US Presidents Celebrity MBTI: Lyndon Johnson - ISTJ

We come to part five 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 my typing of John F. Kennedy using the method, 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:

I've found a few side shots of Johnson, 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:

Novichkov lists these as the attributes of the Thinking, as opposed to the Feeling, type:

1. Large, flat, expressive forehead;
2. Pronounced, jutting superciliary arches (bones beneath eyebrows);
3. Angular or non-existent bridge of nose dip;
4. Deep eye sockets;
5. Hawkish nose;
6. Narrow, inexpressive lower face. 

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

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

Sensor or Intuitive, s or n? 

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 seems more typical of an Intuitive, according to Novichkov, while Cain is a Sensor.

This picture of a stiff and stocky Mitt Romney, a Sensor, with a sprawling and gangly Paul Ryan, an Intuitive, gives us another side-by-side example:

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

Note the rigid, conventional posture when sitting, and the smooth and stocky hands.

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

Here's another example: three celebrities who are all Introverted Sensors - notice the sameness of their gaze:

Introvert or Extravert, I or E? 

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his immediate environment, Johnson seems detached from it; Kennedy has a tense, weathered facial expression, Johnson a withdrawn, sheepish and melancholy one.

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 Johnson like a glove.

An interesting fact: Truman, an ISTJ like Johnson, succeeded Roosevelt, an ESTJ like Kennedy. Both of the predecessors of the two ISTJ presidents Johnson and Truman were ESTJs, and both died in office.

Mark Hootsen signing off.