The influence of psychological type preferences on readers trying to imagine themselves in a New Testament healing story

Abstract

A sample of 404 Anglicans from a variety of church traditions within the Church of England was asked if they could imagine themselves into a healing story from Mark 9:14–29 by identifying with one of the characters in it. Around 65% could do so (‘imaginers’) and 35% could not. The likelihood of being an imaginer was higher among (i) women than among men, (ii) those who preferred intuition to sensing or feeling to thinking, and (iii) those who were most charismatically active. Readers with intuition as their dominant function were most likely to be imaginers, while those with thinking as their dominant function were least likely to be so.