INFP
The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Colbert had some pretty big shoes to fill and that he did, carrying on the torch after David Letterman left the set back in 2015. Colbert and his humble beginnings included “The Daily Show” hosted by Jon Stewart where he moved on to hosting his own show known as the “The Colbert Report“.
One of my favorite segments on the “Colbert Report” was yes, you guessed it – “Truthinews”. Witty, entertaining and intellectually light on the heart – if that makes any sense. I think it’ll make sense later, so read on.
Whether you remember him as Jon Stewart’s correspondent sidekick, “The Colbert Report” and now host of “The Late Show” – Colbert I believe, has firmly grounded himself through hard work all while having fun on set. Yet another well balanced personality, who understands the value of just that – Personality.
It’s no wonder Colbert even had his Personality Type assessed by an MBTI ® Certified Professional, right on his own show. It’s one of the rare moments I actually see anything like this happen – so I was a bit skeptical, let alone skeptical about an MBTI ® test. Yeah, even I have my critiques on the official test. A test confirming Colbert as an INFP.
Yeah, you heard it, INFP – Fi, Ne, Si, Te.
After some research gathering and mind you this involved perusing dozens and dozens of YouTube videos, interviews and personality typing websites, forums and databases – reverse engineering Colbert became more revealing of his most dominant function, Introverted Feeling. But if I were to offer my honest insight, it’s likely Colbert knew he was an INFP before it was even confirmed.
But this only makes sense for a personality highly aware of his strengths and weaknesses – devout Catholic Stephen Colbert is lead by moral principles. And where better to store these than in his eternal child (third slot) function – Introverted Sensing. A storehouse of information and with Colbert – used at full capacity.
Thinking – it’s hard to tell where this comes from. With Colbert, the INFP has Extraverted Thinking placed on the fourth sloth, inferior function. We usually associate this as the weakest function, but there seems to be a misunderstanding within the personality typing community – this function isn’t always weak or inferior if one is aware of its aspirations and actually achieves it through it’s dominant function. In Colbert’s case this is Introverted Feeling followed by Ne (Extraverted Intuition).
It’s second slot (parent) function (Ne) Extraverted Intuition that I wanted to tackle last, because this function is responsible both internally and externally. Ne is creative, witty, novel and without this function, the INFP would be incapable of shining on stage. A well matured Ne user can come off as Extravert, so let’s not associate INFP as that stereotypical timid shy type.
I think uncovering Stephen Colbert’s personality type sheds some light to some assumptions we have about INFP’s. Every personality type, no matter what the cognitive function stack – is highly capable of achieving anything.
