INTP is one of the 16 personality types in the typology created by Katharine Cook Briggs and her daughter Isabel Briggs Myers based on the psychological theories of Carl Jung. These types are most commonly associated with the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator personality test, but they have been reused by many other tests, including the one on this website.
This theory proposes four ways that a person can be either one way or the other, which is what the type acronym stands for. INTPs are
Introverted (instead of Extroverted)
iNtuiting (instead of Sensing)
Thinking (instead of Feeling)
Perciving (instead of Judging)
It is typically claimed that that these divisions are natural and complete. This is not true. The types are arbitrary divisions, but this does not mean they can not be useful. For example, labeling people taller than 5'8" as a type Tall person and the rest as type Short is an arbitrary division, nevertheless Tall people are more likely to play basketball and Short people are likely to live longer. So the INTP personality type can be said in some sense to exist and will have traits/behaviors that are associated with it.
Traits of the INTP personality type
The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator comes with a story about each personality type. These stories have mostly just been made up in the mind of the author and probably contain a lot of truth as people know people, but also must contain some false or non-specific claims as well.
This website has instead focused on collecting a list of traits that are statistically associated with getting an INTP result on a test. That list is below.
lives in a world of their own; wishes people were more skeptical; thoughts are different than most peoples; analytical; has a hard time describing themselves; could stand living alone in the wilderness; more pragmatic than optimistic; does extensive research; wants to be a hacker; does not pack much luggage when they travel; geeky; hates advertisements; does not trust any one to help them with their problems; spends hours alone with their hobbies; likes learning about the solar system; finds being around their parents awkward; does not reliably celebrate their birthday; cringes when watching bad movies; has told people they never want to get married; could be fine without having children; thinks the word feels small and wishes it was bigger; saw father as a buffoon when a teenager; hates to ask for help; avoids contact with others; hopes there is no afterlife; wants to go to space; places equal important on the lives of strangers as people they know; feels like they are different than their emotions; has trouble finding people they like enough to be friends; suspicious; would hate having no bedroom door lock; does not put much importance on birthdays; thinks most marriages are unhappy; hard to comfort; thinks most people have false beliefs; does not put effort into clothes; sometimes hopes society collapses; could enjoy living in an underground bunker; wishes they had been born in the future; does not smile for the camera; angry with the world; likes stormy weather; would be interested in having a fake identity; never satisfied with the ending of books or TV shows; knows most people will never listen to the truth; interested in science fiction; does things others find strange; likes death metal music; bad at remembering names; has difficulty asking for help; thinks most people are boring; would never watch a romantic comedy; unpopular in school; believes that aliens exist somewhere; refuses help; would enjoy living alone in the woods; thinks the world population should be reduced; thinks most people lie; difficult for others to understand; geeky; does not wear fashionable clothing; finds fault with everything; procrastinates returning emails or text messages; thinks extremely muscular people look weird; interested in RPGs; imagines about how they would get away with a heist; not invested in having a big funeral; not a spontaneous singer
This list was based on correlations of self-reported items with scores on the OEJTS1.2 test. Over time, 2900 items were rotated through and the ones that correlated with the 4 dichotomies in the direction of INTP can be downloaded at INTP-item-correlations.ods. So these are the items that are caused by the INTP's four traits working together.
Open-Source Psychometrics Project
This description of the INTP personality type is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.