Type Spotting Guide
Learn to identify personality types accurately
Overview
Assessing someone’s personality type isn’t always an easy process, especially when you don’t know them personally. Looking around the internet for type information about famous people or fictional characters, you’ll often find conflicting opinions. If you don’t have the opportunity to ask someone for more information about their personality, the only thing you can do is collect some clues and make an educated guess - a process that is unfortunately prone to error.
This guide outlines my process for doing a thorough type analysis. I build a case for/against each of the 16 types, based on the evidence available, and systematically narrow down the options to the most probable type. Type spotting should be a fun activity, and it gets easier as you start to remember the patterns to look for. I revise this guide and add new sections on occasion, as people describe to me the problems that they run into during type assessment.
Guide Contents
IMPORTANT NOTE: This guide was written specifically for assessing OTHER people, which inherently requires a lot of guesswork. But such guesswork is moot when trying to assess oneself. It is better to use the Function Theory Guide for self-assessment because it targets cognition directly and in depth. Remember that, the more complicated the person you’re examining, the more theoretical knowledge required for ensuring a thorough and accurate assessment. This guide outlines some important concepts but doesn’t go in depth to explain them.