Is the 16 Personality Types Theory helpful for marriage?
Understanding the 16 Personality Types Theory can be helpful in the following ways in marriage:
- To better understand your partner
- Acknowledge your partner's differences and their unique contributions to your marriage.
- Recognizing the reasons for conflicts and problems allows for two-way discussion on how to overcome such difficulties, and affirms the contributions of both parties to marriage.
- Recognize what your partner needs from married life and build a lifestyle that meets those needs.
Do the elements of the 16 personality types influence who gets married?
There are many factors that influence who you choose to marry. For example, these might include the following:
- hobby
- charm
- Values, etc…
Within that context, how does personality tend to influence the choice of a marriage partner? There are mainly three perspectives on this topic.
Does personality not influence the choice of a marriage partner?
From this perspective, it is argued that there are many other factors that significantly influence marriage.
Personality is something each individual considers when choosing a marriage partner, but there is no overall pattern to the attractiveness of personality. From this perspective, research in this field suggests that it is unlikely to find a correlation between personality and marriage.
Do you tend to choose partners who are different from yourself?
From this perspective, we tend to choose marriage partners based on differences in personality.
This may be based on the principle that "people of the opposite sex are attracted to each other" or the principle that "people with different personalities can mutually utilize their abilities to deal with the world."
Do you tend to choose partners who are similar to you?
Isabel Briggs-Myers' book, *Gifts Differing*, contains data on how many common letter types are found in married couples.
| Common character count* | Actual percentage | Predicted percentage* |
| 4 characters | 9% | 6% |
| 3 | 35% | 25% |
| 2 | 33% | 37% |
| 1 | 19% | 25% |
| none | 4% | 6% |
*Common character count: For example,IWindowsP"and"Iscience fictionP"teethThe two letters "I" and "P" are common.This means that it is happening.
*Pre-predicted proportions*: There are 16 types in total in MBTI. This is the proportion when 16 types x 16 types are randomly combined. In other words, in the table above, the probability of a combination of types where all letters are the same (or all letters are different) is predicted to be 6%.
This table shows that, to some extent, similarities tend to be more attractive than differences.
However, this statistic raises more questions than answers. For example, couples of different types may be attracted to each other, but marriages between similar types may be more likely to last.
Psychologist Cattell discovered that "couples in stable, normally happy marriages have a high agreement rate on the 16PF (16 Personality Factor Questionnaire)*, while couples in unstable marriages or those considering divorce have a low agreement rate" (16PF Handbook, p. 293).
*16PF (16 Personality Factor Questionnaire): This questionnaire categorizes personality traits into 16 types. The 16 factors are as follows:
- Intelligence
- emotion
- impulsivity
- ego strength
- self-sufficiency
- dominance
- Boldness
- Delicacy
- Fantasy
- competitiveness
- Anxiety suppression
- floating anxiety
- public spirit
- suspicion
- cunning
- Guilt
In other words, couples with similar personalities tend to have longer-lasting and more stable relationships.
Within this overall principle, there were exceptions depending on individual characteristics. However, Cattell says that the following are involved in creating marital stability:
- The fact that the two partners have similar personalities and
- Can the other person provide the necessary support and assistance to help them function in society?
Perhaps by being aware of personality types, you will recognize the importance of (2) above and be able to provide better support to your partner.
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