US Presidents Celebrity MBTI: Harry Truman - ISTJ

We come to part two of our series, which aims at typing all the US presidents from Franklin Delano Roosevelt to Donald Trump using the Rod Novichkov visual identification method. For a detailed exposition of Novichkov's method, see here; for an application of that method to Roosevelt, see here.

Judger or Perceiver, j or p? 

Let's look at the diagrams of the Judging ('Conceiving', as Novichkov calls them) and Perceiving types, from left and right sides of the head:

Now, finding a good profile shot of a celebrity and lining it up with the above diagrams can be tough. But I've found a few side shots of Truman, and I make him out to be a Perceiver:

Feeler or Thinker, F or T? 

Let's compare two middle-aged American politicians, one Lindsey Graham, who Novichkov would type as a Feeler, and Donald Rumsfeld, who he would type as a Thinker:

Now, who does Truman resemble more - Rumsfeld or Graham? Rumsfeld, obviously.

So far, we have typed Truman as a Perceiver and a Thinker: xxTp. Two letters to go...

Sensor or Intuitive, S or N?  

Again, here's a compare and contrast photo of an Intuitive and a Sensor: gangly, skinny, long and knuckled fingered John Kerry, and stocky, square-fingered and square-handed John McCain. Kerry flops and lolls in his chair, while McCain seems somewhat more stiff and centrally placed. Kerry would be typed as an Intuitive by Novichkov, McCain as a Sensor.

Is Truman a Kerry or a McCain? McCain, of course, and so we can classify Truman as a Sensor.

Which raises the question: was Truman an extraverted or introverted Sensor? The extraverted Sensor's gaze watches you, scans you; the introverted Sensor's gaze, on the other hand, is blurry and unfocussed, and hardly looks at you directly - it perceives the outlines and shapes of objects rather than the details.

Here we have two celebrities who are Sensors, Jean-Claude Van Damme and Richard Burton. From the foregoing description, we can tell which of the two has the extraverted and the introverted gazes.

Is Truman a Van Damme or a Burton? Clearly a Burton: Truman's eyes, in nearly all the photos, hardly ever seem to be focused at the camera. They look around it, not at it.

Introvert or Extravert, I or E? 

In my post on Roosevelt, I used photos of Truman and Roosevelt together as an example of an Introvert and an Extravert together. While Roosevelt always looks absorbed in his immediate environment, Truman seems detached from it; Roosevelt has a tense, weathered facial expression, Truman a withdrawn, sheepish and melancholy one.

We could also compare Truman to another dashing Extravert president, John Fitzgerald Kennedy:

The verdict

Letters p + T + S + I give us ISTp in socionics or ISTJ in MBTI. The ISTJ type tends to be quiet and reserved, lingers in the background, and goes about his business without drawing attention to himself: The type's dominant function, introverted Sensing Si, gives an impression of comfort and homeliness, while the secondary function, extraverted Thinking Te , lends itself to organisation and efficiency. The ISTJ type description fits what we know of Truman like a glove.

As we shall see, two other presidents after Truman could be typed as ISTJs using the Novichkov method. The ISTJ belongs to the category of types Paul Keirsey calls the 'Guardians', and is extremely common - in everyday life and in celebrity-land.

Mark Hootsen signing off.