I also voted cheese.

Myers-Briggs is a heap of shit. But I'm a psychologist, so what would I know?

BTW, can we call this particular OP 'a cunt', without falling foul of the FUA?

Pudendum wrote:chairman bill, I would be honoured if you would call me that. I don't think it is allowed here, though. The administration insists on cunt being derisive.

Not in all cases. Fortunately.

Pudendum wrote:Myers-Briggs IS a heap of shit, and most people, around the dinner table agree. So why do they comply when brought into a group (say, for work) and why don't more people opt out?

Peer pressure. Not wanting to be seen as being outside the group. Compliance with perceived authority. All sorts of things.

The_Metatron wrote:I'm curious about the MBTI shit heapedness. If it's so shit heapy, how is it that it is so repeatable? Every time I take the thing, the results are the same.

But that isn't the case for a great many people. Many find that their type changes with a re-test a few weeks/months after the initial test.

Pudendum wrote:The test itself is voluntary, so why do so many folks who dislike it do it anyway? I resisted because psuedo-science makes me hate. When I used every opportunity to speak against it (we had a 'mandatory' staff retreat where the whole morning was dedicated to 'voluntary' MBTI) the facilitator (and my boss) said that in his 20 years of facilitating the MBTI, he had NEVER run into anyone so firmly opposed to it.

The 'type indicator' is clearly full of shit, but I do believe him when he says he has never had such firm opposition. So why not?

I asked the room who would volunteer for the upcoming MBTI (just before it started) and about 6 or 7 (out of about 50) put their hands up. When the testing started, however, I was the only one who didn't participate at first. I was told I could leave after a short time, (I did!) and I understand that one other person declined participation later, but that seems really odd to me.

So why the high level of compliance, and how could one move to erode this compliance? Any thoughts?

I imagine the reason that he has never run into someone who firmly opposed it (assuming he's telling the truth) is: 1) it sounds "sciency", 2) people have heard of it in relation to psychology, so they assume it's a valid test, and 3) people love mystical prediction stuff, so someone filling out an MBTI test on you is like someone offering to read your palm. People eat that shit up.

But yeah, the MBTI is absolute bullshit and that's why nobody with training in psychology accepts it as a valid measure. The wiki page gives a good overview of its problems: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers_briggs#Criticism. Basically the main points are:

1) It's based on an extremely weak conceptual foundation - Jung's ideas were insane and have no empirical support.

2) Unlike most psychometric tests (which account for biased self-reporting and weight responses, or counterbalance questions), the MBTI doesn't do this. In other words, the MBTI tells you exactly what you think about yourself, and nothing more. So it's unsurprising that people often comment on how accurate it is, because they've simply described themselves to somebody and they've repeated back what they just said.

3) As pointed out above, it has extremely low test-retest reliability - over the space of 9 months, over 65% of people will have significantly different personalities according to the test. By one year, almost everybody is an unrecognisable person compared to the beginning of the year. There is also some criticism over its split-half reliability; this means that your scores on the same question within the same test will often differ significantly.

The_Metatron wrote:Still, psychometry seems an awfully grey area to me, an electronic engineer. My world makes much more sense. Things I deal with are easily and readily measured with great accuracy.

Psychometry is a bit less certain than what I like dealing with too, but in tests like the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory or the Personality Assessment Inventory, you find much more replicable results. They also can be used to make accurate predictions about other aspects of a person's life, and can be used successfully in therapeutic situations. All of which cannot be said about the MBTI, which is less useful and predictive than a horoscope.

Gallstones wrote:I think psychology is.....uhm.....bullshit.
Psychiatry hasn't impressed me either.

It depends on what kind of psychology you're looking at, it obviously gets less rigorous as you move away from the experimental research towards the clinical areas, but the psychometric stuff is pretty good - backed by empirical and scientific evidence. In other words, the tests used to investigate personality are scientific, but their application in therapeutic settings is less so.

Delvo wrote:

Mr.Samsa wrote:It's based on an extremely weak conceptual foundation - Jung's ideas were insane and have no empirical support.

What ideas is it based on? I don't see a hypothesis/theory or any particular assertions for it to be "based on". It's just description.

It's based on Jung's four "cognitive functions" (thinking, feeling, sensing, intuition), with each of them falling into "introversion" or "extroversion". So the 8 possible personality types in the MBTI are directly, and explicitly, based on these Jungian notions. The only aspects of the "cognitive functions" that have any empirical support are the introversion and extroversion qualifiers, and incidentally these are the only aspects that aren't exclusive to Jungian or MBTI theory.

If they were simply describing, then they'd do it the same way other psychometric tests do; by asking a series of questions and seeing which traits or characteristics lump themselves together, and then they'd apply a label to it. Instead, the creators of the MBTI assumed that Jung was correct and started with these 8 personality types, and then tried to fit people into these groups - even though the personality types had no validity or empirical support.

Pudendum wrote:

Gallstones wrote:I think psychology is.....uhm.....bullshit.
Psychiatry hasn't impressed me either.

Psychology strikes me as one of the largest wastes of resources for the individual, and one of the greatest boons to advertising.

As an example, I looked up the Canadian Psychological Association factsheet on alcoholism (because I have taken a bit of time to learn about it) and found this steaming nugget:

If it makes you feel any better, I had never heard of the CPA. Most psychologists, across the world, are members of the American Psychological Association which is generally recognised as the authority in the area. And whilst their website does still list AA as a treatment for alcoholism (and I'm not sure why they do..) it is listed after two other more empirically sound methods. But substance abuse is a difficult area to study and I don't think there is any real "treatment" in the area, which technically makes AA one of the "best" treatments by default.

Pudendum wrote:I have, however, had great respect for some psychologists (my niece, who just graduated from a cog-psy program is one, Philip Zimbardo, who made an interesting video is another - I'll tack in onto the bottom) and I think what they are aiming to do is important. Hell, I should admit that I considered it as a kind of education to pursue...probably be worth more to keep working and stay under-educated...

Phew! You almost had me in tears, I'm glad that there's still a chance you might have respect for me.

As for Zimbardo, I'm half convinced that his popularity is almost entirely the result of the fact that he looks like Satan. For some more serious psychologists though, you might be interested in this link: SQAB Tutorial Videos. Free videos from some of the leading scientists in memory, behavior, choice, etc. A free education from some of the leading scientists in the world in those areas.