How Different Personality Types Handle Selfishness: A Study

Why Selfishness Is Worth Studying

Few words carry as much sting as “selfish.” We use it to end friendships, win arguments, and criticize ourselves at three in the morning. Yet almost nobody agrees on what counts as selfish. Is protecting your own time selfish, or just sensible? Is putting your career ahead of a friend’s feelings a character flaw or a reasonable choice? The answer often depends less on the behavior itself than on the person judging it – and, as our research suggests, on their personality.

To find out, we created the “Selfishness” survey, asking people how often they act selfishly, whether they notice, whether they feel guilty, how they react when they see it in others, and how much they fear being labeled selfish themselves. Over 39,000 people responded, and the results reveal something more interesting than a ranking of who is most self-centered. They show that people with different personality traits are essentially using the same word to describe different things – and that the gap between those definitions explains a great deal about how we judge each other.

What the Data Reveals About Selfishness and Personality

One personality trait pair dominates the data around selfishness: Thinking versus Feeling. It shaped how often people admitted to acting selfishly, whether they felt bad about it, whether they saw it as necessary, whether they read it as weakness, and how much they worried about being seen that way. On several of these questions there was no overlap at all between the two groups – every Thinking personality type landed on one side of the split, every Feeling type on the other. That kind of clean separation is unusual, even for a trait this influential.

But the survey isn’t a single story repeated 14 times. Other traits took over on specific questions. The Judging and Prospecting traits determined whether people caught their own selfishness in real time or only in hindsight, and they also predicted how confident people felt about spotting selfishness in others. The Extraverted and Introverted traits decided who was willing to confront a selfish person out loud. So awareness, judgment, and action each ran on a different engine.

A recurring theme is the distance between feeling and doing. INFJ personalities (Advocates) were the most bothered by witnessing selfishness, yet only a minority confront anyone about it with any regularity. Feeling types were far more likely to call selfishness a sign of weakness – and yet, when someone acts selfishly toward them first, the majority still say they would answer in kind. Meanwhile, ENTP personalities (Debaters) and ENTJ personalities (Commanders) reported the highest rates of selfish behavior while still being bothered when they saw it in someone else. Almost everyone applies a softer standard to themselves than to the people around them.

Two findings cut across every personality type, and they’re worth paying attention to. First, relationships pull in the same direction for all 16 groups – no type said a partner makes them more selfish overall. Second, a large majority of every type said they usually notice their own selfish behavior. Whatever people disagree about, blindness doesn’t appear to be the main problem. The disagreement is about what the behavior means once it’s been noticed.

Selfish Behavior and Self-Awareness Across Personality Types

Almost everyone admits to acting selfishly sometimes – but personality shapes both how readily people apply that label to themselves and how quickly they catch it. Our data shows two separate patterns at work. The Thinking and Feeling traits largely determine how often people say they behave selfishly, while the Judging and Prospecting traits shape whether that recognition arrives in real time or hours later. In other words, admitting to selfishness and noticing it as it happens are two different skills – and different personality types excel at each.

Self-Reported Frequency of Selfish Behavior

The gap in how often people say they act selfishly is enormous, and it falls almost perfectly along the Thinking–Feeling line. Combining the “very often” and “often” answers, 62% of ENTPs say they act selfishly on a regular basis – the highest result in the survey. ESTP personalities (Entrepreneurs) and ENTJs weren’t far behind. At the other end, only 13% of INFJs and a similar share of ENFJ personalities (Protagonists) and ISFJ personalities (Defenders) said the same. That’s close to a fivefold difference between the two ends of the scale.

It’s worth being careful about what this question actually measures. Respondents weren’t scored by an outside observer – they were asked to judge themselves, using a word most people find unflattering. Thinking personality types tend to treat “selfish” as a neutral description of prioritizing their own interests, while Feeling types often hear it as a moral accusation. That difference in interpretation almost certainly widens the gap. Notably, “occasionally” was the most common answer for most personality types, including nearly every Feeling type, which suggests that plenty of people land somewhere in the middle and simply disagree about what to call it.

Awareness of Selfish Behavior

Whatever their differences elsewhere, people generally believe they can spot their own selfishness. Every single personality type cleared 69% agreement that they usually realize when they’re acting selfishly, and INFJs topped the chart at 90%. ISTP personalities (Virtuosos) and ESTPs sat at the bottom of the range, both around 70% – still a strong majority, just noticeably less certain than everyone else. The floor being this high tells us something useful: self-reported blind spots around selfishness are rare, at least in people’s own estimation.

The ordering, though, doesn’t match the previous question at all. ESTPs report acting selfishly more often than almost anyone, yet they’re the least confident that they notice it – while INFJs report the least selfish behavior and claim the sharpest awareness of it. Types combining Feeling and Judging traits, such as ISFJs and ENFJs, both at 87%, clustered near the top, likely because they monitor their effect on other people as a matter of habit. Prospecting personalities, who tend to act first and reflect later, generally scored lower – a pattern that becomes much clearer in the next question.

Real-Time Awareness vs. Hindsight

Asked whether they usually realize they’re behaving selfishly in the moment or after the fact, INFJs were the most likely to catch themselves in real time, at 64%. ENFJs and ISFJs followed closely, and the Judging types across all four Roles – including ESTJ personalities (Executives) and INTJ personalities (Architects) – all landed on the real-time side of the split. Judging personalities tend to run a mental checklist as they go, and that habit appears to extend to monitoring their own conduct.

ESFP personalities (Entertainers) sat at the opposite end, with only 44% catching themselves in the moment – nearly 20 points behind INFJs. ISTPs and ISFP personalities (Adventurers) produced nearly identical results, and even INTP personalities (Logicians) tipped slightly toward hindsight. That said, most of these splits are narrow. For INFP personalities (Mediators) and ENFP personalities (Campaigners), the two options were separated by about two points – close to an even split. Recognition is happening for nearly everyone – the real difference is whether it arrives in time to change course or only in time to apologize.

How Personality Types Feel After Acting Selfishly

Once someone recognizes their own selfishness, what happens next? Our data points to two very different responses, and the split between them is one of the cleanest in the entire survey. One group tends to feel guilty. The other tends to feel justified, viewing self-interest as a practical requirement rather than a moral failing. The Feeling and Thinking traits explain almost all of this difference. Not a single Thinking personality type scored lower than any Feeling type on the justification question, and none scored higher than any Feeling type on the guilt question. These two survey items essentially describe the same divide from opposite directions.

Guilt After Selfish Behavior

Among Feeling personality types, guilt is close to universal: 93% of INFPs and 92% of INFJs said they usually feel bad after acting selfishly. Thinking types answered very differently. Only 36% of ENTJs and 40% of ESTPs agreed, and even the most guilt-prone Thinking personalities landed just under 60%. From one end of the scale to the other, that’s a gap of more than 55 percentage points – the widest spread of any question in this survey.

What makes this interesting is how it interacts with the earlier findings. ENTJs and ESTPs report acting selfishly more often than nearly anyone, and they also feel the least bad about it – a consistent worldview rather than a contradiction. Feeling types show the mirror image: they report the least selfish behavior and the most remorse about it. For personalities who weigh the human impact of every choice, even small acts of self-interest can register as a betrayal of their values. For those who lead with logic, taking care of your own needs is simply part of how things work, and guilt over it serves no useful purpose.

Selfishness as a Means to an End

Here the pattern reverses with almost mathematical neatness. Nearly 73% of ENTJs and 71% of ENTPs believe that acting selfishly is the only way they’ll get certain things – and every Thinking personality type in the survey agreed at a rate of 59% or higher. Feeling types clustered far below, with ISFJs at 35% and INFJs at 36% anchoring the low end.

This helps explain the guilt gap rather than just repeating it. If you genuinely believe that certain goals are unreachable without putting yourself first, then selfishness stops being a character flaw and becomes a tool – unpleasant, perhaps, but necessary. That belief does most of the work of dissolving remorse. Most Feeling personality types reject that premise, suggesting they see other routes to what they want. Whether that view is realistic is a separate question, but it clearly shapes how these personality types experience their own behavior.

Which Personality Types Are Most Bothered by Selfishness?

Few people enjoy watching someone else act selfishly – but people disagree sharply about what that behavior actually says about a person. These two survey items separate the moral judgment from the emotional reaction. One asks whether selfishness signals weakness of character, and the other asks how much it bothers people to see it happen. Feeling personality types answered yes far more often to the first question and reacted more strongly to the second. Thinking types were bothered too, just less intensely, and they were much less willing to read selfishness as a flaw rather than a choice.

Selfishness as a Sign of Weakness

Opinion here splits almost exactly down the middle of our sample, and the dividing line is the Feeling and Thinking traits. INFJs were the most likely of all personality types to see selfishness as a sign of weakness, at 57%, with INFPs just behind them, while ESTPs and ENTJs sat at the bottom, both at around 17%. Among Thinking types, ISTJ personalities (Logisticians) were the most likely to agree, at 33% – still well below every Feeling type in the survey. The ordering matches the guilt question almost perfectly, which suggests that people apply the same standard to others that they apply to themselves.

The more interesting detail is how narrow the Feeling majority actually is. Even at the top of the range, agreement barely clears the halfway mark, and ESFPs, ISFPs, and ESFJ personalities (Consuls) all landed just under 50%. So this isn’t a case of one group being certain and the other being certain of the opposite. Feeling personalities are genuinely divided among themselves. What separates them from Thinking types is that many of them see selfishness as revealing something about a person’s character, rather than simply describing a decision they made. Thinking types are far more likely to treat it as a strategy – sometimes an unpleasant one, but not evidence of a weak person.

Reactions to Witnessing Selfishness

Here the disagreement shrinks dramatically. Almost every personality type said that witnessing selfishness bothers them at least somewhat – even the least reactive types cleared 80% when the “very” and “somewhat” answers are combined. What changes is the intensity. Six in ten INFJs said they’re very bothered when they witness someone acting selfishly – the strongest reaction in the survey – with ISFJs close behind. INTJs sat at the other end, with just 25% choosing the strongest option. Fewer than one in five people in any group said selfish behavior doesn’t bother them at all.

That near-consensus is worth pausing on. Whatever their differences over guilt, justification, and weakness, people across all 16 personality types agree that selfishness is unpleasant to watch. Sentinels (the Observant, Judging personality types) with the Thinking trait were the most reactive of the logic-led group, which fits their attachment to fairness and shared standards. And notice the mild double standard running through this section: ENTPs and ESTPs report acting selfishly more often than any other group, yet the large majority of them are still bothered when someone else does it. Selfishness, it seems, looks rather different from the inside than from the outside.

Selfishness in Relationships and Confronting Selfish People

When selfishness moves from the abstract into someone’s actual relationships, the picture changes. People across all 16 personality types say they hold back on self-interest with a partner, and most say they rarely call anyone out for it. But when someone acts selfishly toward them first, a large share are willing to answer in kind. These four survey items track selfishness where it’s hardest to avoid – with partners, friends, and the people who test our patience most.

Selfishness Within Romantic Relationships

This was the most one-sided question in the survey. Every single personality type said they’re less likely to act selfishly when they’re in a relationship, and no group came close to splitting evenly. ISTPs were the most likely to say a relationship makes them more selfish, at 26%, with ESTPs and ENTPs just behind them. At the other end, only 11% of ENFJs and a similar share of INFJs said a relationship makes them more selfish. Even among the types who report the highest baseline rates of selfish behavior, roughly three in four say a partner brings out their less self-centered side.

There’s an important limit to what this tells us. Respondents were comparing themselves to themselves, not to anyone else – so an ENTP reporting less selfishness in a relationship is still working from a much higher starting point than an ISFJ. What the data does show is that commitment seems to pull in the same direction for everyone. The types most likely to say “more” share the Thinking trait, and many of them also highly value personal autonomy. For those personalities, a relationship may create more moments where their own preferences visibly collide with someone else’s, which could make ordinary self-interest feel more noticeable.

Frequency of Confronting Selfish Behavior

Speaking up about someone else’s selfishness is uncommon across the board. Combining the “very often” and “somewhat often” answers, ENFJs and ENTJs confront people about selfish behavior most often, at roughly 43%, while ISTPs came in lowest at 18%. Nearly a third of ISTPs said they never confront anyone about it. The dividing line here isn’t the Thinking and Feeling traits, which drove so much of this survey – it’s the Extraverted and Introverted traits. Every Extraverted personality type confronted more often than its Introverted counterpart.

Set this beside the earlier finding on being bothered by selfishness and something notable appears. INFJs are among the personality types most bothered by witnessing selfish behavior, yet fewer than a third of them regularly speak up about it. Strong feelings and direct action are clearly not the same thing. For many Introverted personalities, raising the issue means starting a conflict they’d rather absorb than escalate. ENFJs and ENTJs stand out as the two types most willing to name the problem out loud – though even for them, staying quiet remains the more common choice.

Closeness to an Extremely Selfish Person

Are you close to anyone who is extremely selfish? Around two in five people in most personality types said yes – ENFJs and ENFPs topped the list at around 48%, while ISTPs came in lowest at 33% – a spread of about 16 points, modest compared with the huge gaps elsewhere in this survey. Whatever else divides these groups, having a difficult person in your inner circle appears to be a fairly common human experience.

One pattern does emerge, though: the types most bothered by selfishness are also the most likely to report living with it up close. That may reflect perception as much as circumstance. Personalities who react strongly to self-interested behavior are simply more likely to register it and label it. But there’s probably a second factor too. Feeling types tend to build wide, emotionally involved networks and give people repeated chances, which naturally increases the odds that someone difficult stays in their life. Types who keep tighter circles and cut ties more readily may end up with fewer such relationships to report.

Reciprocating Selfish Behavior

Faced with someone already acting selfishly toward them, most people are willing to respond in kind – but the intensity varies dramatically. Nearly 70% of ENTPs and ENTJs said they’re very likely to act selfishly toward someone already acting selfishly toward them, compared with just 19% of ISFJs and 20% of INFJs. Among ENTJs, ENTPs, and ESTPs, fewer than one in ten ruled it out entirely. This is the Thinking and Feeling divide reappearing in its sharpest form.

But look at the combined figures and the picture softens considerably. Adding “somewhat likely” to “very likely,” about two-thirds of INFJs and ISFJs also said they’d match selfishness with selfishness. Very few personality types genuinely turn the other cheek. What separates the groups is how quickly and how completely they switch modes. For Thinking types, reciprocity is close to automatic – if the other person has set the terms, matching them is simply the rational response. Feeling personalities get there more reluctantly, and many still hesitate even when they feel entitled to push back. It’s one of the clearest reminders in this survey that selfishness is rarely judged in isolation. Most people judge it by who started it.

Making Up for Selfishness and Fearing a Selfish Reputation

Recognizing selfishness is one thing. Managing it – both privately and in the eyes of other people – is another. These three survey items look at what happens around the behavior rather than during it: whether people try to balance the scales with generosity, how confident they are at spotting selfishness in others, and how much they fear being labeled selfish themselves. Each question produced a different pattern. Offsetting is nearly universal, detection tracks the Judging and Prospecting traits, and reputation anxiety falls right back along the Thinking and Feeling divide.

Generous Acts as a Counterweight

Doing something kind to make up for unrelated self-interest turns out to be a widely shared habit. A majority of every personality type said they do generous things to offset their other, unrelated, selfish behavior – ENFPs were highest at 72%, with INFPs and INFJs close behind. ISTJs sat at the bottom of the range at 53%, followed by ISTPs. That’s a spread of roughly 19 points – narrow by the standards of this survey, where several questions produced gaps three times as wide.

The ordering here doesn’t match the guilt results, which makes it more interesting. ENTJs, who were the least likely of all personality types to feel bad about acting selfishly, still reported offsetting at 64% – noticeably higher than INTJs. So this behavior isn’t purely driven by remorse. For some, it may work as a kind of internal ledger, a way of keeping the overall balance acceptable without agonizing over individual entries. The bottom of the ranking, meanwhile, belongs almost entirely to Thinking personality types, and the Introverted ones sit lowest of all: ISTJs, ISTPs, INTJs, and INTPs all landed between 53% and 56%. Perhaps they see unrelated actions as genuinely unrelated. A generous gesture on Tuesday doesn’t cancel out a selfish one on Monday, and some personalities are unwilling to pretend otherwise.

Spotting Selfishness in Others

Most people believe they can identify a selfish person quickly, but confidence varies in a way that has little to do with the Thinking and Feeling traits. ENTJs were the most confident that they’re quick to identify a selfish person, leading at 84%, with INFJs and INTJs just behind – three types that otherwise disagree about almost everything in this survey. ISTPs and ISFPs came in lowest, both around 64%. Look at the full ranking and the dividing line becomes obvious: every Judging personality type cleared 74%, while the four least confident types all share the Prospecting trait.

This fits how the two groups tend to process people. Judging personalities like reaching conclusions and closing the file, so a few data points are often enough for them to form a verdict. Prospecting types are more comfortable leaving the question open, revising their read as new information arrives – which feels less like quick identification and more like ongoing observation. Remember, too, that respondents were rating their own confidence, not their accuracy. Being fast to label someone selfish and being right about it are two different achievements, and this survey only measured the first one.

Worrying About Being Seen as Selfish

Here the Thinking and Feeling divide returns at full strength. INFPs worried the most about other people misreading them as a selfish person, at 83%, with INFJs and ENFPs following. ESTPs were the least concerned, at 42%, just under ENTJs and ENTPs. Every Feeling personality type in the survey landed above 67%, and every Thinking type fell below 58%, with INTPs the highest among them – a gap of more than 40 points between the extremes.

The irony is hard to miss. INFPs reported relatively low rates of selfish behavior and the highest levels of guilt about it, yet they’re the most anxious that other people might see them the wrong way. Meanwhile, the types who admit to acting selfishly most often are the least troubled by how it looks. What this question really seems to measure is how much someone’s self-image depends on being seen as considerate. For Feeling personalities, a reputation for selfishness would contradict something central to who they believe they are. For Thinking types, it’s mostly just an inaccurate label – annoying, perhaps, but not wounding.

What These Findings Tell Us

Read as a whole, this survey describes two coherent worldviews rather than a spectrum from good to bad. One group treats self-interest as morally loaded – something to feel guilty about, apologize for, and worry about being accused of. The other treats it as a practical fact of life, occasionally unpleasant but rarely shameful. Both groups notice their own behavior at similar rates. They simply reach opposite conclusions about what to do with that information.

Perhaps the most reassuring finding is how much common ground remains underneath all this disagreement. People across all 16 personality types dislike watching selfishness, say they recognize it in themselves, and become less self-centered rather than more when they commit to a partner. The word divides us – the underlying instinct mostly doesn’t. Knowing which side of that divide you tend to fall on – and that the person across from you may be using a completely different definition – can take a surprising amount of heat out of the accusation.