Pinterest and the INFJ Personality Type

A few days ago, I was moping around because all of my holiday company had left, particularly my college age children. One of my daughters is a teacher and an INFJ.  She said to me, “Oh mom, quit dragging around.  Let’s make you a Pinterest.”

Pinterest, a pinboard-style photo sharing website that allows users to organize theme-based images is one of her favorite ways to relieve stress.  Even when she was a young child, pictures, particularly if they were unusual, attracted her attention.  She loved “mags” (her magazines) and the best gift she ever received was her first digital camera.  It was no surprise that Pinterest soon became her favorite social media website.

The INFJ personality type tends to rely on the visual part of the brain more often than other personality types. In fact, according to Dr. Dario Nardi’s The Neuroscience of Personality both the INTJ and the INFJ are strong visual thinkers who use the O1 and O2 regions of the brain frequently.  (“O” stands for the occipital lobe of the brain which is the visual cortex).

So, I asked my daughter how she feels after she works with her Pinterest board.  She reported that she is more relaxed and more energized after doing it.   Then she said, ” I wonder if there are many INFJ-related “pins” on the board so we searched “INFJ” on Pinterest. There were pages and pages of them!   Just to test this out further, we searched other types and found several pins for other types such as the ENFP but not nearly as many.   What’s even more interesting is the the INFJ personality type is present in only 1-2% of the population yet they had the most pins related to their type!

What’s the upshot of all of this?  First, Pinterest might be an effective stress reliever/energizer, particularly for this personality type.  Further, it might serve as a perfect way to organize thoughts and keep track of details for multiple personality types but especially for the INFJ.

I woud love to hear from INFJs who use Pinterest.  Does this sound like you?

Ann C. Holm