Are INFJs really that rare?

Royal said:
@Kaze: I don't think extroverts really are overrated overrepresentated and all that. It's most likely 50/50 I/E and being an extrovert sucks anyways, anyone wanna trade :o
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Wouldn't they be?

Not only do most cultures place extroversion as the favorable mode, but also looking around we'd most likely see or hear the extroverts.

That being said, I'd guess it's about 50/50 as well.
 
Royal said:
I love my E, my N, my F and my P very much.
I even bought a thing like this
gold_and_green_alphabet_banner_poster-p228154101477013890trma_400.jpg

And drew hearts on e, n, f and p. It must really suck to be a INFJ. At least you still have N and F, that's not too bad.


Yeah like someone on the thread and I forgot who said, it must be really hard to make the official statistics because so many people doubt their type and everything, and way too many IxFx really want to be T and all... and INFJ has no reason to be rare. xP

@Kaze: I don't think extroverts really are overrated overrepresentated and all that. It's most likely 50/50 I/E and being an extrovert sucks anyways, anyone wanna trade :o
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How does being an extrovert ''suck'' is beyond me. Extroversion is largely favored upon, specially in Western society. I think there might be more extroverts in the sense that so many introverts are forced to act like extroverts due to social pressure.

Billy said:
bingo. Lot of ESFJs and ISFJs and especially INFPs being mistypes as INFJs all over the internet.
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INFJ is not the only type that gets mistyped. Its a little pet peeve of mine, specially because it further emphasizes the idea of the INFJ ''rareness'' which people get very fond of. People from all types are going to be mistyped, that is the disadvantage of self-testing.
 
according to my communication textbook, the breakdown goes like this (for America):
70% of the population is extroverted, while 30% is introverted.
75% is sensing, while 25% is Intuiting
50% is Thinking, and 50% Feeling. about 2/3 of males prefer thinking, while 2/3 of females have feeling as their preferred function.
about 50% of the population is judging, and 50% perceiving.

anyone know how to pull the probability or percentage of an INFJ from that? I'm pretty sure it goes beyond algebra into simple statistics, but i've forgotten all my statistics. :( that was the only fun math :(

really though, anyone get a probability out of that? i'm sure it doesn't account for a multiplicity of factors on how rare a type can be, but i would be really interested in seeing what that would come out to, if someone doesn't mind number crunching.

and i don't know how they measure this. if they used Myers and Briggs as the source in my textbook, then it was some type of largely projective measurement. I think most projective measurements are prone to be flawed though.

anyone want to crunch those numbers? :mcute:
 
It depends where you are.

N types tend to be much more common online.

I met a lot of INTJ's online and ESFJ's seem to be non-existent. However INTJ's are said to be rare and ESFJ's are quite common.
 
Raccoon Love said:
How does being an extrovert ''suck'' is beyond me. Extroversion is largely favored upon, specially in Western society. I think there might be more extroverts in the sense that so many introverts are forced to act like extroverts due to social pressure.
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Nah, I wouldn't say it suck.
But what sucks is that introverts tend to put extroversion on a pedestral thinking it's so awesome and that it's so easy and that it's totally better than being an introvert in every ways and that we're much more accepted and that blah blah blah. It's not. Extroverts may be more appreciated in the sense that "Omg, like I r in teh high skoolz and I r so popularz and I r talkin to every1 zomg", but outside that, not really. But that's not even the definition of an extrovert tough, I'm pretty much the opposite of that. I could go on a rant about how being an introvert is easier, but I won't because I like the monkeys whoever decided to put them as smilies is a genius.
 
Royal said:
Nah, I wouldn't say it suck.
But what sucks is that introverts tend to put extroversion on a pedestral thinking it's so awesome and that it's so easy and that it's totally better than being an introvert in every ways and that we're much more accepted and that blah blah blah. It's not. Extroverts may be more appreciated in the sense that "Omg, like I r in teh high skoolz and I r so popularz and I r talkin to every1 zomg", but outside that, not really. But that's not even the definition of an extrovert tough, I'm pretty much the opposite of that. I could go on a rant about how being an introvert is easier, but I won't because I like the monkeys whoever decided to put them as smilies is a genius.
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Haha I understand, I guess its all a matter of personal perspective. They both have their pros and cons. Imagine a world with only one type? that will certainly be boring and would not function well.
 
Raccoon Love said:
Haha I understand, I guess its all a matter of personal perspective. They both have their pros and cons. Imagine a world with only one type? that will certainly be boring and would not function well.
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Someone once said, "Put 100 INFJs in a room, and eventually you'll have the entire spectrum of personalities."

I think what she meant was that whatever similarities we all share will fall into the background, and what differences we have left will be what we use to define ourselves. That, and somebody's got to be the garbage man.
 
In most studies I've seen INFJ are the rarest, I actually can't think of one were that wasn't the case. Weather they are as rare as they say would probably depend on the community your talking about.

Of course I don't know how they get those studies.
 
I will admit it. I love being an infj for several reasons. One of them being they are "rare." But I don't think they are as common as the others, simply from my experience. Me and my friend Soulofthelaurel are the only ones I know irl who are infjs. And despite this forum, I only know one other person online that is one, (and I force all my friends to take em ! >:) ) But to be honest, even if they were they the most common I would still love being one.
 
maybe i wanted to feel special, but i think i mainly just always felt very different from people around me. when i first did an mbti test i became a bit emotional because it just made sense. i wouldn't say that it made me feel special so much as it validated and helped me to understand my feelings of difference to some extent. and i think we are probably less frequent in the population than other types.
 
invisible said:
maybe i wanted to feel special, but i think i mainly just always felt very different from people around me. when i first did an mbti test i became a bit emotional because it just made sense. i wouldn't say that it made me feel special so much as it validated and helped me to understand my feelings of difference to some extent. and i think we are probably less frequent in the population than other types.
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YES EXACTLY RIGHT ! Haha I was so overjoyed because other people experienced what I did. I felt so vindicated.
 
First off, there is no "better" type.
Everyone has different personalities and different ways of looking at the world and dealing with people, that's what makes us unique and awesome.

That being said, I only know one Infj in real life, as well. And truth be told, I don't know too many extroverted people. Most of my friends are Istps/infps/isfj/infp/isfp. I do have a friend who is an enfj though. I would say that the type is pretty rare.
 
Yea to be honest I think there are a lot more I's in the world than E's, but no one notices, because E's take ALL THE GLORY. (usually)
 
We are getting into speculation now though. Theories that extroversion is more dominant can be originated from claims such as ''humans are social creatures''. Introversion has always been the social stigma and associated with sadness or instability, at least in the culture I was raised here in Miami. People see a child who is not as social and automatically think that its not normal or that something is wrong with the child.

I think naturally the ideal 50/50 balance is more natural, after that cultural aspects really take a role in shaping what a society has an affinity for, in this case extroversion is greatly encouraged in western society.

This may not be the case for Easter philosophy, where in places like Japan introversion is actually valued over extroversion.
 
I don't think Japan favors introversion nearly as much as you assume. Traditional Japanese societies is quite different from how western Japanophiles tend to think of it. They may have some large geeky communities, but these are generally shunned by the more mainstream and traditional members of the society. In the Asians I know extroversion is definitely the norm in their in-groups, although they may act introverted around strangers. Asian culture tends to be very Judging too.


I read somewhere that extroversion and judging preferences are both favored by the needs of agricultural societies. Apparently in bands of hunter-gatherers introversion and perceiving preferences are much more common. INFP is supposedly a common type among Australian Aborigines. In most societies natural selection has preferred EJs since the neolithic era though.
 
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RememberWhenItRained said:
according to my communication textbook, the breakdown goes like this (for America):
70% of the population is extroverted, while 30% is introverted.
75% is sensing, while 25% is Intuiting
50% is Thinking, and 50% Feeling. about 2/3 of males prefer thinking, while 2/3 of females have feeling as their preferred function.
about 50% of the population is judging, and 50% perceiving.

anyone know how to pull the probability or percentage of an INFJ from that? I'm pretty sure it goes beyond algebra into simple statistics, but i've forgotten all my statistics. :( that was the only fun math :(
anyone want to crunch those numbers? :mcute:
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Sure. It's actually not complicated, just take the percentages of the type you want multiplied by each other. So INFJ is .3 x .25 x .5 x .5 = 0.01875 or 1.875%

That also means any INXX is 1.875% if you use those.

But yeah, unfortunately you can't really trust stats on this matter very well. Some types may just be less open to taking the test than others. And surveying everyone on the planet won't work(Even if it was somehow feasible) as people are wont to give false answers sometimes. You'd probably get a decent estimate though.
 
Raccoon Love said:
This may not be the case for Easter philosophy, where in places like Japan introversion is actually valued over extroversion.
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I heard this too. In Introvert Power, Laurie Helgoe mentions that introversion is the norm in several Asian countries (Japan?) and some countries in northern Europe (like Norway). Where she got her sources, I know not.
 
Cecilff2 said:
Sure. It's actually not complicated, just take the percentages of the type you want multiplied by each other. So INFJ is .3 x .25 x .5 x .5 = 0.01875 or 1.875%

That also means any INXX is 1.875% if you use those.

But yeah, unfortunately you can't really trust stats on this matter very well. Some types may just be less open to taking the test than others. And surveying everyone on the planet won't work(Even if it was somehow feasible) as people are wont to give false answers sometimes. You'd probably get a decent estimate though.
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That is assuming that there is absolutely no correlation between the various preferences, which is not really true.

Considering that the most common type for males is ISTJ and for females ISFJ, I'd say that introversion is significantly more common among SJs than SPs or Ns. I believe it has also been shown that NPs tend to be more common than NJs, with ENFP being the most common intuitive if I remember correctly.


Those stats don't fit with many I've seen before. From what I've read women are twice as likely to be feelers than thinkers, but thinkers are only 10% more common than feelers among men. That makes feelers about 56% of the total population and thinkers only 44%. I've also read that Judgers are about a 55% majority among males and close to a 70% majority among females, making judgers about a 62% majority overall.

If we used this data with your assumption that these preferences are perfectly independent then you get INFJs making up about 2.6% of the population instead of around 1.9%. This is very slightly more than twice as common as the calculated percentage of INTPs, which would come out as the rarest type although studies almost always show us are more common than INFJs.
INFJ
.3*.25*.56*.62=0.02604
INTP
.3*.25*.44*.38=0.01287
 
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