My Favorite Sensing/Intuition Activity for the MBTI

I get tons of emails from readers who are looking for new/different activities for the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) assessment.

There are tons of binders with MBTI activities available from CPP.com.

Here is one of my favorites for distinguishing between Sensing and Intuition preferences:

In a workshop, take a cup and place it on a table where everyone can see the object. Ask everyone to "describe" the cup.

If you've never done an activity like this, I suggest you find a cup (or describe the one shown in the picture below) and do the exercise yourself right now before reading further.




In my MBTI class, we had a small Styrofoam cup as the object.

As someone with a Sensing preference, I wrote down as many details about the cup as I possibly could. In the end, my description looked like technical specs for the cup design (4 inches tall, 2 1/2 inches in diameter, holds 6 ounces of liquid, white color, made of Styrofoam, etc).

I wish someone had a camera to capture my expression when the individuals with Intuitive preferences read their descriptions. Some people wrote poems about how the cup feels unfulfilled because it's not being used...how the cup hates coffee because it is too hot, but prefers tea because it's soothing warmth. One person wrote about how Styrofoam cups are ruining the environment.

I was sitting at a table with other people with clear Sensing preferences and we were all baffled. Our descriptions were based on what we could see, not based on our imagination. One person at my table asked if the "Intuitives" had been drinking at lunch!

This is a great, fast, simple exercise you can use with any object laying around the room of the workshop. Many of my customers use paintings as the object in this exercise.

What is your S-N preference, and how did you describe the cup?

Do you have any other MBTI activities you would like to share?