Function Tests: Do Both Attitudes Matter?

Awhile back, I was on a (now-defunct) Jungian message board. They were discussing a phenomenon in which a person with a given dominant function will often find themselves also having good use of the same function in the opposite attitude. This flies in the face of what Jung originally thought, where the most difficult person to get along with was not someone who had a type that was your inferior function, but rather the same function in the opposite attitude. Still, someone that brought it up mentioned that, as an INFP, they had good access to Extraverted Feeling in addition to their dominant Introverted Feeling. A number of dominant Feeling types agreed with this. (There was an INTP on the board, but I can't remember if she weighed in or not.)

If this is the case, then that would add an extra layer of interpretation to function tests. So far there are a few main ways tests are interpreted:

(1)Method of Interpretation: The highest result is your dominant function.

The MMDI and some other function-based tests on the internet tend to operate this way. In this case, you look to the highest score, then match it up with the auxiliary. So, if your highest score is Introverted Intuition, then you go down the list and see that your Extraverted Thinking is higher than your Extraverted Feeling, you're INTJ.

Problem: What if neither auxiliary is all that high? For example, suppose you see a pattern that goes something like this: Ni-Fi-Ti-Ne-Te-Si-Fe-Se. Technically, the Fi is higher than Te. Granted, there are a lot of reasons for this. The N, for example, could color how the Te manifests, since "raw" Te is probably more naturally paired with Introverted Sensing than Introverted Intuition and if the percentages are close, you could just chock it up to the usual problems inherent in self-report questionnaires.

(2)Method of Interpretation: The Overall Pattern Indicates Your Type.

Dario Nardi's test does this. He looks for a pattern in which the dominant and auxiliary are well paired. Meaning, when both the dominant and auxiliary are in higher-ranked choices, then that has the highest probability of being your type. He gets around the problem of incongruous combinations by providing one result that's most probable, two other possible options and then a ranking of probable temperaments. The best-fit type correlates with a person's MBTI results 75-80% of the time and the temperament result matches 95% of the time.

Here's my results on Nardi's test (which I just re-took for the purpose of this post, but it's pretty consistent with previous results):


So, that means my pattern is as follows: Ne-Ni-Fi-Te-Si-Ti-Fe-Se. I have excellent use on Ne, Ni and Fi, limited use of Fe and my Se is, well, non-existent. Based on this, he suggests my most probable type is INFP, followed by ENFP and then INTP. The temperament conflicts with the most probable type, however, since I came out as Theorist. However, my Ti, while admittedly I have a good use of it, still ranks in position #6--below both Fi and Te, making my being an INTP fairly improbable. If contemporary Jungians are correct, INFP is fairly improbable as well, since my Fe is my pathetically low. However, with Ni being only 3 points below Ne, with both Ni and Ne being my highest scores, and with Se ranking, at a whopping 13.1, as unused, bearing in mind the Jungians' suggestion as well as my temperament results, it would then indicate that the most probable type would be INTJ. Because my Fi is so high, I could entertain the idea that my auxiliary is in the same attitude as the dominant. However, with excellent use of Ne and good use of Te, that is unlikely to be the case. If my top four results were all introverted functions, though, I might want to consider such an option.

The problem with function tests, I think, will always be one of there being too many combinations to provide a quick and easy result. I started writing out a possible process through which people could try to interpret results that would incorporate all the various factors, but it was getting a bit complex to put into paragraph form, so I'll try to put together a flow chart and post it later.

I'm going to put up a poll where people can vote on whether they score high on both attitudes of their dominant function. It would be interesting to see if that bears out for a lot of people.