HOW you create a character. Characters are based on how they interact with the world, and it is their actions which define who they are. It is the way that a character acts which defines them to the audience and to the world, and as such it is where you start. There is someone in trouble at the bottom of a mine; do they rush through, trying to get to them as quickly as possible regardless of the danger? Do they take a more cautious approach? Do they try to negotiate with whoever is holding them hostage? Sneak past them? Trick them? I think these are far more useful ways of defining a character.
In a game about something, you know what the plot is going to demand of them, so you need to remember, first and foremost, that whoever this person is, they're going to have to be willing (or forced to) go through with the plot. You know the necessary actions, so their personality has to fit within the bounds where those actions happen.
@rainbowhyphen: As Titanium Dragon mentioned, it would probably be better modeled as a percentage of each type, rather than 16 buckets. If you wanted NPCs to represent types, a straight-up needs system like The Sims would work, just filling up bars more quickly or slowly based on the stats the character has. So, for instance, their need to join a party of adventurers could be a function of Extroversion * Perceiving / Time.
I guess the only thing we know for sure is that all programmer NPCs would be introverts.
@TitaniumDragon
Hit the nail on the head. The MBTI can be a fun way to look at "how people approach a given situation this one time," but it's mostly utter shit for "what is a person *like* inside."
That said, it can be a decent jumping off point for keeping a character consistent, particularly in early stages, when you might not yet know yourself "how would they act?"
MBTI is interesting, but I agree with the comments that this pop psychology is really astrology, which is just as useful in creating a character. This video is not surprising to me, considering that based on the other videos I watched about your views on gender/racial/and cultural issues, you seem to buy in very much into the idea that in games, we can create the ideal world where our actions and decisions aren't informed by our background. We can be whomever we want, and one's gender/race/life experience is completely irrelevant to the character we get to play. We are all interchangeable and this is a desirable equality, a haven from prejudice, etc. But I am very much against this erasing of the individual. I think we should celebrate our diversity and the fact that we do have different values, judgments, needs, motivations, etc.
When creating a character, I think it is important to consider other things a lot more than these Myer-Briggs personality axes and D&D alignment axes, even though these are fun to play with. Whenever I take these tests, I always end up right in the middle of all these bipolar descriptions of people. I get the true neutral and the flip flopping Myer-Briggs inventories, because it depends deeply on the specific situation what choices I might make, what I find to be the most appropriate action.
I would consider more important for any character, 1) gender, 2) race/background, 3) age, 4) occupation/training in life, 5) emotional/physical/psychological state, 6) religion/philosophy, 7) family/friends/inclusion in community, 8) abilities/disabilities, 9) history of trauma/joy, achievement/failure. All of these things are much more likely to inform your characters' decisions than the 16 personality types described by Myers-Briggs or the 12 astrological types in western astrology or the 12 animal astrological types described in Chinese astrology. Even if you can easily create a character based on any of these many archetypes.
Honestly, the best use of the MBTI is the interpretation by David Keirsey. Rather than the 16 distinct types, it really comes down to 4, and the sub categories are more subtle variations on the same theme.
These are temperments, meaning what direction your train of thought comes from, not personality, which defines the decisions that you make in a given situation based on your previous experiences.
the four temperments have shown up in the same pattern for thousands of years, all the way back to 590 BC, and there's a reason our psyches latch on to them so well. Whether it was the four humours of hippocrates, expanded upon by galen in 190 AD to sanguine, bilious, choleric, phlematic, and melancholic; or it was the elemental totem spirits that are still used as the basis of many video game personalities today, salamanders, gnomes, sylphs, and nymphs.
The Artisan encompasses everything from the flamboyant performer who demands attention constantly and is always in the spotlight at the center of a crowd, to the gruff mechanic that knows what he's doing better than anyone and complains about people getting in his way and being idiots. This is the type of person that lives in the moment, focused on the present with absolute precision, even at the detriment of the future, and without any thought of the past.
The Gaurdian is the pillar of society. These are all people who are the gatekeepers of their community, whether it's the town sherrif making sure no bad seeds take root in his town, or the gossipy but friendly matron whose approval is implicitly required to be accepted into the knitting circle. These people are the ones who epitomize the idea of the line between us and them, trusting those close to them and distrustful of anyone who's not part of their community. This is also the old men grumbling about how much better everything used to be, always ready with a saying to emphasize what they mean.
The Rational is most classicly seen as the spock type. The reason spock resonates so well though, is that, like a real life rational, he may be cold and calculating, but his emotions really do run hot. Just because he spends much effort restraining them does not mean he does not feel them.
The Idealist is the people person. But unlike the gaurdian, they ALWAYS try to see life from the other person's perspective. They are more in danger of putting the needs of others around them ahead of their own basic needs that of taking advantage of anyone. Felicia day plays an idealist on the guild, for example.
All of these have subtleties and layers to them, and our life experiences and the lessons we learn are layered on top of these to create our personalities and our actual reactions to such things, but that does not invalidate one's temperment.
This idea has actually been embraced by the psychological community, Keirsey's book about temperments is on the book shelves of both the counsellors I know.
Others have already said that this is pseudo-science and if you think about it, it clearly is. For example introversion and extroversion are not mutually exclusive (I know he didn't say they were and I don't mean it that way). A person can be both an introvert and an extrovert, I don't mean in between (though there are people like that), what I mean is: they enjoy being alone and reading a book but also enjoy being an actor on a stage but they would not enjoy a party (as in loud music, lots of booze and dancing). In some circumstances the individual would be more introverted, in others he would be extroverted, he's not either or in between.
Another example is me: I would fall into both sensing and Intuition categories as both would accurately describe me.
The problem with the system is: there are too few categories and the categories are binary when they should be spectrum's. Replace the four categories with dozens, many of which have more than two polls and each category is a spectrum then is might have some use.
The category tells you which is your preference. you still have both introversion and extroversion, but I don't know a single introvert that is powered up by socializing with lots of people and being inundated with crowds of noise. Likewise, I don't know a single extrovert that does not get mopey and sad when they're forced to be alone for extended periods of time.
Obviously there are degrees, but it's still one or the other.
It isn't pseudo-science, it's primitive science. Jung was literally the second psychologist ever. He was a student/colleague of Freud that corrected Freud in a number of important ways. However, there were still tons and tons of things that he got wrong.
The reason MBTI is still around is because research/academia doesn't have a very strong impact on industry. Businesses (and medical professionals in fields that need pathologize everything) like being able to put people in boxes to quantify things and MBTI was the first personality test that had a scientific basis. Unfortunately, a half century of research that have built and improved upon it and tests like it have been ignored. More unfortunately, the past couple decades of research that have specifically addressed how MBTI does not meaningfully predict performance in school, jobs, relationships, moral hypotheticals, etc. That hasn't changed the fact that everyone from the government to chain retailers to dating sites administer the test.
For those that want more sources for character creation, check out the Enneagram which is also another psychological tool in the same vein as the MBTI. Check out my channel:
Surprised no one has thrown in the Big Five (or OCEAN) to here. It opens up some a few other ways to form a character, especially if you go into the minute details of the parts of the five factors of degrees of Openness, Conscientiousness, Extroversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism. It's probably not as effective as making a solid archetype like MBTI, but it gives a few new ideas to work with. Now if we could just get all of these systems to work with players creating characters based on some of these personality tests, and we might just have something pretty cool to plop into a deep RPG =D!
If you had to recommend one book for studying MBTI in a narrative perspective, which one would it be?
I often take topics from Extra Credits, study them and rework them for game localization.
You would be amazed how relevant this stuff can be for us http://localization.it/mda-framework-se ... em-better/
This said, when I did the MDA framework, it was pretty easy: study the 8 pages PDF and you're done.
The MBTI seems even more interesting, but I wouldn't really know where to start.
So, considering that my focus is on narrative more than psychology, which book would you recommend?
I ought to point out that "perceiving" was spelled wrong about one-third through the video. Sorry for the nitpick though.
In any case, the characters I've made have a really simple approach; I base them on either myself at some point in my life or on someone I've known. I know how I would react to any given situation, and observing people for long enough lets me take good guesses on what they would do (though I am more pessimistic among those I dislike). My thinking patterns are somewhat similar to flowcharts, so this sort of "What would this character do?" type of thinking comes naturally to me. (Flowchart thinking is probably very rare, but you will predominantly understand a character from his or her actions, and they will come to the same conclusions with the same personality and circumstance, flowcharts or not.)
Now if we could just get all of these systems to work with players creating characters based on some of these personality tests, and we might just have something pretty cool to plop into a deep RPG =D!
Or perhaps some sort of AI program that would generate different sets of behaviors for in-game NPCs, based on the MBTI system. Could be interesting...
[PATV] Wednesday, August 21, 2013 - Extra Credits Season 6, Ep. 24: Myers Briggs and Character Creation
Posts
As a way to create a quick character-sketch, I can see a lot more utility.
Right? as a character sketching tool its great, but yeah, its astrology
http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4221
With the other two categories, the division is much more clear, and the changes in behaviour between the two linked types much more marked. Introversion approaches things in a very different way to Extroversion, and Feeling to Thinking, so much so that you can almost see the gear change.
Look at Sensing/Intuition, on the other hand, and Intuition naturally becomes dominant in any area where there isn't any data, and Sensing becomes dominant in any area where the person is unfamiliar and has no preconceived ideas or correlatible experiences. Every person is going to shift between these two different states at some point, and it's a matter of subtle degree more than anything. Same for Judging/Perception. Leaving options open and looking at the wider picture is great and all for discovering new things, but eventually that's all got to collapse so that you can move on and devote energy to a single task.
So while Introversion/Extroversion and Feeling/Thinking have the luxury of being completely different and valid ways of solving a problem, everyone is going to move through Sensing/Intuition and Judging/Perceiving and to tar any person as one or the other just strikes me as nebulous at best (how often do you lean towards Sensing to be called Sensing) and ignorant at worst.
But this could just be personal bias due to being borderline both in S/iN J/P, so maybe I'm just not seeing the extremes.
Figuring out the functions and their order for a personality type can be tricky, but there are summaries online where you can look it up. But I'll give mine as an example. I'm an INFP - Intorverted, iNtuitive, Feeling, Processing. That gives me four basic dominant functions that develop in the following order: Introverted Feeling, Extroverted Intuition, Introverted Sensing, Extroverted Thinking. Of course they're always there, but think of "developing" as meaning "this part of you starts to grow up and really do its job."
I've never had the same archetype come up, but it's always the same two indicators switching things up.
One quibble though: Introversion-Extraversion is not about what people value (their thoughts vs. people), it's about where they get their energy from.
An Introvert (especially INFJ, the "Protector" archetype) can care a great deal about people, and may often make it his/her life's cause to do things that show a great deal of value towards others. But they will also need a lot of alone time to gather their thoughts and "recharge."
Introversion/Extraversion is a much better indicator of what "downtime" looks like for a character. It helps to illustrate what a "state of rest" would look like for that character (i.e. hanging out with friends vs. reading a book). It's often misunderstood as "being a people person" or "being a loner," so your confusion is understandable, but that's not really what it's about.
Other than that you guys did an excellent job on this one. Keep up the good work!
In the same way that an Introvert can survive in a crowd but finds the experience draining, a Sensing person can make decisions without data, but will not be comfortable doing so.
Sensing/Intuition is kind of a blurry and grey section, but if you want a really simplified version it comes down to what you'll tend towards first when trying to solve a problem with half the data you need and a bare-bones understanding of the subject. If you try to get more data and use that to make your decision, you're more Sensing. If you try to get a better understanding of how the system is supposed to work, you're more Intuitive.
For example, an engineer might be trying to solve a problem with an assembly line making bars of soap, where every 168th bar is horrifically mangled, but then the machine walks right to spec before sliding back out again. The sensing engineer would tend towards compiling more data on the machine's output, including a more comprehensive history of its failure rate and production speed, and cross-reference those with similar data from other machines. The intuiting engineer would tend towards better understanding how the machine controls the dimension that's walking out of spec. Both engineers are going to come to the same conclusion, that it's an aliasing problem and two parts of the machine are running at different but semi-compatible speeds. Like maybe the bars are made by pressing a block between two roller dies, a top and bottom. And the top die has 24 molds on it and runs at 7 rpm, but the bottom die has 28 molds running at 6 rpm. Those patterns alias, so at the beginning you'll have perfectly synced molds, but halfway through the patterns are completely misaligned before walking right back together. Both engineers are actually going to use both sides, getting data and understanding the mechanics, it's just a matter of which they do first. The sensing one would get the data, see it's cyclical and only showing up at this run speed on this machine, and would then go out to the machine to find out what's different and what that's causing. The intuiting one would go to the machine and find out what portion is controlling that spec and therefore the probable fault, and would then collect the data that proves why.
In a baseball game while wearing a glove where you are expecting to catch a ball, yes. In real life if someone tossed you a set of keys, more often then not you'd catch them with your dominant hand even if that meant reaching a little bit across your body to the non-dominant side.
P.S: What you did there, with the example `introverted feeler` art, I see it.
Awesome, awesome.
INFPCG
Excellent. More of this, please.
Alot of this series suffers from "Tell, not show."
"Be intrinsic!" - ok... but, how? Walk us through how you would create an intrinsically rewarding game. Don't just say, "Here is a vocab word. Do it."
The Meyers-Briggs test is actually well known by professional psychologists to be completely worthless. This is because most of it is utter nonsense, and, as it turns out, the distributions are not bimodal, but normal - in other words, most people fall into the middle of the scale, so the idea that there are 16 personality types in the system is utter bunkem - in reality most people in the system would fall in the middle, but are arbitrarily assigned categories based on very slight variations.
Indeed, it is noted that of the bits of the scale, the only part of it which is even remotely consistent is the introversion - extroversion bit, and even THEN, most people are in the middle - they aren't introverts or extroverts. I wouldn't put any credence on it.
For those of you talking about giving your characters the test, be warned - the test is known to be highly unreliable, and if you take two tests a month apart, you're reasonably likely to end up in different categories.
I generally find that using such tools is actually really the opposite of how to approach a character - while they can be useful if you're trying for cardboard cutouts, I think that the best way is to actually think about how a character reacts in a given situation, rather than the other way around, as that is HOW you create a character. Characters are based on how they interact with the world, and it is their actions which define who they are. It is the way that a character acts which defines them to the audience and to the world, and as such it is where you start. There is someone in trouble at the bottom of a mine; do they rush through, trying to get to them as quickly as possible regardless of the danger? Do they take a more cautious approach? Do they try to negotiate with whoever is holding them hostage? Sneak past them? Trick them? I think these are far more useful ways of defining a character.
In a game about something, you know what the plot is going to demand of them, so you need to remember, first and foremost, that whoever this person is, they're going to have to be willing (or forced to) go through with the plot. You know the necessary actions, so their personality has to fit within the bounds where those actions happen.
I guess the only thing we know for sure is that all programmer NPCs would be introverts.
Now there's an idea. I think I may use that.
INTJCN
Hit the nail on the head. The MBTI can be a fun way to look at "how people approach a given situation this one time," but it's mostly utter shit for "what is a person *like* inside."
That said, it can be a decent jumping off point for keeping a character consistent, particularly in early stages, when you might not yet know yourself "how would they act?"
When creating a character, I think it is important to consider other things a lot more than these Myer-Briggs personality axes and D&D alignment axes, even though these are fun to play with. Whenever I take these tests, I always end up right in the middle of all these bipolar descriptions of people. I get the true neutral and the flip flopping Myer-Briggs inventories, because it depends deeply on the specific situation what choices I might make, what I find to be the most appropriate action.
I would consider more important for any character, 1) gender, 2) race/background, 3) age, 4) occupation/training in life, 5) emotional/physical/psychological state, 6) religion/philosophy, 7) family/friends/inclusion in community, 8) abilities/disabilities, 9) history of trauma/joy, achievement/failure. All of these things are much more likely to inform your characters' decisions than the 16 personality types described by Myers-Briggs or the 12 astrological types in western astrology or the 12 animal astrological types described in Chinese astrology. Even if you can easily create a character based on any of these many archetypes.
These are temperments, meaning what direction your train of thought comes from, not personality, which defines the decisions that you make in a given situation based on your previous experiences.
the four temperments have shown up in the same pattern for thousands of years, all the way back to 590 BC, and there's a reason our psyches latch on to them so well. Whether it was the four humours of hippocrates, expanded upon by galen in 190 AD to sanguine, bilious, choleric, phlematic, and melancholic; or it was the elemental totem spirits that are still used as the basis of many video game personalities today, salamanders, gnomes, sylphs, and nymphs.
The Artisan encompasses everything from the flamboyant performer who demands attention constantly and is always in the spotlight at the center of a crowd, to the gruff mechanic that knows what he's doing better than anyone and complains about people getting in his way and being idiots. This is the type of person that lives in the moment, focused on the present with absolute precision, even at the detriment of the future, and without any thought of the past.
The Gaurdian is the pillar of society. These are all people who are the gatekeepers of their community, whether it's the town sherrif making sure no bad seeds take root in his town, or the gossipy but friendly matron whose approval is implicitly required to be accepted into the knitting circle. These people are the ones who epitomize the idea of the line between us and them, trusting those close to them and distrustful of anyone who's not part of their community. This is also the old men grumbling about how much better everything used to be, always ready with a saying to emphasize what they mean.
The Rational is most classicly seen as the spock type. The reason spock resonates so well though, is that, like a real life rational, he may be cold and calculating, but his emotions really do run hot. Just because he spends much effort restraining them does not mean he does not feel them.
The Idealist is the people person. But unlike the gaurdian, they ALWAYS try to see life from the other person's perspective. They are more in danger of putting the needs of others around them ahead of their own basic needs that of taking advantage of anyone. Felicia day plays an idealist on the guild, for example.
All of these have subtleties and layers to them, and our life experiences and the lessons we learn are layered on top of these to create our personalities and our actual reactions to such things, but that does not invalidate one's temperment.
This idea has actually been embraced by the psychological community, Keirsey's book about temperments is on the book shelves of both the counsellors I know.
Another example is me: I would fall into both sensing and Intuition categories as both would accurately describe me.
The problem with the system is: there are too few categories and the categories are binary when they should be spectrum's. Replace the four categories with dozens, many of which have more than two polls and each category is a spectrum then is might have some use.
Obviously there are degrees, but it's still one or the other.
The reason MBTI is still around is because research/academia doesn't have a very strong impact on industry. Businesses (and medical professionals in fields that need pathologize everything) like being able to put people in boxes to quantify things and MBTI was the first personality test that had a scientific basis. Unfortunately, a half century of research that have built and improved upon it and tests like it have been ignored. More unfortunately, the past couple decades of research that have specifically addressed how MBTI does not meaningfully predict performance in school, jobs, relationships, moral hypotheticals, etc. That hasn't changed the fact that everyone from the government to chain retailers to dating sites administer the test.
http://www.youtube.com/user/leadintea/videos
to find out more about the Enneagram and various RPG characters that represent each one!
I often take topics from Extra Credits, study them and rework them for game localization.
You would be amazed how relevant this stuff can be for us http://localization.it/mda-framework-se ... em-better/
This said, when I did the MDA framework, it was pretty easy: study the 8 pages PDF and you're done.
The MBTI seems even more interesting, but I wouldn't really know where to start.
So, considering that my focus is on narrative more than psychology, which book would you recommend?
Thank you!
In any case, the characters I've made have a really simple approach; I base them on either myself at some point in my life or on someone I've known. I know how I would react to any given situation, and observing people for long enough lets me take good guesses on what they would do (though I am more pessimistic among those I dislike). My thinking patterns are somewhat similar to flowcharts, so this sort of "What would this character do?" type of thinking comes naturally to me. (Flowchart thinking is probably very rare, but you will predominantly understand a character from his or her actions, and they will come to the same conclusions with the same personality and circumstance, flowcharts or not.)