# Do sensors enjoy science? Are they good at it?



## LemonTea (Mar 24, 2015)

Alright, so, whenever I read about scientists on this forum, it's always the NT types. Usually INTJ or INTP. I also read that intuitives tend to be the ones good at science.
But what about sensors? Can't they also be just as interested or skilled in science?


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## Donovan (Nov 3, 2009)

actually, you'd think they'd be better suited to it, since it's such a practical field. intuitives can be gifted as well, but that's by having an inkling on how to look at something, or better yet: _where_ to look to begin with... but they'd have to double-time their efforts to make up for their lack of a grounded here-and-now sense of reality. 


really though, the principles of science are grounded in sensation.


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## Highway Nights (Nov 26, 2014)

ESTP here, majoring in environmental science.


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## JTHearts (Aug 6, 2013)

yeah anyone can be good at science but you'll find some people on this forum who will make up fake "statistics" trying to say that intuitives are more likely to be scientists.


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## Simpson17866 (Dec 3, 2014)

Sensors are more likely attracted to the applied sciences, iNtuitives are more likely attracted to the theoretical.


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## PaladinX (Feb 20, 2013)

There are so many different fields of science that no one type is really going to be representative of the whole. You might find certain types more likely in a specific field of science though.

FWIW here is a statement that Jung made that is somewhat relevant:

_"As a natural scientist, thinking and sensation were uppermost in me and intuition and feeling were in the unconscious and contaminated by the collective unconscious."_


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## TheProphetLaLa (Aug 18, 2014)

Yes. I enjoy certain fields of science, and yes I'm good at them.


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## reckful (Jun 19, 2012)

JTHearts said:


> yeah anyone can be good at science but you'll find some people on this forum who will make up fake "statistics" trying to say that intuitives are more likely to be scientists.


You rang, bro?

The official MBTI folks put out Career Reports that show the popularity for each type of "22 broad occupational categories," based on "a sample of more than 92,000 people in 282 jobs who said they were satisfied with their jobs."

One of the 22 categories is "Life, Physical, and Social Sciences," and the following are the rankings (on a 0-100 scale) for that category for the following 14 types. And again, for a job to count for purposes of these rankings, the person had to _both_ have a job in that area _and_ report that they were "satisfied" with their job.

INTJ 100
INTP 100
ENTJ 99
ENTP 87
INFJ 70
ISTJ 64
ENFJ 58
INFP 54
ENFP 53
ISFJ 32
ESTJ 29
ESTP 29
ISFP 24
ESFP 19

(I don't have the stats for ISTPs and ESFJs.)


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## ihadahamsandwich (Sep 21, 2014)

I am ISFP/ISTP and I am a chemist. FWIW, I am interested in the more clinically relevant aspects of the field rather than the theoretical side.


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## Max (Aug 14, 2014)

LemonTea said:


> Alright, so, whenever I read about scientists on this forum, it's always the NT types. Usually INTJ or INTP. I also read that intuitives tend to be the ones good at science.
> But what about sensors? Can't they also be just as interested or skilled in science?


At the moment, I am researching scientific-based things. And in school, I was reasonable at Science. I quite enjoyed it, actually. I used some Sensing in my live experiements, as well as my Inuitive/Thinking side. 

All in all, I agree that any type can be a Scientist if they have the drive for it and enjoy doing it.


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## galactic collision (May 1, 2014)

Simpson17866 said:


> Sensors are more likely attracted to the applied sciences, iNtuitives are more likely attracted to the theoretical.


I'd think Ti users would be more attracted to the theoretical and Te users would be more attracted to applied sciences.


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## JTHearts (Aug 6, 2013)

reckful said:


> You rang, bro?
> 
> The official MBTI folks put out Career Reports that show the popularity for each type of "22 broad occupational categories," based on "a sample of more than 92,000 people in 282 jobs who said they were satisfied with their jobs."
> 
> ...


my statistics say otherwise sir.


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## Dangerose (Sep 30, 2014)

Personally, as an ESFJ, I do not enjoy, and I am not good at science. My ESTJ brother does, however. I occasionally like reading about theory and such but for me...it's not that relevant to my life. I know a rose is a rose, but I don't need to know what its cells look like. It can be an interesting diversion, but I don't foresee a future where I'm massively interested in science.


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## deadly_silence (Apr 28, 2015)

I like science a lot in school. Part of it is because my teacher's awesome, but mostly I just like the subject in general. It's very logical, the instructions are usually simple and clear, and it involves a lot of facts. Although I do more creative activities like writing and drawing at home, my creativity is sort of a personal thing, so I like classes like science or math because they don't involve it, and I can save that energy for my own projects.


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## FearAndTrembling (Jun 5, 2013)

Science is mostly sensors. The stereotypical "media scientist" is the intuitive. Like Richard Dawkins, Carl Sagan, Neil Degrasse Tyson. They are more accomplished personalities, than scientists. Big difference. Intuitives are better at playing scientist, not actually being them.


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## Sygma (Dec 19, 2014)

JTHearts said:


> my statistics say otherwise sir.


Well show them then, and dont forget to include the source


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## periwinklepromise (Jan 26, 2015)

I've been considering the idea that ST types have the same essence as science. We like science to deal with the tangible and concrete, what we can observe from objects, and we like to deal with science in a very linear way. Seems right up the ST alley. I don't really like the idea that certain types are *belong* in certain fields, but I would say that yeah, Sensors enjoy science just as much as iNtuitives, and they're just as good.


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## Twitchie (Apr 2, 2015)

reckful said:


> You rang, bro?
> 
> The official MBTI folks put out Career Reports that show the popularity for each type of "22 broad occupational categories," based on "a sample of more than 92,000 people in 282 jobs who said they were satisfied with their jobs."
> 
> ...


Yeah, I looked at that. The whole ball of wax looks extremely flawed. I wouldn't draw any conclusions from that.


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## Green Girl (Oct 1, 2010)

My father in law was an ISTP, and a well-known and greatly respected geologist.


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## reckful (Jun 19, 2012)

Twitchie said:


> Yeah, I looked at that. The whole ball of wax looks extremely flawed. I wouldn't draw any conclusions from that.


Care to elaborate on what the "extreme flaws" were that you spotted in that particular "ball of wax"?


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## JTHearts (Aug 6, 2013)

reckful said:


> This is hardly the first time you've referred to one or more sets of MBTI statistics as "lies," but unless I'm misremembering, you've _never once_ offered us any basis for your allegations.
> 
> Do you actually have any grounds for claiming that the people who reported all those results were "lying," or are you the one with the integrity issues?


yes they are mean and therefore not valid


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## reckful (Jun 19, 2012)

JTHearts said:


> yes they are mean and therefore not valid


Alas, it's in the nature of many kinds of statistics to regress toward the mean.


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## Tad Cooper (Apr 10, 2010)

With people I know in my animal biology class the majority are sensors of some sort (there are a few intuitives, but most use Si or Se very high up and the intuitives are mostly extroverted). They do well because we have a fair number of practical classes and we have to think based on real situations i.e. "You have these resources, how do you create a reserve and what would it be like and why?"


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## FakeLefty (Aug 19, 2013)

JTHearts said:


> yes they are mean and therefore not valid


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## FakeLefty (Aug 19, 2013)

reckful said:


> Well, first of all, your original post was misleading then, since it made it sound like you'd "looked at" that particular 92,000-subject data pool and somehow found it to be "extremely flawed." Instead, it sounds like what you're saying is that you're under the misimpression that the rate of testing errors on the official MBTI is so high that reported correlations in _any_ data pool are essentially meaningless.
> 
> Which leads me to my second point, which is that, contrary to what you may have read in uninformed sources, the validity and reliability of the official MBTI have been found to be basically on a par with the leading Big Five test (the NEO-PI-R).
> 
> ...


In my opinion, it seems that the questions provided by the MBTI tests (at least the ones I was able to find) are just too simple. For example, given the questions someone may think, "Oh I'm capable of imagination and understanding theories- that must mean I must be an intuitive." Or, "I'm not a party animal therefore I must not be an extrovert." etc, etc, etc. Not to mention that MBTI tests don't really take into account cognitive functions. Is it possible that most of the people involved in these studies are typed correctly? Absolutely. But I don't think there are THAT many people who truly understand typology and I don't think it is completely out of the realm of possibilities that there are plenty of people who are mistyped.


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## reckful (Jun 19, 2012)

FakeLefty said:


> In my opinion, it seems that the questions provided by the MBTI tests (at least the ones I was able to find) are just too simple. For example, given the questions someone may think, "Oh I'm capable of imagination and understanding theories- that must mean I must be an intuitive." Or, "I'm not a party animal therefore I must not be an extrovert." etc, etc, etc. Not to mention that MBTI tests don't really take into account cognitive functions. Is it possible that most of the people involved in these studies are typed correctly? Absolutely. But I don't think there are THAT many people who truly understand typology and I don't think it is completely out of the realm of possibilities that there are plenty of people who are mistyped.


The purpose of the MBTI test is to type people as accurately as possible with respect to four dimensions of personality with respect to which identical twins raised in separate households have been found to be substantially more alike than less genetically-similar pairs.

And there's nothing that says that a test item that does a psychometrically impressive job of sorting MBTI N's from S's (for example) is necessarily going to rise to anybody's idea of intellectual sophistication, or be comprised of two choices that correspond to the kind of neat logical opposition likely to please the philosophy majors in the audience.

All of the items on the current form of the official MBTI got there by a process of elimination that started decades ago and has involved hundreds of tested items, with the survivors basically being the items that have been found to do the best job of clustering — based on thousands of tests and the psychometric standards applicable in the personality typology field — with the other items being scored for the same preference.

The MBTI Manual expressly acknowledges that, in many cases, both sides of a particular item are likely to have some appeal to any particular test-taker, and also that, in many cases, the alternative choices don't exactly make sense in terms of a _logical opposition_. As the Manual explains:



MBTI Manual said:


> In writing items, every effort was made to make the responses appeal to the appropriate types, for example, to make the perceptive response to a JP item as attractive to P people as the judging response is to J people. The result is that responses may be psychologically rather than logically opposed, a fact that annoys many thinking types. *Item content is less important than that the words and form of the sentence should serve as a "stimulus to evoke a type response."*


And here's a little bit of what Myers said in Gifts Differing about the relationship of the actual underlying temperament preferences to behavior, test items and summary descriptions:



Myers said:


> Since the more superficial aspects of type are often the easiest to report, many trivial reactions are useful for identification, but these are merely straws to show which way the wind blows. They are not the wind. *It would be a mistake to assume that the essence of an attitude or of a perceptive or judging process is defined by* its trivial surface effects or by *the test items that reflect it* or by the words used to describe it.


As for the fact that the MBTI items are dichotomy-based rather than function-based, that's definitely a point in their favor from the standpoint of scientific respectability — and if you're interested, you can read more about that in this post.


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## Mac The Knife (Nov 5, 2014)

Any type can enjoy science. Any person can regardless of any of personality type. It doesn't have anything to do with that, personal interests are decided on an individual preference not a specific set of function preferences. It'd be like someone saying, every ENTJs favorite color is violet because of their functions. The only thing I'd go so far as to assume is that perhaps an *extroverted-sensor-preference-person* may find it more enjoyable doing experimental studies over theoretical endeavors. Even then I'm not completely comfortable assuming that, it will vary on an individual basis being influenced by an infinite amount of other reasons aside from even personality type.


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## Twitchie (Apr 2, 2015)

reckful said:


> Well, first of all, your original post was misleading then, since it made it sound like you'd "looked at" that particular 92,000-subject data pool and somehow found it to be "extremely flawed." Instead, it sounds like what you're saying is that you're under the misimpression that the rate of testing errors on the official MBTI is so high that reported correlations in _any_ data pool are essentially meaningless.
> 
> Which leads me to my second point, which is that, contrary to what you may have read in uninformed sources, the validity and reliability of the official MBTI have been found to be basically on a par with the leading Big Five test (the NEO-PI-R).
> 
> ...


Blah blah blah. MBTI isn't respected by the scientific community. That's enough to tell me to take all your statistics with a grain of salt.


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## reckful (Jun 19, 2012)

Twitchie said:


> Blah blah blah. MBTI isn't respected by the scientific community. That's enough to tell me to take all your statistics with a grain of salt.


Anyone who's interested can read quite a lot about the scientific respectability of the MBTI — and about several other issues often raised by people claiming to "debunk" the MBTI — in this post and in this post (also linked to in the first linked post).

As explained (with copious citations) in those posts, the MBTI's scientific validity and reliability now have decades of studies behind them, conducted by many respectable members of "the scientific community." And among those members are McCrae and Costa, the leading Big Five psychologists, who long ago acknowledged that the MBTI passed muster in the validity and reliability departments, and also acknowledged that each typology might have things to teach the other.

You're free to have your own _opinions_ on various aspects of the MBTI, Twitchie, but the foregoing statements are _facts_.


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## firedell (Aug 5, 2009)

Who isn't interested in some form of science? I assume you are referring to as science, as in, physics, biology, and chemistry. And then you have your social sciences: psychology, sociology, anthropology, history, archaeology, language ect: 

There is so much to explore, I am pretty positive any personality type can enjoy science.


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## Ninjaws (Jul 10, 2014)

Theoretical sciences will most likely appeal to strong Ti/Ne types, while Applied sciences are more attractive to Te/Se/Si. 
I'd go as far as to say that SJs and SPs are better at applied science than NTs or NFs, since their Si/Se gives them an attention to detail that is really important when you are dealing with things like bridges. 
I'm good at keeping track of the big picture, but I'm rather sloppy when it comes to details. <- Not someone you want to have designing bridges you have to safely drive over.


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## 750ko (Jul 5, 2014)

Many low testosterone ISP go into sciences. Especially ISTP. Those who goes into psychology likes to understand humans as mechanical creatures. They love statistics and empirical answers. Daniel Ariely and Daniel Kahneman are both ISTP, and both of their work reflect how ISTP psychologists focus their curiosity in general


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## mrhcmll (Nov 22, 2013)

My ESTJ friend is an enthusiast in Science. That's his thing, his trademark; the first thing we think of when we think of him. He finds it really interesting.


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## Pressed Flowers (Oct 8, 2014)

I know plenty of Scientific Sensors! =D


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## Ghostsoul (May 10, 2014)

reckful said:


> Here are the self-selection ratios that Myers reported for a study involving 705 Cal Tech science majors:
> 
> INTJ 3.88
> INFJ 2.95
> ...


They probably went with the whole 'are you quiet?' Congratulations your an introvert! Basic crap.
It's unlikely none of these people knew anything about the cognitive functions, probably quite a few of them are sensors but they don't know.

It's the reason MBTI statistics are generally hard to trust.


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## dracula (Apr 5, 2015)

I know several Sensors who take sciences, although it's difficult to say whether they actually like them or if they only take them to get into med school. Seems like most people taking sciences without a clear future plan are iNtuitives. 

On the other hand, I avoid both mathematics and natural sciences like the plague (although I do like some topics in biology, such as genetics) so I'm not a typical NT in a sense.


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## reckful (Jun 19, 2012)

Ghostsoul said:


> They probably went with the whole 'are you quiet?' Congratulations your an introvert! Basic crap.
> It's unlikely none of these people knew anything about the cognitive functions, probably quite a few of them are sensors but they don't know.
> 
> It's the reason MBTI statistics are generally hard to trust.


It sounds like maybe you haven't thought this through.

The first thing to note is that those typings were by way of the official MBTI, and the official MBTI is the _only_ MBTI-related instrument with any substantial body of respectable support behind it. And as further discussed in this post (earlier in this thread), the official MBTI's reliability and validity have been found to be more or less on a par with the leading Big Five tests.

And the second thing to note is that, by contrast, and as further discussed in this post, there has _never_ been a functions-based test — on or off the internet — where the results typically came close to lining up with anybody's cognitive functions model.

But the most important thing to note is that the _self-selection ratios_ shown in that study are the ratio of _the percentage of Cal Tech science majors who were X type_ to _the percentage of X type in the general population_ — and both percentages were determined using the _same test_. So any skew in the direction of particular preferences that resulted from _faults in the test_ would have been reflected in _both_ the Cal Tech stats _and_ the general population stats — which means they wouldn't have been the cause of those very lopsided self-selection ratios.


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## ae1905 (Jun 7, 2014)

750ko said:


> Many low testosterone ISP go into sciences. Especially ISTP. Those who goes into psychology likes to understand humans as mechanical creatures. They love statistics and empirical answers. *Daniel Ariely and Daniel Kahneman are both ISTP*, and both of their work reflect how ISTP psychologists focus their curiosity in general


Why do you think they are ISTPs?


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## 750ko (Jul 5, 2014)

ae1905 said:


> Why do you think they are ISTPs?


Sensor orientated. economic interest, mechanical views, fact oriented, linear thinking in general. + Speaking pattern, facial expressions etc. Lacks the quirkynes and imaginary vibes of intuitives.


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## ae1905 (Jun 7, 2014)

reckful said:


> Well, first of all, your original post was misleading then, since it made it sound like you'd "looked at" that particular 92,000-subject data pool and somehow found it to be "extremely flawed." Instead, it sounds like what you're saying is that you're under the misimpression that the rate of testing errors on the official MBTI is so high that reported correlations in _any_ data pool are essentially meaningless.
> 
> Which leads me to my second point, which is that, contrary to what you may have read in uninformed sources, the validity and reliability of the official MBTI have been found to be basically on a par with the leading Big Five test (the NEO-PI-R).
> 
> ...


In the two tests of gifted young people you cited above, ISTPs and ESTJs (both T-doms) scored lower than INTPs and ENTJs (also both T-doms). This suggests N is a more important factor than T in deciding interest in and probably also aptitude for science, and contradicts the often-heard assertion that Te is particularly well-suited to doing science.

Here's what one scientist had to say about intuition and imagination:



Einstein said:


> When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come close to the conclusion that the gift of imagination has meant more to me than any talent for absorbing absolute knowledge.





Einstein said:


> Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.





Einstein said:


> All great achievements of science must start from intuitive knowledge. I believe in intuition and inspiration.... At times I feel certain I am right while not knowing the reason.


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