All personality types in the MBTI suite hold grudges, and the capacity to do so is wired into our nature. Only a few gifted individuals may be immune through deep introspection, unique experiences, or personality quirks.
Like most people, ESTPs can hold grudges. However, thinking and perceiving (TP) types do not tend to hold grudges with as much intensity and length as the more feeling and judging (FJ) types. As extroverts (E), they tend to express their anger openly rather than bottling it up in a grudge.
Personality is an individual complex thing and people who fall into the same Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), such as ESTP, still differ in life experience, which may deeply influence how they deal with grudges. Therefore, the question: Do ESTPs hold grudges can only be answered in terms of general tendencies in the aggregate and not of any specific individual.
How Grudge Dynamics Relate To The MBTI
To make sense of how prone ESTPs are to holding grudges, it is instructive to know what functional role grudges play in our psyche. A grudge is a resentment toward those who have wronged us in the past. The feeling of being wronged is very disempowering due to unmet expectations.
Holding grudges has probably been hard-wired into us because it has a biological survival advantage. It protects us from being taken used and taken advantage of. Anyone who too easily forgets and forgives signals to the more ruthless and predatory amongst us that there will be no penalty to pay for treading on us. We hold grudges from our need to control, assert power, and have agency.
It is not always possible to immediately react to a wrong being done to us because the perpetrator could, at that moment, be in a more powerful position than us, so it may be too dangerous or unwise to react. Holding a grudge gives us the drive to plan and seek revenge at a more opportune time. This is why people derive satisfaction from seeing wrongdoers being punished and brought to justice.
Many people hold onto grudges because it gives them an identity and a sense of purpose and meaning. Less introspective personality types may use grudges to protect the integrity of their psyche by blaming others for their failings. For more reflective types, grudges may motivate them to more deeply examine their feelings, thereby transforming negative emotions into positive understanding.
Looking back on the words in bold in the text above may help one deduce which key personality traits may be engaged in holding a grudge. People who are open and easily express their emotions and who are blunt, direct, and emotionally honest tend to blow off steam tend to resolve their grievances more quickly than those who bottle them up. Extroverts (E) who may be more comfortable than introverts (I) with confronting those who wrong them may resolve grievances before they turn into long-term grudges.
However, extroversion does not automatically give you emotional intelligence (EQ). Openly expressing yourself clumsily and violently may keep the grievance unresolved or even intensify it. Some extroverts are more sensorily (S) directed, so their extroversion does not always make them more empathic to other people’s emotions or comfortable with emotionally laden confrontations.
Sensors are also caught up with observable facts and details and often lack the initiative’s (N) ability to process and work through negative feelings, such as grudges, which sensors often keep unresolved in their unconscious. Thinkers (T) operate more logically than Feelers (F), who place more weight on values.
Since grudges are about ‘the feeling of being wronged,’ more sensitive and values-driven intuitive-feeling (NF) personalities might hold deeper grudges than sensor-thinking (ST) types. Judges (J) are also very prone to hold grudges.
Judgers take responsibility very seriously and expect others to do the same. They can very easily hold grudges against flakes since holding grudges is linked to having unmet expectations. The most prone to holding grudges are FJ’s. Thinking-Perceiving (TP) types are more pragmatic, logical, spontaneous, less rigid, and less hung up on ethical principles than FJ’s.
Grudge Dynamics Of An ESTP
As extrovert – sensors, ESTPs are “doers .”This makes them very action-oriented and focus mainly on the present. When they dwell on the past, it is more about factual details rather than meanings and values. ESTPs who are very observant and don’t forget easily are more likely to keep a mental point score rather than an emotionally laden grudge.
Extroverts gain energy from others and don’t like losing friends, so they tend to ‘want’ to forgive and keep them. So, although forgiving, ESTP’s never forget. Their mental score card may come across as mean and petty. Although very forgiving, ESTPs will never forget. Their quickness to forgive may keep them attached to people who keep on hurting them.
Perversely, when an ESTP nurses a grudge against someone, it is a sign that they care about them. They only invest energy into holding a grudge against people who are important to them. ESTPs resolve grudges by stopping to care. They, therefore, do not waste emotional energy on enemies or strangers.
Unlike Intuitive–Feeling-judging (NFJ) personality types, they are not driven to plot and scheme, to seek revenge and justice in the future if there is no immediate threat to them or their loved ones. ESTPs are more adept at defending against immediate, especially physical dangers.
ESTPs thrive in action-packed careers, such as being soldiers, detectives, and athletes. Therefore, if, for some health, age, or political reason, they are prevented from being active and solving things by ‘doing,’ they may brood and mope in negativity. Since they find it hard to introspect and be without doing, they may leave a lot of negative feelings unresolved and buried in their unconscious.
Less introspective ESTPs may even protect their psyches from unresolved negativity by blaming others or outside forces for their state of forced inactivity.
Conclusion
Like all personality types, ESTPs can and do hold grudges. However, their grudges are more like point scores or accounting ledgers rather than deep, emotionally laden grievances. They perversely hold grudges only against their loved ones and friends.
ESTPs resolve grudges by stopping to care and do not invest emotional and mental energy in plotting revenge against their enemies. Instead, they are very good at defending against immediate threats.
