I am an ENFP.
High control religions force people to change their temperaments, tending towards an E type. This is because high control groups generally try to make their followers go converting others with hard sell techniques. JWs are forced to be E's preaching and giving talks even when they are highly introverted.
Flavil Yeakley, a well known Myer Briggs researcher has done some research into this.
"Yeakley (1988) gave 835 members of the Boston Church of Christ (BCC) the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTT), a psychological instrument that classifies people according to Carl Jung?s type system. Individuals may differ in the way in which they tend to perceive (some being more sense oriented, others more intuition oriented), the way they judge (thinking oriented versus feeling oriented), and their basic attitudes (extraversion versus introversion). Isabel Myers and Katherine Briggs, the developers of the MBTI, added a dimension to Jung?s typology: the person?s preferred way of orienting himself to the outside world. This orientation may be judging or perceiving. The MBTI thus produces 16 personality types based on the permutations of these variables. Yeakley asked subjects to answer the questions in the MBTI as they think they would have answered before their conversion, as they felt at the time of testing, and as they think they will answer after five more years of discipling in the BCC. He found that "a great majority of the members of the Boston Church of Christ changed psychological type scores in the past, present, and future versions of the MBTI" (p. 34) and that "the observed changes in psychological type scores were not random since there was a clear convergence in a single type" (p. 35). The type toward which members converged was that of the group?s leader. Comparisons with members of mainstream denominations showed no convergence, but members of other cultic groups did show convergence, although toward different types than that on which the BCC members converged. Yeakley concludes that "there is a group dynamic operating in that congregation that influences members to change their personalities to conform to the group norm" (p. 37). Although this study did not directly examine harm, it does indirectly support clinical observations, which contend that the personalities of cult members are bent, so to speak, to fit the group." (From http://www.csj.org/infoserv_articles/langone_michael_research_on_destructive_cults.htm )
Yeakley's research was done on the Boston Church of Christ , Church of Scientology (he strongly warns against Scientology), the Hare Krishnas, Maranatha Ministries, the Children of God, the Unification Church (Moon organization), and The Way.
Each participant rated him/herself on the MBTI according to:
1) Prior to membership or five years before if they were long term members;
2) How they viewed themselves at the present time;
3) How they thought they would be in the future.
The results of the first administration of the MBTI showed that all participants had a normal range of personality variations. However, on the second and third taking of this test, they dramatically shifted to the same personality type whereas those in mainline churches continued to show normal variations. For example, when member of this International Churches of Christ took the MBTI a second time, 97% of the members who rated themselves as extroverts on the first administered MBTI remained extroverts on the second one as well, while 95% of those who rated themselves as introverts the first time ?changed? to extroverts the second time.
Three of the groups shifted towards ESFJ, 2 groups were shifting towards ENTJ, and one towards ENTJ. Generally they shift towards the personality of the leader, or to the group norm. Yeakley wrote ?there is nothing wrong with any of these three types. The problem is with the pressure to conform to any type. It is the shifting which is negative, not the type toward which the shifting takes place?. Yeakley concluded that "they are producing conformity in psychological type" which he deemed to be "unnatural, unhealthy, and dangerous."
The same tests were conducted on five mainline denominations ? Baptist, Catholic, Lutheran, Methodist and Presbyterian, with no significant changes in personality type. In Christianity, this phenomenon is most prevalent in some but not all churches related to fundamentalism, very conservative evangelicalism and in some of the churches in the charismatic movement or Pentecostalism.
