post 5

By anders pearson 01 Jul 2000

a while back on a webdesign mailing list i’m on, someone put forth the theory that because webdesign often combines creative/artistic work with programming, webdesigners and coders might tend more towards certain ends of the Myers-Briggs personality spectrum. to test this hypothesis, i set up a simple poll script and invited the listees to take the kiersey test and then enter their type. the list has about 800 subscribers. i’ve gotten 142 responses so far. the kiersey test website lists their statistics; here are the results i got, including a column showing my results normalized against the kiersey ones (thanks to Dave Nicholls for the statistics know how on that part):

typenumberpercentagenormalized*
ENFJ42.8169014084507 %0.369672100846549
ENFP117.74647887323944 %0.912423895552348
ENTJ42.8169014084507 %0.861437739587371
ENTP96.33802816901408 %2.85496764370004
ESFJ53.52112676056338 %0.297392462885421
ESFP10.704225352112676 %0.14857074939086
ESTJ53.52112676056338 %0.330622231038815
ESTP21.40845070422535 %0.525541307546773
INFJ139.15492957746479 %1.20143432775128
INFP3121.830985915493 % 3.17310841794956
INTJ2114.7887323943662 %2.66463646745337
INTP1510.5633802816901 %3.30105633802817
ISFJ53.52112676056338 % 0.366784037558685
ISFP42.8169014084507 % 0.926612305411416
ISTJ53.52112676056338 % 0.338895742113896
ISTP74.92957746478873 % 2.24071702944942


out of 142 total

i don’t know nearly enough about statistics to interpret this data properly but it certainly looks like webdesigners tend heavily towards the IN group with 3 times the normal levels of INTP (architect), INFP (healer), and INTJs (mastermind), along with the ENTPs (inventor). the profession also seems to be surprisingly lacking in ESFP (performer), ENFJ (teacher), ESFJ (provider), ESTJ (supervisor), ISFJ (protector), and ISTJ (inspector) types.

probably not a large enough sample size to really draw any conclusions, but an interesting experiment nonetheless.