identifying 3rd and 4th function dominance

Logically according to Jung's theory, and Myers Briggs® interpretation, functional dominance can be extended beyond the superior (dominant) and auxiliary (secondary) functions to potential tertiary (3rd) and quarternary (4th) functions. This enables the identification of the order (relative strength or preference) of all four functions - Thinking, Feeling, Sensing and Intuition - within any given type. The process for doing this is simple, once you crack the dominant and auxiliary methodology. Here's how to determine 3rd and 4th functional dominance:

Remember Jung's principle of opposites and the four compass points. The most dominant or 'superior' function is balanced by its opposite in the unconscious, and will be correspondingly the least dominant just as the superior function is the most dominant, to whatever extent.

The 4th function therefore, available consciously in whatever degree, is always the opposite of the superior. For example, where a personality's superior or most dominant function is Thinking, logically its quaternary (or 4th or weakest function) function will be Feeling. Where a personality's superior function is Feeling, its 4th function will be Thinking. Where Intuition is dominant, so Sensing will be least strong. Where Sensing is the superior function, so Intuition will be the weakest. And that's the full set.

Applying the same 'balancing opposites' principle, logically, the 3rd function is the opposite of the 2nd or auxiliary. Same pattern as for the 1st-4th correlations. Easy.

The extent to which any personality is able to make use of supporting functions depends on other factors. Some people are able to draw on the 3rd and 4th functions more ably than others (dominant and auxiliary as well for that matter).

From the perspective of understanding and describing each of the sixteen MBTI® personality types simply from their four-letter codes, identifying functional dominance - from superior or dominant, to auxiliary, to 3rd and to 4th functions - is a very useful technique. When you understand the methodology you can say a great deal about any personality type just by looking at its MBTI® four-letter code - because you can determine the preference (which implies prevalence and priority) of each of the four functions, two of which will not even be represented in the MBTI® four-letter code!

Below is the complete set of functional dominance mixtures, showing 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th preferred functions according to MBTI® type. By using this methodology we can also very usefully group the Myers Briggs® types according to their Jungian four dominant functions, which is a super matrix for understanding these theories, and for applying the thinking to team-building and job roles within teams, etc.

MBTI® types and functional dominance

The left column shows the MBTI® sixteen types, colour-coded as to Extravert or Introvert. These MBTI® types are grouped in four sets according to '1st functional dominance' ('superior' function) which are colour-coded in the middle and right columns accordingly. For each MBTI® type, the middle and right columns show the dominant (superior) function, followed by the 2nd (auxiliary) function, and then the 3rd and 4th functions, which are largely unconscious and can be accessed when required depending on the person. Note that each of the four main functional dominance groupings (Thinking, Feeling, Sensing, Intuition, represented by the four colours) contains only two different sequential 'dominance sets', and that each of these can be formed by both an Extraverted and an Introverted type.

The extent to which people are able to call upon and make use of their auxiliary, and particularly 3rd and 4th functions depends on the individual person, and is also the subject of continuing debate and ongoing research by psychologists. Most people are capable of developing their less strong functions to some degree or other. Knowing what they are and that they exist in us is the starting point.

Similarly everyone is capable of understanding their own functional dominance and how this style might be perceived by others. Using this matrix you might be able to have a good guess as to your own Myers Briggs® MBTI® type and your functional dominance. Look at the right column: ask yourself - and maybe also ask someone who knows you well - what order of preferences best represents your own personality? Having decided this, are you mainly extraverted or introverted? You might now have a reasonable idea of your own MBTI® personality type.

If anyone can suggest more clearly how to present all this I am very much open to suggestions. Please let me know any daft typos or errors in this. It's not an easy thing to explain.

Aside from using Myers Briggs® MBTI® model to understand one's own or other other people's personality types, the most important opportunity is that everyone can and should use systems such these to endeavour to access and develop their weaker functions.

This was central to Jung's motivation, and this opportunity and encouragement echoes through Myers Briggs'® ideas too. Awareness of the fact that we all possess these unconscious under-developed functions is the first step towards realising that they can be developed and used, alongside our natural preferences, brought into play consciously, where we see the need and possibility to do so.

The Myers Briggs® MBTI® system typically involves the use of MBTI® testing instruments to determine people's own types or 'profiles', the process and analysis of which is best administered by a suitably qualified person to give proper explanation and feedback to people being 'tested'.

There are significant commonalities between the Myers Briggs® personality model and that of David Keirsey. Both systems draw strongly on the work of Carl Jung and (Keirsey's more than Myers Briggs®) also to the Four Temperaments. Further comparisons are indicated in the Four Temperaments and Keirsey sections on this page, and these cross-references between models (notably Benziger) help with the understanding of each model independently, and also help to build up a variety of perspectives of oneself, and human personality and behaviour.

There are some differences between Myers Briggs® and Keirsey's interpretations. Not least, as Keirsey points out, Myers Briggs® is effectively an interpretation and extension of Jung's model - both of which focus on the minds and thinking types of people, whereas Keirsey's system, building on Myers Briggs®, Jung, and others, seeks to identify and point to what the different personality types can do well in different circumstances. In addition there are some detailed differences between certain type descriptions of Myers Briggs® and Keirsey, which concern complex interpretations that seem to me to be a matter of personal opinion, based on the experiences of the theorists themselves and not matters that can be proven one way or another. As we've already seen, this is not a perfect science, and when we drill down deeper than broad definitions the detail is open to different interpretation, which I encourage you to do yourself. Despite the best efforts of some of the providers in the psychometrics industry to convince us that all this is highly complex and impenetrable, you can hopefully see that much of the thinking is extremely accessible and within the grasp of ordinary folk.

As you learn about these concepts, see each model (Myers Briggs®, Jung, Keirsey, Four Temperaments, Eysenck, Benziger, etc) as self-sufficient and stand-alone. Note the common aspects between the models by all means because there are many: seeing the common aspects will greatly improve your overall understanding of the subject and of people; but do not try to overlay and match definitions and descriptions from model to model if the fit is not obvious and clear. Respect each model in isolation for what it is - a different perspective of the same highly complicated thing - the human mind.

More information about the Myers Briggs® organisation and MBTI® system and types descriptions is at myersbriggs.org.

Note that Myers Briggs®, MBTI® and other terminology is likely to be protected trademarked intellectual property for use in direct training and testing applications, so beware of using any of these terms for commercial purposes without a licence, or at least checking whether a licence is required or not.

david keirsey's personality model and the 'keirsey temperament sorter'

As mentioned above, David Keirsey's work refers significantly to the age-old 'Four Temperaments' model, and to the work of Carl Jung, and Katharine Briggs and Isabel Briggs Myers, who also drew strongly on Jung's work. Keirsey's key book (with Bates) was 'Please Understand Me', first published in 1978 and since revised and re-issued several times, more recently as 'Please Understand Me II', which is a wonderful book and includes a self-test to discover your detailed temperament type (of the sixteen types).

David Keirsey's ideas extend and develop the Four Temperaments and the ideas of Carl Jung, and also relate very directly to the Myers Briggs® MBTI® system.

In fact according to Keirsey the two systems - Keirsey and MBTI® - are quite similar. (Here's a good explanation of the similarities and differences between the Keirsey and Myers Briggs® systems.)

Keirsey's model has for many years underpinned a highly regarded personality assessment methodology, which Keirsey claims to be the most widely used in the world. Keirsey's model has also enabled the development of a considerable supporting business corporation, which markets his testing instruments and their associated training and accreditation.

Like Myers Briggs®, Keirsey's personality model analyses human personality according to sixteen types, which are compared below to the Myers Briggs® MBTI® equivalents. There are fundamental similarities between the Keirsey types and the Myers Briggs® types, but there are also some significant differences, so do not see the two systems as being the same thing.

keirsey/MBTI® types correlations

Keirsey's personality model is particularly helpful because of the meaningful personality 'type' descriptions, especially when used alongside Myers Briggs® abbreviated letter codes. The colour-coded groupings reflect Keirsey's view that certain categories of MBTI® or Keirsey types equate strongly to the Four Temperaments. Keirsey is a fan of the Four Temperaments. Not everyone is, particularly when it comes to categorising MBTI® types. This layout is shown because Keirsey favours it. The use of colours are purely to aid comparison with the Four Temperaments model shown earlier in this section. Other than an echo of Jung's 'Perceiving' and 'Judging' within the SP and SJ blocks, these colours do not relate to the colours used in the Jung and Myers Briggs® sections.

N.B. Again bear in mind that certain copyright protections apply to the MBTI® and Keirsey terms so I recommend that you be wary of using these in the provision of chargeable services or materials since under certain circumstances they are likely to be subject to licensing conditions.

A free 'lite' Keirsey personality test and descriptions of each of the Keirsey sixteen types is available via the Keirsey website at Keirsey.com. The 'lite' test indicates your dominant or preferred temperament of the four main types, but not your detailed type within the temperament, which is something you need to pay to discover. In my view the most enjoyable and useful way to do this is to buy a copy of Keirsey's book 'Please Understand Me II', which contains the 70-question Keirsey Temperament Sorter II personality test, which will in a few minutes reveal your detailed Keirsey personality type, and also provides a vast amount of descriptive information relating to your type and all the other fifteen types within the Keirsey model.

eysenck's personality inventory and the four temperaments

British psychologist Hans Jurgen Eysenck (1916-97) was born in Berlin. A Jewish sympathiser, he left Germany in 1934 for England, where he studied and later taught psychology at London University. He became a prolific writer in the field of clinical psychology and also had a great interest in psychometrics. He disagreed with the principles of psychoanalysis and preferred the (at times controversial) view that genetics (inherited factors - our genes) are significant in determining the psychological differences between people, and more besides.

Eysenck used extensive research and questionnaires to build a personality inventory which he related to Galen's Four Temperaments. The fit is not perfect with the more recent interpretations of the Four Temperaments (Keirsey, Myers Briggs®) but there are certainly many common aspects between the Eysenck and Galen models.

Eysenck's concepts are particularly interesting, and provide a valuable additional perspective compared to the Four Temperaments, Jung, Myers Briggs®, and Keirsey, because they explore and analyse a personality dimension related to emotional stability.

Eysenck's approach to personality assessment was the first popular scalable mathematical methodology. Previous theories generally placed a person within one of the defining types, or between two types, or attributed a mixture of types to a person's personality.

Eysenck's 1950s theory (he later added a third dimension) measures personality using two scales:

• introversion-extraversion
• stability-instability (unemotional-emotional*)

Eysenck's theory also refers to instability as unstable, emotionally unstable, or neurotic.

*While Eysenck's scientific headings of 'stable' and 'unstable' or 'neurotic' can be seen as judgemental (good or bad) it's important not to see them in this way. Academics (including Eysenck) tend to write for other academics and forget or disregard that certain language carries negative meanings and stigmas in normal life, such as the words unstable and neurotic. Eysenck did not use the words to convey a sense of good or bad - he used them because he felt scientifically comfortable with the terms. If discussing these concepts with people who might be sensitive to words like 'unstable' or 'neurotic' it can be helpful to interpret Eysenck's 'instability' or 'neuroticism' to mean 'emotional', and for 'stable' to equate to 'unemotional'. 'Unemotional-emotional' was not Eysenck's alternative scale, it's my suggested alternative for seeing that this scale is not a question of good or bad.

By surveying many thousands of people, using many and various adjectives (traits) representing behaviours and types, Eysenck built a scalable model which also formed the basis of what became the Eysenck personality test.

Eysenck's theory regards the choleric and melancholic temperaments as being emotionally unstable (let's say 'emotional'), and the sanguine and phlegmatic temperaments as being emotionally stable (unemotional). The theory sees the phlegmatic and melancholic temperaments as being introverted, and the choleric and sangine temperaments as being extraverted. At this point there is clear divergence from the Eysenck model and certain recent interpretations of the Four Temperaments, since, for example, Keirsey and Myers Briggs® clearly assert that introversion and extraversion appear in each of the four temperaments. Eysenck's ideas are a part-fit with MBTI® and Keirsey, but certainly not a direct overlay.

The Eysenck theory produces four main types types of personality, which he said resembled Galen's Four Temperaments:

• unstable-introverted (emotional-introverted) = melancholic
• unstable-extraverted (emotional-extraverted) = choleric
• stable-introverted (unemotional-introverted) = phlegmatic
• stable-extraverted (unemotional-extraverted) = sanguine

Within which are several key words of graduated significance relative to the heading elements (Eysenck presented this as a four-quadrant circle containing his describing words, rather than the matrix shown here). The colours merely reflect those used in the Four Temperaments section for ease of comparison and do not appear in Eysenck's theory:

Can you see yourself, and others perhaps, in this model? Could you define yourself according to a mixture of these characteristics? Perhaps you can see in yourself a leading 'type' with one or two supporting types? (This is not how Eysenck intended the model to be used, but seeing it in this way can be helpful for understanding your own and others' personality types.)

Again note that the fit is not perfect between Eysenck's model and recent interpretations of the Four Temperaments such as Keirsey and Myers Briggs®, but there are certainly many common aspects between Eysenck and Galen.

The significant difference between Eysenck's ideas and the Four Temperaments interpretations of Galen and the older theorists is that Eysenck's (1950s) theory measures personality according to two scalable dimensions, introversion-extraversion and stability-instability; whereas traditional Four Temperaments ideas simply seek to define personality according to one of the four temperaments. In this respect Eysenck's model is far more sophisticated, and indeed add an extra dimension (stable-unstable) that is not found at all in popular systems such as Keirsey and Myers Briggs®. In this respect Eysenck's model offers a highly significant and helpful additional perspective to the Four Temperaments, Jung's Psychological Types, and the Keirsey and Myers Briggs® systems on which they were based.

Eysenck's ideas have been developed and supported using studies and surveys of many thousands of people. Eysenck was one of the most prolific researchers and writers on the subject of personality and its measurement, and yet he continued to strive for improved understanding and interpretation into the 1990s, having worked for 60 years in the field. Proof, if any were needed, that this is indeed a complex area, and one which we are still a long long way from fully comprehending.

It is interesting to note also that Eysenck's 1950s key words feature strongly in at least one modern version of the DISC personality testing system, which testifies to the enduring importance of Eysenck's work, and which provides yet another indication of the similarity and common themes between many of these 'different' personality models.

Eysenck later theorised about a third dimension: psychoticism, from his studies of mentally disturbed people, and which can be related to risk-taking and eccentricity. In his later life Eysenck also developed better scientific understanding of Jung's introversion and extraversion 'attitudes', which, along with his other ideas helped Katherine Benziger develop her own ideas of personality and behaviour.

Hans Eysenck's key books include: Uses and Abuses of Psychology (1953); Know Your Own IQ (1962); Race, Intelligence and Education (1971), and the autobiographical Rebel without a Cause (1990).

katherine benziger's personality and brain-type theory

Benziger's model is relatively recent compared to the Four Temperaments, Jung, Eysenck, etc. Her theories and tools have been widely used by many of the world's major corporations, and are still the subject of ongoing research and refinement.

Benziger's key book, The Art Of Using Your Whole Brain, was first published in 1989, revised as 'Thriving In Mind' in 2000. Benziger's main psychometrics instrument is the BTSA (Benziger Thinking Styles Assessment).

Katherine Benziger is unusual compared to many other personality thinkers (and particularly the way that other seminal theories have been developed into highly commercialised 'testing' systems) because she places greatest emphasis on 'wellness' and the need to help people avoid 'falsifying' their true type. Benziger says that very many people 'falsify type', so as to fit into a role or career path that might not be right for them, which has a negative impact on health, happiness and personal effectiveness.

Benziger drew great inspiration from Carl Jung and from the work of Myers Briggs® and Hans Eysenck. Her work has also been influenced and supported by the late 20th century scientific developments into brain imaging, using modern scanning technologies - basically using safe equivalents of X-Ray techniques - to actually determine which parts of the brain are being used for various functions and types of thinking ('thinking' here in the general sense of what the brain is doing, not in the 'logical' Jungian sense).

Put simply, Benziger's theory expresses personality in terms of four quadrants of the brain (basal means rear or back):

• Basal Left - process and routine
• Basal Right - intuition and empathy
• Front Left - logic and results
• Front Right - vision and creativity

Benziger relates these modes of thinking to Jung's Four Functions, and Benziger's theory provides many people an immensely helpful way to make sense of what Jung said and advocated. For ease of comparison between Benziger's and Jung's models the same colours are used for corresponding 'functions' or 'styles', although these colours were not part of either theorist's concepts.

Importantly Benziger acknowledges and uses the Jungian Extravert and Introvert dimension, but does not represent it within the four-quadrant model of the four functional types (Benziger's 'behaving' or 'thinking' or 'preferred' styles - the word 'thinking' is used here in a more general sense than the specific Jungian meaning).

These brain-type functions also correlate to the Myers Briggs® and Keirsey models, naturally since all of these theories make use of the fundamental Jungian 'four functional types' reference points - Thinking, Feeling, Sensing, Intuition.

Benziger's model uses this representation of the brain (viewed from above, top is front) and the summary definitions below. The brain has four specialised areas. Each is responsible for different brain functions (which imply strengths, behaviour and thinking style). Within Benziger's model the specialised areas are called 'modes'.

According to Benziger each of us possesses natural strengths in only one of these specialised areas, which causes us to favour and use a certain style ahead of others. Outside of that one style, we may have strengths and weaknesses which are based on what competencies we have been exposed to, or developed, and indeed which competencies we have not been exposed to.

Katherine Benziger refers to the natural specialised area as the 'preferred thinking and behavioural mode'. Typically this will equate to the Jungian 'superior function' and the Myers Briggs® 'dominant function' as described in this section.

Benziger's books ('The Art of Using Your Whole Brain', and in revised form 'Thriving in Mind') contain an excellent and simple personality assessment to illustrate this point. The benziger personality assessment relies on complete honesty when answering - if you are 'falsifying your type' then you will distort the analysis (which of course is true for any personality assessment or psychometrics test, although most theorists and providers seem to emphasise this aspect far less than Benziger). Incidentally the Benziger assessment also contains a section which determines the extent to which the person is falsifying type, and this for Benziger is a fundamentally important aspect of her theory and assessment methodology.

Without wishing to go off on a long tangent, Benziger's ideas about 'falsification of type' relate strongly to the need for people to seek proper 'congruence' and 'alignment' between their own true natural personal preferences, style, strengths, and the organisations and services within which they work. Organisations and employers need increasingly to wake up to these issues, both in terms of re-aligning their own values and aims so that they become more helpful for the world at large, and also in helping their people to identify and pursue and fulfil their own unique potential and destiny. Benziger's ideas are at the heart of this very modern sort of organisational philosophy.

Now back to the model. Here's how Benziger's model relates to Jung's Four Functions. Once more the colours are merely to help with comparisons to the Jung and Myers Briggs® models:

Remember while Benziger certainly acknowledges and makes use of Jung's Extravert-Introvert dimension, it is not represented within Benziger's four-quadrants brain model.

These are Benziger's brain functions or 'modes' in more detail. Note again the correlation to the Jungian functions.

Benziger says that people possess one and only one natural leading function or 'mode' in which their brain is naturally efficient.

People can and often do however develop competencies in other modes. When they do in practice they will be using more areas of their brain, and when they do this the competencies outside their natural lead are always somewhat draining, which links to Benziger's ideas about the dangers of falsification of type. If it's 'draining' using competencies that are not our natural strength, it must be more stressful still when we have to work exclusively in a competence other than our natural preference.

benziger and correlations to other personality models

Benziger's model is particularly helpful for many people in providing an excellent framework for comparing and understanding other personality models, including Jung's original four functional types, Kolb, and one or two other less well-known ideas from around the world. Once more the colours aim to help show the relationships with Jung's model, and are not part of the original theories. The correlations to the Myers Briggs® MBTI® types (and by implication Keirsey's also) are based on the functional dominance within each of these types (explained in the functional dominance sub-section of the Myers Briggs® section).

More detail about Katherine Benziger's fascinating theory is on the Benziger page.