# how is an ISFP and type 8 person



## manedwave (Mar 6, 2019)

I am in doubt as to what a personality of a person being these two things
since many people say that it is very rare


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## The Veteran (Oct 24, 2018)

I also don't think there are many INFP's as Type 8's. Nor do I think there are many ESFP's as Type 1's. Nor do I think there are many Extroverts or Feelers as Type 5's.


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## Brains (Jul 22, 2015)

Mostly they aren't. Eightishness and low Extraversion don't mix.


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## Handsome Dyke (Oct 4, 2012)

My suspicion about people with conflicting personality types like this is that they probably tend to be the most psychologically disturbed types, and, though they may indeed be rare, the most we can say is that they _seem_ rare because we probably rarely have the opportunity to come across them: they suicide, overdose on drugs, end up in institutions, chronically homeless, or extremely socially isolated, etc., because they are so much at odds with themselves that their functioning is seriously impaired.


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## Xool Xecutioner (Jul 8, 2018)

Brains said:


> Mostly they aren't. Eightishness and low Extraversion don't mix.


Extraversion meaning low assertiveness in this case? To be anecdotal, my dad is an ISTP 8w9, and while not strict or active like a TJ (especially ExTJ), can get serious, aggressive, and assertive that quick. Like he gets often impatient and annoyed with my ESFP brother's silliness and nuttery. My father isn't a socialable (in a sense of a socialite), either, and would often watch television in his room just to be undisturbed; and he is only talkative with friends or family only and not so much with strangers. 

I think ISTJs, INTJs, and ISTPs are the introverts that are most likely to be Eights, and that's because of Te's major correlation and Se's slight correlation (Ti slightly amplifies the correlation in ISTPs).


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## Brains (Jul 22, 2015)

Xool Xecutioner said:


> Extraversion meaning low assertiveness in this case? To be anecdotal, my dad is an ISTP 8w9, and while not strict or active like a TJ (especially ExTJ), can get serious, aggressive, and assertive that quick. Like he gets often impatient and annoyed with my ESFP brother's silliness and nuttery. My father isn't a socialable (in a sense of a socialite), either, and would often watch television in his room just to be undisturbed; and he is only talkative with friends or family only and not so much with strangers.
> 
> I think ISTJs, INTJs, and ISTPs are the introverts that are most likely to be Eights, and that's because of Te's major correlation and Se's slight correlation (Ti slightly amplifies the correlation in ISTPs).


Not just assertiveness, though that is a part of it. Extraversion is a thing that blatantly exists, right? We see that some people just keep going and going and do stuff nonstop, socialize a lot and can't stop talking, enjoy their creature comforts and so on. The question is, why? Jung&co. theorized that it's where your energy is directed, inward or outward, some popular conceptions basically amount to do you get energy from solitude or company and such things. But what actually causes extraverted behaviors?

Fundamentally, humans - any creatures - need reasons, causes for acting the way they do. Any creature, on average, only takes action because the rewards seem to outweigh the costs, and the systems that gauge how profitable or enjoyable rewarding signals are differ naturally between people - give someone with a high reward sensitivity the same set of inputs as someone low in reward sensitivity, and one will see a world abundant in opportunity to be seized and joy from things acquired, while for the other the rewards seem lower, and thus the costs seem higher in comparison, and he will see more of the world as a drain or a drag, more trouble than it's worth. There will still be things that filled their heart with joy and they'd totally end up doing those things, but their sphere of concerns would inevitably be smaller than that of the reward sensitive person, all else being equal. This is just a simple consequence of both perceiving similar costs but one sees things as more rewarding than the other - what those specific things are is of course very personal, but a highly reward sensitive person's sphere of interests will be wider, on average, and they will exhibit more positive emotions since wanting things and liking things is what drives us to pursue rewards in the first place.

The above is the fundamental force behind Extraversion and the true definition of the trait. It highlights some things: It gives us a clue as to the lived experience of Extraversion and so-called introversion and shows how an "introverted Eight" or an "extraverted Five" are oxymoronic: The way a Five is said to experience the world is incompatible with high Extraversion and the way an Eight or any Assertive triad type is supposed to experience the world is incompatible with low Extraversion.

We see that Jung&co. were wrong: Turning Extraversion lower and lower doesn't actually turn from "wide, outward and shallow" to "narrow, inward-turned and deep", it just narrows the sphere of interest - an "introvert" isn't necessarily a deep or especially inward-turned person at all, their narrow sphere of interest can just as well be collecting Turtles episodes. The Jungian style contrast makes sense when you play with concepts and language, but doesn't actually work out as operating parameters for a physical creature and doesn't fit evidence - Extraversion-Introversion makes good sense linguistically, but Extraversion-Detachment or Engagement-Detachment is probably closer to reality.

We can also see that extraverts are by no means necessarily shallow and unintellectual - if anything, it's the opposite, as Extraversion has a positive correlation with both aspects of Openness/Intellect, the personality trait that's linked to a bohemian, artistic type of character and to intellectual engagement. (Fives and Fours are characterized by both low Extraversion and high Openness/Intellect)

We can also see that social anxiety is not a form of introversion - an emotionally stable introvert simply isn't interested in social interaction because it is unprofitable. Anxiety is an active form of negative emotion, not the lack of active positive emotion that characterizes low Extraversion. This accounts for the popular conception of "where you get energy" - socializing is more often a positive hedonic deal for a highly reward sensitive person, while for the introvert it's more often a cost, but it's distinctly different from anxiousness related to social things or personal depth.

Now, if we look at the kind of experience that'd characterize high Extraversion, we'd see that it'd mean seeing the world as full of worthwhile things to do - worthwhile enough to actually do, not just think yea those are great but I can't be arsed, lots of positive emotion - not just happiness but an excited drivenness, a hungry want, and so on. A lack of this is completely against the Eight profile, wouldn't you agree? Of course, even introverts will experience times when they feel everything is abundant, and find things they feel very driven to do or feel things to be so in certain environments, and extraverts will find things they just aren't interested in or find life overwhelming sometimes, but the dispositional tendencies to certain experiences have to make sense if we are to actually describe someone's _character_ overall, not just their reaction to some particular situation or circumstance.


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## Xool Xecutioner (Jul 8, 2018)

@Brains

I understand that the extravert is a person that is stimulated by external stimuli 
and have a large breadth of judgement/perception relative to the introvert. I can tell in comparison with my extravert brother and introvert me. What I am trying to understand, though, is why 8 incompatible with introverts (or anyone that scores low extraversion, and likewise with five and extraverts) when its descriptions doesn't really contradict anything introverted (especially among certain I types)? An Eight doesn't have to be super talkative, socialable (though it helps), or intervening in anyone's lives just to be a leader (or leader-like) and to be strong (and not being seen as weak). I can get that with an introverted 8 it may not have enough energy to project on external objects (let's say people), but that doesn't invalidate the 8 fears and motivations of the person. Just that the introverted person is more subdued. 

I don't think extraverts are necessarily more shallow than introverts. Rather, focusing on one thing makes extraverts lose opportunities/more time on another things. This is consistent with your "high reward-sensitive" explaination that is true (or at least common) with extraverts. "High openness" seems to be more toward ExxPs than ExxJs. ExxJs, while engaging, seem to be stubborn in the sense of collective (everyone's welfare/competency), and anything imaginative is for the collective only. Versus ExxPs doing something for their subjective reason, without accounting the collective. It's no wonder there are more ExxP entertainers, risk-takers, and explorers than ExxJs ones (which is not to say that there can't be any of those for ExxJs--just that they account the collective basis on what they do). In others words, ExxPs are more free-minded than ExxJs because they take in raw data on their own subjective basis and not being restricted by everyone else.


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## Veni Vidi Vici (Jun 8, 2018)

In Socionics ESIs (FiSe) have 3D Se and the Se subtypes especially are more likely to be 8 than any N types except maybe ENTj. That said most ESIs are 6s, 1s or 9s. 

In MBTI, ISFPs are mostly 9s and 6s.


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## sparklygem (Mar 13, 2019)

It isn't possible. I'm guessing it is a male ISFP and they are a 9w8 with a heavy 8 wing.


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## Brains (Jul 22, 2015)

Xool Xecutioner said:


> @Brains
> 
> I understand that the extravert is a person that is stimulated by external stimuli
> and have a large breadth of judgement/perception relative to the introvert. I can tell in comparison with my extravert brother and introvert me. What I am trying to understand, though, is why 8 incompatible with introverts (or anyone that scores low extraversion, and likewise with five and extraverts) when its descriptions doesn't really contradict anything introverted (especially among certain I types)? An Eight doesn't have to be super talkative, socialable (though it helps), or intervening in anyone's lives just to be a leader (or leader-like) and to be strong (and not being seen as weak). I can get that with an introverted 8 it may not have enough energy to project on external objects (let's say people), but that doesn't invalidate the 8 fears and motivations of the person. Just that the introverted person is more subdued.



Well, if you go read 5 and 8 descriptions and how people of those types are supposed to experience the world, you'll find it lines up with low and high Extraversion, respectively. If the kind of thing that gets described is supposed to be the person's dominant disposition, then yeah, there's a contradiction.

The particular fears and motivations you could easily find in an introvert and Fivish motivations you might find in an extravert, depening on which parts you emphasize, but the problem with that is that the motivations themselves as the cause for personality are a mistake in themselves.

One huge thing is to consider what is the root of personality structure and differences between people. Most takes on the Enneagram posit that people have some kind of fundamental experience that leads to some kind of motivation that then over time results in the construction of an ego structure, and these motivations relate to over- or underexpressing three key emotions. But is that really how it goes?

Just on the face of it, if you really think every human's personality is fundamentally driven by and constructed around anger, shame or fear, I've a bridge to sell you. Good condition, inland, nowhere near a body of water so it won't rust.

The motivations themselves suffer from a similar problem: They're just too specific and narrow to really characterize human personality as a whole. You can find some of them in most people, to be sure, but that doesn't mean they're the fundamental building block of those people's character. To claim so would require pretty extraordinary evidence. Furthermore, those motivations have to come from somewhere, and that's where things get interesting.

It's easy to see how the kinds of dispositions outlined about Extraversion could commonly lead to different kinds of outlooks on life, and the same applies to other traits - a person who really viscerally feels others' pain and someone more tough-minded and undersensitive to others' emotional states are likely going to adopt different life philosophies, people with different reward and threat sensitivities are going to see the world differently, and so on, and they're also likely to act differently overall. But these philosophies are merely a consequence of the fundamental building block of temperament, and a lot of the individual variety in that is due to how our biological systems are wired, without any kind of clear cause. Just the opposite: The way our biological systems are wired colors our experience from the day we're born. We interact with the world according to our nature, and as the world responds to our actions, we absorb the feedback through the lens of our nature. The same signal can be and is interpreted differently simply due to random accidents of biology. We're certainly not slaves to the way biology colors our lived experience, but it colors, well, everything.

If you go with the motivations, you end up not putting similar people in the same box, which is the whole point of a personality typology. Fearing being controlled for example doesn't at all necessarily make someone Eightish - Eightishness, Fivishness etc. are far more about character than any specific motivation, and between character and motivation, character comes first, inevitably. People who have been manually typed also have Big 5 profiles that match book type descriptions, so...




Xool Xecutioner said:


> I don't think extraverts are necessarily more shallow than introverts. Rather, focusing on one thing makes extraverts lose opportunities/more time on another things. This is consistent with your "high reward-sensitive" explaination that is true (or at least common) with extraverts. "High openness" seems to be more toward ExxPs than ExxJs. ExxJs, while engaging, seem to be stubborn in the sense of collective (everyone's welfare/competency), and anything imaginative is for the collective only. Versus ExxPs doing something for their subjective reason, without accounting the collective. It's no wonder there are more ExxP entertainers, risk-takers, and explorers than ExxJs ones (which is not to say that there can't be any of those for ExxJs--just that they account the collective basis on what they do). In others words, ExxPs are more free-minded than ExxJs because they take in raw data on their own subjective basis and not being restricted by everyone else.


ExxP/ExxJ has more to do with Conscientiousness, ie. orderliness, a sense of personal industriousness and ability "to force yourself to do what you want to do", not Openness. Openness/Intellect indicates things like a bohemian/artistic/unusual mindset and intellectual engagement. The bohemian half is driven by a thing called latent inhibition - basically a measure of how tenuous an association can get before our subconscious dismisses it as fanciful nonsense rather than a real connection. A high degree of latent inhibition and thus low Openness means the brain is very strict about those associations which can stunt at least spontaneous imaginativeness to a degree, while very, very low levels play a part in certain kinds of mental illness.

The typical ExxP/ExxJ profiles typically reflect more of a high Openness style with the ExxPs, that is true, but Conscientiousness and Openness/Intellect aren't especially related.


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## HIX (Aug 20, 2018)

Brad Pitt is an ISFP 8w7, so is Roman Reigns from WWE


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## Figure (Jun 22, 2011)

The idea that an ISFP "cannot be" an 8 because "8 is Extraverted" takes type descriptions at their most absolute surface level interpretation, making it possible to weave together a conclusion that sounds more conclusive than it is. The intent of "Extraverted" in Jung is to describe the orientation of a function; "extraverted" in MBTI means one gains energy being around other people as opposed to losing it; "extraverted" or "extroverted" in the context of Gut types means outwardly (environmentally)-focused, in service of a habit of self-neglect and forgetting. These are clearly not equivalent. Besides, Temperament (E__J/E__P) also has a substantial impact on extro/extraversion and isn't fleshed out much in mainline MBTI. 

There isn't anything in any theory that conclusively says an ISFP can't be a type 8, and this is true of any combination. The Enneagram and Jung/MBTI weren't co-designed, so an apple in one can't necessarily be taken as an apple in another even if it looked that way.

Anecdotally, I don't find the 8-ness of 8's to be tied to how socially extro/extraverted they are. It's the cluster of things you can track back to the Passion of Lust - overdoing, constant need for intensity, denial of anything that makes them look or feel weak, rejection of experiencing sensitivity, attacking/aggression against being constrained or controlled, mocking people they feel aren't strong enough, and the like. 

Obviously, most people are anecdotally going to say that they'd have a hard time imagining an ISFP type 8, which is totally reasonable. I personally could see it, although much more so as an 8w9 than 8w7. I think you could see someone who is Fi + Se and still be that cluster of traits above. It'd be someone who probably strikes you as being over-intense and pushy, not able to not over-do, but just within a smaller scope of people and situations because of the Introverted orientation. That 8-ness would be equally pertinent in public and private settings, and more so private than with an E.

The E__J/E__P 8 IS the one that is going to be extra/extroverted across all theories and, because it's more common, probably inspired most of the enneagram character type descriptions of type 8.


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## ReliK (Feb 24, 2019)

It'd be _very_ unusual. Enough that I'd seriously consider a mistype before truly entertaining it. I recently read some old description on E4 SX, and it claimed that these 4's can very much look like 8's. Also CP E6 could look like an 8, or a 9w8 who is feeling unusually stressed could lean far into their 8. All of these would be more likely, imo.. than a ISFP 8.


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## type8isfp (Mar 30, 2020)

Hello! I am an ISFP type 8. What this looks like for me....all of my MBTI scales are in the middle but the ISFP description is so validating to read and much more accurate than any other MBTI type description.

In high school, I was an ENFJ which I think aligns quite nicely with type 8. I was in advanced classes and had a very (academically) competitive friend group, which I thrived in. I was a natural leader, class president, and LOVED Socratic dialogues and debates. Fast forward to college...I was done trying for leadership positions and being the perfect student and just wanted to have fun. I had a very passive-aggressive roommate (we did not get along AT ALL), a boyfriend who made me completely lose my sense of self, and I was far too involved in my social/personal life to take academics seriously. I stopped enjoying conflict and started actively avoiding it. This is where I started to shift personalities into one that's more anxious about my present surroundings and feelings (higher s), less confident and more subdued due to criticism from boyfriend/roommate (lower E) and socially controlling. 

I was at odds with myself and became extremely depressed. To combat my depression and anxiety, I turned to yoga and meditation, which accounts for lowering my J and upping my P. I became very intentional about having fun and stimulating experiences. I dumped the boyfriend, got a new roommate, and found another social setting that I thrived in. I took the enneagram test for the first time around this time and got 7. I was something like ESFP for a year or so but after college I lived abroad in Ireland for a few months while getting over a really hard breakup. My extroverted self was completely alone, literally on an island, dealing with something very traumatic (heartbreak). This is when I began the long process of becoming an introvert. I had to. I was alone. When I got back from Ireland I took a work-from-home job, which really solidified the introversion.

Thus, I finally became an ISFP. It took a long time to finally admit to myself that after a lifetime of being an extrovert, I had dealt with enough trauma to turn me into an introvert, but there's no question about it. I simply don't get any energy from being around others anymore. It is now draining because I spent so long learning and adapting to being alone. 

I recently got into the enneagram and am trying to reconcile type 8 with isfp. I think type 8 is the ENFJ that's still very deep down. Maybe. Who knows? My personality is an enigma even to me. I think ISFPs and 8s are both private and reserved people. They're both fiercely independent. They both care much more than they let on. They care deeply about others, but firstly themselves. But one is a leader (8) and one is a follower. One is controlling (8) and one is not. One speaks their mind (8) and the other holds it in. 

I'm both. It depends on how much I care about the situation and how much I respect the authority figures. If I don't care about either one, I will just let the leaders do their thing and I'll sit back and watch them suck at it (ex: side jobs I don't care about). If i care deeply about the situation, ohhhh, you better believe I will speak my mind and take over if the current leadership sucks (ex: unproductive meetings for volunteer situations). I can tell you, the one thing I value the most is my time. If my time is being disrespected by wasting it, I will speak my mind. I can waste my own time (lmao), but other people wasting my time is unacceptable. If I care about the situation but genuinely respect the authority figures, I feel a cognitive dissonance (ex: a career job). I want to take over but obviously can't/won't for fear of losing job, so I'll speak my mind in smaller, diplomatic ways where they know I'm unhappy and not trying to hide it, but also not trying to actively undermine or overthrow my boss. These situations are the hardest and make me seem combative and resistant to change, which I am. Anyway, that's me. And that's not even getting into romantic relationships or friendships. 

Hope this was helpful to understanding us walking contradictions.


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## tanstaafl28 (Sep 10, 2012)

manedwave said:


> I am in doubt as to what a personality of a person being these two things
> since many people say that it is very rare


*I*nfinite *D*iversity *I*nfinite *C*ombination. After all, I'm a 5w6 So/Sx 584, ENTP. I'm sort of an "ambivert." I was married to an 8w7 Sp/Sx 863 ISTJ.


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## Heavy (Jun 16, 2010)

Type 8 is incompatible with ISFP. See Comment to Pearl of Wisdom number IX:

https://www.personalitycafe.com/enneagram-personality-theory-forum/1328131-stackemup-typology-enneagram-side-s-eleven-pearls-wisdom.html

Brad Pitt is an IEE-Fi 9w8 sp/sx (the contrarian-leisurely gestalt)....anybody who believes that Brad Pitt is an 8w7 would drastically benefit from taking a refresher course on the gestalts for every enneagram type, as provided below: 

https://www.personalitycafe.com/enn...991-prime-core-gestalts-each-e-type-more.html

I also recommend intensive study as to the real time examples for each gestalt (especially with regards to 8w7 and 9w8 and its respective stackings), as provided below:

https://stackemup.livejournal.com/


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