Updated: What is the most common MBTI personality type on Twitter?

I recently re-researched the most common Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) instrument personality type on Twitter via a SurveyMonkey.com survey. There were 215 participants (after filtering out duplicates, non-twitter users, and people who reported they did not know their MBTI preferences). Clearly this is a tiny sample of the overall Twitter population and the survey was meant to be fun (not scientific), but these were the results from my efforts.

A few summary notes:

• The personality types that are OVER-represented on Twitter are highlighted in Blue.
• The personality types that are UNDER-represented on Twitter are highlighted in Red.
• The most common personality types on Twitter are ENFP, INTJ, and INFJ (representing 40% of my sample population)
• The least popular type on Twitter was ESTP (only 1 participant) ESFJ, ISTP and ISFJ (each with 3 participants)
• 52% of the Twitter population reported Introversion, and 48% Extraversion
• 81% of the Twitter population reported iNtuition preferences vs. 19% Sensing
• 55% of the Twitter population reported Thinking preferences vs. 45% Feeling
• 57% of the Twitter population reported Judging preferences vs. 43% Perceiving
• NF (Idealist) = 40%
• NT (Rational) = 41%
• SJ (Guardian) = 14%
• SP (Artisan) = 5%

ISTJ
% of General Population: 11.6%
% in Twitter Sample: 6.05%

ISFJ
% of General Population: 13.8%
% in Twitter Sample: 1.40%

INFJ
% of General Population: 1.5%
% in Twitter Sample: 12.56%

INTJ
% of General Population: 2.1%
% in Twitter Sample: 13.49%

ISTP
% of General Population: 5.4%
% in Twitter Sample: 1.4%

ISFP
% of General Population: 8.8%
% in Twitter Sample: .93%

INFP
% of General Population: 4.4%
% in Twitter Sample: 5.58%

INTP
% of General Population: 3.3%
% in Twitter Sample: 9.97%

ESTP
% of General Population: 4.3%
% in Twitter Sample: .47%

ESFP
% of General Population: 8.5%
% in Twitter Sample: 1.86%

ENFP
% of General Population: 8.1%
% in Twitter Sample: 13.95%

ENTP
% of General Population: 3.2%
% in Twitter Sample: 8.84%

ESTJ
% of General Population: 8.7%
% in Twitter Sample: 5.58%

ESFJ
% of General Population: 12.3%
% in Twitter Sample: 1.4%

ENFJ
% of General Population: 2.5%
% in Twitter Sample: 7.91%

ENTJ
% of General Population: 1.8%
% in Twitter Sample: 8.84%

While the differences between the general population and the Twitter population are interesting, I think the more interesting question is HOW each personality type uses Twitter. Some use Twitter for social interaction, where others use it almost as a social bookmarking site. Some use Twitter as a marketing/sales tool, whereas others just lurk and watch the public timeline flow.

A more interesting study would look at the content of tweets by personality type. In addition, you could study variables like # of tweets/day, # of followers/following, etc. I think that kind of study would be fascinating!

We must also acknowledge that there are plenty of sampling biases in this survey. There is a question of whether or not some personality types are more likely to participate in volunteer surveys in the first place. Also, the survey was promoted to others within my network via "retweets" so it could potentially be that my twitter friends (and those that they retweeted the message to are not the "normal" twitter population.)

As a side note, I plan to leave the original survey site on SurveyMonkey.com open and continue collecting responses to see if results change with a larger sample size. The survey is available here: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=BsbZQS4IQ5hpVANWrxfxSA_3d_3d