Welcome to the club! A study on the psychological profile of US priests was published in Pastoral Psychology in 2013. It was summarized in the article from this link. https://www.lastampa.it/vatican-insider/en/2013/08/09/news/u-s-priests-are-introverts-new-british-study-finds-1.36061206
The study used a combination of the Meyers-Briggs test to assess personality types and a test developed by Carl Jung, a famous Swiss psychiatrist. For those who are familiar with the Meyers-Briggs types, the vast majority of priests are ISTJ. The website, Truity, describes ISTJ types as “ISTJs are responsible organizers, driven to create and enforce order within systems and institutions. They are neat and orderly, inside and out, and tend to have a procedure for everything they do. Reliable and dutiful, ISTJs want to uphold tradition and follow regulations. https://www.truity.com/personality-type/ISTJ
Given that description it is not surprising that many priests would be categorized this way. It is also not that surprising since this is a common personality type among males as up to 2/3 of men fall into this grouping. A further description of each of the components of the ISTJ may be helpful to better understand this in more depth.
The letters for Meyers Briggs are explained as follows on the humanmetrics website http://www.humanmetrics.com/personality/type
The “I” stands for introversion (vs extroversion). The first criterion, Extraversion – Introversion, signifies the source and direction of a person’s energy expression. An extravert’s source and direction of energy expression is mainly in the external world, while an introvert has a source of energy mainly in their own internal world.
The second criterion, Sensing – Intuition, represents the method by which someone perceives information. Sensing means that a person mainly believes information he or she receives directly from the external world. Intuition means that a person believes mainly information he or she receives from the internal or imaginative world.
The third criterion, Thinking – Feeling, represents how a person processes information. Thinking means that a person makes a decision mainly through logic. Feeling means that, as a rule, he or she makes a decision based on emotion, i.e. based on what they feel they should do.
The fourth criterion, Judging – Perceiving, reflects how a person implements the information he or she has processed. Judging means that a person organizes all of his life events and, as a rule, sticks to his plans. Perceiving means that he or she is inclined to improvise and explore alternative options.
We tend to think that all successful leaders must be the stereotypical extrovert but numerous studies as well as real life experience have shown that this is not necessarily true. There are many benefits to being an introverted leader and indeed many have been quite successful. We will provide some examples from both the business and the religious world in future posts. For now, if you haven’t yet done it, take a personality test. We’ve mentioned several alternatives in previous posts. Meyers-Briggs and others are available for free online.
If, however, the study by Francis referenced above is valid we will assume that most are introverts. We will begin to understand the impact of that in coming blogs.