Personality type indicators of Indian insurance managers – Profiling and gender differentials

Pages: 1-5
Diljot Soin (Department of Psychology, Panjab University, Chandigarh)

The present research intends to compare the male and female managers on the Myers Briggs’s personality type indicators in form of sixteen personality types based on Jung’s (1921) theory of psychological types and to examine the common occurring personality types and functions. In this regard, Myers Briggs Type Indicator commonly known as MBTI by Myers and McCauley (1985) was used to assess the personality type of the managers. This paper makes contribution by further probing and comparing the dominant and auxiliary functions of the personality types of male and female managers that illustrate the gender similarities and differences. For this purpose a sample of 170 middle-line managers (90 males, 80 females) in the age group of 35-45 years was randomly selected from the sales departments of Private Insurance Companies from the tri-city of Chandigarh, Panchkula and Mohali. Firstly, the results indicated that “ESTJ” (extraverted sensing thinking judging) was the most common occurring personality type among effective male and female managers. Secondly, extraverted thinking and introverted sensing emerged as the most common dominant and auxiliary functions respectively among male and female managers. The results revealed that among male managers preference for the dominant function i.e., thinking was greater than auxiliary function i.e., sensing, whereas among female managers preference for the auxiliary function i.e., sensing was greater than the dominant function i.e., thinking. Further, t-test results showed that male managers were found to be significantly higher (t = 6.75, p < 0.01) than female managers on the dominant function of thinking whereas female managers were found to be significantly higher (t = 6.18, p < 0.01) than males on the auxiliary function of sensing.