Why is INFJ the rarest type?

Basically the INFJ type barely makes sense. It's a very paradoxical type.

 

Because our ancestors were burned at the stake. We are an endangered species.

 

We are the few who remember who and what we are.

 

I love these replies.

I also concede that it takes a certain kind of personality to take the test, and take further interest thereafter. Is it even still employed as a tool in the US regularly? If so, it would only take into account the US populace and less so the rest of the world.

There could even be hidden INFJs in the population that have taken the test, but since the test is inherently flawed, it doesn't give them the right result. Same the other way around, although I can't fathom why someone would want to be one of us (on the other had, I couldn't bear being anyone but myself).

There is also the conspiracy theory that INFJs are made, because it's rare that any one of us isn't in some way damaged because of our experiences. I have yet to properly meet a stable thoroughbred INFJ.

 

Lol, I haven't met you, have I? I think I would have remembered

Besides, I meant by thoroughbred that the least of us are born as INFJs from the start. I for one (and I believe I have met myself) might as well have been an ENFP at one point during my childhood. Hence not a thoroughbred.

 

I'm just here for the waffles.

 

Because the most useless for short-term survival

 

well yeah, there is that too

 

People, please don't forget me!!!


I mean, I had posted the compilation of the official MBTI population counting per country on the wiki here: Link

It would be a good idea to make this thread sticky "MBTI population by country" instead of this one "Approximate MBTI percentages of MBTI per population", @Wyote .

I also do not have a whole theory why INFJs are rare (I do for ENFJs), but I have a partial explanation to that.

It happens that Intuition and Perceiving are correlated - or Sensing and Judgment are correlated, even inside the official MBTI, also on Sakinorva test, and although the keys2cognition one seems to be free from it, xNxJs are less intuitives than xNxPs in average.



These above are the correlations for US country, but other countries, even Japan, follows a similar pattern. In facet terms, all facets have the correlations as well. Explaining it conceptually is a little bit hard but far from impossible, there are N stuff that partially points to Perceiving (more than Perceiving stuff pointing to intuition in my opinion).

So, since there are these tendencies, it is very unlikely for any XNXJ or XSXP type to be the most common type in any country, and this can explain until some point - not entirely - why INFJs are rarer. ENFJs being rare can be explained entirely by this because "it gets further".

 

It's because INFJs were evolved to be the community shaman, mediating with the spirits and the dreamtime, back before civilisation happened. Trouble is, everyone knows that witches and wizards need to be supreme in their communities, along with the headman, so there isn't room for more than one of them in a given village or small nomadic group - if there were it was a matter of last one standing wins all. Apart from the apprentices of course. The small communities wouldn't stand for it either because the shaman was an overhead who had to be watered and fed. Of course not all shamans were INFJs, but this is why there are so few of us.

This persisted for tens of thousands of years so it became genetically programmed. Of course in some groups there were a bit too many, and in some there were too few, so there was a trade in shamans. You see the same in the way that priests and pastors traditionally moved communities far more than most other people did until modern times - though the link to INFJ type was not there for these guys in the same way, because the need for direct access to the spirit world was no longer absolutely essential for spiritual leaders in the Abrahamic religions, for example.

It's a theory anyway .....

 

Yeah !!!

 

Underdog was far superior to Mighty Mouse.


(John started it)

 

I see your Underdog and raise the pot by one Catweasel



(They never showed Underdog on our TV when I was a kid, nor when my own kids were that sort of age - two generations deprived )