- I was talking with one of my friends
who is an ENTP, and he was like,
"Frank, I started talking to some of my other friends
"and they're ENTPs, also."
He said, "Frank, is this normal?
"Do people have the same or
"similar personality types tend to congregate together?"
And a lot of times in the comments section,
I see people who are like,
"Man, I just wish I could find someone
"who's the same personality type as me,
"and we could be best friends
"and we could really understand each other."
Is that true?
If you were friends with someone
who was your personality type,
would it be the best friendship ever?
Are there some types
you just won't be able to be friends with?
That's what we're talking about today.
But before we jump into it,
let me tell you about this video's sponsor, Cloverleaf.
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Okay, so friendships and personality type,
how does it all work together?
So, first of all, here's a question.
Can you be friends with any personality type?
It doesn't matter what your personality type is,
could you make friends with any other personality type?
The answer is yes.
Because friendship is not about just like
fitting puzzle pieces together of your personality types.
Friendship really is about shared experiences.
You have a history you can look back on and bond over.
And not just that, but it's like,
you also wanna continue to have shared experiences.
Now, personality type helps you get to that point.
Personality type helps you want to get closer to someone
and be able to have those experiences, to be their friend,
but you can get thrown together with other people
who are not necessarily friendship compatible
and still just by those shared experiences become friends.
It happens the most when we're kids, when we're in school,
because kids are pretty malleable
when it comes to what they're willing to accept,
we're more flexible,
we can put up with people's differences a bit more,
we're not as stuck in our own ways.
Certainly, children have personality types,
but it's not becoming the huge issue
that it becomes when you are an adult.
So as kids, we are going through school together,
the shared trauma of school, and we're going through
all these formative experiences together,
you know, where we're growing up,
we're, you know, having new responsibilities,
we're learning new things.
These are all these really big things.
Like, childhood through adolescence is a really tough time
to get through.
And so, you just happen to be experiencing
all of these major things
with people who are just random personality types,
people who you're stuck with in your town,
at your school, et cetera.
Then you become an adult
and you get a little bit more set in your ways
(chuckling softly) and a bit more annoyed with people
and a bit more inflexible.
And you're like that person over there, you know,
it's just not the easiest thing to get along with them.
So I'm not even gonna try.
I'm not gonna put in the effort
'cause it takes more effort when you're an adult.
It takes very little effort as a child,
you're kind of just put into this pressure cooker together.
As an adult,
a lot of these social interactions are optional.
And so, in an adulthood, that is when your personality type
becomes much more important because the personality type is
what greases the wheels of forming a friendship.
And I think, yes, people of similar types
do end up becoming friends together.
Not necessarily the same types,
not necessarily the types you might think are similar,
but they do end up kind of gravitating towards each other.
One of the reasons why is a bit more just easy to explain.
It's not very mystical or magical.
But then there's another more abstract reason,
which given the amount of times
I've had to rerecord this video so far,
I will probably struggle to explain in a coherent manner.
The easy to explain reason is that
people of similar types end up doing sort of similar things.
They go to the same places, they do the same jobs,
they go to the same meetup groups,
they do the same recreational sports leagues or whatever.
And so, that's how they end up meeting each other.
I mean, just as a very basic example,
if you're talking about like a networking event,
that's like a happy hour and, you know,
get to meet people in your industry or whatever,
you're probably gonna meet a lot of extroverts there.
You'll definitely meet people of all personality types,
but you'll probably have
a clustering of more extroverted individuals.
If you go to a book club,
you might get people who are a bit more introverted,
people who prefer to just kind of stay in and read,
but not necessarily,
you could get a clustering of the introverts,
but then a smattering of all different personality types.
And if you've ever been to any kind of group meeting before,
you know this, if you've gone to a book club,
you know that there are people
who are sort of running everything
and they're doing most of the talking,
and they're doing all these crazy abstract connections
and everything.
You know, you get some kind of talkative ENTP
dominating the conversation,
and then you'll get someone of some other type
who doesn't say much.
Maybe you get a quiet ISTP in the corner
who never really says anything,
but then occasionally drops in a little observation
that they made.
So what is it when we get together
in a group of a bunch of different personality types,
what makes us kind of gravitate towards people
who are similar?
I'll tell you all about it in part two of the video.
All right, so the reason we gravitate towards
people of similar personality types,
it all has to do with what Myers Briggs is all about,
perceiving and judging.
Perceiving is, how do we become aware of reality?
What do we focus in on? Is it the concrete world around us?
Is it the facts?
Or is it the connections behind things,
like the meaning of the things, not the things themselves?
Just that alone, just the perception, the intuition
or the sensing can really cause some miscommunications
between people.
You will find when intuitives and sensors get together,
they kind of talk past each other a bit
because they're focusing on different parts of reality.
Even more influential
to our communication are the judging functions,
thinking and feeling.
That's how we make decisions.
That's how we figure out what we should do.
That's how we figure out what is appropriate,
what is valuable, which is feeling,
or how we figure out what's gonna make sense
and what is going to get us to the end result that we want,
which is thinking.
How do we know what is good?
And how do we know what is true?
Feeling and thinking.
You know, thinking and feeling, sometimes, yeah,
in their extremes, the stereotypes that we learn about,
they're very different, it's very black and white.
But sometimes they can present a bit closer
than you might expect.
They can resemble each other sometimes,
which is interesting
and I think causes a lot of the miscommunication
because you'll get a thinker and a feeler talking,
and they'll think they're on the same page, but they're not.
They're really talking about
two different ways of making decisions.
But it doesn't stop there.
It's not just thinking, feeling, intuition, and sensing.
It is also the cognitive functions.
And if you haven't watched my video
on cognitive functions yet,
you gotta get over there and check it out.
Unless, of course,
you already know about cognitive functions,
in which case, (chuckling softly) you're good.
So even if you get two thinkers together,
you get an ISTP and an ESTJ, let's say.
They don't have the same kind of thinking.
The ISTP has introverted thinking
and the ESTJ has extroverted thinking.
And so, sure they will be both talking about like,
what is valid?
What are the ways to get something done?
But they're going about it in very different ways.
And the ways are so different
that they are gonna really get on each other's nerves.
'Cause extroverted thinkers are like,
"Let's all do this together.
"Let's all figure out the best idea,
"everyone's gotta chip in."
And the introverted thinkers are like,
"I'm just gonna go off and figure this out by myself."
Likewise, if you get an extroverted feeler
and an introverted feeler together, they will,
you know, have a bit of conflict due to that difference.
Extroverted feelers are like,
"Let's all figure out what everyone likes,
"what everyone finds valuable."
And the introverted feelers are like,
"No, I'm gonna do that on my own."
So I think ultimately we get along best
and make friends easiest, especially in adulthood,
with people who have similar personality types,
especially people within our type family.
If you don't know what that is, check out my video
on the four families of the 16 personalities right here.
And when it comes to types outside of your type family,
the ones that will be the easiest to become friends with
are ones that have the same last two letters
as your type, or the opposite last two letters of your type.
So as an example, if you're an FJ type other FJs or TPs.
And the last question is one that I see a lot.
If you found someone of your same personality type,
would they just understand you completely,
would you be the best friends right away?
I've experienced this myself where people are like,
"Oh my gosh, because we're both the same personality type,
"I know you are just gonna fully understand me
"and get me, and no one else gets me."
And (chuckling softly) that's not true.
Personality type does help make friends
if you have that compatibility there,
but it doesn't ensure that you will be friends,
and it doesn't mean that you are gonna basically be
the same person in different bodies.
You are still individuals
and you will have a lot more in common with an individual
who has just had similar experiences to you,
not necessarily someone who is the same personality type.
And I bring this up because
a lot of people in the comments seem to think that
they don't have many or any friends.
And they're like,
"Man, if I could just find that one person
"who's the same personality type as me."
And for a long time on the internet,
there was this myth that it's like,
if you were an INFJ,
you'll never meet another INFJ in your life
because it's so rare, which I don't think that's true.
I guess my point is stop worrying about,
is this person the same personality type as me?
And just worry about, can I connect with them?
Because you could meet someone
who was the same personality type
and still fail to connect with them.
You might communicate very well,
you might process things in the exact same way,
and just, like, not really have a connection,
not really want to be friends.
Who knows?
I think sometimes when you meet people
who are the same personality type,
you have an instant like dislike for them.
You don't realize this consciously,
but you sort of see yourself in them.
And you're like, "Aw, man, what is this joker doing?
"I know what game he's playing
"because I play it all the time."
Thanks for watching,
check out this video about the type families here
if you haven't seen it yet,
or check out the whole darn playlist right here.
Remember to take the Cloverleaf 16 Types assessment
down below.
And until next time, stay cool and attractive.
(smooth music)