Articles

SG-1 MBTI

Introduction

Jack

Daniel

Sam

Teal'c

Conclusion

Introduction

Personality Typing

Social scientists, as do all scientists, tend to try to organize the complex systems they study into more easily comprehended models. For behaviorists, this means that through history there have been numerous attempts to categorize temperament and personality.

In the 1920s, Carl Jung developed his own theory of personality type. This theory was later adapted for use in the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator ®, a particular test instrument for personality typing, and this is the system I've followed here.

Although personality typing is not used nor studied much within the psychiatric and research/academic psychological community, it is used extensively in career counseling and development, business and education. Many "personality tests" and "temperament sorters" are even available online.

The Four Scales

Basically, personality typing assumes that our personality can be divided into four independent scales: energizing, attending, deciding, and living. Within each scale we have a preference for one of two opposites that define the scale.

Energizing: where we prefer to focus our attention and what energizes us
- Extraverted (E): get their energy from the outer world of people, activities, and things
- Introverted (I): get their energy from their inner world of ideas, impressions, and thoughts
Attending: how we prefer to take in information
- Sensing (S): pay attention to information taken in directly through the five senses and focus on what is or what was
- Intuition (N): pay attention to their sixth sense, to hunches and insights and focus on what might be
Deciding: how we evaluate information and make decisions
- Thinking (T): make decisions in a logical and objective way
- Feeling (F): make decisions in a personal, values-oriented way
Living: our lifestyle orientation
- Judging (J): live in an organized, planned way
- Perceiving (P): live in a spontaneous, flexible way

This makes for a total of 16 different combinations (2x2x2x2), each of which defines one particular and unique personality type.

SG-1 Results

If we apply these principles to the members of SG-1, here's what I think they'd find (bearing in mind that characterizations may change as the show progresses):

Jack O'Neill - ESTJ
Daniel Jackson - INFP
Samantha Carter - ENTP
Teal'c - ISFJ

In the rest of the article, I provide more detail for each team member's temperament and conclude with some final thoughts about how these types help SG-1 work so well together despite their obvious differences.

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