Why The Myers-Briggs Personality Test Is Misleading, Inaccurate, And Unscientific
DRAKE BAER


The Myers-Briggs personality test is entrenched in business culture.
It's taken by more than 2.5 million people a year. A full 89 of the Fortune 100 companies use it.

The test promises to tell you which of the 16 personality "types" yours most resembles, slotted along a range of behavioral binaries. As a refresher, they are:

• Extraverted or Introverted

• Sensing or Intuiting

• Thinking or Feeling

• Judging or Perceiving

The types describe readymade personalities suitable for a T-shirt or coffeemug: The INTP is the Architect, the INFP is the Healer, the ENTJ is the Commander.

Taken together, the test and its administration is an industry unto itself, worth around $20 million a year.

It's a little troubling, given that Myers and Briggs were a mother (Katharine Briggs) and daughter (Isabel Myers) who studied the works of psychologist Carl Jung a hundred years ago, particularly his book "Psychological Types." Myers and Briggs weren't social scientists themselves. Briggs was a housewife with a deep interest in Jung; before she wrote a survey that served as a prototype of Myers-Briggs personality tests, Myers wrote mystery novels.

Many people say they didn't really understand Jung at all.

As Malcom Gladwell writes in the New Yorker:

... Jung didn't believe that types were easily identifiable, and he didn't believe that people could be permanently slotted into one category or another. "Every individual is an exception to the rule," he wrote; to "stick labels on people at first sight," in his view, was "nothing but a childish parlor game."

The Myers-Briggs (MBTI) has become so entrenched, in part, because people who invest themselves in something are typically loathe to give it up. MBTI training sessions cost a couple grand to go through, and once you believe in something like the personality types, your cognitive biases are going to do everything they can to hold onto it.

Cambridge University professor Brian Little says another main reason for the test's ongoing success is that it's been "marketed brilliantly." But, of course, "you have to have something of merit in order to market well."

The merits are there: Little says that the test gives people the chance to discuss their preferences and personality in the workplace — a conversation that otherwise gets crowded out.


.....

slottedbox wrote:I've been told that a big problem with the MB is that subjects can fake it, that is with a bit of nouse one can answer the questions in such a way as to produce the outcome which suits one best.

Made of Stars wrote:

slottedbox wrote:I've been told that a big problem with the MB is that subjects can fake it, that is with a bit of nouse one can answer the questions in such a way as to produce the outcome which suits one best.

The question is, why would you?

Made of Stars wrote:

slottedbox wrote:I've been told that a big problem with the MB is that subjects can fake it, that is with a bit of nouse one can answer the questions in such a way as to produce the outcome which suits one best.

The question is, why would you?

KeenIdiot wrote:
Naturally they just said something long the lines of "That's just like an ENTJ."

Mr.Samsa wrote:... whereas even amongst skeptic groups you'll find this unwavering irrational support for MBTI.

Made of Stars wrote:

Mr.Samsa wrote:... whereas even amongst skeptic groups you'll find this unwavering irrational support for MBTI.

Where was this?