In a highly interesting paper, Friendship and natural selection Nicholas A. Christakis and James H. Fowler describe that people tend to find their friends among genetically similar people. That means that friends are more related to each other (the equivalent of fourth cousins) than to people outside their circle. There might be several possible reasons for this phenomenon. The possibility that fascinates me most is selection via personality types, i.e. people choose other people with a similar personality type as friends and partners.
I have already discussed the similarities between Myers-Briggs types, Helen Fisher’s types and possible adaptations due to subsistence economy. Here is a schema of the types who like to pair in all different types of relationships with each other:
I do the Myers-Briggs test with all of my classes and each time I find a similar picture: similar types sit next to each other. The ones who have the same MBTI often tell me that they have been friends since early childhood.
What you can see that from this seating chart is that personality types tend to “bond” like molecules. The more similar two individuals are the more similarly they tend to experience the world and the more easily they bond. There is an empty seat between two types that are opposites (ENFP/ISTJ) and an empty seat between the outsider (INTJ) who hasn’t found anybody to bond with and the rest of the classmates in the back row.
Outsiders are almost always IN types, most typically INTJ/INFJ with social anxiety. IN types are the rarest of all types and find it hard to connect to other types. These students are often extremely difficult when it comes to collaborating with other classmates or giving a presentation in front of the whole class. In general, the quiet students are introverts (no big surprise) and occasionally also extroverted intuitive (EN) who haven’t found anybody to bond with and are quasi outsiders despite being extroverts.
The “alphas” are usually extroverts sensors (ES), in particular, ESTJ and ESTP. When it comes to class and school presidents, it is often the F types, who are more popular, so ESFJ and ENFJ are overrepresented among them.
Typically the hardest types to mix are N/S (hunter-gatherer vs farmer/pastoralist). N types generally mix well with S types that do not try to dominate them, i.e. often I/F, but also the respective T types, when treated as a friend rather than a rival. If there is a conflict between the two major groups in class, the two groups are usually made up like this: one group in which ES types are predominant and usually led by one or more ST types, with the other group more “egalitarian”, typically without a leader, made up of mixed N/IS/SF types.
Why is there no INTP in class?
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