Serious, principled, and systematic, the ISTJ gets right to the point.
Reading time: 5 minutes
Gregory Park, Ph.D.
Author
This series of short articles touches on several aspects of the ISTJ personality type.
You can jump straight to any section by clicking the links below, or keep reading to learn about the definition of the ISTJ personality type.
ISTJ stands for Introverted, Sensing, Thinking, and Judging.
In the popular Myers-Briggs or 16-personalities tradition, all personalities belong to one of 16 types. Each type is defined by preferences across these four dimensions:
Here’s how to understand the ISTJ’s place on all four dimensions:
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ISTJs have an introverted attitude or orientation.
ISTJs tend to focus more on the inner, subjective world of concepts and ideas, while an extraverted attitude leads to a greater focus on the external world of objects and people.
ISTJs prefer to use the cognitive function of sensing over intuition when taking in information about the world.
This dimension, sensing vs. intuition, is known as the perceiving function in MBTI theory.
Sensing refers to perceiving and gathering information directly through the sensory system. People who prefer sensing trust their five senses to directly observe the world, and they can be more skeptical of more intuitive, theoretical approaches to learning and understanding.
ISTJs prefer using their thinking function when judging information and assessing values and needs among people.
This dimension, thinking vs. feeling, is known as the judging function in MBTI theory.
By prefering thinking over feeling as their judging function, ISTJs lean heavily on logic, consistency, and correctness when making decisions, rather than focusing on others’ emotions, desires, and perceptions.
As a judging type, ISTJs tend to present their judging function of thinking to the external world.
Because they present their thinking function externally, other people see ISTJs as logical, rational, and highly analytical.
The four-letter types from MBTI theory encode each type’s attitudes and preferred cognitive functions.
For the ISTJ,
From this, we can determine how the ISTJ prefers the four cognitive functions of intuition, sensing, thinking, and feeling:
Why? ISTJs have an introverted attitude (I) and a judging attitude (J), so they present their judging function (T) to the external world.
However, as an introverted type, ISTJs prefer an orientation to the inner world, so their primary cognitive function is not what they show to the external world. Instead, their primary cognitive function is their perceiving function: sensing or sensory perception (S).
ISTJs’ secondary function is the one they show to their external world: thinking. This counterbalances their introverted primary function.
In MBTI theory, the tertiary function is the opposite of the auxiliary function, which for ISTJs is feeling.
Lastly, the inferior function is the opposite of the primary function, which for ISTJs is intuition. The inferior function in all personality types is the least developed function.
According to the MBTI, somewhere between 5% and 30% of all people will be classified as an ISTJ. The rarity of the ISTJ varies based on the version of the MBTI assessment and the demographic makeup of the sample.
For comparisons between ISTJs and other types from the 16 Personality typology, visit any of the type pairings below:
