Perception of Openness

This is again, just throwing around my own theories. There are some people that are perceived in our society to be "Open" and others who are generally considered "closed-minded." Here is my theory on which traits make a person appear more "Open" in our culture.

Open
Extraverts - to people
Intuition - to ideas and unseen possibilities
Sensing - to experience
Feeling - to emotion
Perceiving - to options

Closed
Introverts - to people
Sensing - to ideas and unseen possibilities
Intuition - to experience
Thinking - to emotion
Judging - to options

Obviously, Etraverted people are open to interacting with other people. They are open to meeting new people, open to working with people, open to talking with people, open to sharing their thoughts and feelings with people, open to sharing experiences with other people. And in contrast Introverted people more often try not to meet new people, avoid talking with them, dislike working with them, reserve their thoughts and feelings for a select few, and prefer solitary rather than shared experiences.

The next highest factor in being seen as open or closed is found in the J/P traits. Judgers like to plan things out, stick to scheduals, and follow instructions. They tend to believe there is a right and wrong way to go about things, and like to form their oppinions of what view is right or wrong on any given topic. They do not welcome unexpected changes in plans, and have difficulty accepting other people's oppinions that do not line up with their own. Thus, Js are frequently seen as "closed-minded" or too stuck in their routines to make progress. Perceivers on the other hand tend to be spontaneous and do not feel any particular need to stick to plans. They like to take in as much information as possible, considering many options and many sides of an issue before making any conclusions about it, and even then they prefer tentative statements and are open to exceptions. Thus they are seen as open-minded, able to hear and consider other viewpoints, willing to adapt to change, take life as it comes rather than how they planned it, and able to blaze new trails and see new options.

Feeling people are frequently seen as being open to others, because they are able to sense others emotions and willing to share in them. They are also more likely to be demonstrative of their own feelings. Thinking people, on the otherhand, are generally less in tune with others feelings, and not very interested in sharing their own. They are generally more open to criticism and more open to participating in debate or conflict situations, but these things are not as valued by society as social tact, keeping harmony, and entering into the spirit of the moment with other people. Those who are in tune with feelings are seen as open-hearted, while those who prefer 'cold' logic are seen as shutting people out or hiding their true feelings.

Lastly, notice N and S are both perceived as open in different ways. I would venture to say, however, that overall our culture seems to expect people to be more open to experiences than to imagination. My reasoning is that people who aren't willing to try new experiences, such as eating new foods, learning new skills, or participating in events they haven't been to before, are often ridiculed as boring, spoil-sports, scaredy-cats, stubborn, and self-limiting. However, people who don't posses great immaginations, or who don't easily infer possibilities that aren't right in front of them, usually do not recieve much ridicule. Instead they are often respected for their practicality and 'down-to-earth'ness. An S gathers data through experiences, and thus is more willing to taste new foods before deciding if he likes them. An S focuses more on the outer world of experiences and is thus more likely to get involved in doing different things. Therefore an S is likely to be see as generally 'open' in society. An N who is good at coming up with new ideas will often be praised for 'thinking outside the box'. Yet if this 'open mind' is coupled with a less open approach to activites and experiences, the openness of the N is likely to be overlooked, or may even be overshaddowed by criticisms of his less open approch to activity. The N who is too involved in thinking to do anything with his ideas can often be seen as someone who closes himself off from life, living in a thin immaginary world of thought.

Thus the personality type which I think is most likely to be seen as "Open" by society is the ESFP and the type which is most likely to be seen as "Closed" by society is the INTJ. For further example, an ESFJ may be seen as more closed than an ENFP. Of coure it doesn't necessarily follow that those perceptions of society are actually true.