The OPS Starter Kit will get you familiar with the basic concepts of the Objective Personality System, so that you have a foundation from which to build upon as you learn more about the system, engage with the community, and of course, try and type your mom. Seriously, she probably isn’t the ESFJ you’ve been telling your friends this whole time.
What’s an OPS?
The OPS Starter Kit is your intro guide to the Objective Personality System. Not sure what that is or want an overview? See the article below for our intro and brief history lesson. I promise you won’t have to memorize any dates.
New to Personality In General?
By the way, if you are new to personality theory in general, you might also enjoy taking a step back from Objective Personality and taking a quick detour down to Function Town. Cognitive functions as first theorized by Carl Jung form the backbone of the MBTI as well as OPS, so it might be beneficial to start there. Or not, I’m not your mom, but seriously… still probably not an ESFJ.
Objective Personality on YouTube
Objective Personality has numerous videos on their YouTube Channel, but most of their content these days doesn’t focus on providing an overview of their core concepts, so it can be daunting to figure out where to start. When they first relaunched the channel in 2018 they did overviews videos that we have compiled into a playlist for you below to get you up to speed. You can also try going to their channel and just sorting by oldest and working your way up. Either way there is a lot to watch, so grab some popcorn 🍿 or better yet, a notepad.
The core concepts you will learn about within this playlist are listed below in the banner and introduced in more depth further down the page. We have written explanations for all these concepts if you don’t like moving images so much.
Letters
Thinking vs Feeling
Intuition vs Sensing
NF vs ST & SF vs NT
Saviors and Demons
Saviors and Demons are how selections of coins are made within the Objective Personality system. As such it is an essential component to understanding how the system works in comparison to other personality systems.
Saviors are the patterns of behavior we are addicted to in our life. In our minds, the information from our Saviors will do us no wrong we tend to overtrust this information and naturally look to them first to help us understand the world around us. Conversely, Demons are the opposites of our saviors and seem to contradict our natural tendencies. As such, we distrust them and resist applying the lessons we learn from them within our lives. Someone naturally attuned to paying attention to others will feel awkward and unsure when venturing alone. By tracking which side of each of the coins we are more comfortable with, we can then predict which side will be distrusted or vice versa. By making these predictions and seeing those patterns play out again and again, we are able to prove each part of the type.
Human Need Coins
The first set of coins is called the Human Needs. Each type has the Observer needs of Certainty and Variety satisfied through Organizing (Oi) and Gathering (Oe) and the Decider needs of Signification and Connection satisfied through deciding for the Self (Di) and the Tribe (De). Each of these exist as a coin in the OP system. A type will have either a savior observer of Organizing or Gathering and a savior decider of Self or Tribe. Additionally, types will have a preference for either their savior observer or their savior decider function. This is determined by the third coin of the Human Needs, Single Decider or Single Observer, which looks at where the largest gap is between your Human Needs.
These 3 coins make up the first 8 types in Objective Personality as listed in the last column below.
Letter Coins
The next set of coins is called the Letters. The letters coins are similar to those found within the MBTI. We have the deciders letter coin of F for Feeling vs T for Thinking and the observer letter coin of N for iNtuition vs S for Sensing. These letters represent types of information people are processing and together with the Human Need coins above determine which cognitive function a type is using. We can also combine observer and decider letters together to form temperaments which each have their own distinctive vibe.
Thinking and Feeling are types of deciding which can be done by the Self or with the Tribe.
Sensing and Intuition are types of observable information which can be Organized or Gathered.
Related:
- Introverted Feeling – Fi = Di + Feeling
- Decider Functions – Fi Fe Ti Te
- Observer Functions – Si Se Ni Ne
- Temperaments – SF vs NT, ST vs NF
Adding these 2 coins we arrive at the first 32 types in Objective Personality. These types are comparable to the 16 in the MBTI but with 16 additional jumper types.
Animal Coins
The next set of coins is called the Animals. Animals are combinations of two cognitive functions working in tandem, one observer and one decider. There are two types of Animals, Information and Energy. The Information Animals are Consume and Blast and involve receiving and communicating information. The Energy Animals are Play and Sleep and are used to expend and conserve energy. Similar to the Observer vs Decider coin, there is a coin called Info or Energy dominant which distinguishes between types which are more balanced on their Energy animals or more balanced on their Info animals.
Adding Animal Stacks gives us 4 additional versions of each of the 32 types, resulting in 128 types.
Sexual Modality Coins
The final set of coins is known as the Sexual Modalities. These coins look at where a person pushes (Masculine) or flows (Feminine) with information. The first coin looks at how the type views the sensory information as hard and immovable or flexible and malleable. The second coin looks at whether or not the type pushes information outwards towards other or inwards to the self. Objective Personality has also seen strong correlations between a type’s modalities and their preferred learning style of Kinesthetic, Audio, Tester, and Visual.
Adding 4 additional modality combinations for each of the 128 types gives us 512 types total.
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More Reading
- Overview of Coins – 2021 update from Objective Personality on their coin definitions
- Introvert vs Extrovert – Objective Personality does not measure this aspect directly, so how do they view this spectrum in relation to their typing model?
- Objective Typing – Learn more about the operator model of typing
- Self Typing – The opposite of Objective Typing, can someone still apply this model to their self? (not yet written)
- Dashboards – OPS Types are often presented via a table called a dashboard
- OPS Type Code – How to construct an Objective Personality Type based on the coins
- Typing Mistakes – Common mistakes people make when typing
- Glass Lizards – A particular subset of types within Objective Personality which seem to use their last function in their stack more than you’d expect.
- Memory in the Masculine Observer – Part of Objective Personality’s Masculine Sensory coin is the theory that our Memory is tied closely to our masculine observer function.
Join the Community
Once you have watched these videos and exhausted the resources we have available for you here on our site, come join us on the Facebook groups and start asking some questions! There is an Unofficial Objective Personality Study Group open to anyone interested in discussing OPS, as well an Objective Personality Class Members group for those who have joined the OPS class and would like to discuss the goings on there.
Connect with Us
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Other Intros
OPS also has a beginner series of videos available only on their website that goes into greater depth on their typing methods. However, you must first join the class to view their beginner series. In the class, Dave and Shannon answer questions and use their typing methods to type a new celebrity every week. You can check out the class archives here.
Binyamin Tsadik does interviews with many people in their classes who have been typed by OPS on his YouTube Channel and also compiled an excellent introduction playlist of his explanation of what Objective Personality is tracking. You can check this out below.
Binyamin previously created this playlist as an intro to the system. It is a bit dated now, but still provides a nice overview of the system from his perspective.
Laura Miller has crafted an extensive list of links to OPS content across the web. In her doc she lists several ways to begin your journey into OP. Check it out here.
Subjective Personality 