The relationship between Myers-Briggs type indicator scores and people who are judged to have peak experiences

The purpose of this study was to detect significant relationships between people who were judged to be peakers and Jungian types. One hundred and twelve undergraduate and graduate students from The University of Tennessee, Knoxville volunteered to participate in this study.

Maslow claims that peak experiences are indicators of psycho logical health. He created the Peak Experience Questionnaire to determine whether subjects are peakers or non-peakers. Peakers, he believed, are more motivated by being needs while non-peakers are more influenced by deficiency needs.

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator was the other instrument used in this study. This instrument is based on Jung's typological theory and it classifies individuals on four scales: extraversion-introversion, thinking-feeling, sensing-intuition, and judging-perceiving.

The data from this project was analyzed using a t-test for the first four hypotheses and a chi square test was used to determine if the discriminant function analysis was significant for the fifth hypothesis. The only significant relationship was between subjects who preferred intuition and were judged to be peakers. The discriminant function prediction equation for peakers classified only 44% of the peakers correctly, but the equation for non-peakers identified 84% correctly.

The results of this study suggest that the Jungian intuitive type may be a predictor for people who have peak experiences. Also, peakers seem to be a much more heterogeneous group than non-peakers.