#it just feels like my opinions are secondary and inferior and /dirty/ or something

[moxievoxi]

personal

[thatsjustsupergirl]

hey gurl hey, pls do some mbti meta for our fav superfam

oh my god I’ve owed you this writeup for literally a year now. FINALLY getting around to it.

quick & dirty answers:

- Kara: ESFJ  (Fe-Si-Ne-Ti)

- Alex: ISFJ  (Si-Fe-Ti-Ne)

- J’onn: ISTJ (Si-Ne-Ti-Fe)

Answers explained below for those who either disagree or who want to understand how to do this using personality theory instead of crappy online quizzes:

Kara: ESFJ  (function stack: Fe-Si-Ne-Ti)

    We’ll use Kara as our walkthrough since she’s easy to figure out. The letters that make up a personality type in MBTI represent four binary pairs: Extroversion vs. Introversion; Sensing vs. Intuiting; Feeling vs. Thinking; and Judging vs. Perceiving. Most people assume that you find a personality type by going down the list of pairs and picking whichever traits match the person/character. NOPE, WRONG.

     Sensing, Intuiting, Feeling, and Thinking are functions – and everybody uses all four to different degrees. The other qualities (Extroversion, Introversion, Judging, Perceiving) are modifiers that tell us how someone applies those functions to themselves or to interactions with others. Sensing and Intuiting are perceiving functions – they’re used to collect data. Feeling and Thinking are judging functions – they’re used to make decisions. All four of these functions can be either introverted (self-oriented) or extroverted (other-oriented).

    So okay, what the heck do we do with all of that information and how do we end up with a string of letters after we’re done? Well, we observe how a person – Kara – behaves, both alone and with other people, and then we consider what that tells us about her.

    First observation: Kara is an extrovert – she enjoys being around others. She gets energized from her social interactions, and she goes into a funk when she’s isolated.

     Second observation: Kara is also a judgy little shit. Look at her reaction to finding out about James and Winn’s hero exploits, her scorn for people who kill their opponents, or the way she huffs whenever she thinks Snapper’s being unfair to her. She’s quick to form opinions, and they’re usually visible to others.

    So, we have identified our two modifiers! Kara is an extrovert, and she’s a judging type. Next, we need to decide: are these judgments based on cool, dispassionate logic, or are they based on emotion?

    If your answer was anything other than ‘emotion’ we are not watching the same show. Kara’s dominant function is Extroverted Feeling (Fe). It is, obviously, a judging function, and it’s directed outward – meaning that Kara uses her feelings in order to decide how to act or react to what’s happening around her. Extroverted feelers also tend to run their feelings through a broad morality lens when they make decisions, and this is something we see Kara do a lot. She makes choices by thinking about the big picture: is this good for society, humanity, and/or the people she cares about? She also regularly seeks out opportunities to engage with other people, and is concerned with being empathetic.

    Now to fill in the rest of the puzzle: since we know Kara has superhuman sensory abilities that play an integral role in how she makes decisions, Introverted Sensing (Si) is the only logical choice for her secondary function. This is a perceiving function, meaning Kara uses it to gather and absorb information that can moderate or inform her feelings. People who use introverted sensing in this way are also prone to relying on habits/traditions that they know worked in the past when they try to reach a goal or solve a problem, something we see Kara do often. (Case in point: she still punches first and asks questions later even when it’s obviously the wrong strategy.)

     The tertiary (third) and inferior functions in Jungian theory are just inversions of the first two, so from here we can determine pretty quickly that they are Extroverted Intuition (Ne) and Introverted Thinking (Ti). These functions are frequently underdeveloped, especially in younger people, which can lead them down the wrong track sometimes when they try to problem-solve or handle difficult interpersonal situations.

     Extroverted Intuition (Ne) as a tertiary function manifests itself as a knack for finding creative solutions to a problem or goal. It essentially helps to overcome the rigid thinking that Kara might get stuck in because of over-reliance on her feeling & sensing functions. Her ability to trust her extroverted intuition is not fully developed yet. Sometimes she needs prompting to push past her Fe-Si loop (see: pretty much always at CatCo), but other times she’ll get to that point on her own. (Her takedowns of Parasite and Mxyzptlk are good examples of this.)

    And then, at the bottom, we have Introverted Thinking (Ti). The inferior function is always the weakest one in a person’s arsenal, and the ability to use it well rarely occurs before adulthood. Thinking, like feeling, is used to make judgments. As an inferior function it works to help Kara discern the objective truth about people and situations around her. It’s meant to be a counterweight to the dominant impulse to judge based on feelings alone. Kara is … not so good with this yet.

    So, to turn all of our thinking back into the 4-letter code … you take the two modifiers we identified at the start, plus the two strongest functions, and then you mark them in this order:

#1: Introversion vs. Extroversion = E

#2: Sensing vs. Intuiting = S

#3: Thinking vs. Feeling = F

#4: Judging vs. Perceiving = J

Alex: ISFJ  (function stack: Si-Fe-Ti-Ne)

   It’s easy to go wrong with Alex’s personality – a lot of people mistakenly assume she’s Thinking-dominant because she has an affinity for science, for example. So, round two.

   First: Alex is an introvert. She’s open and warm with the people she’s accepted into her inner circle, but with most everyone else she’s cautious and reserved. She’s also comfortable relaxing or working through problems by herself, where many extroverts would feel uneasy and want to word-vomit to the nearest available listener.

    Second: just like her sister, Alex is quick to make value judgments based on how she interprets other people – and to vocalize or act upon them. This means that Extroverted Feeling (Fe) is her secondary function, not Thinking.

     Why is this the secondary function instead of primary like Kara’s? Because with introverts, their primary/strongest function is, obviously, introverted. It tends to hide underneath their secondary function and run the internal show, which can make it hard to figure out sometimes. Their secondary function is the one that’s most likely to be visible in social or interpersonal situations.

     To figure out an introvert’s dominant function, we have to look for clues based on their choices or behavior. Since we know Alex tends to move her life forward by building on the memories and experiences of her past, we can easily figure out that Alex’s dominant function is Introverted Sensing (Si) – she uses memories of things that were effective or comforting in the past to guide her present/future behavior and make decisions.

     As I already said, Alex’s secondary function is Extroverted Feeling. An introvert who relies on feeling to interact with others will try to act in ways that satisfy the needs and wants of the people around them, and that’s Alex all the way. Her decisions about how to act will also be impacted by her dominant function, of course, and that’s where we’ll sometimes see her prejudice toward “this was always a good/bad thing before” clouding her judgment like it did in 2x14 and 2x15.

     So, how does the scientist part of Alex’s personality fit into this? We know Alex is comfortable in environments that are hierarchical and systematic, and that’s partly because of her dominant Si (she’s in the same field as her parents, it’s familiar), but it’s also because Alex’s tertiary function is Introverted Thinking (Ti). She’s much farther along in developing her less-dominant functions than Kara, so they’re more visible in her behavior. Introverted Thinking here will show up as a self-oriented inclination toward making logical, systematic decisions about how to plan or organize information before acting on it. That’s Alex’s science brain. And we see it over and over again with her paramilitary operations, too: no matter what kind of crazy thing Alex does, she plans first.

     Last but not least we have Extroverted Intuition (Ne). As an inferior function, outward-focused intuition helps someone feel more comfortable with ambiguity or with entertaining new possibilities about the world around them or the people in it – which is rather useful to a scientist who studies alien biology. We’ve also seen Alex mature quite a bit in this ability to feel okay with new or challenging possibilities in the other facets of her life over the course of S2.

J’onn: ISTJ (function stack: Si-Te-Fi-Ne)

    J’onn, like Alex, is introverted. He tends to hold himself at a distance from others until he’s grown to know them well, even though he could use his powers to read their intentions early on. He’s also decisive in his interactions with others, which means his main extroverted function is used for judging.

     Based on that, we can work out pretty easily that J’onn is Introverted Sensing (Si) dominant – he’s inclined toward looking at the past for reference, reflecting on his memories, and acting based upon his centuries of life experience.

     His secondary function, the main one he uses to interact with others, is Extroverted Thinking (Te). J’onn bases his behavior on an examination of the facts and context in front of him, and is usually able to stay calm and rational when choosing the best course of action – even if it affects him personally in negative ways. (E.g. lying about Astra in 1x13, refusing to fight M’gann in 2x03)

     His tertiary function then has to be Introverted Feeling (Fi), and we can see this in how J’onn operates according to very strict, self-imposed morals or values. In one very blatant example, his vow to look after the Danvers sisters on behalf of Jeremiah has been unwavering since the day he made it, no matter how difficult it’s been or how much his dumb adopted daughters get mad at him sometimes.

     Rounding out J’onn’s function stack is Extroverted Intuition (Ne). Unsurprisingly, as an extraterrestrial shapeshifter who’s over 300 years old, J’onn is pretty good at listening to his intuition and opening his mind to new or unfamiliar things, even when they’re uncomfortable. (Like, say, the idea that a White Martian could be anything less than terrible.)

Checking for accuracy: ESFJ & ISFJ are extremely complementary types, meaning they should get along well and have similar values/interests – definitely true for Kara and Alex; there is an equal level of compatibility between ISFJ & ISTJ – Alex and J’onn have a very close relationship too, so that also checks out; and then ESFJ & ISTJ are different enough that they’ll butt heads once in a while, but in ways that push one or both of them toward growth. (So basically Kara and J’onn throughout all of season one.)