Does your personality type fit that of an entrepreneur?

According to a survey conducted by a California-based personality and career assessments company, Truity Psychometrics, found that extraverts are more likely to become entrepreneurs.

The four main deciding factors of the survey included extraversion (E) vs. introversion (I); sensing (S) vs intuition (N); thinking (T) vs feeling (F); judging (J) vs perceiving (P), as well as a second set of basic questions, such as income, age, and gender.

Out of the 25 759 respondents, only around half completed the survey. From that the numbers were whittled down to those over 18 and who had answered the salary question. This left the survey with 7 534 respondents, which became the basis for the survey.

Read more: What do South Africa’s startup founders look like, and what drives them?

The four main questions were compared against the employment status of respondents. The results produced stated people having the ENTPs (Extraversion, Intuition, Thinking, Perceiving) personality were self-employed.

The ENTP group represented 13.5% of respondents. Those exhibiting the ENFP (Extraversion, Intuition, Feeling, Perceiving) (10.8%) and INTP (Introversion, Intuition, Thinking, Perceiving) (9.6%) personalities were also heavily represented among the group.

See the table below represent the employment status by personality type:

Further delving into this yielded that Extraverts, Thinkers, and Judgers tend to manage larger teams below them.

When comparing the results to Job Satisfaction, those geared towards being self-employed had an average result. Our own Ventureburn Survey found 42% of startup founders would promote startup life to others.

All of these results mean extraverts and thinkers are more likely to become entrepreneurs.

Read more: Ventureburn survey sheds light on SA’s tough, but pioneering startup industry

This survey type is based on the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) which analyses two answers against each other for each core question. It must be noted though that this method of testing has come under criticism. According to a Forbes article, the methodology “has no more reliability and validity than a good Tarot card reading.”

In response to the criticism the survey states, “our study found that personality type has a significant correlation with a wide range of career outcomes, from salary to managerial responsibility to job satisfaction.”

Does your personality fit the survey’s findings? Let us know in the comments below.

Image by ShashiBellamkonda via flickr