The Spider – INTJ

If life is, as Voltaire wrote, “a game—play it,” then the Spider seems to be playing chess while the rest of us are playing checkers. Not only do they always have a plan, but they usually have multiple contingencies if something in that plan were to go awry. And as opposed to Killer Whales, Smith siblings who willfully show their motivations like a poker player slamming their winning hand onto the table, the serious and reserved Spiders very rarely reveal the personal agenda that drives their farsighted machinations.

The Empiricist

Ayn Rand

All the reasons which made the initiation of physical force evil, make the retaliatory use of physical force a moral imperative.

– Ayn Rand

If research is a god, consider the Spider a true believer… Preorder The Power of Personality to learn more!

The Reserved Contradiction

Kristin Kreuk1

It’s not that easy to find someone I can relate to. I’m tough to crack because I’m shy.

– Kristin Kreuk

Spiders are a living oxymoron. On one hand, they’re industrious, career-minded individuals. On the other hand, they create systems with the expressed goal of avoiding doing more work than they deem necessary, and career ambition as a means to material success is an anathema to them… Preorder The Power of Personality to learn more!

The Contingency Planner

Michael Corleone

Let’s set the meeting. Get our informers to find out where it’s gonna be held. Now, we insist it’s a public place, a bar, a restaurant, some place where there’s people, so I feel safe. They’re gonna search me when I first meet them, right? So I can’t have a weapon on me then. But if Clemenza can figure a way to have a weapon planted there for me, then I’ll kill ’em both.

– Michael Corleone, The Godfather

The master of the algorithm, it’s not unusual to hear a Spider using conditional statements like “if this, then that…” when devising a strategy… Preorder The Power of Personality to learn more!

The Efficient Problem Solver

Bill Gates

I choose a lazy person to do a hard job. Because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it.

– Bill Gates

The Spider’s gift is their ability to integrate a myriad of disparate, even discordant, ideas into a harmonious web of synchronicity, an elegantly practical, working system that solves an existing problem or fulfills a foreseeable need… Preorder The Power of Personality to learn more!

12 Comments

  • Frank Rugamba says:

    Still I Don’t Understand Who I Am!
    Is There An Expert To Converse To?

  • Nice article. Although after reading this I realize there are easier ways to phrase the words. I mean instead of the numerous big words used you could easily just use simpler terms.

    • Just another Internet as*le says:

      Well, after reading your comment (which uses two sentences to state the same thing -redundancy), I wouldn’t entrust you with the task of making this article more to the point. Maybe you just got INTJ and felt the need to prove your “INTJness”, but at least do it right, mate. Or just don’t be an as*le about it. Cheers.

    • dude, just update your vocabulary

  • Gert-Jan ten Ham says:

    On other tests I always get INFJ, but here I am tied in between INFJ and INTJ. It depends on a few words I choose. When I choose ‘feeling/humanistic’ words for example, I think I miss some other important words that define me. I also asked someone who knows me very well (my wife) which list with my 28 chosen words is correct. She said both. Hmm… Interesting…

  • Gert-Jan ten Ham says:

    Normally I always get INFJ, but on this test I am tied in between INFJ and INTJ. It depends on which of my core values I focus when I am answering the questions. First I got INFJ, but later when reviewing my answers I felt like I had missed some of my key characteristics. Thus, I got INTJ. Interesting… Hmm…

    • Gert-Jan ten Ham says:

      Even more interesting is that someone who knows me very well (my wife) agrees with both ways I have answered your test and (thus) with both results.

      • I guess that’s the beauty of understanding personality. A test is never better than actual human interaction, and hopefully only encourages us all to keep trying to understand ourselves and others better. In reading your previous comments, there is a certain pattern of teetering on both idealist and rational values. You might want to read the profile for the Owl actually. Owls are the idealist of the rationals (pandas are the rational of the idealists). Owls are pacifists by nature and compassionate in a calm, analytical way. They can be highly critical of things that upset their values, but tend to view aggression as harmful, and will look for more indirect ways to affect change. They LOVE information. The significant difference between an Owl and a Spider is that the former likes info for its own sake, where the latter tends to be more time efficient with their learning. Your comments sound thoughtful, which is not the sole providence of Owls, but Spider comments usually have a little more bite.

        • Gert-Jan ten Ham says:

          Thanks a lot for the comment. It is very useful for my self-development. I really like the profile of the Owl. Still, I think I am closest to the Giant Panda. I crave too much for structure and I am too much of a planner to be an Owl or a Humpback Whale. To be honest, I thought I was an Owl first. I am mostly a pacifist like Pandas and Owls (I am strongly antimilitarist), but I am not against a revolution to overthrow a totalitarian government. Sometimes violence is a necessity to destroy the oppressor and thus to create a better society. In such cases violence is a necessary evil. This is where I get my anarchist tendencies from. Furthermore, my dream job would be an ideologist for someone like a president or prime-minister (preferably a socialist). I crave for control behind the scenes, but when really necessary I would not be too reluctant to show myself to pull the strings. Lately I have studied on cognitive functions and I have realized that my main function is introverted intuition. Spiders and Pandas have this one in common. My secondary function is extraverted feeling, which is in line with Pandas. I deducted that my idealism comes first, then rationalism. Also, I have a lot of will power to achieve the things that I aim for. Lastly, I am quite stubborn about my plans for the future as I refuse to give up on them easily. So, my own conclusion is that my primary type is a Panda and my secondary a Spider.

        • Gert-Jan ten Ham says:

          You were right here. I am an Owl. It took me quite some time to understand this, but now I finally do. I guess that this uncertainty about your personality type is very much like an Owl as well. Thanks again for your help.

          • I’m glad that I could help! Yes, I think for Owls, the greatest enemy to truth is certainty.

Leave a Comment