share a few thoughts about what the recent election has taught me about myself and about the influence of my type preferences on my voting behavior.
As a peace - loving person with INFJ preferences, I was shocked to hear people telling others how to vote. Perhaps even more disconcerting was hearing people told that if they didn't vote for a certain candidate, it would be their fault if the next four years didn't go well due to the election results.
I've lived through quite a few elections, and though it is common for candidates to call each other names, I am not used to voters calling each other names and pressuring each other to vote for certain candidates. Yes, candidates are often nasty, but the voters? If I have ever seen nasty voters, I don't remember them. I do remember voters putting up election signs in their yards and saying great things about their candidates to make them more appealing to others. I also remember people volunteering to work for their favorite candidates and knocking on doors to talk about them. But threatening other voters with the responsibility for any subsequent problems if they did not vote as the majority told them to, and trying to put them on a guilt trip? No!
Facebook was particularly bad. I saw discussion threads where people, in all seriousness, were lamenting the fact that those who had voted for the candidate opposite to the one they preferred must be evil. Thus, they argued, they could not in good conscience be friends with those people, in real life or on Facebook. To do so would, of course, be the equivalent of espousing all the evil things that these "friends" must surely believe in and practice to vote for that candidate.
It did not seem to cross these people's minds that voting for a candidate does not mean one agrees with everything the candidate stands for. Sometimes people vote while holding their noses, as some people expressed it, after searching desperately for the lesser of two or more evils, and trying to have their votes do the best they could for our country. Or to phrase it another way, they wanted their votes to do as little damage as possible.
In the midst of this craziness I discovered I could not think or vote with the same perspective as everyone else. I've always thought that in the United States elections were about voting for the candidate of one's choice, free of harassment from others. I thought we had the privilege of voting as our consciences dictated, and that it was a private matter. I saw that many of my friends were voting while holding their noses, so to speak, feeling that they had no other choice. I do not judge anyone for how she or he voted, but I had to vote for a candidate I could believe in and feel proud to vote for. I had to vote according to my conscience.
My attitude is not surprising, considering my type preferences are for INFJ, which the MBTI(R) Manual describes on p. 75. One of the bullet points describing INFJ calls us idealistic, complex and deep. "INFJs apply personal values and empathize to understand others and make decisions. They are loyal to people and institutions that exemplify their values but have little interest in those that do not."
Could this quote not be a description of the election process? INFJs decide who to vote for by applying personal values to the candidates and issues at hand. Our loyalty to our values overrides any loyalty we may have to a political party or to our friends who may be telling us to vote for a particular candidate, whether because they want to see that person in office, or to prevent someone else from getting elected. For me, voting must be a positive process with the goal of putting someone in office only because he or she is the best candidate.
Many people said that a vote for a third - party candidate, however worthy that individual might be, was a wasted vote. But for me, voting could not be a means to an end, a negative process with the goal of preventing a different candidate's election. In my view the only wasted vote was a vote for someone the voter did not wholeheartedly wish to see in office. In order for the election process to be satisfying for me, voting must have the purpose of putting the person voted for into office. Period. It must be an end in itself.
As idealistic as we are, though, I don't think many INFJs make political affiliation and voting history a test of friendship. I might be a bit slower to start a friendship with someone I know to be very different from me politically. But I do have friends, perhaps even many, who differ from me politically, as well as many with whom I've never discussed politics. I would have to say, though, that I think my closest friends tend to fall near me on the spectrum of political ideologies ranging from conservative to liberal.
I also don't think INFJs would drop an established, longstanding friendship just because of how someone had voted. I certainly wouldn't, though in this past election many seemed ready to do just that.
Perhaps, though, I would not be in the minority among INFJs if I withheld my friendship from those who belittled and/or ridiculed us, or anyone for that matter, for our political views and choices.
After all, couldn't it be that the most important determinant of how things will go over the next four years is something other than the outcome of this election? Maybe we should consider the possibility that the way we view and treat others who differ from us, whether in the realm of politics or personality, might hold the key to shaping the quality of our future.
Do your personality preferences influence the way you vote and view other voters who differ from you politically? If so, how? Feel free to let us know in a comment!
Myers, Isabel Briggs, Mary H. McCaulley, Naomi L. Quenk, and Allen L. Hammer. MBTI(R) Manual. Mountain View, California: CPP, Inc., 2009.