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):

type

number

percentage

normalized*

ENFJ

2.8169014084507 %

0.369672100846549

ENFP

7.74647887323944 %

0.912423895552348

ENTJ

2.8169014084507 %

0.861437739587371

ENTP

6.33802816901408 %

2.85496764370004

ESFJ

3.52112676056338 %

0.297392462885421

ESFP

0.704225352112676 %

0.14857074939086

ESTJ

3.52112676056338 %

0.330622231038815

ESTP

1.40845070422535 %

0.525541307546773

INFJ

9.15492957746479 %

1.20143432775128

INFP

21.830985915493 %

3.17310841794956

INTJ

14.7887323943662 %

2.66463646745337

INTP

10.5633802816901 %

3.30105633802817

ISFJ

3.52112676056338 %

0.366784037558685

ISFP

2.8169014084507 %

0.926612305411416

ISTJ

3.52112676056338 %

0.338895742113896

ISTP

4.92957746478873 %

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.