Your true type is the type that represents your natural preferences and the MBTI^® instrument's purpose is to point you to your true (or best-fit) type. There are, however, some reasons why the type a person reports on the MBTI^® instrument may not be their best-fit type.

These reasons include but are not limited to concern about how others might feel about someone's type, working to develop skills and qualities of different preferences, lack of clarity about one's preferences, type development, work and social expectations, or stress. The reasons a person may have results from the MBTI^® instrument that do not reflect their best-fit type are often the very same reasons people may experience uncertainty in clarifying their best-fit type.

One reason people may receive results that are not their best-fit type may be because, for some reason, they learned not to trust their innate preferences. People tend to develop the functions in the order in which they prefer them. If family, school, and environment support this natural path, an individual will use and trust his or her dominant (favorite) function, followed by increasing use and trust of the auxiliary function.

Sometimes family, school, and culture do not allow individuals to develop along natural paths. For example, a child who tries to make logical and impersonal decisions using Thinking may be made to feel guilty for not attending enough to family harmony and other Feeling values. In this manner, an individual may be discouraged from developing his or her naturally preferred dominant and/or auxiliary functions and may instead be pushed to develop another less-preferred function. It could also result in reporting a type on the MBTI^® instrument that is not a true or best-fit type.

This kind of type falsification may lead to someone feeling uncomfortable with his or her ability to make good decisions or not knowing what information is most important to attend. For these and other reasons, a person may feel tension between some preferences (between Thinking and Feeling, or between Sensing and Intuition) and not be sure of his or her natural preference.