NT Types, the Idea Testers: What Intuition Plus Thinking Means

If your result on the personality type quiz has N and T as its middle letters, it falls in the group this site calls the Idea Testers: INTJ, INTP, ENTJ and ENTP, the four types that pair Intuition with Thinking. This page covers what those two letters mean in the Myers-Briggs framework, which questions decide them, what a close split looks like, and how much weight the research says a result like this can carry.

Why these four types make a group

A Myers-Briggs type takes one letter from each of four preference pairs. The Myers & Briggs Foundation describes Sensing or Intuition as "opposite ways to take in information" and Thinking or Feeling as "opposite ways to decide and come to conclusions" (Myers-Briggs Overview). Those two pairs supply the middle two letters of every type. In the Foundation's account of type dynamics, the middle letters combine a way of perceiving with a way of judging, and the combination is called a "process pair" (Type Dynamics: Overview). NT is one of four process pairs, alongside ST, SF and NF.

The Idea Testers is a house name, chosen for this site. It sums up the two letters in the Foundation's own terms: Intuition looks for patterns and possibilities, and Thinking weighs them against objective principles. The Foundation's label for the same pair is "Possibilities for Systems."

What N and T mean in the framework

Intuition, as opposed to Sensing

In the Foundation's words, "People who prefer Intuition pay more attention to the patterns and possibilities in the information they receive," while "People who prefer Sensing pay more attention to information that is concrete and tangible" (The Preferences). Both are ways of taking in information. The same page puts the contrast as a focus on what is, through details and facts, against a focus on what could be, through the big picture and the connections between facts.

Thinking, as opposed to Feeling

"People who prefer Thinking put more weight on objective principles and impersonal facts when decision-making," and "People who prefer Feeling put more weight on personal concerns and the people involved when decision making" (The Preferences). The pair is about what tends to carry a decision, not about whether a person has feelings or can reason. The Foundation calls type preferences "tendencies, inclinations, and preferred ways" of doing things and says "they are not absolutes" (Ethical Use of the MBTI Assessment).

What the Foundation says the pair adds up to

The Foundation's description of the NT process pair says "People who prefer NT use insights for strategizing and creative problem-solving." It also names the likely weak spots in their decisions: "they may miss details, lack common sense, disregard experience, or neglect the impact of decisions on others" (Type Dynamics: Overview). Those are descriptions drawn from type theory. The research section further down covers how well the letters themselves hold up.

Which of the two letters leads

Type dynamics, the part of the theory that ranks a type's mental processes, says the four NT types share the same two processes but do not lead with the same one. The Foundation's table gives INTJ and ENTP a dominant Intuition with Thinking as the auxiliary, and INTP and ENTJ a dominant Thinking with Intuition as the auxiliary. The rule starts from the last letter, because "we extravert the process indicated by the last letter," and the page adds that the dominant process "is extraverted for people who prefer Extraversion and introverted for people who prefer Introversion" (The Processes of Type Dynamics). For INTJ, the J means the judging process, Thinking, is the one turned outward, and since INTJ prefers Introversion, the inward process, Intuition, is the dominant one. This quiz does not measure that ordering. It counts answers on each pair separately, so it can say whether the answers leaned toward N and toward T, and nothing about which of the two leads.

The four NT types

The other two pairs, Extraversion or Introversion and Judging or Perceiving, decide which of the four a result names. Each line below condenses the Foundation's own short description of the type (The 16 MBTI Personality Types).

• INTJ, with Introversion and Judging, is described as original, independent and skeptical, quick to see patterns, and driven to carry its ideas through.
• INTP, with Introversion and Perceiving, is described as looking for a logical explanation of whatever holds its interest, more drawn to ideas than to social interaction, and flexible.
• ENTJ, with Extraversion and Judging, is described as frank and decisive, quick to spot illogical or inefficient procedures, and fond of long-term planning.
• ENTP, with Extraversion and Perceiving, is described as quick and outspoken, resourceful with new problems, good at generating possibilities and then analyzing them, and easily bored by routine.

The questions that decide N and T

Every answer on the quiz counts toward one side of one pair, so only the questions on the two middle pairs decide whether a result lands in this group. The questions on the other two pairs choose among the four types above.

On Sensing or Intuition the questions are everyday scenes, from following a recipe to taking in a detailed explanation. On Thinking or Feeling they are decisions, from a vote at work to feedback on someone's project. The "How the quiz gets to this result" section further down this page lists every question on those two pairs, the answers that lean toward N or T, and which version of the quiz asks it.

Two things stand out in those answers. Several Thinking answers are not blunt ones. Voting with the data and then addressing the person's concerns, or giving the honest version while watching the reaction, still count as T. In both, the data or the honest assessment settles what happens, and the care goes into how it is delivered. And one Intuition answer, using the recipe as a rough reference and trusting your instincts, leans on the everyday sense of intuition as a hunch, which is looser than the Foundation's definition about patterns and possibilities.

Close splits and balanced pairs

The result shows how the answers on each pair split, not only the letter, and that matters most for the two letters this page is about. A letter won with every answer on one side and a letter won by the narrowest margin the quiz allows print the same N or T in the code. Only the split shown for that pair tells them apart.

When a pair is close enough, the quiz does not pick a letter. If the side in the lead holds no more than a set share of that pair's answers, the pair counts as balanced: the code shows a lowercase x in that position, and the line for that pair says it is balanced, names the side that was ahead if one was, and gives the two counts. The result then lists the types closest to the answers instead of a single type, or, when too many pairs are balanced for that list to help, shows only the split on each pair. The share is one setting in the quiz's code, and the "How this quiz works" section on the quiz page states it and says, version by version, which splits count as balanced, if any do.

For this group, an x in the second or third place means the answers on that pair were too close to call, so the result leaves open whether it belongs in this group at all. A code with an x in the second place and I, T and J in the others, for example, lists both INTJ and ISTJ, and only one of those is an NT type. An x in the first or last place keeps the result inside this group and leaves open which of its types the answers fit.

What the research says about these letters

Two questions apply to every type alike: how often a whole four-letter type holds up when someone takes the test again, and how much a type predicts about work or life. The 1991 National Research Council review, the publisher's own retest figures and the later critiques of the theory are covered once, in the science behind the MBTI. This section keeps to what research says about the N and the T.

How well the N and T scales measure what they aim at

The 1991 National Research Council report did not rate the four scales alike. It describes correlational data from 20 studies presented by Myers and McCaulley (1985), who concluded that the Extraversion-Introversion scale has good construct validity. The next sentence reads: "In contrast, the S-N and T-F scales show relatively weak validity, with only moderate correlations with other instruments designed to measure similar constructs." The committee added that these findings were "based largely on high school and college student samples," so caution is advised in generalizing from them (National Research Council, 1991). Those two weaker scales are the ones that define this group.

Trait research reads the same scales another way. A 2003 study of 900 people by Furnham, Moutafi and Crump found that Openness was correlated with Sensing-Intuition and Agreeableness with Thinking-Feeling, replicating the findings of McCrae and Costa (1989) (Furnham, Moutafi and Crump, 2003). Read that way, the scales behind N and T line up with two of the five broad traits, Openness and Agreeableness, which trait measures report as a position on a continuous scale.

Common mix-ups

• NT is not a measure of intelligence. The Foundation says the assessment "sorts for preferences; it does not measure traits, ability, skill, or character," and that "There are no better or worse types" (Myers-Briggs Overview).
• Thinking does not mean unfeeling, and Feeling does not mean illogical. The pair describes what gets more weight in a decision, objective principles or the people involved, not how much feeling or logic a person has.
• Intuition is not a sixth sense. In the framework it means attention to patterns and possibilities in information, a way of noticing rather than a way of knowing without evidence.
• This quiz is not the MBTI. It uses the same four pairs, but it is not the publisher's assessment and has not been tested the way research questionnaires are. The quiz page explains how its own scoring works.

Using an NT result

• Look at the split on the two middle pairs before the letters. A wide lead on both says more about the answers than a narrow one.
• If either pair was close or balanced, read the description on the other side as well. The Sensing and Feeling descriptions sit beside Intuition and Thinking on the quiz page.
• Treat the type as what the Foundation calls a "for-the-moment" type, "a hypothesis to work with," and test it the way the Foundation's tips for settling on a best-fit type suggest: "observe how you take in information and make decisions in real life" (Verification of Best-Fit Type).
• Keep it out of decisions about other people. The Foundation states that "The MBTI assessment is not designed to be used for hiring purposes" and that "Results are never to be used to limit anyone" (Ethical Use of the MBTI Assessment).

If this does not fit you

A result that misses says something about the quiz as well as about the person who took it. The 1991 committee judged that self-assessment instruments like the MBTI are "likely, at best, to capture a person's current state" (National Research Council, 1991), and the Foundation leaves the last word with the reader: "Ultimately, you are the only one who can decide which of the 16 types you prefer" (Verification of Best-Fit Type).

If the N or the T reads wrong after a wide split, the scenarios in the questions may not match the situations you usually face, and a handful of answers given on one day is a small sample of anyone. Reading the S or F description beside it on the quiz page is a quick way to see which side sounds more like you. A description that does fit can also fit for reasons that have little to do with the quiz, which why personality test results feel accurate explains.