Personality types of dentists

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) was used to determine the personality types of dental graduates, 1964-1984, from Creighton University, School of Dentistry. The MBTI reveals the strength and nature of preferences along four dimensions: extraversion-introversion, sensing-intuition, thinking-feeling, and judging-perceptive. In sample (N = 472), four personality types: ISTJ (108), ESTJ (66), ISFJ (48), and ENTJ (37), accounted for 54.9% (N = 259) of the dentists. The remaining 45.1% (N = 213) were divided among 12 personality types without any type accounting for more than 6.1% (N = 29). Comparisons with a general population (N = 9,320) revealed that the dental sample included more introverts (58.9%), thinkers (65.9%) and judgers (75.0%). The implications of personality characteristics, as applied to dentistry through communication patterns, relationships with co-workers and management styles were discussed.