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Why don't you walk in and ask what the building is. It is probably a mosque, and if so, they will probably enjoy the interest of someone in their neighborhood. What on earth are you worried about?

In The Lucifer Effect, Phil Zimbardo describes the circumstances that create or elicit evil behavior. (Zimbardo is most famous for the Stanford Prison Experiment, and has dedicated his career in psychology to understanding evil and heroic acts.) Being anonymous definitely makes people more...

WARNING: Anecdotal evidence is being generalized here, plus this is a slightly tongue-in-cheek post. I am married to and deeply in love with an INTJ, and I have very close INTJ friends, so while they are not representative, I'll have to go with what I've observed. INTJs procrastinate, but...

I've been celebrating my birthday on the wrong date!

I have never felt particularly masculine or feminine, either. For me, those are both moods which can change. Today I feel feminine, so I put on lipstick and a nice blouse. (I'm old enough not to get carded any more so I don't worry about looking like a kid.) Junior high is probably the worst...

Yes. Let me know if you figure out a way to work around it.

I ignored the girls who told me to be more feminine. I didn't see where their opinion on the subject mattered, and I still don't. If I put on a dress and nice shoes, people think I'm feminine. If I start talking about the difference between causation and correlation (which I am prone to do)...

Yes, scientists use the word "reliable." I don't have any idea what the actual ratio is of M:F. As an INTP female, I have been told my whole life, always by other personality types, that my interests and style are not feminine. In high school, I was informed by other girls that I was too...

Just get through it. Accept being bored and get good grades this last semester. Sure it is hard, but you can obviously do it. College is worth it. It is so much better than high school. I guarantee you will find something in college to get you fired up, personally if not academically...

Oh, thank goodness. I thought it was only me. There were a few years in my 20s when I was pretty near phobic of phones, though after working a tech support line for a few years I am over it. But I still hate them and yes, I find them very unsettling. Great description. From the other...

Well, IB, you are my age (41) and I think you give yourself away by picking a quote from Hitchhiker's for your sig. You can tell I'm old because: The movie Watchmen brought back nostalgic memories of the Cold War. I learned to type on a typewriter. I remember bell-bottom jeans. Shrek...

Definitely true for me. I have long fantasized about 26-hour days. Even worse for me is daylight savings time. I spend all 7.5 months of it feeling like I am short one hour. It is like I never adapt to it. I get really depressed in the last few weeks of standard time. This has been...

If it were a choice between those two, I would agree, but I can honestly say it is possible to have both. I haven't met any INTPs (or INTJs) who were really contentedly happy until they were in their mid-30s, though. Before that, there seems to be a restless, hungry drive to grow in every...

Yes. My group (INTP, INTP, INTJ, INTJ, ISTP) consists of college-educated professionals in our early 40s, who own homes (or at least have mortgages and none of those ARMs, either), my husband and I have a child who is doing well in school, we have friends, activities, are close to our families...

I love the brackets. I don't think you are obnoxious. And yes, very INTP-ish to use definitions, but I am trying not to apologize for being me, so I won't. :)

I forgot to add that in order to have good social skills, you must not be allergic to anything. If you have a rash, or are sneezing a lot, you are automatically socially inept no matter what else you do.

To have very good social skills, you have to care about having good social skills. You also have to enjoy and take pride in having good social skills. And you have to have very thick skin. INTPs most often don't have these traits. We can certainly develop them to a very respectable degree...

I guess he is. Yes, everyone is obsessed with judging others and situations. Exactly. You aren't interested in that, but remember that xNxP, as you describe yourself, is a small minority. The xSxJ types, a larger population, have totally different priorities, different approaches to...

I certainly know what you are talking about, as I do exactly the same thing, tailoring my responses to what will work best for the other person. The situation with your family is obviously difficult and painful, and just as obviously you were trying to make the best of things and be as...

What a fascinating question. I have OCD, I am certain, though it has never been diagnosed. Mostly you have described the Compulsion part. If I don't separate the edges of things in my visual field, or read signs backwards, etc., it will annoy me to the point where I can't think. (I get...

I do love math, though I majored in Physics. I especially enjoy teaching math, and am having a great time watching my 5-year-old daughter play with it. Why do I love it? I've tried to answer that many times, usually for people who asked a question much like this. First, yes, there is...

Welcome, ijustprotectedmyidentity. I hope you have fun in the discussions. You seem to be defining yourself, and us, by how you see INTPs: lazy overcontrolled hermits. The MBTI is useful and interesting, but personality type is descriptive, not prescriptive. Most of us do not define...

Oh, yeah. I wanted to be J Robert Oppenheimer when I was 12 (but, you know, a girl Oppenheimer). I also spend a lot of time reading about the mind, especially cognitive and developmental psychology, so I know about that too. I also wanted to be the best, at the top of my field, so every thing...

It sounds like you don't love being a student or have a great desire to accumulate degrees and live in an academic environment. If that is the case, theoretical physics is out. You have to have a PhD to sweep the floors, it seems like. Same with chemistry and cognitive psychology. Lab...

You are funny. Your points were actually well-taken, if, um, oddly phrased. But let me get this straight: you were ashamed of a not-completely-helpful gift suggestion but not of being called bananaphallus? :confused:

Ah ha ha ha ha ha! Can't do better than a dick in a box. Yeah, what happened to banana's post? Anyway, thanks for the comments. I happen to agree about money and specific requests. I just have to work around family obligations here.

You are right, it should be that way. But college isn't just about learning. As EditorOne said, it is also about the diploma. Employers want to hire people who finish degrees, whether they learned anything or not. And it is about making connections that will be useful for the rest of your...

What things make good gifts for INTPs? Suppose it's your birthday, and you have a promising box in front of you. What would you like to see in it? My list: Science fiction books and movies Fantasy books and movies Non-fiction books, especially about how the brain works, cryptography, and...

You might give NPR's "Science Friday" with Ira Flatow a listen. Ira is an amazing interviewer and usually has very interesting guests, talking on a huge variety of topics. What I like is his ability to synthesize all the different scientific disciplines, and I also love his voice.

That was a very common feeling in college, near as I could tell. It was an engineering/science/math college, so everyone was smart and technical. It wasn't super-competitive, though of course there was some of that. Mostly people tried to help each other. Despite learning quickly...

Cliques don't work for me either, I suspect because the members seem to define themselves by their exclusion of people who aren't in the group. That is not only unfriendly, it is a stupid way to define your identity. I felt like the other posters here, like amorfati said with too many...

No, I don't mimic people I dislike. For them, I close up. My face goes neutral, and my body becomes tense[r than usual]. Fortunately, I like most people.

I have dark circles too, but potassium helps. Eat more bananas. It doesn't make them go away but they fade some. I am also super light-skinned, so that accentuates it.

Well, we can see your personality here, and it is a good one. I don't mimic people nearly as much around close family and friends, small though their number is, perhaps because I have a pretty good understanding of how they think. I do it when I don't understand someone completely. What about...

Definitely. I don't know if that is the same as a social chameleon, though. I will mimic posture, pitch change in speech (even an accent if I am not careful), and pace. Fortunately, most people don't seem to notice. It doesn't feel like an attempt to hide behind a mask; it is more like an...

That is exactly what I do. I think of it as "showman mode" too, and it is almost like another person takes over for me. I love it. I am very comfortable in front of a group, as long as it is about a topic I know well, and students tell me they really like my style of teaching. It is one of...

I am seldom angry, aside from passing irritations, which may elicit a curse but is forgotten a moment later. I certainly can hold a grudge for years, but typically there is only one or two at a time, as I manage to forgive some older ones. I was shocked last year, during the US elections, to...

Hire my daughter's babysitter and her little sister. Those two young teens are brilliant at planning parties. They threw a 50-person surprise party for their parents' 25th anniversary, did all the decorations and invitations and it was amazing. I'd give them a budget and tell them to do...

Wow. And I thought my insomnia was bad.

While I am not naturally inclined to follow through on things, I don't think I am lazy. I used to procrastinate more, since I'd let myself get so worked up about something that I felt paralyzed. Then I made a vow to myself that I would do one thing every day that I really didn't want to do...

In graphological terms, that sounds like pretty superior handwriting. Angular writing is a sign of an independent thinking. Rapidity is a sign of a mind working too fast for the hand to keep up. Some connected letters and some disconnected strikes a nice balance between intuition and...

My own values, of course. I follow the law when it doesn't conflict with my morals. Though, in truth, there are very few such conflicts, and where there are conflicts, often there isn't much I can do about them. For example, as a Californian, I opposed Prop 8 by working a phone tree, giving...

What is an enneagram? Where did you take this test?

I consider myself intelligent. So do other people. I used to "dumb myself down" and try to hide it, but it never made me more popular or happy. It was much more effective to genuinely appreciate other people's strengths than to hide my own. People have come up with lots of ways to measure...

Yes, that will do it. I can't think how many people I know who had exactly that problem. I know my husband used to tune out the boring parts in junior high and high school, and he got terrible grades. Now he has advanced degrees in Applied Mathematics and Industrial Engineering. Grades don't...

That's terrible. You have my sympathy; I've been there. Please believe me that the classes and academic experience get better over time. Don't give up on math. If you can make it to calculus by the end of high school, it makes college that much better. (I certainly hope you go to college...

Duck out fast, possibly throwing another poor student to their mercy. Back when I was a senior majoring in physics, a really annoying math prof started explaining spherical coordinates. We'd mastered that freshman year, and he was clearly going to go step-by-step. Nothing could stop him...

1. Try to observe as many details about the snatcher as possible, and give the description to the victim or mall security. 2. Wait until it is unguarded, then look at the device to see if it is mine. Probably it isn't. My friends don't steal. If it is mine, though, demand it back. 3...

Congratulations Aunt Jenny! (I too am an Aunt Jenny, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.)

What a beautiful laugh you have, Jennywocky! I get told this all the time. Thinking is a great pleasure, and people who say that are out of their minds. I've been known to tell them so, or more often just shake my head sadly and continue as if they had not spoken. It happens often enough...