How to Figure Out Your Type When the Tests Keep Disagreeing

By Michael A. RoBards, LCSW

You took one test and got INFP. Another said INFJ. A third, on a bad day, said ISFP. Now you have three labels and less clarity than when you started. This is one of the most common frustrations people bring to typing communities, and the fix is not a fourth test.

Why the tests disagree in the first place

Every MBTI-style questionnaire measures four continuous traits and then forces each one into a binary. If your real position on Thinking–Feeling is close to the middle, whether you land on the T or the F side depends on how the questions are worded and how you felt that morning. Different tests also draw their cutoff lines in slightly different places. So three tests disagreeing does not mean one of them is right and two are wrong. It usually means you are near the middle on at least one dimension, and the tests are doing exactly what they are built to do.

That is worth taking in: a near-the-middle result is information about you, not a failure of the test or of your self-knowledge.

A better method: type from behavior, not from answers

Here is what I walk people through in my office. Instead of answering questions about yourself in the abstract, look at what you actually do, across months, not on a Tuesday.

• Energy. After a long day with people, do you feel filled up or drained? Not what you wish were true — what your body does. That is the honest read on Extraversion–Introversion.
• Attention. When you walk into a new room, do you notice what is literally there (details, textures, what is out of place) or do you notice what it means, what it reminds you of, where it could go? Sensing versus Intuition is about where your attention lands first.
• Decisions. When you have to choose, what do you reach for first: the logic of the situation, or how it will affect the people in it? Both matter to everyone; the question is which one gets the first vote. That is Thinking–Feeling.
• Structure. Do you feel better with the plan made and the decision closed, or with options still open? Judging–Perceiving is not about being organized; it is about whether closure or openness feels like relief.

Then read the profiles — all of them you land between

If your behavior says you are between INFJ and INFP, read both full profiles slowly. You will almost always recognize yourself more clearly in one, and the places where you see yourself in both are simply true about you. The profiles on this site are written for exactly this: INFJ, INFP, and the rest of the 16 types.

Ask someone who sees your outside

One more thing that helps more than people expect: ask a partner, sibling, or close friend which description sounds like you. We are experts on our own inner life and often blind to how we actually show up. The people around you see your extraverted side better than you do.

What not to do

Do not retake the same test hoping for a tiebreaker. A 51/49 split will just flip the coin again. And do not type yourself as the version you would like to be. The most useful type is the one that explains the patterns you already have.

The Insight Game is built on the clinical Type and Temperament work of Dr. Martine J. RoBards, Ph.D. (1946–2017). Live community accuracy data is on the research page.