As an individual (INFJ) thoroughly interested in Myers-Briggs, I often see this discussion brought up. As a short rebuttal, I feel as though many of those who tout Myers-Briggs as a comprehensive personality test fail to understand what the Myers-Briggs attempts to identify. While the "value-add" is more subjective, I'm going to go ahead and say it's not as useless as this article claims. While I don't think anyone (especially employers) should rely heavily on Myers-Briggs, I think it can provide a decent framework (or starting point) outlining basic facets of an individual's personality based on their own perspective. Though I often distrust individual claims about belonging a certain type, given my interest in understanding myself and facets of my own personality, I enjoy discussing why a person may claim to be a part of a certain type.
For me, Myers-Briggs tends to be little more than a starting point for discussing the finer parts of my own personality, values, and perspectives. I find that those who are equally interested in Myers-Briggs share similar values in self-understanding, thus a starting point for some interesting discussion.
As an individual (Taurus) thoroughly interested in astrology, I often see this discussion brought up. As a short rebuttal, I feel as though many of those who tout astrology as a comprehensive personality test fail to understand what astrology attempts to identify. While the "value-add" is more subjective, I'm going to go ahead and say it's not as useless as this article claims. While I don't think anyone (especially employers) should rely heavily on astrology, I think it can provide a decent framework (or starting point) outlining basic facets of an individual's personality based on their own perspective. Though I often distrust individual claims about belonging a sign, given my interest in understanding myself and facets of my own personality, I enjoy discussing why a person may claim to be a part of a certain sign.
For me, astrology tends to be little more than a starting point for discussing the finer parts of my own personality, values, and perspectives. I find that those who are equally interested in astrology share similar values in self-understanding, thus a starting point for some interesting discussion.
Your comment can be distilled to "it's fun to talk about".
I think the M-B is useful, but I only apply it in the area of communication styles. As an INTP engineer, I run into a lot of ISTJ engineers. ISTJ and INTP viewpoints are markedly different in what information is considered critical, how and when to make decisions, and how they like information summarized. So I use M-B to help understand the audience I am writing for or presenting to.
When I first encountered M-B it rescued a sour relationship with an ISTJ boss who thought I wrote content-free status reports, where I thought I wrote well-summarized round-ups that avoided meaningless minutia. Later, the table was reversed when I had an ISTJ report who drowned me in more details than I could (or needed to) process. I used M-B to help us workout guidelines for talking with each other so that we were productive instead of both frustrated.
So M-B has been useful to me. But it should not be used for making hiring/placement decisions. I really see it as an information processing styles inventory and little more.
That is a completely reasonable approach. Like astrology or tarot cards. Getting people thinking about big questions in a non threatening way can spark interesting conversations. There are a lot of cultural norms that prevent people from talking about themselves in that kind of way. A little hocus pocus can help cut through that.
In that same spirit alcohol is a pretty great social lubricant. A little bit of booze lowers people's inhibitions enough to have fun conversations.
My primary concern with even cursory usage of Myers-Briggs is that retest consistency isn't as high as I'd like. Plenty of people retest very solidly, of course, but there's a large-percentage chunk of the population that walks or more boundaries and doesn't put up consistent tests. That makes it hard to say anything about the results, at least in simple "my type" terms.
A nuanced discussion would probably accept that these are continuous axes, but instead they get treated as clusters, distorting even casual analysis.
What about considering other starting points and comparing the added value of them with MBTI? How differs "So, you are INFJ, let's talk about your personality" from "So, you are Captain America/Hobbit/Sith Lord, according to this online test. Let's talk about your personality"?
I am an INTP, and while a lot do consider Myers-Briggs as glorified Barnum statements, I do consider it somewhat valuable for self-introspection.
The main reason I don't think Myers-Briggs can be a true-ism is that each dimension is actually a spectrum. For example I am about 60% "I" (and thus 40% "E") so the various "I" true-isms only slightly factor on my personality.
I read your first paragraph and there is absolutely no information in those 851 characters (!). I actually had to go through your comment history to see that your account is not some sort of Markov generator.
On a more productive point, your post gave no evidence at all about why M-B is useful
As a conversation piece, sure, it is an interesting framework.
As a tool, though, its utility remains doubtful. Its test-retest reliability is very low, meaning that, if you give the same person the test at two different times, you're likely to get two different results. This strongly suggests that, while the test might capture aspects of a person's personality, it's also functioning like a glorified mood ring. Without some way to separate those two aspects, its utility as an indicator of anything useful about any one individual is highly suspect.
I used MBTI in a similar way when I was younger. I identified strongly with the INTP type and wanted to become more outgoing and confident so I studied the descriptions of the ENTP type and deliberately cultivated some of those behaviours. It actually worked fairly well (though admittedly this was also around my 18th birthday so maybe it was just alcohol), nowadays I don't find it particularly useful nor the descriptions at all accurate but as a starting base for self analysis and improvement it's great.
Myers-Briggs is incredibly useful for people who fall into INFJ because the categorization is relatively rare and can help them place a few of their more socially maladaptive tendencies in context.
Admittedly, the test is arbitrary in many ways, but you can't deny the questions -- about introversion, how logical, emotive, and judgmental you are, etc -- represent the subjective experience we have of others' personalities, even if the categories are incomplete, nonlinear, redundant, or transient.
If you feel that way, why not just go for a scientifically-developed personality test like the Big 5? It seems to me that there's an alternative that is real, but there's an almost astrological appeal to Myers-Briggs because (not in spite of) it is opaque.
Your assertion that it is good for anything is based on the idea that the data is valid in any way. It isn't. When people are retested the results are very inconsistent.
Results being independently reproducible is the foundation of science. Meyers-Briggs fails that simple metric.
This is so poorly thought out. I really don't get why some people can't seem to tell the difference between things like MBTIs and astrological signs/zodiacs/horoscopes in terms of their potential to classify people in a meaningful way...
One is an arbitrary mapping of a person's date of birth to an set of traits and prophesies.
The other is a brief summary of a person's personality/behavioral inclinations based on a survey of that person's stated behavior and inclinations. When you say MBTI can be "just as arbitrary," what you're claiming is that it might be true that there is zero correlation between how any individual person of a given personality type answers any of the 93 MBTI questions. Sure, there is variation in people's self-assessments (and personalities for that matter, but let's ignore that for the moment) over time, but it wouldn't be "just as arbitrary" unless it had no correlation at all with basically anything about the person. I find that claim to be completely implausible.
The only way it could be true that it is meaningless is if upon repeated testings, knowing a person's formerly reported MBTI provided no insight at all into what MBTIs are more likely than for the average person in subsequent testings. That's certainly not the case that's been found in the research, so at the very least, it provides insight into what a person thinks that they are like.
Even if it were the case that all the MBTIs are only related to positive traits (which isn't true), the idea that it is meaningless is just nonsense.
> I really don't get why some people can't seem to tell the difference between things like MBTIs and astrological signs/zodiacs/horoscopes
Then let me try to help clarify. MBTI has no predictive power ("I'm an INTP, so... ?") and is not falsifiable. Those are the delineators between science and pseudoscience, so that's why I bucket it with astrology.
When I talk about external validity, what I mean is that the MBTI does not predict how people actually behave. What it says about you, and what you actually are, do not line up often enough or non-trivially enough for it to be valuable.
The problem is not variation over time - that's fine. The problem is that when someone gets a result, that result doesn't say what it claims to about them. It's similar to astrology because while it has a series of well-defined rules for making a decision, that decision does not reflect reality. It is therefore effectively arbitrary.
Both MBTI and astrology are internally valid - that is, the same person will get the same or similar results the majority of the time. That doesn't mean they mean anything.
I believe the "arbitrary zodiac" claim is made toward people that attempt to extrapolate behavior out of mbti types. For example,
"INFJs are strong leaders" is as arbitrary as saying "aquarius's are strong leaders"
The problem i, and many other people find with the mbti is that most of its users, and even scientific apologists, can't help but fall into the trap of categorizing people into perceived behavioral trends based on their types, which is at best, scientifically invalid, and at worse, harmful.
>> a brief summary of a person's personality/behavioral inclinations based on a survey of that person's stated behavior and inclinations.
I'm really a very nice person. I'm magnanimous, full of goodwill and compassion and everyone I meet immediately likes me. I am intelligent and brave and very gregarious. I am the best person to be around when you need a shoulder to cry on because I have a deep understanding of human nature, thanks to my very high emotional intelligence.
That is the problem with taking into account people's stated behaviour and inclinations.
To be fair, the comparison to horoscopes was in a very specific context: the results are presented in general terms that people will be more likely to self-identify with. That particular excerpt doesn't really say much about the predictive power of MBTIs, aside from pointing to a study that suggests that the predictive power doesn't really matter when individuals assess their own results.
Of course other parts of the article talk about the predictive power of the personality test. On the other hand, those excerpts don't talk about horoscopes.
You are correct, but I predict you will not have much success arguing this point in this forum. Hacker News already made up its mind that psychological tests don't predict anything.
I find the MBTI incredibly useful. When I meet someone I immediately figure out what their MBTI type is. That saves me enormous amounts of time later on---I don't have to pay close attention to what they say or do. I just rely on their MBTI type. Sometimes I don't even bother listening to them or asking their opinion, which lets me use the time to think about other things, like HN. I used to use their astrological sign, but that required asking for their birthday, which was awkward, especially when I didn't get them a present.
The point of these IMO, isn't to pigeonhole people, it's for many practical reasons:
- Engender some self awareness. It's astonishing how many people lack critical self-awareness about how they approach problems , handle change, communicate with others, or deal with their emotions. MBTI might be nonsense or unverifiable but for many people it's their first exposure to any written form of objective introspection. The belief that these are immutable traits somehow isn't usually dwelled on.
- Help team members recognize that there are different styles/preferences of thinking and reasoning. You'd be amazed how many inter-office conflicts get resolved just through spending time getting to know one another. MBTI or HBDI workshops (not just the test) are helpful for this
On a final note, there is a fairly popular executive MBA program where I took a one week survey course on leadership about a decade ago. In both this course and the program, they were pretty stoked about the Hermann Brain Dominance Instrument (HBDI): https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herrmann_Brain_Dominance_Ins...
With the hope it was a bit more rooted in science than MBTI. It focuses more on cognitive preferences than on personality.
For me, I appreciated obtaining and knowing my MBTI result for exactly this self-awareness. It allowed me to recognize in myself when certain behaviors and patterns were occurring, and how others might perceive me in those moments. Scientific or not, having a way to codify my personal introspection helped me in many ways career-wise.
Agree completely. Furthermore, the article falsely states that the MBTI asserts people are either 100% introvert or 100% extrovert or whatever other letter. Every time I've been exposed to any sort of MBTI material, it's been very clear that the individual letters are a continuum. Some people fall further out along the continuum than others for each letter pair. The goal is not to pigeon-hole people, but to provide a framework for discussing why people approach situations or react the way they do.
I'd characterize it as a pseudo-scientific horoscope.
It's marginally analogous to the Big Five personality traits (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits - this is the personality paradigm recognized by academia), it just leaves out the tendency to experience negative emotions (probably because neuroticism is a negative thing, and businesses like their HR experiences and training to be as positive and feel-good as the bottom line allows.)
It is unfortunate that people like the false dichotomies and the Forer effect (the generic but positive descriptions that apply to just about everybody.)
I'm sure the Myers Briggs people would be selling the Big Five if they thought they could copyright it.
I think your missing the point. Do you know what flavor of ice cream you like? I think you do -- and why not know that about yourself?
Everyone is some range of introverted to extroverted, for example. It's their preference, such as the flavor of ice cream they like. It can change often, under circumstances, or even not be present, of course. It's not set in stone; it's just a preference. It doesn't define you; you define it.
Myers-Briggs is unfortunate in that it assigns that preference as letter. You like Chocolate. You're a C. There are some who have no problem with this sort of designation. They love chocolate always and in every circumstance. Many, however, are not one letter, and so it's a poor test.
The point is not the letter. The point is asking yourself the question: do you feel more energized after a dinner party or after a quiet day alone? The point is to know, not just what flavors your prefer usually, but what situations (in this case) you prefer. And why not know that about yourself?
This article is as unscientific as it claims the Myers-Briggs test to be. It does not prove the Myers-Briggs test wrong, but instead claims that there is no evidence to support it. Well, in science, if you want to claim that something is wrong, you need two things: the theory must be falsifiable and you need to falsify it. Just claiming something has no evidence is not enough.
Some more critique on the article.
1. The Myers Briggs test result does not need to be binary. There are variants of the tests that give you a score on each of its 4 axes (Introvert/Extrovert, Sensing/Intuitive, Feeling/Thinking, Judging/Perceptive). For example, see https://www.16personalities.com/free-personality-test
Finally, on the point of falsification, I would like to suggest the following test. Take a group of people and let them take the test. Now let the close friends of the test taker read all the personality type descriptions and chose one for the test taker. Find the correlation between the friends' choices and the test results. If the correlation is significant, then the test is meaningful. Otherwise not meaningful.
For these points, I think it's crucial to distinguish "Myers-Briggs style tests" from The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator.
The first thing, MB-style tests, are amorphous and have been improved in various ways since the invention of the test.
That second thing is a formalized test with licensed practitioners. It's been used to disqualify people from jobs, and has produced a huge amount of secondary literature/analysis which requires the binary distribution to be meaningful. This formalized test has been worth a small fortune for the people who own it, and their training seminars and public literature aggressively go against both points 1 and 2.
It's fair to criticize MBTI as, say, needing to be binary. 16personalities is a secondary group which is doing a different thing than the still-popular, rigorously-bounded original.
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, correct. Some theory that has not been tested, however, is equally pointless. Unfortunately we're opertating in a space here where it's more an economy of attention than hard scientific discourse which is very hard to attain in that field. You seem on the right track, though.
My opinion is that the real value of tools like this is to give people a common vocabulary to talk about themselves and understand others. I think StrengthsFinder[0] does a particularly good job at this. The danger is when people assume they understand somone (or themselves) based on the letters/scores/etc. sans dialogue/reflection.
The covariance of the Big 5 and MBTI is high. This means that if you give both inventories to the same population you can do a factor rotation of one onto the other with much of the variance being preserved. This has been demonstrated multiple times in the academic literature. I have never read an article against the MBTI that mentioned this, and that's because the people who write these articles do not understand statistics. The MBTI is approximately as valid as the Big 5.
I've found that Meyers Briggs feels accurate to people whose classifications don't fall right on the margin. If two of the letters fall close to the margin, parts of the description will feel a bit inaccurate.
In my opinion, the Meyers Briggs is useful mainly because it can help people become more self-aware and more empathetic toward others.
I've observed that in a group of 15 people who just got their Meyers Briggs results, several usually think it was uncannily accurate, and a few are immediately defensive because the result does not jive with their self-perception (usually because the personality type is described as similar to some unsavory characters from history). When I read articles criticizing Meyers Briggs, I always assume it was written by one of these people.
If you are in a relationship, one interesting game to play with your significant other is to take the Meyers Briggs test and then read some of the stuff that has been written about relationship compatibility through the Meyers Briggs lens. I've found it to be quite accurate for many couples I know. There is also a very amusing book called Please Understand me II which has detailed write-ups about the characteristics of each type. It's great for parties to read out loud everyone's results over a glass of wine.
IMHO Personality tests are useful mainly to encourage self-awareness, introspection and empathy. As a Meyers Briggs ENTP I find the descriptions of an ENTP personality flattering and desirable. I suspect nearly any type would find their own type description equally flattering and desirable.
I get highly skeptical whenever I encounter things like this.
I've been subjected to "DiSC" profiling at a previous employer. After taking the test we were subjected to a 3 hour session where we slowly discovered and learned about our unique profile. The best part was I compared my strengths and weaknesses with someone who had an "opposite" personality and they were pretty close to identical.
Granted there is a lot to be gained by getting a group of people in a room to talk about the different ways they interact with the world and how they go about solving problems. However, as soon as you start providing formulas for how to interact with people my bull shit detector goes off.
> the most obvious flaw is that the MBTI seems to rely exclusively on binary choices….For example, in the category of extrovert v introvert, you’re either one or the other; there is no middle ground
This is categorically false. Myers Briggs results are quite literally reported on a spectrum of 100 I - 0 - E 100, with your position on the spectrum shown. The 4 letter rollup is exactly that: a summary rollup of your test results.
MBTI highly correlates with OCEAN (aka Big Five), a psychological test (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers%E2%80%93Briggs_Type_Indi...). Sure, some parts make no sense (like insisting in binary values, or some of its interpretation). Still, it is not a horoscope.
I use it a lot when it comes to introducing people to nerdy friends (especially in the context of dating, like: "She's INFP!" or "Yeah, she looks nice, but is a total ESFJ...".)
A link (nice pictures, especially the carnivorous plant for INTP) and some descritpions that actually may be helpful how to deal with other people (especially with different personalities): https://www.16personalities.com/.
If you really want to "be scientific" (as if it was a binary criterion), you can use OCEAN. For me it would be:
It is well worth watching Derren Brown's demonstration of the Barnum / Forer effect [0].
If you've never heard of it, I recommend watching the video before you Google anything. It's only a short video (less than 4 minutes) and is a brilliant demonstration.
As a society, we believe in a lot of pseudo-scientific garbage, from management principles, to nutrition theories, to psychological tests. Ironically it's an outgrowth of our glorification of science and education: kids are taught from an early age to defer to those who clothe themselves in the trappings of the academic, and so as adults people voluntarily entertain very stupid ideas so long as they sound sufficiently "science-y."
This is not a new finding. MBTI has never really been a serious psychological tool. In fact, a lot of the personality assessments used in business are really just woo - MBTI isn't even the worst. It at least is internally consistent.
For a real personality exam with actual use in psych research, check out the Five Factor metric.
At the company I work for, everybody took the test and then we all sat down with a coach to go over the scope of Meyers Briggs and exactly what each part meant. As we were going through this with our team we each had a card in front of us with our type on them.
Explaining the profile parts while seeing your team members profiles was a great exercise for us because it effectively taught us how to communicate better with each other. I'm an ENFJ on a team of highly technical introverts INTJ.
We learned how to work better together, how to communicate better and they also learned how/when to better utilize me for interactions with the rest of the company.
Until we did this exercise it was just some interesting test results.
> For example, in the category of extrovert vs introvert, you’re either one or the other; there is no middle ground.
That's not entirely true. The final answer that people wear as a badge is binary, but the result is calculated as a percentage, and usually presented to the test-taker as a percentage.
The difficulty I see with MBTI is that the categories were decided in advance, whereas they should be determined based on the data. In other words, MBTI treats human personality as a classification problem (which of these categories do you belong to?) where it should be treated as a clustering problem (which categories even exist?)
I'd love to do some data mining on a large MBTI test database. Better yet, a large database of people's responses to various personality-oriented questions, MBTI or not.
Lots of comments here mention the use of MBTI in the workplace. This is such a bad idea! As someone who has taken the test many times over the years, I have a lot of problems with the system in general, especially when applied to the workplace. That's not to say that the idea of personality types is invalid, but I have often seen them misapplied (and overapplied) in practice.
In my experience, Gallup's Strengthsfinder system is much better suited to workplace environments. It's backed by solid research, and I really like its core philosophy: everyone has natural strengths, and building off those strengths will lead to better outcomes than trying to compensate for personal weaknesses. As long as companies understand that it isn't a litmus test for suitability -- teams should have a diversity of strengths or they will have blind spots -- it can actually be a great tool for understanding management and team dynamics.
For personal development, I prefer the Enneagram system. I've found each type's "levels of development" to be incredibly helpful in pinpointing my own type, and overall I have a much better "fit" with my type than in MBTI. As opposed to Strengthsfinder, the Enneagram system is mainly useful for identifying patterns in behavior and understanding motivations. Not such a great business tool, except perhaps at the executive level.
I also had incredible "fit" with Enneagram. I'm not sure I agree about it not being a good business tool, though. I've met a great Quality Manager who almost certainly was a type 6 (which is naturally focused on finding risks and things that might go wrong). The level to which his position matched his personality was striking - he was extremely good at what he was doing and he loved it.
I know a type 6 girl who dropped her job as editor and became a software tester as well. She just liked doing it.
Similarly you could reason about type 7 and their ideal job position: they see more opportunieties and options than others (Steve Jobs was said to be 7w8), but they often dismiss any risks involved. They also hate repetitive day to day work. Hence they would make better Architect, Analyst, UX Designer or Salesperson than a Project Manager (unless they are eg. balanced by a 6 in their team).
I'm not saying that we should choose job solely on the type, it just offers lot of opportunities to understand what is it specifically in given activity that we like and what goes naturally against our habits. Whether we change the job or just work on the weaknesses is up to us.
[+] [-] n-exploit|9 years ago|reply
For me, Myers-Briggs tends to be little more than a starting point for discussing the finer parts of my own personality, values, and perspectives. I find that those who are equally interested in Myers-Briggs share similar values in self-understanding, thus a starting point for some interesting discussion.
[+] [-] TheSpiceIsLife|9 years ago|reply
As an individual (Taurus) thoroughly interested in astrology, I often see this discussion brought up. As a short rebuttal, I feel as though many of those who tout astrology as a comprehensive personality test fail to understand what astrology attempts to identify. While the "value-add" is more subjective, I'm going to go ahead and say it's not as useless as this article claims. While I don't think anyone (especially employers) should rely heavily on astrology, I think it can provide a decent framework (or starting point) outlining basic facets of an individual's personality based on their own perspective. Though I often distrust individual claims about belonging a sign, given my interest in understanding myself and facets of my own personality, I enjoy discussing why a person may claim to be a part of a certain sign. For me, astrology tends to be little more than a starting point for discussing the finer parts of my own personality, values, and perspectives. I find that those who are equally interested in astrology share similar values in self-understanding, thus a starting point for some interesting discussion.
Your comment can be distilled to "it's fun to talk about".
[+] [-] dbcurtis|9 years ago|reply
When I first encountered M-B it rescued a sour relationship with an ISTJ boss who thought I wrote content-free status reports, where I thought I wrote well-summarized round-ups that avoided meaningless minutia. Later, the table was reversed when I had an ISTJ report who drowned me in more details than I could (or needed to) process. I used M-B to help us workout guidelines for talking with each other so that we were productive instead of both frustrated.
So M-B has been useful to me. But it should not be used for making hiring/placement decisions. I really see it as an information processing styles inventory and little more.
[+] [-] jfoutz|9 years ago|reply
In that same spirit alcohol is a pretty great social lubricant. A little bit of booze lowers people's inhibitions enough to have fun conversations.
[+] [-] Bartweiss|9 years ago|reply
A nuanced discussion would probably accept that these are continuous axes, but instead they get treated as clusters, distorting even casual analysis.
[+] [-] ivan_gammel|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] novaleaf|9 years ago|reply
The main reason I don't think Myers-Briggs can be a true-ism is that each dimension is actually a spectrum. For example I am about 60% "I" (and thus 40% "E") so the various "I" true-isms only slightly factor on my personality.
[+] [-] zzleeper|9 years ago|reply
On a more productive point, your post gave no evidence at all about why M-B is useful
[+] [-] bunderbunder|9 years ago|reply
As a tool, though, its utility remains doubtful. Its test-retest reliability is very low, meaning that, if you give the same person the test at two different times, you're likely to get two different results. This strongly suggests that, while the test might capture aspects of a person's personality, it's also functioning like a glorified mood ring. Without some way to separate those two aspects, its utility as an indicator of anything useful about any one individual is highly suspect.
[+] [-] ck425|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] taplogger|9 years ago|reply
Admittedly, the test is arbitrary in many ways, but you can't deny the questions -- about introversion, how logical, emotive, and judgmental you are, etc -- represent the subjective experience we have of others' personalities, even if the categories are incomplete, nonlinear, redundant, or transient.
[+] [-] c3534l|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] ebbv|9 years ago|reply
Results being independently reproducible is the foundation of science. Meyers-Briggs fails that simple metric.
[+] [-] 0xfffafaCrash|9 years ago|reply
One is an arbitrary mapping of a person's date of birth to an set of traits and prophesies.
The other is a brief summary of a person's personality/behavioral inclinations based on a survey of that person's stated behavior and inclinations. When you say MBTI can be "just as arbitrary," what you're claiming is that it might be true that there is zero correlation between how any individual person of a given personality type answers any of the 93 MBTI questions. Sure, there is variation in people's self-assessments (and personalities for that matter, but let's ignore that for the moment) over time, but it wouldn't be "just as arbitrary" unless it had no correlation at all with basically anything about the person. I find that claim to be completely implausible.
The only way it could be true that it is meaningless is if upon repeated testings, knowing a person's formerly reported MBTI provided no insight at all into what MBTIs are more likely than for the average person in subsequent testings. That's certainly not the case that's been found in the research, so at the very least, it provides insight into what a person thinks that they are like.
Even if it were the case that all the MBTIs are only related to positive traits (which isn't true), the idea that it is meaningless is just nonsense.
[+] [-] Analemma_|9 years ago|reply
Then let me try to help clarify. MBTI has no predictive power ("I'm an INTP, so... ?") and is not falsifiable. Those are the delineators between science and pseudoscience, so that's why I bucket it with astrology.
[+] [-] ivraatiems|9 years ago|reply
The problem is not variation over time - that's fine. The problem is that when someone gets a result, that result doesn't say what it claims to about them. It's similar to astrology because while it has a series of well-defined rules for making a decision, that decision does not reflect reality. It is therefore effectively arbitrary.
Both MBTI and astrology are internally valid - that is, the same person will get the same or similar results the majority of the time. That doesn't mean they mean anything.
[+] [-] cazum|9 years ago|reply
"INFJs are strong leaders" is as arbitrary as saying "aquarius's are strong leaders"
The problem i, and many other people find with the mbti is that most of its users, and even scientific apologists, can't help but fall into the trap of categorizing people into perceived behavioral trends based on their types, which is at best, scientifically invalid, and at worse, harmful.
[+] [-] YeGoblynQueenne|9 years ago|reply
I'm really a very nice person. I'm magnanimous, full of goodwill and compassion and everyone I meet immediately likes me. I am intelligent and brave and very gregarious. I am the best person to be around when you need a shoulder to cry on because I have a deep understanding of human nature, thanks to my very high emotional intelligence.
That is the problem with taking into account people's stated behaviour and inclinations.
[+] [-] II2II|9 years ago|reply
Of course other parts of the article talk about the predictive power of the personality test. On the other hand, those excerpts don't talk about horoscopes.
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] psyc|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] egl2016|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] parasubvert|9 years ago|reply
- Engender some self awareness. It's astonishing how many people lack critical self-awareness about how they approach problems , handle change, communicate with others, or deal with their emotions. MBTI might be nonsense or unverifiable but for many people it's their first exposure to any written form of objective introspection. The belief that these are immutable traits somehow isn't usually dwelled on.
- Help team members recognize that there are different styles/preferences of thinking and reasoning. You'd be amazed how many inter-office conflicts get resolved just through spending time getting to know one another. MBTI or HBDI workshops (not just the test) are helpful for this
On a final note, there is a fairly popular executive MBA program where I took a one week survey course on leadership about a decade ago. In both this course and the program, they were pretty stoked about the Hermann Brain Dominance Instrument (HBDI): https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herrmann_Brain_Dominance_Ins...
With the hope it was a bit more rooted in science than MBTI. It focuses more on cognitive preferences than on personality.
[+] [-] delgaudm|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mi100hael|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] triplesec|9 years ago|reply
More articles
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/give-and-take/201309/go...
Edit: http://www.forbes.com/sites/toddessig/2014/09/29/the-mysteri...
And the Guardian article https://www.theguardian.com/science/brain-flapping/2013/mar/...
[+] [-] bognition|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aaronchall|9 years ago|reply
It's marginally analogous to the Big Five personality traits (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits - this is the personality paradigm recognized by academia), it just leaves out the tendency to experience negative emotions (probably because neuroticism is a negative thing, and businesses like their HR experiences and training to be as positive and feel-good as the bottom line allows.)
It is unfortunate that people like the false dichotomies and the Forer effect (the generic but positive descriptions that apply to just about everybody.)
I'm sure the Myers Briggs people would be selling the Big Five if they thought they could copyright it.
[+] [-] alex_anglin|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] david927|9 years ago|reply
Everyone is some range of introverted to extroverted, for example. It's their preference, such as the flavor of ice cream they like. It can change often, under circumstances, or even not be present, of course. It's not set in stone; it's just a preference. It doesn't define you; you define it.
Myers-Briggs is unfortunate in that it assigns that preference as letter. You like Chocolate. You're a C. There are some who have no problem with this sort of designation. They love chocolate always and in every circumstance. Many, however, are not one letter, and so it's a poor test.
The point is not the letter. The point is asking yourself the question: do you feel more energized after a dinner party or after a quiet day alone? The point is to know, not just what flavors your prefer usually, but what situations (in this case) you prefer. And why not know that about yourself?
[+] [-] gh1|9 years ago|reply
Some more critique on the article.
1. The Myers Briggs test result does not need to be binary. There are variants of the tests that give you a score on each of its 4 axes (Introvert/Extrovert, Sensing/Intuitive, Feeling/Thinking, Judging/Perceptive). For example, see https://www.16personalities.com/free-personality-test
2. The test results do not always talk about positive qualities. For example, here is a discussion of strengths and weaknesses of the ISFJ personality. https://www.16personalities.com/isfj-strengths-and-weaknesse....
Finally, on the point of falsification, I would like to suggest the following test. Take a group of people and let them take the test. Now let the close friends of the test taker read all the personality type descriptions and chose one for the test taker. Find the correlation between the friends' choices and the test results. If the correlation is significant, then the test is meaningful. Otherwise not meaningful.
[+] [-] Bartweiss|9 years ago|reply
The first thing, MB-style tests, are amorphous and have been improved in various ways since the invention of the test.
That second thing is a formalized test with licensed practitioners. It's been used to disqualify people from jobs, and has produced a huge amount of secondary literature/analysis which requires the binary distribution to be meaningful. This formalized test has been worth a small fortune for the people who own it, and their training seminars and public literature aggressively go against both points 1 and 2.
It's fair to criticize MBTI as, say, needing to be binary. 16personalities is a secondary group which is doing a different thing than the still-popular, rigorously-bounded original.
[+] [-] static_noise|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JohnKacz|9 years ago|reply
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Now%2C_Discover_Your_Strengths
[+] [-] wutf|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] grandalf|9 years ago|reply
In my opinion, the Meyers Briggs is useful mainly because it can help people become more self-aware and more empathetic toward others.
I've observed that in a group of 15 people who just got their Meyers Briggs results, several usually think it was uncannily accurate, and a few are immediately defensive because the result does not jive with their self-perception (usually because the personality type is described as similar to some unsavory characters from history). When I read articles criticizing Meyers Briggs, I always assume it was written by one of these people.
If you are in a relationship, one interesting game to play with your significant other is to take the Meyers Briggs test and then read some of the stuff that has been written about relationship compatibility through the Meyers Briggs lens. I've found it to be quite accurate for many couples I know. There is also a very amusing book called Please Understand me II which has detailed write-ups about the characteristics of each type. It's great for parties to read out loud everyone's results over a glass of wine.
IMHO Personality tests are useful mainly to encourage self-awareness, introspection and empathy. As a Meyers Briggs ENTP I find the descriptions of an ENTP personality flattering and desirable. I suspect nearly any type would find their own type description equally flattering and desirable.
[+] [-] bognition|9 years ago|reply
I've been subjected to "DiSC" profiling at a previous employer. After taking the test we were subjected to a 3 hour session where we slowly discovered and learned about our unique profile. The best part was I compared my strengths and weaknesses with someone who had an "opposite" personality and they were pretty close to identical.
Granted there is a lot to be gained by getting a group of people in a room to talk about the different ways they interact with the world and how they go about solving problems. However, as soon as you start providing formulas for how to interact with people my bull shit detector goes off.
[+] [-] liquidise|9 years ago|reply
This is categorically false. Myers Briggs results are quite literally reported on a spectrum of 100 I - 0 - E 100, with your position on the spectrum shown. The 4 letter rollup is exactly that: a summary rollup of your test results.
[+] [-] stared|9 years ago|reply
I use it a lot when it comes to introducing people to nerdy friends (especially in the context of dating, like: "She's INFP!" or "Yeah, she looks nice, but is a total ESFJ...".)
A link (nice pictures, especially the carnivorous plant for INTP) and some descritpions that actually may be helpful how to deal with other people (especially with different personalities): https://www.16personalities.com/.
If you really want to "be scientific" (as if it was a binary criterion), you can use OCEAN. For me it would be:
O+ C- E= A- N+
[+] [-] J-dawg|9 years ago|reply
If you've never heard of it, I recommend watching the video before you Google anything. It's only a short video (less than 4 minutes) and is a brilliant demonstration.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bCjzLij54k
[+] [-] rayiner|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ivraatiems|9 years ago|reply
For a real personality exam with actual use in psych research, check out the Five Factor metric.
[+] [-] brightball|9 years ago|reply
Explaining the profile parts while seeing your team members profiles was a great exercise for us because it effectively taught us how to communicate better with each other. I'm an ENFJ on a team of highly technical introverts INTJ.
We learned how to work better together, how to communicate better and they also learned how/when to better utilize me for interactions with the rest of the company.
Until we did this exercise it was just some interesting test results.
[+] [-] Lambdanaut|9 years ago|reply
That's not entirely true. The final answer that people wear as a badge is binary, but the result is calculated as a percentage, and usually presented to the test-taker as a percentage.
[+] [-] pc2g4d|9 years ago|reply
I'd love to do some data mining on a large MBTI test database. Better yet, a large database of people's responses to various personality-oriented questions, MBTI or not.
[+] [-] iamnothere|9 years ago|reply
In my experience, Gallup's Strengthsfinder system is much better suited to workplace environments. It's backed by solid research, and I really like its core philosophy: everyone has natural strengths, and building off those strengths will lead to better outcomes than trying to compensate for personal weaknesses. As long as companies understand that it isn't a litmus test for suitability -- teams should have a diversity of strengths or they will have blind spots -- it can actually be a great tool for understanding management and team dynamics.
For personal development, I prefer the Enneagram system. I've found each type's "levels of development" to be incredibly helpful in pinpointing my own type, and overall I have a much better "fit" with my type than in MBTI. As opposed to Strengthsfinder, the Enneagram system is mainly useful for identifying patterns in behavior and understanding motivations. Not such a great business tool, except perhaps at the executive level.
[+] [-] aaimnr|9 years ago|reply
Similarly you could reason about type 7 and their ideal job position: they see more opportunieties and options than others (Steve Jobs was said to be 7w8), but they often dismiss any risks involved. They also hate repetitive day to day work. Hence they would make better Architect, Analyst, UX Designer or Salesperson than a Project Manager (unless they are eg. balanced by a 6 in their team).
I'm not saying that we should choose job solely on the type, it just offers lot of opportunities to understand what is it specifically in given activity that we like and what goes naturally against our habits. Whether we change the job or just work on the weaknesses is up to us.
[+] [-] Symmetry|9 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits