[Akrasiel]

I have a very good ISTJ friend. I've been into type theory for a few years and I thought he was an INTP. I had others talk to him, and not tell them of my hunch, and they came back as thinking he was an INTP as well. He's incredibly introverted, and I suppose I don't think of ISTJ's as very introverted, but is there any other reason people can think of why an ISTJ could be mistyped as an INTP?

[Frannyy]

wait- how do you know he is an ISTJ and not an INTP?

[Akrasiel]

wait- how do you know he is an ISTJ and not an INTP?

He never /ever/ thought the INTP description was accurate at all. I went through several with him and he said they didn't match with him at all. The cognitive functions for INTP's didn't go well with him either for what I knew of him. I had him take an MBTI test on a whim and he came out as a rock solid ISTJ. He doesn't care about type theory at all really, but that just made him unbiased. I was skeptical at first because thinking someone is an INTP to an ISTJ is a rather large difference, but I managed to wrap my head around it. I went through their dominant functions and they explain so much. I fed him a few ISTJ profiles and he said they fit him very well. I don't have a doubt that he's an ISTJ.

[Frannyy]

so you are asking how could it be that you mistyped him as INTP???? and what similarities they have??

[Akrasiel]

so you are asking how could it be that you mistyped him as INTP???? and what similarities they have??

Nope. I'm asking what things people think could be factors in how an ISTJ could come across as an INTP. It wasn't just myself. He was typed as an INTP by several people, all of which were unaware he was typed as one by any other.

[Frannyy]

here is a previous thread where someone confused an INTP for an ISTJ... maybe it will help:

Help type my hubby.


i don't really know how else someone could confuse them- they are both logical i guess....

[Akrasiel]

here is a previous thread where someone confused an INTP for an ISTJ... maybe it will help:

Help type my hubby.


i don't really know how else someone could confuse them- they are both logical i guess....

Thanks, I'll poke about it. I had a brief overview of it, and it seems more personable. I'm just trying to get general input from other types on their perception of the two for such, but it may prove useful.

[Thrifty Walrus]

I think introverts in general can get confused because it is hard to tell what they are thinking since they often won't show all of their personality.

However there is quite a big difference between P's and J's so I have no idea how that could have happened. Back to my original hypothesis I guess.

[screamofconscious]

Might be easy to do if one doesn't understand the difference between Te and Ti. I don't know what the case for you may be, but if you were typing him letter by letter rather than by function, I can see how the mistake would be made easily.

[Eric B]

I think it might be a similarity among E/I+T/F groups (IT, ET, IF, EF). This combo you never hear about some other two letter groups. I call them "social image temperaments". Hence, an ISTJ is introverted, and a Thinker, so he will bear a similarity to "introverted Thinkers", even though it's really his Sensing that is dominant and introverted, and his Thinking is extraverted.

This of course ignores the S/N difference, but when you think of a person's surface behavior, we usually notice first, introversion or extroversion, and whether he is a "thinker" or "feeler".

So likewise, when I first started thinking about type, I wondered if my father was an INTP (And I at that time thought I might be something else) or ISTP, yet he is a typical ISTJ.