Identification of Imam Ali (AS) personality type based on Imam's words in Nahj al-Balaghah using MBTI model

Recognition of personality traits of religious leaders is one of the important research areas in the study of religions and sects. Religious people always choose prominent religious figures as a model of behavior and try to create maximum harmony between their behavior and religious elders. Among the many theories introduced in the field of psychology to psychologically describe human personality, Jung's theory of psychological types, which was later developed by Meyer Briggs and Briggs as 16 personality types, was chosen as the theoretical framework for this study to better understand the personality of Ali ibn Abi Talib (AS). Although many writings, especially in the last century, have examined his personality, but in none of these studies, this theory has not been selected as a theoretical framework for research, and in this regard, the present study is the first work of its kind. In this research, the statements of Imam Ali (AS) in the book Nahj al-Balaghah have been examined by content analysis method and it has been determined that his personality in the spectrums of "introversion-extraversion", "sensing-intuition", "thinking - feeling" and "judgment-perception" which side was he more inclined to? The findings of our research lead us to the conclusion that Imam Ali (AS) probably had an “introverted”, “intuitive”, “thinker” and “judger” personality and his personality is closer to the architectural personality type (INTJ) in terms of typological literature.