The Myers-Briggs Personality Test Is Pretty Much Meaningless(smithsonianmag.com)
smithsonianmag.com
The Myers-Briggs Personality Test Is Pretty Much Meaningless
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/the-myers-briggs-personality-test-is-pretty-much-meaningless-9359770/?no-ist
350 comments
Your comment works surprisingly well like this:
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".
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".
The difference is that astrology is a starting point with zero correlation with who you are, while Myers-Briggs is a starting point with positive correlation with who you are. The positive correlation can be surprisingly helpful to understand differences between people.
However you don't need anything so complex for such a starting point. A classic demonstration that I saw was a large group of people who marked where they were on two lines. The first was how organized you were. The second was how extroverted you were. Based on this we divided into 4 groups, and began talking. It was surprising how much people in each group had in common. And how differently the groups behaved. The groups were:
Introverted and disorganized: Supporter. Good shoulder to cry on.
Introverted and organized: Analyst. They make good accountants.
Extroverted and disorganized: Promoter. High energy, lots of ideas, not a lot of carry through.
Extroverted and organized: Controller. They generally relate to, "My way or the highway."
I was in the Promoter quadrant. One of the things we had in common was that our spaces look like a tornado just tore through it, but please don't clean up because then we won't know where anything is. :-)
However you don't need anything so complex for such a starting point. A classic demonstration that I saw was a large group of people who marked where they were on two lines. The first was how organized you were. The second was how extroverted you were. Based on this we divided into 4 groups, and began talking. It was surprising how much people in each group had in common. And how differently the groups behaved. The groups were:
Introverted and disorganized: Supporter. Good shoulder to cry on.
Introverted and organized: Analyst. They make good accountants.
Extroverted and disorganized: Promoter. High energy, lots of ideas, not a lot of carry through.
Extroverted and organized: Controller. They generally relate to, "My way or the highway."
I was in the Promoter quadrant. One of the things we had in common was that our spaces look like a tornado just tore through it, but please don't clean up because then we won't know where anything is. :-)
>"astrology is a starting point with zero correlation with who you are"
I would really doubt that it is zero, the relative position of the celestial bodies correlates with season. All sorts of human activities follow a yearly cycle, including birth rates and mortality rates. I have no doubt there is some correlation between astrological sign and personality.
I would take it further and say a good principle is that "everything is correlated with everything else", it is just a matter of the strength of the relationship. I will probably get downmodded for that, because it is in direct conflict the "null hypothesis" testing paradigm that has dominated data analysis for the last half century or so.
I would really doubt that it is zero, the relative position of the celestial bodies correlates with season. All sorts of human activities follow a yearly cycle, including birth rates and mortality rates. I have no doubt there is some correlation between astrological sign and personality.
I would take it further and say a good principle is that "everything is correlated with everything else", it is just a matter of the strength of the relationship. I will probably get downmodded for that, because it is in direct conflict the "null hypothesis" testing paradigm that has dominated data analysis for the last half century or so.
There are indeed measured weak correlations between seasons and personality. Things like your odds of being bipolar are higher if you were born in late winter, and lower for summer/early fall. (The same correlations exist in the Southern hemisphere, but with the obvious 6 month shift.)
However there aren't correlations between those known correlations and the traits that astrology says that you should have. Therefore there is no known correlation between your astrological description and your personality. And yes, people have attempted to measure this.
However there aren't correlations between those known correlations and the traits that astrology says that you should have. Therefore there is no known correlation between your astrological description and your personality. And yes, people have attempted to measure this.
It all depends on the sample size. If sufficient money is put towards it you will find the correlation. People have also done studies on this for around 50 years, everything is correlated with everything else:
'The author once had occasion to use 700 subjects in a study of publie opinion. After a factor analysis of the results, the factors were correlated with individual-difference variables such as amount of education, age, income, sex, and others. In looking at the results I was happy to find so many "significant" correlations (under the null-hypothesis model)-indeed, nearly all correlations were significant, including ones that made little sense. Of course, with an N of 700 correlations as large as .08 are "beyond the .05 level." Many of the "significant" correlations were of no theoretical or practical importance.' https://www.gwern.net/docs/statistics/1960-nunnally.pdf
"One of the common experiences of research workers is the very high frequency with which significant results are obtained with large samples. Some years ago, the author had occasion to run a number of tests of significance on a battery of tests collected on about 60,000 subjects from all over the United States. Every test came out significant. Dividing the cards by such arbitrary criteria as east versus west of the Mississippi River, Maine versus the rest of the country, North versus South, etc., all produced significant differences in means. In some instances, the differences in the sample means were quite small, but nonetheless, the p values were all very low. Nunnally (1960) has reported a similar experience involving correlation coefficients on 700 subjects. Joseph Berkson (1938) made the observation almost 30 years ago in connection with chi-square" http://www.tc.umn.edu/~nydic001/docs/teaching/Fall2011_PSY38...
"...it is regularly found that almost all correlations or differences between means are statistically significant. See, for example, the papers by Bakan [1] and Nunnally [8]. Data currently being analyzed by Dr. David Lykken and myself, derived from a huge sample of over 55,000 Minnesota high school seniors, reveal statistically significant relationships in 91% of pairwise associations among a congeries of 45 miscellaneous variables such as sex, birth order, religious preference, number of siblings, vocational choice, club membership, college choice, mother’s education, dancing, interest in woodworking, liking for school, and the like. The 9% of non-significant associations are heavily concentrated among a small minority of variables having dubious reliability, or involving arbitrary groupings of non-homogeneous or non-monotonic sub-categories. The majority of variables exhibited significant relationships with all but three of the others, often at a very high confidence level (p < 10–6)." http://www.fisme.science.uu.nl/staff/christianb/downloads/me...
'The author once had occasion to use 700 subjects in a study of publie opinion. After a factor analysis of the results, the factors were correlated with individual-difference variables such as amount of education, age, income, sex, and others. In looking at the results I was happy to find so many "significant" correlations (under the null-hypothesis model)-indeed, nearly all correlations were significant, including ones that made little sense. Of course, with an N of 700 correlations as large as .08 are "beyond the .05 level." Many of the "significant" correlations were of no theoretical or practical importance.' https://www.gwern.net/docs/statistics/1960-nunnally.pdf
"One of the common experiences of research workers is the very high frequency with which significant results are obtained with large samples. Some years ago, the author had occasion to run a number of tests of significance on a battery of tests collected on about 60,000 subjects from all over the United States. Every test came out significant. Dividing the cards by such arbitrary criteria as east versus west of the Mississippi River, Maine versus the rest of the country, North versus South, etc., all produced significant differences in means. In some instances, the differences in the sample means were quite small, but nonetheless, the p values were all very low. Nunnally (1960) has reported a similar experience involving correlation coefficients on 700 subjects. Joseph Berkson (1938) made the observation almost 30 years ago in connection with chi-square" http://www.tc.umn.edu/~nydic001/docs/teaching/Fall2011_PSY38...
"...it is regularly found that almost all correlations or differences between means are statistically significant. See, for example, the papers by Bakan [1] and Nunnally [8]. Data currently being analyzed by Dr. David Lykken and myself, derived from a huge sample of over 55,000 Minnesota high school seniors, reveal statistically significant relationships in 91% of pairwise associations among a congeries of 45 miscellaneous variables such as sex, birth order, religious preference, number of siblings, vocational choice, club membership, college choice, mother’s education, dancing, interest in woodworking, liking for school, and the like. The 9% of non-significant associations are heavily concentrated among a small minority of variables having dubious reliability, or involving arbitrary groupings of non-homogeneous or non-monotonic sub-categories. The majority of variables exhibited significant relationships with all but three of the others, often at a very high confidence level (p < 10–6)." http://www.fisme.science.uu.nl/staff/christianb/downloads/me...
Yeah, everything is correlated with everything, and a principal component analysis will quickly sort out the source.
For example what songs you like is tied to what media you watch which is tied to what politics you have. And most of that is tied to how liberal vs conservative you are.
It doesn't take many principal components to make most of the remaining correlations very small.
But correlations between astrological descriptions and personality start off small. So small that astrology is not a useful starting point to understanding people.
For example what songs you like is tied to what media you watch which is tied to what politics you have. And most of that is tied to how liberal vs conservative you are.
It doesn't take many principal components to make most of the remaining correlations very small.
But correlations between astrological descriptions and personality start off small. So small that astrology is not a useful starting point to understanding people.
>"astrology is not a useful starting point to understanding people."
I never said it was. My problem is with the prevailing philosophy of doing statistical tests on whether there is exactly zero effect/correlation, ie testing for deviation from noise/chance. It is the most destructive idea ever pushed by mathematicians.
I never said it was. My problem is with the prevailing philosophy of doing statistical tests on whether there is exactly zero effect/correlation, ie testing for deviation from noise/chance. It is the most destructive idea ever pushed by mathematicians.
> I have no doubt there is some correlation between astrological sign and personality.
There's no evidence of this, so you should have doubts.
There's no evidence of this, so you should have doubts.
Sure there is, I found thousands of papers on it with one simple search: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=season+of+birth
EG: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27310922 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25132151
I don't know much about astrology, but your "sign" is determined by the birthday right? From my understanding, it is basically a way of binning together sets of birthdays. There will probably be various artifacts and noise introduced by the binning process, but I am sure with large enough sample size you will see the correlation.
EG: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27310922 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25132151
I don't know much about astrology, but your "sign" is determined by the birthday right? From my understanding, it is basically a way of binning together sets of birthdays. There will probably be various artifacts and noise introduced by the binning process, but I am sure with large enough sample size you will see the correlation.
No, you didn't anything relevant there about personality types; personality disorders are a vastly different subject.
> I don't know much about astrology,
Now we agree.
> I don't know much about astrology,
Now we agree.
Well, I tried searching "Myers Briggs season", etc. I didn't find any data on it all. It is one of those topics... too many low quality (unscholarly: not citing references , etc) sources popped up so I won't waste any further time on it.
I assure you with large enough sample size you will find some correlations though.
I assure you with large enough sample size you will find some correlations though.
> I assure you with large enough sample size you will find some correlations though.
I can correlations the drop in pirates with a rise in global temperature, so what... correlations don't mean a damn thing by themselves, that's just data-mining bias.
I can correlations the drop in pirates with a rise in global temperature, so what... correlations don't mean a damn thing by themselves, that's just data-mining bias.
No, it is not data-mining bias. There really is a correlation. It is real, but realizing that has no usefulness at all.
The correlation with pirates is real too, that's my point, correlations don't mean anything. Only causation is meaningful. The only use of a correlation is as a starting point for finding causation.
Actually... I think causation may largely be a red herring as well. Our most successful models really do not incorporate it at all. They are in the form of F=ma or PV=nRT. There is no causality there.
I don't know much about astrology,
Then please kindly don't defend it.
but your "sign" is determined by the birthday right?
I have actually studied astrology. Serious astrologers loathe sun sign astrology.
Then please kindly don't defend it.
but your "sign" is determined by the birthday right?
I have actually studied astrology. Serious astrologers loathe sun sign astrology.
I wasn't defending astrology, I was attacking the pseudoscientific thought process being used to attack astrology.
[deleted]
No, that doesn't work at all. OP is saying that he draws conclusions about someone's personality based on the Meyers-Briggs type with which they identify. That logic doesn't apply to the zodiac because your star-sign is based on your birthday. People don't lie about their birthday to become a Virgo. But they might fudge the answers to the Meyers-Briggs survey so they appear more "introverted" and "thinking". If you compare someone's self-view ("I'm an introvert!") with their behavior (definitely an extrovert), you can draw conclusions. This is more than "fun to talk about". It's standard practice in psychology.
That logic doesn't apply to the zodiac
Sure it does. I've met people who will say things like "My sun sign is Virgo, but my personality is dominated by my Sagittarius moon", and then later say something like "I'm going through Saturn return, no wonder Pisces is such an influence".
If you compare someone's self-view ("I'm an Aries!") with their behavior (definitely a Gemini), you can draw conclusions. It's standard practice in astrology.
Sure it does. I've met people who will say things like "My sun sign is Virgo, but my personality is dominated by my Sagittarius moon", and then later say something like "I'm going through Saturn return, no wonder Pisces is such an influence".
If you compare someone's self-view ("I'm an Aries!") with their behavior (definitely a Gemini), you can draw conclusions. It's standard practice in astrology.
maybe it's easier to be existential over essential with Myers-Briggs style systems? less rooted in the stars, though i guess overall humanity is now in a position to be getting smart about mixing and matching which references and metaphors work and which don't, depending on context. all abstractions are leaky, though it's easier with some to frame a flow of change.
e.g. later Wittgenstein, process relational, integral theory, chaos magic
e.g. later Wittgenstein, process relational, integral theory, chaos magic
[deleted]
There are a lot of worthless measures we use out there. Body Mass Index (BMI) is another one. This scale was developed in the mid 1800s and you can do a simple search to find tons of criticism on it. If you're overweight/obese, you will have a high BMI, but not everyone with high BMI is overweight (especially if you're very tall or very short).
Measuring Cholesterol is another one, since you can't actually change cholesterol via diet and it has no relation to heart disease either (source: http://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/panel-suggests-stop-warni... ). But the pharmaceutical industry still wants doctors to prescribe Statins and pours tons of money into advertising them to people and doctors, even though they're terrible for you and worthless.
It's troubling when industry grasps onto these measures and makes business models out of them. Wide spread acceptance of measures like these moves them out of the realm of homeopathy or astrology and into the realm of what people believe as relevant scientific measure. They benefit industry, but not the individual. Advertising allows that industry to continue to grow at the expense of good relevant data.
Measuring Cholesterol is another one, since you can't actually change cholesterol via diet and it has no relation to heart disease either (source: http://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/panel-suggests-stop-warni... ). But the pharmaceutical industry still wants doctors to prescribe Statins and pours tons of money into advertising them to people and doctors, even though they're terrible for you and worthless.
It's troubling when industry grasps onto these measures and makes business models out of them. Wide spread acceptance of measures like these moves them out of the realm of homeopathy or astrology and into the realm of what people believe as relevant scientific measure. They benefit industry, but not the individual. Advertising allows that industry to continue to grow at the expense of good relevant data.
Invisibilia ran a great episode on "the personality myth"[1] and I think it shows the difference between BMI and "personality tests". BMI might be worthless but it measures something that objectively exists. Is it useful? Maybe not. Personality tests measure something that we don't even know exists, personality.
The episode talks about research showing how we can understand ourselves better as sets of behavior that we exhibit in different contexts, more than as having a single personality.
Put in simple words, you maybe introvert in some contexts and extrovert in others, and theses behaviors can change over time. You ARE not AN introvert, you exhibit introvert behaviors in context.
[1]: http://www.npr.org/programs/invisibilia/482836315/the-person...
The episode talks about research showing how we can understand ourselves better as sets of behavior that we exhibit in different contexts, more than as having a single personality.
Put in simple words, you maybe introvert in some contexts and extrovert in others, and theses behaviors can change over time. You ARE not AN introvert, you exhibit introvert behaviors in context.
[1]: http://www.npr.org/programs/invisibilia/482836315/the-person...
> Personality tests measure something that we don't even know exists, personality.
This sentence strikes me as odd, because subjectively, the one thing that shines through the most with people, even people I haven't seen in 20+ years, is a distinct (and possibly largely immutable) personality. In fact, a large part of why I was so shy growing up is because people's personalities were so "bright" that I felt intimidated. Not of course "bright" in a literal, measurable sense, but in an irrational qualitative sense. And therein lies the problem with trying to discuss it rationally.
To this day I perceive distinct personalities in every child and pet I encounter. Not sure if related, these exact same entities seem drawn to me for some reason. I have often heard a pet owner say "my pet has never acted this way before" around me (such as sitting in my lap when it has never done so with anyone).
I wonder if it simply reflects what I see in them. Anyway. My point is that the inability to discuss something rationally is not evidence for its nonexistence.
This sentence strikes me as odd, because subjectively, the one thing that shines through the most with people, even people I haven't seen in 20+ years, is a distinct (and possibly largely immutable) personality. In fact, a large part of why I was so shy growing up is because people's personalities were so "bright" that I felt intimidated. Not of course "bright" in a literal, measurable sense, but in an irrational qualitative sense. And therein lies the problem with trying to discuss it rationally.
To this day I perceive distinct personalities in every child and pet I encounter. Not sure if related, these exact same entities seem drawn to me for some reason. I have often heard a pet owner say "my pet has never acted this way before" around me (such as sitting in my lap when it has never done so with anyone).
I wonder if it simply reflects what I see in them. Anyway. My point is that the inability to discuss something rationally is not evidence for its nonexistence.
They never claimed evidence of nonexistence.
They claimed there's simply an absence of unambiguous evidence that it exists.
They claimed there's simply an absence of unambiguous evidence that it exists.
Thank you for the clarification.
My argument is then that we will never have evidence that it exists because evidence is rational and objective and its very reality and/or value is trapped in the irrational subjective eye of the beholder.
Trying to boil it down into, say, patterns of neuron activations would be like trying to boil down or derive the "value reality" of the Mona Lisa by analyzing and cataloguing the light wavelengths reflecting off of it.
My argument is then that we will never have evidence that it exists because evidence is rational and objective and its very reality and/or value is trapped in the irrational subjective eye of the beholder.
Trying to boil it down into, say, patterns of neuron activations would be like trying to boil down or derive the "value reality" of the Mona Lisa by analyzing and cataloguing the light wavelengths reflecting off of it.
The claim that we will never have evidence that it exists says more about your need to not have your belief in its existence questioned than it does about the actual likelihood of evidence being found in the affirmative or negative.
> There are a lot of worthless measures we use out there. Body Mass Index (BMI) is another one. This scale was developed in the mid 1800s and you can do a simple search to find tons of criticism on it. If you're overweight/obese, you will have a high BMI, but not everyone with high BMI is overweight (especially if you're very tall or very short).
The metric system was developed in the 1800s and you can do a simple search to find tons of criticism on it.
Being tall or short is accounted for by BMI, as it's a component of BMI. So that is not a problem.
The actual problem with BMI is that it attempts to measure body composition, but it assumes that fat is the only variable component of body composition. It's not--muscle can also vary. So people with a lot of muscle mass can have a very high BMI even if they have very little fat.
However, in practice this isn't a problem--nobody looks at a body builder and says they're fat because they have a high BMI. It's obvious when a high BMI is caused by fat and when it's caused by muscle.
BMI is a pragmatic way to measure body composition, which is effective for estimating body composition when body composition isn't obvious, such as in the case of a body builder. Anyone who tells you otherwise is either misinformed, or has political reasons for saying otherwise.
This is not to disagree with your overall point--industry does grasp into measurements and make business models out of them. But in the case of BMI, political interests have become invested in discrediting the BMI measurement, not in overcrediting it.
The metric system was developed in the 1800s and you can do a simple search to find tons of criticism on it.
Being tall or short is accounted for by BMI, as it's a component of BMI. So that is not a problem.
The actual problem with BMI is that it attempts to measure body composition, but it assumes that fat is the only variable component of body composition. It's not--muscle can also vary. So people with a lot of muscle mass can have a very high BMI even if they have very little fat.
However, in practice this isn't a problem--nobody looks at a body builder and says they're fat because they have a high BMI. It's obvious when a high BMI is caused by fat and when it's caused by muscle.
BMI is a pragmatic way to measure body composition, which is effective for estimating body composition when body composition isn't obvious, such as in the case of a body builder. Anyone who tells you otherwise is either misinformed, or has political reasons for saying otherwise.
This is not to disagree with your overall point--industry does grasp into measurements and make business models out of them. But in the case of BMI, political interests have become invested in discrediting the BMI measurement, not in overcrediting it.
They are not remotely comparable, Meyers Briggs is descriptive, Astrology is prescriptive and it's the prescriptive part that is nonsense. There is no connection to your personality and your birth date. Meyers Briggs is a classification system that groups similar personalities, it does not prescribe what your personality is or should be.
> Meyers Briggs is description
It's impossible to describe personalities without implying value judgments.
I randomly took the first Google link found under 'Myers Briggs' and ended up here:
https://www.16personalities.com/intj-personality
'Ironically, it is often best for them to remain where they are comfortable – out of the spotlight...'
https://www.16personalities.com/infp-strengths-and-weaknesse...
'Too Idealistic – INFPs often take their idealism too far, setting themselves up for disappointment as, again and again, evil things happen in the world.'
It's impossible to describe personalities without implying value judgments.
I randomly took the first Google link found under 'Myers Briggs' and ended up here:
https://www.16personalities.com/intj-personality
'Ironically, it is often best for them to remain where they are comfortable – out of the spotlight...'
https://www.16personalities.com/infp-strengths-and-weaknesse...
'Too Idealistic – INFPs often take their idealism too far, setting themselves up for disappointment as, again and again, evil things happen in the world.'
The sites you list (and a lot of discussion on MBTI) take the judgments way too far. That's when a lot of people conclude MBTI is junk -- when they see these conclusions based on type.
MBTI is basically this: You have a set of observed traits, and from that set we can tell you other traits you likely have based on observing many others that share the same traits.
Or in other words... -Observe trait A -Observe trait B -Observe trait C -Extrapolate trait D -Extrapolate trait E
What those sites are doing is... -Observe trait A -Extrapolate traits C, M, Q, X, Z
MBTI is basically this: You have a set of observed traits, and from that set we can tell you other traits you likely have based on observing many others that share the same traits.
Or in other words... -Observe trait A -Observe trait B -Observe trait C -Extrapolate trait D -Extrapolate trait E
What those sites are doing is... -Observe trait A -Extrapolate traits C, M, Q, X, Z
I suggest you don't understand the distinction I'm making between descriptive and prescriptive.
Please provide your definition then, instead of leaving us all guessing?
I interpreted 'prescriptive' as making 'should' rather than 'is' statements.
I interpreted 'prescriptive' as making 'should' rather than 'is' statements.
Meyers Briggs is meant to be descriptive, but the preponderance of evidence shows that it is not, at all. In the corporate world discussion of MBTI very quickly becomes idiotically prescriptive. In my line if I see someone discuss MBTI with any level of passion or enthusiasm I have learned to distrust their evaluations of personalities and strengths/weaknesses, whether they refer to themselves or others.
> In the corporate world discussion of MBTI very quickly becomes idiotically prescriptive.
Misuse of a tool does not invalidate the tool.
Misuse of a tool does not invalidate the tool.
Yes the uselessness of the tool invalidates the tool.
And yet, misuse of a tool does not invalidate the tool; MBTI can do something the big 5 can't, assign a category which aids in thinking about and understanding another person which as someone else in this discussion points out can be statistically mapped directly to the big 5 making it not at all a useless tool.
This is also true of astrology and MBTI has as much scientific validity and predictive value.
No one's disputing that a useless tool can be misused. They're questioning the use of useless tools at all. They give the illusion of understanding to those not interested in evidence.
No one's disputing that a useless tool can be misused. They're questioning the use of useless tools at all. They give the illusion of understanding to those not interested in evidence.
> This is also true of astrology
False.
> and MBTI has as much scientific validity and predictive value.
As it can be mapped directly to the big 5, this is also false.
False.
> and MBTI has as much scientific validity and predictive value.
As it can be mapped directly to the big 5, this is also false.
Psychologists don't even use it because of how completely useless and scientifically invalid.
http://www.vox.com/2014/7/15/5881947/myers-briggs-personalit...
http://www.vox.com/2014/7/15/5881947/myers-briggs-personalit...
| They are not remotely comparable
Oh dear, there seems to be an epidemic of people's comparators not working. You might want to start small: try comparing two oranges, then an orange and an apple. Before long you'll be comparing supernovas to salamanders!
(Or perhaps you meant the rather less categorical "I think they're very different". I harp on this because I find "not remotely comparable" excessively dismissive. It's fine to disagree, just don't act like there's no possible way the other person might have a valid point)
Oh dear, there seems to be an epidemic of people's comparators not working. You might want to start small: try comparing two oranges, then an orange and an apple. Before long you'll be comparing supernovas to salamanders!
(Or perhaps you meant the rather less categorical "I think they're very different". I harp on this because I find "not remotely comparable" excessively dismissive. It's fine to disagree, just don't act like there's no possible way the other person might have a valid point)
Oh dear, I don't care what you like to harp on, take your sarcasm and shove it.
Astrology is prescriptive
If you disregard the people who claim astrology is prescriptive, and pay attention to only those aspects of it that describe tendencies - all the most convincing astrology nuts I've met do this - it can be quite... warming.
If you disregard the people who claim astrology is prescriptive, and pay attention to only those aspects of it that describe tendencies - all the most convincing astrology nuts I've met do this - it can be quite... warming.
Those tendencies are still linked to a birthdate which makes them prescriptive, you cannot ignore the prescriptive element of astrology without ignoring astrology entirely.
Being linked to your birthday has absolutely nothing to do with being prescriptive. Perhaps horoscopes are only prescriptive, but astrology as a whole is much broader than that.
I don't put faith in or know much about astrology, but I do know there are many different types and areas of astrology and not all of them have to do with telling you how to pick your lotto numbers tomorrow.
A lot of people talk about signs and astrology in terms of being able to read people and determine personality traits of others.
I don't put faith in or know much about astrology, but I do know there are many different types and areas of astrology and not all of them have to do with telling you how to pick your lotto numbers tomorrow.
A lot of people talk about signs and astrology in terms of being able to read people and determine personality traits of others.
It has everything to do with it, and it doesn't matter how or what a lot of people talk about astrology in terms of, it's absolute horseshit regardless of how they try and justify it. The stars, planets, etc have no relationship to your personality in any way.
> don't put faith in or know much about astrology
You're right, you don't, so perhaps don't sit here and defend this pseudo-scientific nonsense that you know nothing about.
> don't put faith in or know much about astrology
You're right, you don't, so perhaps don't sit here and defend this pseudo-scientific nonsense that you know nothing about.
Myers-Briggs has a type label then assigns traits based on that label.
It's not clear to me how that's different.
Sure, you can choose your type by responding differently to the questions, or finding a "practitioner" who assigns a type you prefer, but the same applies to astrology: shop around until you hear what you want to here.
It's not clear to me how that's different.
Sure, you can choose your type by responding differently to the questions, or finding a "practitioner" who assigns a type you prefer, but the same applies to astrology: shop around until you hear what you want to here.
> Myers-Briggs has a type label then assigns traits based on that label.
False. It's exactly the opposite, the label doesn't assign the traits, rather the traits create the label; if your traits change so does the label, it's nothing more than a description of who you are now according to your own answers to those traits questions. And it aids greatly in think about yourself and others and how people differ and exactly in what ways they can differ.
> It's not clear to me how that's different.
Then learn more.
False. It's exactly the opposite, the label doesn't assign the traits, rather the traits create the label; if your traits change so does the label, it's nothing more than a description of who you are now according to your own answers to those traits questions. And it aids greatly in think about yourself and others and how people differ and exactly in what ways they can differ.
> It's not clear to me how that's different.
Then learn more.
If I'm not mistaken, isn't "confirmation bias" basically the thing at play in the existence of both of these?
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.
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.
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.
No
Because those mentioned deal with random events, where X and Y are uncorrelated (being X a date of birth or card drawn from Tarot and Y is some personality characteristic)
MB do ask you questions from which you can predict - to some degree - some outcomes (how do you think a strong Extrovert changes from a strong Introvert)?
Just don't do something stupid like "this job requires a INTJ only" or think that the distribution is bimodal or that their behaviour will follow a strict pattern.
(It's not like the rest of "behavioral science" can make repeatable predictions and reproduce papers compared to other scientific branches)
Because those mentioned deal with random events, where X and Y are uncorrelated (being X a date of birth or card drawn from Tarot and Y is some personality characteristic)
MB do ask you questions from which you can predict - to some degree - some outcomes (how do you think a strong Extrovert changes from a strong Introvert)?
Just don't do something stupid like "this job requires a INTJ only" or think that the distribution is bimodal or that their behaviour will follow a strict pattern.
(It's not like the rest of "behavioral science" can make repeatable predictions and reproduce papers compared to other scientific branches)
I don't think about M-B or Tarot or astrology as predictive, they are mindfulness prods: interesting frameworks to break up and reframe the narratives we tell ourselves about who we are. A horoscope that tells me "this week will present challenges at work about money" is likely to prod me into mindfulness about work and money than I would be otherwise. Similarly, my ESTJ M-B type is more likely to make me mindful about where I get my energy and the ways in which rigorously analytical thinking may not be the way lots of other humans approach decisions.
That's such a J thing to say.
Astrology is correlated to seasonal climate change etc. which can plausibly affect life outcomes, though
Considering the planet has two hemispheres, no, it's not correlated.
It's much more than 'astrology or tarot cards'. MBTI correlates with the big five personality traits. Which are backed up scientifically.
It correlates poorly with any of the competing empirically-supportable models; e.g., as I recall, the I-E axis seems to be a blend of the extraversion and neuroticism axes shared by the EPQ (3 factor) and Big Five (5 factor) models. Better to use one of the scientific models directly than MBTI.
Indeed. But that doesn't mean MBTI is really meaningless, only that there are better models.
When you say 'reasonable', you mean something orthogonal: rather it's 'rhetorically useful', or 'a social hack '. This does not make it scientific, nor based in reason, and more dangerous because it masquerades as reason much more truthily than tarot and other pretence magic
I don't mean it's rational, i mean good enough, at least it's in the same ballpark of getting someone drunk.
It's not scientific, it's totally based in reason. It's reasonable to deny global warming because winters are getting colder than ever. It's not reasonable to deny climate change because winters are getting colder than ever.
There's nothing wrong with someone drawing a conclusion from their personal experience, that's going to be full of emotion, opinion and hopefully some logic.
I get your concern, but the same folks who make hiring decisions based on Myers Briggs will tell you angels were watching over them when they narrowly avoided a car crash. Or their relative visited them a month after they passed away. it's mostly benign. When it's not benign, they're unreasonable. Only then is it possibly worth the effort to persuade them to be a bit more rational.
But, yes. I mean 'rhetorically useful' or 'a social hack'
It's not scientific, it's totally based in reason. It's reasonable to deny global warming because winters are getting colder than ever. It's not reasonable to deny climate change because winters are getting colder than ever.
There's nothing wrong with someone drawing a conclusion from their personal experience, that's going to be full of emotion, opinion and hopefully some logic.
I get your concern, but the same folks who make hiring decisions based on Myers Briggs will tell you angels were watching over them when they narrowly avoided a car crash. Or their relative visited them a month after they passed away. it's mostly benign. When it's not benign, they're unreasonable. Only then is it possibly worth the effort to persuade them to be a bit more rational.
But, yes. I mean 'rhetorically useful' or 'a social hack'
> more truthily than tarot and other pretence magic
Depending on where you are from I suppose.
Edit: I believe "pretense" was the incantation you were after.
Depending on where you are from I suppose.
Edit: I believe "pretense" was the incantation you were after.
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.
A nuanced discussion would probably accept that these are continuous axes, but instead they get treated as clusters, distorting even casual analysis.
I've retested several times, and while I'm normally I (strong), my other values were weaker, and fluctuated some (sometimes F, sometimes T, for example).
Amazingly, I've had arguments about this with folks. (probably E folks). They claimed that "it never changes", which is just patently untrue. Perhaps E folks don't introspect enough to re-evaluate their views on things? I know I tested different 5 years ago compared to when I took it 20 years ago.
I don't really see how you couldn't retest at least somewhat differently.
Amazingly, I've had arguments about this with folks. (probably E folks). They claimed that "it never changes", which is just patently untrue. Perhaps E folks don't introspect enough to re-evaluate their views on things? I know I tested different 5 years ago compared to when I took it 20 years ago.
I don't really see how you couldn't retest at least somewhat differently.
I've flipped at least two letters over time, and at least one letter on next-morning retest. J/P in particular has never seemed clear or significant to me.
I think this is actually the most common experience. The data I've seen says that scores on all four 'axes' are normally distributed. So it's actually fairly exceptional to have strong, predictable positions for every letter; cutting a bunch of normal distributions down the middle means most of us are on a boundary.
And yes, it's probably those silly E folks saying they never change. God forbid we wake up tomorrow testing as E, we'll have a paradox on our hands.
I think this is actually the most common experience. The data I've seen says that scores on all four 'axes' are normally distributed. So it's actually fairly exceptional to have strong, predictable positions for every letter; cutting a bunch of normal distributions down the middle means most of us are on a boundary.
And yes, it's probably those silly E folks saying they never change. God forbid we wake up tomorrow testing as E, we'll have a paradox on our hands.
:)
The folks who have argued that point with me over the years all happened to be strong E. I'm talking perhaps 3-4 people over 20 years - not a huge number to go on, but it was the only consistent I saw (male/female/old/young/etc).
Me: "Wow, I took this a few years ago and was a moderate F, but now I'm a slight T".
Them: "That's just not possible. It doesn't work that way. You just don't remember what you had before. It doesn't change".
Me: "WTF??"
The folks who have argued that point with me over the years all happened to be strong E. I'm talking perhaps 3-4 people over 20 years - not a huge number to go on, but it was the only consistent I saw (male/female/old/young/etc).
Me: "Wow, I took this a few years ago and was a moderate F, but now I'm a slight T".
Them: "That's just not possible. It doesn't work that way. You just don't remember what you had before. It doesn't change".
Me: "WTF??"
Without the clusters, the tests would generate no interest. Imagine if most of us got the same results: "You are within a standard deviation of average. Go ahead and keep doing what you're doing." It would be like the typical middle-of-the-road performance review. We'd file it in the drawer and forget about it. The binary extremes provide the entertainment value needed to perpetuate the product, and also to justify the traits attached to the symbols.
> A nuanced discussion would probably accept that these are continuous axes, but instead they get treated as clusters, distorting even casual analysis.
As far as I understood the test, it results in your brain's _dominant_ mode on four axes. So you are either predominantly introverted or extraverted. There is nothing in the theory stating that you are introverted 100%, all the time.
As far as I understood the test, it results in your brain's _dominant_ mode on four axes. So you are either predominantly introverted or extraverted. There is nothing in the theory stating that you are introverted 100%, all the time.
I don't think I made my point clearly.
I'm not suggesting that MBTI claims we're 100% E or I. I'm saying that it assigns binary distributions on those axes, which would make it meaningful to talk about "E dominant" and "I dominant" people. Every study I've seen of the actual data, though, says that these are normally distributed traits.
So there are some people with distinctive, meaningful dominant modes on these axes. But the bulk of the population is at the center of the distributions, where marginal differences are being talked about like high-significance bimodal results.
This isn't inevitably the case, but we live in a world where MBTI results are still being used to determine who's suited to which jobs. If you're hiring sales guys who are 51% extroverted and refusing ones who are 49% extroverted, that supposed binary distribution is misleading you badly.
I'm not suggesting that MBTI claims we're 100% E or I. I'm saying that it assigns binary distributions on those axes, which would make it meaningful to talk about "E dominant" and "I dominant" people. Every study I've seen of the actual data, though, says that these are normally distributed traits.
So there are some people with distinctive, meaningful dominant modes on these axes. But the bulk of the population is at the center of the distributions, where marginal differences are being talked about like high-significance bimodal results.
This isn't inevitably the case, but we live in a world where MBTI results are still being used to determine who's suited to which jobs. If you're hiring sales guys who are 51% extroverted and refusing ones who are 49% extroverted, that supposed binary distribution is misleading you badly.
I thought the MBTI gave an X if you were actually at the middle?
So you'd get an I at less than 45%, an E at more than 55%, and an X if you were on the border.
Further, you said they were normally distributed, but didnt talk about the variance. It's possible that people who are just a little from the middle by % of population are meaningfully different than the average -- a quarter standard deviation could be a meaningful amount of change in the real world.
So your argument doesn't actually support your claim: with the inclusion of an X band, it's possible the gap between E and I is meaningful in real world situations. We can't know merely by knowing it's normally distributed, we need to analyze the standard deviation size versus the minimal meangingful difference in the real world.
So you'd get an I at less than 45%, an E at more than 55%, and an X if you were on the border.
Further, you said they were normally distributed, but didnt talk about the variance. It's possible that people who are just a little from the middle by % of population are meaningfully different than the average -- a quarter standard deviation could be a meaningful amount of change in the real world.
So your argument doesn't actually support your claim: with the inclusion of an X band, it's possible the gap between E and I is meaningful in real world situations. We can't know merely by knowing it's normally distributed, we need to analyze the standard deviation size versus the minimal meangingful difference in the real world.
I'm oversimplifying, yes.
Several instances I've seen of MBTI didn't offer X, but that's definitely an improvement. The one I got for high school career services actually crashed if you 'tied', because that hadn't been accounted for at all.
Without the X band, "normal distribution" is enough to say things are broken. It means that you're consistently dividing similar people while grouping dissimilar people, which isn't what I like in a cluster.
With the X band, SD becomes important and a wide distribution might provide good results. Anecdotally, this could match the high attention given to E/I versus F/T - high SD axes would be relevant to more people.
Having said that, I'm still skeptical of much of the MBTI literature. It definitely deals in bimodal distributions, asserting that these clusterings are features of the territory rather than the map. If the peak frequency is a value the test can't inform about, I think that still invalidates much of the literature even if the test has some predictive power.
Several instances I've seen of MBTI didn't offer X, but that's definitely an improvement. The one I got for high school career services actually crashed if you 'tied', because that hadn't been accounted for at all.
Without the X band, "normal distribution" is enough to say things are broken. It means that you're consistently dividing similar people while grouping dissimilar people, which isn't what I like in a cluster.
With the X band, SD becomes important and a wide distribution might provide good results. Anecdotally, this could match the high attention given to E/I versus F/T - high SD axes would be relevant to more people.
Having said that, I'm still skeptical of much of the MBTI literature. It definitely deals in bimodal distributions, asserting that these clusterings are features of the territory rather than the map. If the peak frequency is a value the test can't inform about, I think that still invalidates much of the literature even if the test has some predictive power.
> Several instances I've seen of MBTI didn't offer X, but that's definitely an improvement. The one I got for high school career services actually crashed if you 'tied', because that hadn't been accounted for at all.
While I get the criticism of those tests as poorly implemented pop-psych, it only seems fair to attack the MBTI itself as a concept if you criticize the actual written, send-in-and-evaluate official version. The version I took of that (which came with a ton of propaganda from the testing company) featured both an X band and numeric strength scores for each category. It also featured a lot more questions than the typical online free ones, and had redundant questions the way that standard psych evals do. So at least some of the "professional" MBTI people are providing that kind of test, even if their analysis is all about bimodals and nonsense.
> With the X band, SD becomes important and a wide distribution might provide good results. Anecdotally, this could match the high attention given to E/I versus F/T - high SD axes would be relevant to more people.
My main point was that the joint distribution increases the spread away from XXXX to things like XXFX or XNXX, where even if you're still near the exact middle, there's less people exactly at average, and so the test is more likely to relay at least one fact in one category about the test taker than any particular category is to say something useful.
So even though the test can't say anything about the hyperbox in the middle of the range, it is relatively small because getting a little way away from the exact center likely says something about at least one category, even if the majority still can't have anything useful said about them.
Think of it this way: assume that the test can't say anything about the middle 20% of people for a given trait, and that the traits are independent (ie, how you score on one has nothing to do with the others). The odds that you're XXXX is (0.2)^4 = 0.0016. So only ~1 in 500 people would get nothing out the MBTI, even though ~1 in 5 has at least one category with an X.
And that's assuming a relatively large X band. Drop the X band to 5%, and it's only ~1 in 200,000 that would get XXXX.
> Having said that, I'm still skeptical of much of the MBTI literature.
I threw out the marketing booklet mostly unread after the statistical nonsense of the first few pages was too much when I paid to take the professional version of the test in school.
The test is alright, but not great and modern data analysis can probably do a much better PCA than the MBTI is, but the company is outright moronic in what they say. And others can be much worse.
While I get the criticism of those tests as poorly implemented pop-psych, it only seems fair to attack the MBTI itself as a concept if you criticize the actual written, send-in-and-evaluate official version. The version I took of that (which came with a ton of propaganda from the testing company) featured both an X band and numeric strength scores for each category. It also featured a lot more questions than the typical online free ones, and had redundant questions the way that standard psych evals do. So at least some of the "professional" MBTI people are providing that kind of test, even if their analysis is all about bimodals and nonsense.
> With the X band, SD becomes important and a wide distribution might provide good results. Anecdotally, this could match the high attention given to E/I versus F/T - high SD axes would be relevant to more people.
My main point was that the joint distribution increases the spread away from XXXX to things like XXFX or XNXX, where even if you're still near the exact middle, there's less people exactly at average, and so the test is more likely to relay at least one fact in one category about the test taker than any particular category is to say something useful.
So even though the test can't say anything about the hyperbox in the middle of the range, it is relatively small because getting a little way away from the exact center likely says something about at least one category, even if the majority still can't have anything useful said about them.
Think of it this way: assume that the test can't say anything about the middle 20% of people for a given trait, and that the traits are independent (ie, how you score on one has nothing to do with the others). The odds that you're XXXX is (0.2)^4 = 0.0016. So only ~1 in 500 people would get nothing out the MBTI, even though ~1 in 5 has at least one category with an X.
And that's assuming a relatively large X band. Drop the X band to 5%, and it's only ~1 in 200,000 that would get XXXX.
> Having said that, I'm still skeptical of much of the MBTI literature.
I threw out the marketing booklet mostly unread after the statistical nonsense of the first few pages was too much when I paid to take the professional version of the test in school.
The test is alright, but not great and modern data analysis can probably do a much better PCA than the MBTI is, but the company is outright moronic in what they say. And others can be much worse.
The big problem of MBTI is the axes aren't well aligned with supportable dimensions of personality, though they have some correlation with them. Models like EPQ (3 factors), Big Five (5 factors), and HEXACO (6 factors) have better methodology behind them (though each still has strengths and weaknesses).
MBTI is a just-so story with a lot of marketing behind it.
MBTI is a just-so story with a lot of marketing behind it.
The goal of the test is just to give an approximation. The test is not accurate (and is not claiming to be).
The core of the theory is to highlight natural preferences in the way we use cognitive functions. It's a pretty good and useful model. It's not a definite one though, like all the models we have it's meant to be improved and replaced over the years (like in physics).
99% of the critics about MBTI are focusing on the tests (which I agree are not accurate) and the authors don't understand the theory behind it - which is the really useful part. (Carl Jung's work, cognitive functions preferences, etc)
The core of the theory is to highlight natural preferences in the way we use cognitive functions. It's a pretty good and useful model. It's not a definite one though, like all the models we have it's meant to be improved and replaced over the years (like in physics).
99% of the critics about MBTI are focusing on the tests (which I agree are not accurate) and the authors don't understand the theory behind it - which is the really useful part. (Carl Jung's work, cognitive functions preferences, etc)
I think there's a cross-purposes argument happening here.
I, for one, am totally alright with MBTI-style questions as a tool for analysis/introspection. RibbonFarm has some great writing about identifying 'dominant' cognitive functions based on magnitude data from MBTI.
Strictly accurate? No. A useful framework for planning? Absolutely.
MBTI is also an organization, though. It charges money for training, issues education materials, and gives trainers strict guidelines on what assessments are ok to make. That system is hideously inaccurate and deserves criticism. It asserts that the test is accurate to reality, that the personality types are 'opposed', and that people are bimodal on the four axes. Many of those claims explicitly contradict the Jungian theories that inspired them.
So it's easy to overreach when criticizing the MB model, and most articles like this aren't clear about their target. But the actual MBTI organization - which is still popular with big companies in its original form - is wrong in terms of its own theoretical foundations, defended with bad data, and deserves extensive criticism.
I, for one, am totally alright with MBTI-style questions as a tool for analysis/introspection. RibbonFarm has some great writing about identifying 'dominant' cognitive functions based on magnitude data from MBTI.
Strictly accurate? No. A useful framework for planning? Absolutely.
MBTI is also an organization, though. It charges money for training, issues education materials, and gives trainers strict guidelines on what assessments are ok to make. That system is hideously inaccurate and deserves criticism. It asserts that the test is accurate to reality, that the personality types are 'opposed', and that people are bimodal on the four axes. Many of those claims explicitly contradict the Jungian theories that inspired them.
So it's easy to overreach when criticizing the MB model, and most articles like this aren't clear about their target. But the actual MBTI organization - which is still popular with big companies in its original form - is wrong in terms of its own theoretical foundations, defended with bad data, and deserves extensive criticism.
Agreeing 100% with you.
Which is the fundamental failure. Picking E v. I says little about relative magnitude. 'E' might be slightly larger than 'I' but below the test's noise floor so you show up 'I' slightly more frequently. Or 'E' might significantly higher than 'I' so it's a consistent result.
Further, it says nothing about the fluctuations in magnitude over time, some days 'E' might be more important than 'I' and it really can swap on other days. Or even how accurately people self report.
Further, it says nothing about the fluctuations in magnitude over time, some days 'E' might be more important than 'I' and it really can swap on other days. Or even how accurately people self report.
Actually, a type (e.g. INFP) does say a lot about the magnitude of different cognitive processes. Take a look at this website (INFP linked as an example): http://www.cognitiveprocesses.com/16Types/INFP.cfm
There are only 4 bits of information. E v I, S v N, T v F, J v P.
So, if you are 'strongly' I and weakly P that does not change the order to show P is more dominate over J than I is over E. AKA, magnitude is literally not part of the test.
So, if you are 'strongly' I and weakly P that does not change the order to show P is more dominate over J than I is over E. AKA, magnitude is literally not part of the test.
When I took the MBTI as part of a college psych course, our test results came back with magnitude scores: moderately I, very N, barely T (ie, almost X), and very P. (The actual scores were numeric, but I only remember the relative strength years later.)
When discussing the results as a class, the strength of a type seemed to correlate reasonably with behavior, and explain more than the clusters on their own, eg, all the strong NPs had similar epistemological views and styles, fading towards an SJ style as the scores people had changed.
What a lot of people seem to forget, though, is the MBTI doesn't account for effects from disorders only healthy variation and it's about who you are right now, not who you are permanently. People vary over time.
When discussing the results as a class, the strength of a type seemed to correlate reasonably with behavior, and explain more than the clusters on their own, eg, all the strong NPs had similar epistemological views and styles, fading towards an SJ style as the scores people had changed.
What a lot of people seem to forget, though, is the MBTI doesn't account for effects from disorders only healthy variation and it's about who you are right now, not who you are permanently. People vary over time.
Notably, all the good secondary analysis of MBTI I've seen worries about magnitude. The RibbonFarm bit on it focuses almost exclusively on magnitude, discussing 'primary' traits rather than four-letter type clusters. A lot of the worst analysis, by contrast, insists on using non-magnitude, 16-case typing.
Which, of course, means that we're abandoning the actual test to get a substantive measurement.
Which, of course, means that we're abandoning the actual test to get a substantive measurement.
A problem is that the opposite sides of each axis aren't even mutually exclusive. You can be a strong judger and perceiver. Or weak at both.
And the MBTI doesn't imply or assume axes. A type (e.g. INFP) is a label for your cognitive processes.
e.g. INFP leads with a primary Introverted Feeling (judging), an auxiliary Extroverted Intuition (perceiving), then Introverted Sensing, and finally Extroverted Feeling.
Some of the better tests will help identify these cognitive processes and then attempt to find the best fitting type based on them. You can read more about the cognitive functions here: http://www.cognitiveprocesses.com/Cognitive-Functions/index....
It's too bad that so many people see the types as diametrically opposed (e.g. Feeling vs Thinking -- you do both!)
e.g. INFP leads with a primary Introverted Feeling (judging), an auxiliary Extroverted Intuition (perceiving), then Introverted Sensing, and finally Extroverted Feeling.
Some of the better tests will help identify these cognitive processes and then attempt to find the best fitting type based on them. You can read more about the cognitive functions here: http://www.cognitiveprocesses.com/Cognitive-Functions/index....
It's too bad that so many people see the types as diametrically opposed (e.g. Feeling vs Thinking -- you do both!)
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 expect you get about the same utility out of any 4-dimensional, 16-choice bucketing strategy.
The MBTI is mostly just useful in that it's one of the few things that actually sorts humans in a hyperdimensional way, which is really how we're best categorized.
We're all slight wobbles (well, statistically speaking) around the center of a like 20-100 dimension distribution.
MBTI is basically just PCA on that space in to a 4-dimensional one, and while we can argue how evenly its bucketing split the actual distribution of people (not ideally, but not terribly), or how much information was lost in that downcasting (a lot!), I think the basic premise of viewing people as a composite of slight differences across many dimensions is a useful viewpoint we don't normally engage in.
So if you could pick 16 LotR characters that form a hypercube of traits, then assigning LotR characters is the same as the MBTI. The problem is usually that LotR quizzes and the like are a) much smaller than that (4-8 characters) and b) not laid out in a hypercube (ie, there's not 4+ dimensions of wobble, there's 2 or 3).
The MBTI is mostly just useful in that it's one of the few things that actually sorts humans in a hyperdimensional way, which is really how we're best categorized.
We're all slight wobbles (well, statistically speaking) around the center of a like 20-100 dimension distribution.
MBTI is basically just PCA on that space in to a 4-dimensional one, and while we can argue how evenly its bucketing split the actual distribution of people (not ideally, but not terribly), or how much information was lost in that downcasting (a lot!), I think the basic premise of viewing people as a composite of slight differences across many dimensions is a useful viewpoint we don't normally engage in.
So if you could pick 16 LotR characters that form a hypercube of traits, then assigning LotR characters is the same as the MBTI. The problem is usually that LotR quizzes and the like are a) much smaller than that (4-8 characters) and b) not laid out in a hypercube (ie, there's not 4+ dimensions of wobble, there's 2 or 3).
The P in PCA is principal. It's a strong and dubious assumption that MBTI carries any orthogonality.
Well, sure. But it's also exactly the contention of its proponents: that the categories represent orthogonal concerns about how we process information, but that our variation across those categories explains the larger trait distribution we experience.
My point wasn't to argue about how well they did that (not particularly), but rather that it's useful to approach issues of understanding personality in those terms at all. That's the real innovation of things like the MBTI: that we should analyze the distribution of personalities in terms of PCA, and that we should probably use a few components, rather than like 1 or 2.
Of course, we could do the actual analysis much better than the MBTI did.
My point wasn't to argue about how well they did that (not particularly), but rather that it's useful to approach issues of understanding personality in those terms at all. That's the real innovation of things like the MBTI: that we should analyze the distribution of personalities in terms of PCA, and that we should probably use a few components, rather than like 1 or 2.
Of course, we could do the actual analysis much better than the MBTI did.
MBTI is not that. It is marketed as if it was, but it's an a priori model not based on analysis of actual data. EPQ, Big Five, HEXACO, etc. are closer to what you present MBTI as being.
If you have a reasonable methodology to generate the comparison, I think being able to tell someone they are a Sith Lord can be helpful. I think tests can help provide a different perspective to people. I think tests are an issue when they present traits as concrete and unable to be changed, or only present the positive aspects of 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.
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.
Self-introspection is also where I find the most value in M-B. It gave me perspective on my ISTJ personality preferences (preferences is the key word) that I didn't understand about myself prior to having these results.
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
On a more productive point, your post gave no evidence at all about why M-B is useful
I suggest reading it again.
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.
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.
Seems like a great tool for a science that draws conclusions first and looks for evidence later, as I've been led to believe has been happening in psychology.
I wouldn't drop this one on psychology's doorstep - the MBTI has been pretty consistently critcized by the mainstream psychology community for decades.
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.
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.
yes, I always score very very strongly in INTJ. It may not be as useful as a full psychological evaluation for describing my personality, but unlike Tarot/astrology, if you know what INTJ means, you can understand how I function and how I see myself. (not very social/emotional, very logical, stubborn, aptitude for systems-building)
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.
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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.
Results being independently reproducible is the foundation of science. Meyers-Briggs fails that simple metric.
If the test is judging mindset, something that changes very regularly, of course the results will change as well. This is akin to saying testing blood sugar is worthless because the result varies throughout the day.
Well sure, but the point is that saying "I am INTJ" is like saying "My blood sugar is X." It may be true at the moment, but it's not a useful statement about the general prevailing conditions.
But people take the test once, and then use the results for a long period of time. Guess what? At night, blood sugar level goes down. it's no longer X. And likewise with this test.
But people take the test once, and then use the results for a long period of time. Guess what? At night, blood sugar level goes down. it's no longer X. And likewise with this test.
True, but by noting your blood sugar readings over a long period of time, taking note of the spikes, drops, and so forth, you gain some insight into your health and diet.
Same thing, here. I wouldn't put much stock into a single result on a single test, but I think there's some broader value to be gained by examining the trend, the fluctuations, and what you wind up as more often than not.
Same thing, here. I wouldn't put much stock into a single result on a single test, but I think there's some broader value to be gained by examining the trend, the fluctuations, and what you wind up as more often than not.
C'mon man. It purports to test personality, not mindset. It doesn't say "Run this after meals and first thing in the morning between meals to get an idea of your mindset throughout the day." Sheesh.
What is the substantial difference between those two things?
The only assertion I have to disprove here is that the test is "worthless".
The only assertion I have to disprove here is that the test is "worthless".
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.
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.
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.
.
A lot of Israeli companies use handwriting tests in their hiring decisions. Don't ask me why, it's a meme that has hung on there for some reason. Does that mean graphology has predictive power? After all, companies are using it!
Of course not. All the companies are simply wrong. They're falling for management/hiring fads, or relying on old superstitions. This happens all the time. "Companies are using it" says nothing about whether it's actually reliable.
Specifically, many studies and meta-studies have failed to show correlation between MBTI results and job performance. Here is one such summary: http://www.opd.net/abstracts5.html
Of course not. All the companies are simply wrong. They're falling for management/hiring fads, or relying on old superstitions. This happens all the time. "Companies are using it" says nothing about whether it's actually reliable.
Specifically, many studies and meta-studies have failed to show correlation between MBTI results and job performance. Here is one such summary: http://www.opd.net/abstracts5.html
That's meaningless unless you confirm that their fitness for that task was actually correlated to their MTBI, e.g. by mixing those "fit" and "unfit" (based on MTBI) on the same task and comparing their performance. I'm pretty sure most companies don't do this. They just assume MTBI has predictive power and use it anyway since it gives them something to go on besides gut instinct.
Well, I know for sure that a person with an INTJ personality type is not suited for marketing and sales (statistically speaking of course). Would you claim otherwise?
Yes I would. Given the inconsistency of results that the Myers-Briggs test outputs for individuals, the personality of that person who tested as an INTJ could be far from it normally.
Furthermore, your willingness to buy into the narrative (and others' willingness to also believe it) that by categorizing certain people into stereotypes and assuming that most of these people tend to excel at a particular set of tasks is most likely what limits them from excelling at tasks that lie outside of their respective sets just as much as their true predisposition to not excelling at them.
Furthermore, your willingness to buy into the narrative (and others' willingness to also believe it) that by categorizing certain people into stereotypes and assuming that most of these people tend to excel at a particular set of tasks is most likely what limits them from excelling at tasks that lie outside of their respective sets just as much as their true predisposition to not excelling at them.
Then please point me to the research, because the article does a lousy job at it.
Saying that any profiling technique has zero predictive value is a very bold claim.
Even one's astrological sign has predictive value: [1]. And yes, this has been scientifically proven.
[1] http://www.medicaldaily.com/how-birth-month-influences-perso...
Saying that any profiling technique has zero predictive value is a very bold claim.
Even one's astrological sign has predictive value: [1]. And yes, this has been scientifically proven.
[1] http://www.medicaldaily.com/how-birth-month-influences-perso...
Why is it the job of the skeptic to prove that a profiling technique does not have predictive power? Shouldn't you have to prove that it does?
Because it is very hard for a test not to have predictive power.
For example, companies fruitfully extract predictive power from whether a user clicked a link or not. Facebook extracts predictive power from whether users like videos, et cetera. So why shouldn't an elaborate test that was developed to have meaning, not have any predictive power?
For example, companies fruitfully extract predictive power from whether a user clicked a link or not. Facebook extracts predictive power from whether users like videos, et cetera. So why shouldn't an elaborate test that was developed to have meaning, not have any predictive power?
Not having predictive power means it is not better than chance at predicting any X.
There are results that show MBTI has no predictive power against job performance. It has not been tested against any other measure.
That said, MBTI shows bad orthogonality in the factors in its response. This suggests the factors are ill defined.
There are results that show MBTI has no predictive power against job performance. It has not been tested against any other measure.
That said, MBTI shows bad orthogonality in the factors in its response. This suggests the factors are ill defined.
> There are results that show MBTI has no predictive power against job performance.
Could you provide a reference?
Could you provide a reference?
Provided by another person in this thread already.
Don't invert the burden of proof.
How do you know that?
Have you done any controlled experiment to test this hypothesis?
The fact that (some) companies may use it to test if a person is fit for certain tasks doesn't mean that it really indicates whether a person is fit for certain tasks.
Let me devise a test. The test is just "are you a man or a woman?".
Does this have predictive power? Yes. If I needed somebody to take care of small children, would this test be useful? Yes of course. If I had to pick people blindly for this task, except for the results of this test, then this test would be very useful. Now, MBTI is more sophisticated than this simple test. So to say that it has no predictive power is just silly.
Does this have predictive power? Yes. If I needed somebody to take care of small children, would this test be useful? Yes of course. If I had to pick people blindly for this task, except for the results of this test, then this test would be very useful. Now, MBTI is more sophisticated than this simple test. So to say that it has no predictive power is just silly.
While I'm not a huge fan of Myers-Briggs (or rather, how it's used), that's not what I'm saying.
I'm saying that the fact that some people are using it for some purpose doesn't mean that it's actually useful for that purpose.
As for your response, the burden of proof really lies with its proponents - is there any proof of its alleged predictive power?
I'm saying that the fact that some people are using it for some purpose doesn't mean that it's actually useful for that purpose.
As for your response, the burden of proof really lies with its proponents - is there any proof of its alleged predictive power?
Strictly speaking you are right, my logic was flawed (hidden assumption). But let's stick with the orignal issue here, which is whether the test is predictive.
Agreed - this is why I asked whether there is any proof of its alleged predictive power.
Without this, I don't think it's reasonable to assume that it is in fact predictive.
Without this, I don't think it's reasonable to assume that it is in fact predictive.
Yes, but the point I'm trying to make is that the claim that any test has zero predicitive power is actually pretty bold.
For example, the simple test of whether a user clicks a certain link or not already has predicitive power (companies are using this, fruitfully). So a more sophisticated test like MBTI certainly has some predictive power.
For example, the simple test of whether a user clicks a certain link or not already has predicitive power (companies are using this, fruitfully). So a more sophisticated test like MBTI certainly has some predictive power.
This is a completely bogus argument. Phrenology[1] on its face sounds pretty sophisticated, but it still has zero predictive power.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrenology
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrenology
Unless it is demonstrated to have some predictive power, it isn't certain at all.
Additionally, the added (relative) complexity doesn't imply anything about its qualities.
Additionally, the added (relative) complexity doesn't imply anything about its qualities.
According to your logic, sophistication implies better predictive power. You completely ignore the fact that someone could devise a very elaborate system for judging e.g. fitness for a certain job, make very good assumptions and work very hard and still achieve poor predictive power.
True, but not very likely.
> MBTI has predictive power; for starters, it is used by companies to test if a person is fit for certain tasks.
This is a null argument.
Unless you show that those predictions actually assess whether someone is fit for those tasks this is absolutely content free.
This is a null argument.
Unless you show that those predictions actually assess whether someone is fit for those tasks this is absolutely content free.
That kind of makes sense, in a kafkan way, in a society so full of preparatory courses that will teach you how to do a test (instead of the contents of the test), or how to perform in interviews.
You're saying that, because companies use it to test employees, that means it has predictive power? Or is it that companies BELIEVE it has predictive power, so companies use it?
I suppose that demonstrates that MBTI had predictive power as to whether one will be hired by one of those companies, but it doesn't demonstrate anything beyond that.
You're doing a disservice to astrology.
MBTI is a subjective categorization. Astrology is more like your DNA. You're born with a specific set pattern. Just like we don't understand what most of our genetic patterns mean, we don't understand what most of our astrological patterns mean.
MBTI is a subjective categorization. Astrology is more like your DNA. You're born with a specific set pattern. Just like we don't understand what most of our genetic patterns mean, we don't understand what most of our astrological patterns mean.
Much of our DNA may not mean very much at all, just like our astrological patterns.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/08/magazine/is-most-of-our-dn...
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/08/magazine/is-most-of-our-dn...
There are no data to support the magical thinking of astrology. You are unlikely to find supporters here for your assertions of pre-enlightenment pseudo science
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Add to that "People receive different MBTI results even in the same week."
That proves what? If you want to argue that people's MBTI fluctuates too wildly to be meaningful, the proper question is whether there's any information gain from knowing a person's previous MBTI results for subsequent tests, not whether it is exactly the same. And the answer to that is yes. If you know I scored INTP on my last test, am I equally likely to score say ESFJ on a subsequent test as opposed to INTP or something closer to it (there are four dimensions after all) than a randomly selected person? Nope.
If I ask you what your weight and height is today, it's indicative of what your weight and height will be a year from now even if the number doesn't fit into exactly the same rounded range. Doesn't mean weight and height are meaningless if the answers change classifications a bit.
If I ask you what your weight and height is today, it's indicative of what your weight and height will be a year from now even if the number doesn't fit into exactly the same rounded range. Doesn't mean weight and height are meaningless if the answers change classifications a bit.
With all due respect your analogy with weight and height is a bad analogy.
A much better analogy would be blood sugar level. For many healthy people its sorta constant-ish. The fact that its not nearly constant for a subset of people doesn't prove the test is therefore worthless. It just proves some people have untreated diabetes. The test is not worthless because it can be used in diabetes screenings, unless the point of the test was to tap people like maple syrup trees or something really weird like that.
A major problem with the test is we know people are not terribly good at self introspection, we're all above average drivers and lovers and thinkers, all of us. I am good enough at self introspection to tell I'm pretty well introverted, yet I can imagine someone not so observant or self aware or perhaps neurotic about the whole topic, getting a fairly random score. Or I'm bad enough at self introspection to not realize I'm no good at it at all, and I'm actually a closet extrovert, although I find that rather unlikely (although I would, wouldn't I, if I failed at introspection).
In that way as a secondary measurement I'd propose theoretically that the wider the variation in test results, the worse the person would score in some kind of self introspection ability test. It seems a reasonable hypothesis. You'd need correction factors to deal with people having diagnosed or undiagnosed swings in brain neurotransmitters or use of addictive substances (including sugar and caffeine). But it could be run as a study.
A much better analogy would be blood sugar level. For many healthy people its sorta constant-ish. The fact that its not nearly constant for a subset of people doesn't prove the test is therefore worthless. It just proves some people have untreated diabetes. The test is not worthless because it can be used in diabetes screenings, unless the point of the test was to tap people like maple syrup trees or something really weird like that.
A major problem with the test is we know people are not terribly good at self introspection, we're all above average drivers and lovers and thinkers, all of us. I am good enough at self introspection to tell I'm pretty well introverted, yet I can imagine someone not so observant or self aware or perhaps neurotic about the whole topic, getting a fairly random score. Or I'm bad enough at self introspection to not realize I'm no good at it at all, and I'm actually a closet extrovert, although I find that rather unlikely (although I would, wouldn't I, if I failed at introspection).
In that way as a secondary measurement I'd propose theoretically that the wider the variation in test results, the worse the person would score in some kind of self introspection ability test. It seems a reasonable hypothesis. You'd need correction factors to deal with people having diagnosed or undiagnosed swings in brain neurotransmitters or use of addictive substances (including sugar and caffeine). But it could be run as a study.
You're conflating two things here - the instrument, which is the survey, and the data it is measuring - the MBTI. Even if we assume the MBTI itself is accurate - that is, it is possible to categorize the entire human race into 16 distinct personality categories, the fluctuating survey results indicate that the instrument used to measure it is wildly imprecise, and using it to make any sort of important decision is irresponsible.
I was talking with my friend pretty extensively about personality recently. One way we came to view MBTI was as a clustering on 4 axes. We came away with an understanding that the letters don't mean much without a quantifier for each axis. For instance, my results have been consistent for a long time, but hers jumped around a lot and we realized she was probably on the borderline of the classifier on several dimensions while I was probably in a corner.
That said there are other criticisms, for instance: Are thinking and feeling really an axis or are they two independent traits? Are there other useful axes not included?
While I sort of cringe at the idea of using this for assigning people jobs, there area few people in my life that fit some of the type narratives fairly well and it helped me understand their motivations a bit better, which did legitimately help my relationships with them.
That said there are other criticisms, for instance: Are thinking and feeling really an axis or are they two independent traits? Are there other useful axes not included?
While I sort of cringe at the idea of using this for assigning people jobs, there area few people in my life that fit some of the type narratives fairly well and it helped me understand their motivations a bit better, which did legitimately help my relationships with them.
> whether there's any information gain from knowing a person's previous MBTI results for subsequent tests
That doesn't seem like the proper question. Specifically, it works only to predict future MBTI results, not anything further. That's fine for height and weight because those values are robust to small/moderate changes in value.
MBTI already has low predictive power about real-world content, and high sensitivity to change (on the margins; it also suffers from applying a clustered model to non-clustered data). So if retest reliability is anything less than excellent, I worry that our predictive power has been almost totally destroyed.
To provide a new analogy, this is like variance in number of fingers. The significance of 11 vs 10 vs 9 isn't proportional to magnitude, so we wouldn't accept "small" counting errors.
None of that says that "I'm an INTP" is meaningless, but I suspect that MBTI is no better, or even worse, than non-formalized personality summaries.
That doesn't seem like the proper question. Specifically, it works only to predict future MBTI results, not anything further. That's fine for height and weight because those values are robust to small/moderate changes in value.
MBTI already has low predictive power about real-world content, and high sensitivity to change (on the margins; it also suffers from applying a clustered model to non-clustered data). So if retest reliability is anything less than excellent, I worry that our predictive power has been almost totally destroyed.
To provide a new analogy, this is like variance in number of fingers. The significance of 11 vs 10 vs 9 isn't proportional to magnitude, so we wouldn't accept "small" counting errors.
None of that says that "I'm an INTP" is meaningless, but I suspect that MBTI is no better, or even worse, than non-formalized personality summaries.
Essentially: Accuracy is not precision; precision is not accuracy.
(Of course, MTBI is neither accurate nor precise. It is not accurate because it does not provide us any useful information about personality. It is not precise because test results vary wildly.)
(Of course, MTBI is neither accurate nor precise. It is not accurate because it does not provide us any useful information about personality. It is not precise because test results vary wildly.)
Some people may score same results for the entire life, just as some unlucky molecula of oxygen can stay in same cubical centimeter of the room for a long time. Statistically it's possible. But it does not matter, when you need predictions for the entire ensemble. If real predictive power of MBTI is low, if the cost of mistake is high (e.g. when you do not hire a star because of this test or when you promote to management position a guy with promising test score), then this typology does not make sense and must be avoided. Since there's no scientific proof of predictive power of this theory, then it's garbage.
Height and weight are things we can objectively measure.
If say some person knows two people and that one tested as INTP and other as ESFJ and doesn't know for a fact who had which test results. Are you really sure they won't have better than even odds at figuring out which is which based on their interactions with the people that don't involve asking for their MBTI test results? If so, based on what study? If you can't demonstrate that, on what do you base that it has no predictive power?
You bring up an interesting case I think even you failed to consider:
Since mbti essentially neuters it's own usefulness in the "round those percentages down to binary" stage, you could end up with a situation where an INTP and an ESFJ have only an 8% total difference in mbti-measured personality between them.
Since mbti essentially neuters it's own usefulness in the "round those percentages down to binary" stage, you could end up with a situation where an INTP and an ESFJ have only an 8% total difference in mbti-measured personality between them.
Oh absolutely. In fact I think there are those situations. My argument isn't that MBTI is effective in all individual cases to gauge much about them. My argument is that the ineffectiveness of MBTI at providing useful information to people on average has not been established. It's not been well researched in the first place and the research I've seen has been quite awful in their setup and analysis.
The question isn't whether people who are in the middle of each criteria exist and could easily swap classifications to their polar opposite. The question is what percentage of people would do that and whether it's high enough that there's too little signal to noise to extract any meaningful information out of the classification system.
The question isn't whether people who are in the middle of each criteria exist and could easily swap classifications to their polar opposite. The question is what percentage of people would do that and whether it's high enough that there's too little signal to noise to extract any meaningful information out of the classification system.
>ineffectiveness of MBTI at providing useful information to people on average has not been established
Don't invert the burden of proof. It's up to the proponents of MBTI to demonstrate its effectiveness.
Don't invert the burden of proof. It's up to the proponents of MBTI to demonstrate its effectiveness.
Well, since we know that 50% of people score different types upon retaking the test, that should be enough to identify the prevalence of these problem.
As for signal-to-noise, mbti is a useful tool for measuring the traits it measures, it just, for some reason, cuts the signal in half by removing the percentage from the label.
Without the percentages, you can never assume a persons traits don't hover at that middle ground. And thus, can never assume any part of their label is accurate.
If the occurrence of these hover cases were more like <4%, I'd be more inclined to agree with its usefulness, but as it is right now, the 4bit label, on its own, is just noise.
As for signal-to-noise, mbti is a useful tool for measuring the traits it measures, it just, for some reason, cuts the signal in half by removing the percentage from the label.
Without the percentages, you can never assume a persons traits don't hover at that middle ground. And thus, can never assume any part of their label is accurate.
If the occurrence of these hover cases were more like <4%, I'd be more inclined to agree with its usefulness, but as it is right now, the 4bit label, on its own, is just noise.
If 50% of people score the exact same type upon retaking the test, I consider that great evidence that there is relatively stable information in the indicator. As a baseline, remember that if the distribution of results was uniform, a null model would expect something on the order of 6.25% if the noise really drowned out all the signal.
absolutely agree with 0xfffafaCrash on this, just because a measure is imperfect and has varying levels of validity depending on the person doesn't mean it has no signal.
i'm pretty sure someone who has gotten INTP every single test in his life will behave differently on average than someone who has always gotten ESFJ
i'm pretty sure someone who has gotten INTP every single test in his life will behave differently on average than someone who has always gotten ESFJ
I agree that it has a use: it helps identify gullible people. Extremely valuable in that regard.
ha, got a laugh from that.
As an anecdote, I was able to predict my wife's results on the test, down to how strong her leanings were in each category.
I think its a mildly useful categorization which allows a simpler and more coarse view of personality than the full spectrum of data would normally allow.
I think its a mildly useful categorization which allows a simpler and more coarse view of personality than the full spectrum of data would normally allow.
Given the fact that repeated testing over a period often comes out with entirely different results - yes.
By "entirely different" you mean not the exact same classification or a classification independent of the previous classification? If the latter, the evidence does not support you.
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.
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.
Do you have any serious evidence that shows that it doesn't have external validity?
If say some person knows two people and that one tested as INTP and the other as ESFJ and this person doesn't know for a fact who had which test results. Are you really sure they won't have better than even odds at figuring out which is which based on their interactions with the people that don't involve asking for their MBTI test results? If so, based on what study?
It's clear I wouldn't be able to tell them apart based on their birthday (unless they were super young or something), but it's not at all clear that it's the case for MBTI.
If say some person knows two people and that one tested as INTP and the other as ESFJ and this person doesn't know for a fact who had which test results. Are you really sure they won't have better than even odds at figuring out which is which based on their interactions with the people that don't involve asking for their MBTI test results? If so, based on what study?
It's clear I wouldn't be able to tell them apart based on their birthday (unless they were super young or something), but it's not at all clear that it's the case for MBTI.
That's not how science works. The burden is not on me to prove MBTI does not have external validity, the burden is on the MBTI to prove it does have it. You have the chain of cause and effect backwards.
If you say "the sky is green," it's not my job to prove to you it's not. It's your job to prove it is. You're the one making the claim.
But here is a (more politely worded than I) paper on the MBTI's ineffectiveness for your perusal: http://epublications.bond.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article... - simply googling "mbti external validity" will also give you plenty of explanation. I also recommend looking at the many studies that review cites, since its whole purpose is amassing information on whether the MBTI is effective.
If you say "the sky is green," it's not my job to prove to you it's not. It's your job to prove it is. You're the one making the claim.
But here is a (more politely worded than I) paper on the MBTI's ineffectiveness for your perusal: http://epublications.bond.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article... - simply googling "mbti external validity" will also give you plenty of explanation. I also recommend looking at the many studies that review cites, since its whole purpose is amassing information on whether the MBTI is effective.
I'm a scientist, so I kind of know how science works.
There's a difference between saying the extent of something's effectiveness hasn't been established by existing research and saying that it is ineffective. I've read the publication you are linking to before and it is saying the latter without the evidence necessary to back up the claim.
There's a difference between saying the extent of something's effectiveness hasn't been established by existing research and saying that it is ineffective. I've read the publication you are linking to before and it is saying the latter without the evidence necessary to back up the claim.
I'm sorry, but I don't believe you. You are lacking a basic understanding of how the research process works in social sciences.
I don't want to be "credentials guy," but I have a degree in cognitive science and I've conducted human subjects research. What you are saying is simply wrong.
That publication cites dozens of studies to back up its claims. Are you suggesting they are all invalid? If so, why?
I don't want to be "credentials guy," but I have a degree in cognitive science and I've conducted human subjects research. What you are saying is simply wrong.
That publication cites dozens of studies to back up its claims. Are you suggesting they are all invalid? If so, why?
Did you read the same linked article I did? There were not cites to "dozens of studies;" rather, there were quotes from the Guardian and something called Skeptoid, plus a quoted but uncited "researcher."
Combined with the fact that this is basically a listicle ("quoticle?") clickbait from a mid/low-brow popsci website, with no analysis or synthesis, and you can pretty much throw TFA away, regardless of your side of what's shaping up to be a religious war here on HN.
Combined with the fact that this is basically a listicle ("quoticle?") clickbait from a mid/low-brow popsci website, with no analysis or synthesis, and you can pretty much throw TFA away, regardless of your side of what's shaping up to be a religious war here on HN.
I'm talking about the study I just linked, not the article that started this discussion.
Apologies, I missed that. The review paper you linked was indeed deeply researched and had a good synthesis of what it discussed. Decided not a pop Sci listicle :)
> Do you have any serious evidence that shows that it doesn't have external validity?
I can't prove a negative, all that a study can do is say "no results observed", but there's plenty of that. From the researcher cited in the article: "Many very specific predictions about the MBTI have not been confirmed or have been proved wrong." "Finally, there is no evidence that the MBTI measures anything of value."
This aligns with all of the other at-all-convincing research I've seen on MBTI: it assigned binary distributions to normally distributed data, and has very low predictive power. The majority of people will be near the middle of those distributions, where MBTI is at its least useful.
Further, I think your example is unfair: MBTI is a one-way function. I can meet people and anticipate their scores to with 1-2 errors (a huge margin, but we talk like it's 'close'!) I can't go from an MBTI score to useful predictions about the person though, because it's so massively information-destroying. Even on the things it purports to measure, the normal-to-binary problem means that it has awful predictive power. MBTI defines a somewhat-consistent function from people to letters, but since it's an arbitrary clustering system it doesn't actually allow new predictions or efficiently compress information about people.
So yes, I could probably tell some people apart by MBTI, but you could also assemble 10 different ESFJ's who are more dissimilar than the ESFJ and the INTP. It's like a compression algorithm that can't be reversed, and about as useful.
I can't prove a negative, all that a study can do is say "no results observed", but there's plenty of that. From the researcher cited in the article: "Many very specific predictions about the MBTI have not been confirmed or have been proved wrong." "Finally, there is no evidence that the MBTI measures anything of value."
This aligns with all of the other at-all-convincing research I've seen on MBTI: it assigned binary distributions to normally distributed data, and has very low predictive power. The majority of people will be near the middle of those distributions, where MBTI is at its least useful.
Further, I think your example is unfair: MBTI is a one-way function. I can meet people and anticipate their scores to with 1-2 errors (a huge margin, but we talk like it's 'close'!) I can't go from an MBTI score to useful predictions about the person though, because it's so massively information-destroying. Even on the things it purports to measure, the normal-to-binary problem means that it has awful predictive power. MBTI defines a somewhat-consistent function from people to letters, but since it's an arbitrary clustering system it doesn't actually allow new predictions or efficiently compress information about people.
So yes, I could probably tell some people apart by MBTI, but you could also assemble 10 different ESFJ's who are more dissimilar than the ESFJ and the INTP. It's like a compression algorithm that can't be reversed, and about as useful.
This is by far the clearest methodological explanation of the problem so far from someone who understands statistics and the problems of empirical research. Thank you. It's amazing how many people are too wedded to the truthiness of it, and are unable to let go of something they did once and believed because it was plausible.
I agree with a lot of this.
I don't disagree with the fact that it's not necessarily super effective because the distributions of personalities of people are not bimodal, as would be ideal for this simplistic sort of classification. It's also unlikely to be supremely effective at clustering in that way because the design of the metric wasn't really data driven in any systemic way. It's not even like someone used principal component analysis to really establish that the four classifiers are reasonably orthogonal. It's probably not super obvious/trivial to find human language-friendly orthogonal aspects of personality that are each bimodal, but I imagine the surveys could be improved informed by better data science.
It's certainly a compression algorithm, as are all classification based metrics based on answers to multiple questions, and I'm not arguing it's the most effective one around. However I think before making claims like it has no "external validity" the degree to which it might have it should actually be tested with reasonable methodology and I'm offering something that can absolutely be tested scientifically. There's nothing impossible about having some people take the test and having others who know them try to classify them without the results and see how well the two coincide. It's also possible to evaluate the degree to which people can decompress the data. You can set it up where people have equal time spent with two people of each MBTI and see how well they can guess their answers to the original survey questions with additional knowledge of the MBTI as opposed to without it. It won't establish an upperbound for how useful an MBTI is but it will help gauge a lower bound and I'm pretty confident the lower bound will be higher than that of a zodiac.
I imagine we can design a better classification, probably with even the same survey questions, but just because a metric wasn't well-designed doesn't mean the information it provides is meaningless.
I don't disagree with the fact that it's not necessarily super effective because the distributions of personalities of people are not bimodal, as would be ideal for this simplistic sort of classification. It's also unlikely to be supremely effective at clustering in that way because the design of the metric wasn't really data driven in any systemic way. It's not even like someone used principal component analysis to really establish that the four classifiers are reasonably orthogonal. It's probably not super obvious/trivial to find human language-friendly orthogonal aspects of personality that are each bimodal, but I imagine the surveys could be improved informed by better data science.
It's certainly a compression algorithm, as are all classification based metrics based on answers to multiple questions, and I'm not arguing it's the most effective one around. However I think before making claims like it has no "external validity" the degree to which it might have it should actually be tested with reasonable methodology and I'm offering something that can absolutely be tested scientifically. There's nothing impossible about having some people take the test and having others who know them try to classify them without the results and see how well the two coincide. It's also possible to evaluate the degree to which people can decompress the data. You can set it up where people have equal time spent with two people of each MBTI and see how well they can guess their answers to the original survey questions with additional knowledge of the MBTI as opposed to without it. It won't establish an upperbound for how useful an MBTI is but it will help gauge a lower bound and I'm pretty confident the lower bound will be higher than that of a zodiac.
I imagine we can design a better classification, probably with even the same survey questions, but just because a metric wasn't well-designed doesn't mean the information it provides is meaningless.
Science works another way. You have to prove that the theory works, not that it does not work (no sense in asking for evidence of that). Your personal observation does not matter if it's not confirmed by others, so for this theory to be confirmed, a) it shall be falsifiable, b) there shall be a reliable proof, c) there shall be independent confirmation, d) other possible explanations of observed results must be considered and rejected
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.
"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.
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.
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.
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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.
- 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.
It's basically horoscope for geeks
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/...
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/...
Not just geeks. Anyone who is looking for easy to digest oversimplification of who they are.
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.
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 first read about the Myers-Briggs controversy via Malcolm Gladwell in the New Yorker over a decade ago: http://gladwell.com/personality-plus/
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?
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?
I'd prefer a questionnaire which provides the benefits of self-questioning towards better self knowledge and actualisation. This can be done without MBTI which adds pseudo-science on top of any questioning it might provide, which falsely formalises bull and fossilises fake intellectual structures into public consciousness.
The scales are unsound. They actively direct people away from curiosity in discovering other structures which are less wrong.
The scales are unsound. They actively direct people away from curiosity in discovering other structures which are less wrong.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
I guess you are referring to this. http://www.myersbriggs.org/
This is a valid point. If the version that most companies are using needs a binary classification, then this is a meaningful criticism of the test.
However, note that this is just be a criticism of the test. It says nothing about whether the tests are effective or not, which is what the article tries to prove.
This is a valid point. If the version that most companies are using needs a binary classification, then this is a meaningful criticism of the test.
However, note that this is just be a criticism of the test. It says nothing about whether the tests are effective or not, which is what the article tries to prove.
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.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Now%2C_Discover_Your_Strengths
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Now%2C_Discover_Your_Strengths
Yep, personality indicators are a useful way to understand oneself and others in terms of personal interaction.
Sadly, these tests are misused by well-meaning HR departments who are in no position, as amateur psychologists, to make _any_ decisions based personality test results.
Sadly, these tests are misused by well-meaning HR departments who are in no position, as amateur psychologists, to make _any_ decisions based personality test results.
That is valuable and true. The problem is that people take them to mean "this is what I'm like" when it really means "this is how I responded to this test."
Sometimes, people strive to be different, perhaps to improve themselves. When answering a MB question, the answer could be understood in two possible ways: "I usually do that" and "My instinct is to do that". For example, she might keep the room clean but when she was younger, she was sloppy - her instinct is still to be sloppy by she is more disciplined now and keeps clean. How should she answer? These kinds of confusions could change a type.
Yes, it seems BM is measure people in 4 axis and assign a name for each of the 16 types. That's it
By forcing people to think in these characteristics to evaluate someone it makes it easier to have a common vocabulary and to predict stuff along those lines
By forcing people to think in these characteristics to evaluate someone it makes it easier to have a common vocabulary and to predict stuff along those lines
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.
Yea, it's very frustrating that this sort of article gets written when the author does not even address the arguments on the wikipedia page!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers%E2%80%93Briggs_Type_Indi...
That said, I don't think it's quite true that "The MBTI is approximately as valid as the Big 5". It seems to me that the Big 5 is a strict improvement on the MBTI. First, the discrete nature of the MBTI incorrectly suggests that the distributions are bimodal, when I don't think anyone thinks that's true. Second, I'm willing to bet that even if we just concentrate on the 4 factors of the Big 5 that correlate with the (non-discrete version of the) MBTI factors, we'd find significantly higher validity for the former, if only because there have been many more serious scientists studying and refining it over many years.
Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/the-myers-briggs-pe... Give the gift of Smithsonian magazine for only $12! http://bit.ly/1cGUiGv Follow us: @SmithsonianMag on Twitter
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers%E2%80%93Briggs_Type_Indi...
That said, I don't think it's quite true that "The MBTI is approximately as valid as the Big 5". It seems to me that the Big 5 is a strict improvement on the MBTI. First, the discrete nature of the MBTI incorrectly suggests that the distributions are bimodal, when I don't think anyone thinks that's true. Second, I'm willing to bet that even if we just concentrate on the 4 factors of the Big 5 that correlate with the (non-discrete version of the) MBTI factors, we'd find significantly higher validity for the former, if only because there have been many more serious scientists studying and refining it over many years.
Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/the-myers-briggs-pe... Give the gift of Smithsonian magazine for only $12! http://bit.ly/1cGUiGv Follow us: @SmithsonianMag on Twitter
They both have strengths and weaknesses. Strengths of the MBTI include the text descriptions, which are very valuable, and that it focuses on positive psychology. Of course, if you rotate the MBTI onto the Big 5, you see that it does in fact measure neuroticism, although not that strongly.
PS: I'm the one who added that table to Wikipedia - many years ago.
> Strengths of the MBTI include the text descriptions, which are very valuable, and that it focuses on positive psychology
You're describing salesmanship and/or popularizing techniques, not scientific validity.
You're describing salesmanship and/or popularizing techniques, not scientific validity.
What you have to understand is that statistically the models are very similar (you can compress them both into one unified model that does what both of them do quite well). However, the ways the models are constructed makes them useful for different things. The Big 5 is primarily useful for academics, and the MBTI is primarily useful for the rest of us.
If you are a logical positivist and scientific realist you'll never be able to grok this. As a utilitarian I understand that science is the process of making something that does something you want done.
If you are a logical positivist and scientific realist you'll never be able to grok this. As a utilitarian I understand that science is the process of making something that does something you want done.
I think I grok that some simplifications are more useful and teachable than others, and that it's possible to accomplish useful things by simplifying (and also by misleading). But I don't think you have to be a hardcore logical positivist to think these are distinct notions from "validity". My impression is that you have psychological or statistical training, so when you used the word in your original comment I assume you know what it meant.
That's very interesting. I'm in psychology and I've never heard this. Do you have a source for that covariation?
Thanks!
Thanks!
IIRC the first one was done in the original McCrae & Costa paper introducing the Big 5. Will dig it up in a bit. Edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers%E2%80%93Briggs_Type_Indi...
That's probably a very good argument against the Big 5.
What's the mapping?
You can see the original mapping here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers%E2%80%93Briggs_Type_Indi...
Interesting. Looks like extroversion is the best correlated (.74) which I suppose makes sense. But nearly as strong (.72) is intuition/sensing to openness to experience, which I would not have predicted. Conscientiousness to judging/perceiving is only .49 and agreeableness to thinking/feeling is only .44. MBTI has no good correlate for neuroticism.
I'm no statistician, but "is approximately as valid" looks to be overselling the situation.
I'm no statistician, but "is approximately as valid" looks to be overselling the situation.
You're no statistician or psychologist. Those loadings are huge.
0.5 correlation means it is maybe perhaps correlated given Emax view of the statistics. For normal variates you should aim for R=0.95 at least. Both MBTI and Big Five are approximately normal variates.
Also correlation is a linear operator which is not particularly sensitive to anything nonlinear. Use a good statistical test instead.
Also correlation is a linear operator which is not particularly sensitive to anything nonlinear. Use a good statistical test instead.
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.
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'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.
Unfortunately, the traits investigated by the MBTI seem to be normally distributed. So as true as this is, it still means that people who are decisively placed on all four axes are the exception rather than the rule.
Unfortunately, the traits investigated by the MBTI seem to be normally distributed. So as true as this is, it still means that people who are decisively placed on all four axes are the exception rather than the rule.
True, in my case I'm close to the P/J line and the E/I line, so there are aspects of the ENTJ, INTJ, and INTP that ring true to me, but in spite of that the ENTP description tends to feel more accurate.
Nonetheless, one meets a lot of ENTJs and INTPs and understanding some of the subtle differences between those and ENTP has helped me understand my differences and similarities with those people better.
Nonetheless, one meets a lot of ENTJs and INTPs and understanding some of the subtle differences between those and ENTP has helped me understand my differences and similarities with those people better.
The problem here is that since the MBTI only collects your own perceptions, it is only as accurate as your own perceptions--it isn't going to tell you anything you don't already think. There's some value in bringing what you think of yourself into your conscious awareness, but I don't think that can be represented as increasing self-awareness--it only can cause you to think what you already think. There's even some risk that it may reinforce incorrect ideas you may have about yourself.
> As a Meyers Briggs ENTP I find the descriptions of an ENTP personality flattering and desirable.
Of course, they're your descriptions and therefore they're biased. (Incidentally, I'm an ENTP too).
> As a Meyers Briggs ENTP I find the descriptions of an ENTP personality flattering and desirable.
Of course, they're your descriptions and therefore they're biased. (Incidentally, I'm an ENTP too).
> it isn't going to tell you anything you don't already think.
Well, if you take a 2000 word write-up about your own type, there may be some thought-provoking generalizations either about your own type or about patterns that are consistent when people of different types interact... things which derive from what you believed about yourself but are consequences of the MBTI's generalizations about human interactions.
But I agree, it would be interesting to incorporate the sort of information in the MBTI along with less subjective metrics and come up with a more rich analysis.
Well, if you take a 2000 word write-up about your own type, there may be some thought-provoking generalizations either about your own type or about patterns that are consistent when people of different types interact... things which derive from what you believed about yourself but are consequences of the MBTI's generalizations about human interactions.
But I agree, it would be interesting to incorporate the sort of information in the MBTI along with less subjective metrics and come up with a more rich analysis.
> Well, if you take a 2000 word write-up about your own type, there may be some thought-provoking generalizations either about your own type or about patterns that are consistent when people of different types interact... things which derive from what you believed about yourself but are consequences of the MBTI's generalizations about human interactions.
Right, but how many of those generalizations are actually verified? The specifics are studied to be consistent, but there are very few generalizations backed up by data.
Right, but how many of those generalizations are actually verified? The specifics are studied to be consistent, but there are very few generalizations backed up by data.
I don't know whether they are verified. Not sure how much it matters though, if the goal is to foster self-understanding and communication between people with different personalities. Obviously it would be great if there were research offering a more robust version of all of that.
In my opinion, the Meyers Briggs is useful mainly because it can help people become more self-aware and more empathetic toward others.
Could this be the placebo effect? I once read a comment, that all self-help methods are successful, simply because they make you self conscious. The personality test gives the impression of being a carefully developed machine that can peer into your soul. Does it need to be real, in order to be useful?
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.
But isn't that an argumentum ad hominem? At the very least, it's a good reason why an individual's personal impression of the results is a poor source of validation. The ones who think it's accurate could be wrong too.
On the other hand, in a workplace situation, the defensive ones are simply not thinking tactically.
Could this be the placebo effect? I once read a comment, that all self-help methods are successful, simply because they make you self conscious. The personality test gives the impression of being a carefully developed machine that can peer into your soul. Does it need to be real, in order to be useful?
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.
But isn't that an argumentum ad hominem? At the very least, it's a good reason why an individual's personal impression of the results is a poor source of validation. The ones who think it's accurate could be wrong too.
On the other hand, in a workplace situation, the defensive ones are simply not thinking tactically.
> On the other hand, in a workplace situation, the defensive ones are simply not thinking tactically.
Haha absolutely true. It puzzles me that anyone would react that way.
Your points are totally valid. For me, the interesting part was reading my own results and thinking about my reaction to them, and watching people I know pretty well reading and reacting to theirs.
Also, the way the results are framed teases apart some of the more "identity-oriented" aspects of peoples' personalities and validates them as legitimate rather than (perhaps) annoying quirks. I think this can lead to empathy.
So I don't really think it matters how psychologically real the assessment is, so long as it's interesting, relatively repeatable, and useful in the sense I mentioned. Just my opinion though. In the workplace I've used it before alongside a few other metrics (like DISC and one other private one) as part of a fun "learn about each other" exercise. I would not use it for hiring decisions or as part of any kind of official HR oriented policy.
Haha absolutely true. It puzzles me that anyone would react that way.
Your points are totally valid. For me, the interesting part was reading my own results and thinking about my reaction to them, and watching people I know pretty well reading and reacting to theirs.
Also, the way the results are framed teases apart some of the more "identity-oriented" aspects of peoples' personalities and validates them as legitimate rather than (perhaps) annoying quirks. I think this can lead to empathy.
So I don't really think it matters how psychologically real the assessment is, so long as it's interesting, relatively repeatable, and useful in the sense I mentioned. Just my opinion though. In the workplace I've used it before alongside a few other metrics (like DISC and one other private one) as part of a fun "learn about each other" exercise. I would not use it for hiring decisions or as part of any kind of official HR oriented policy.
> When I read articles criticizing Meyers Briggs, I always assume it was written by one of these people
how dismissive of you. do you dismiss the science in those articles as well?
how dismissive of you. do you dismiss the science in those articles as well?
That comment was intended as a joke. No, I do not. Although I think I'd view MBTI less favorably if it said I had the same personality type as a variety of dictators, etc.
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.
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.
And when your employer totally buys in to the bullshit, there's a strong incentive to game the system -- make sure you're classified as a DI (Dominance/Inducement) if you want to move up the management ranks.
This is good to know. It would probably be useful for someone to catalog the "desirable" categories for the various personality tests. We know the tests are used for screening, and it's a pretty safe bet that the screening is based on stereotypes.
I don't think it's necessary to precisely nail a specific set of quanta, but simply to avoid the symbols that are associated with negative stereotypes such as introverted, obstinate, or lazy. When I had to take one of these kinds of tests, I just put myself into a mind set of being outgoing, cheerful, agreeable, diligent, etc.
I don't think it's necessary to precisely nail a specific set of quanta, but simply to avoid the symbols that are associated with negative stereotypes such as introverted, obstinate, or lazy. When I had to take one of these kinds of tests, I just put myself into a mind set of being outgoing, cheerful, agreeable, diligent, etc.
> 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.
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.
Then why do we use the summary rollup when it completely loses any of the granular insights? It makes no sense for me to say I'm an E when it was 51E, 49I. For me personally, shouldn't I instead say something like 51E64N60F65J? Likewise, the "insights" you get into your 4 letters is based on whatever the majority letter was, even when your percentages are nowhere near 100% for each.
You're rolling perilously close to the cliff that has your Geek Code signature block at the bottom.
Precise geek coding is typical behavior for NTPs. ;-)
Eh, I'm right on the E/I border and pretty strongly test one way in the other categories so I just say i'm barely an I and then NTJ.
I believe this is classified as an "x" within the MBTI community, where x means on the border.
So xNTJ? Cool
A lot of the tests will give you those granular numbers, but as a summary it's easy to see why they use only 4 letters compared to your example. Personally I'm surprised any reasonable person would think the test is strictly binary.
When I did this test, the trainer was pretty clear that it's not meant to be a 'spectrum'. You're either an E or an I and that was that. The only one they claimed might be a spectrum was P to J.
Sounds like your trainer was a doofus. Each pair is a continuum and most people exhibit at least a mild preference in one direction or the other.
My trainer was certified by the people who make and sell the course/questionnaire. She made it clear that this was the official position.
So, no, she was not a doofus.
So, no, she was not a doofus.
This isn't actually true. During construction of the test they throw out questions that don't categorize you. It has discriminative validity even when it looks close.
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:
O+ C- E= A- N+
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+
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.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bCjzLij54k
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
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."
Caution and scepticism are important. However, you imply that teaching and science are bad. That way lies creationism and magical thinking via truthy plausibilist hokum to end up teaching them to be conspiracy theorists
A lot of the science-y crap that is popular today is no better than creationism and magical thinking. The problem isn't science, it's "science for everyone" and scientists' failure to jealously guard their turf.
That's clearer and more reasonable. But what do you think should be done to achieve this?
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.
For a real personality exam with actual use in psych research, check out the Five Factor metric.
Five Factor is not much better than MBTI. See http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/pdf/10.1176/ajp.161.10.1... for better (and more recent) research on the subject.
Dead salmon study is nowhere near comparable to a psych survey with a lot of data behind it like Big Five.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Good point. I should have been more specific. I agree that the Enneagram is useful personally in business, but I'd caution against HR departments attempting to categorize their employees based on type and draw judgments from the results. (Again, this could be different at the executive level, where companies may be seeking a certain type or "flavor" of leadership.)
If you want a scientific measure of personality you can use the Big Five.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits
Which notably do correlate closely with Myers-Briggs traits, so if you believe the one is meaningful then so is the other.
The primary problem with Myers-Briggs, besides the four traits not at all correlating with the big five is the test itself because it's binary.
Correlations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers%E2%80%93Briggs_Type_Indi... 0.44 / -0.49 is not correlation.
Correlations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers%E2%80%93Briggs_Type_Indi... 0.44 / -0.49 is not correlation.
The test measures a scale. Reporting the result as binary is indeed extremely misleading.
This is making light of a difficult problem. Personality is an interesting and relevant aspect of individual behavior and socialization that remains incompletely characterized by science. One of the most popular modern alternatives to Meyers-Briggs is the Five Factors model which also has limitations. Utility for corporate applications may not be the best metric for these early attempts to characterize personality.
I don’t feel that it’s meaningless. I’ve taken it multiple times in a span of a decade and most of the times I get the same result (INTJ) - I guess P’s and J’s must be pretty dominant in here. As any test, it gives me a rough estimate. It’s not meant to define you, it’s meant to give you a guideline to understand yourself better. In that aspect it works just fine for me.
As an INTJ, I am part of 1% of the population and 25% of people who know their MBTI. Systematizers FTW!
The MBTI is more useful than an astrological sign, and less useful than a 15 minute conversation with someone, if you want to understand their personality. That said I think it's a mostly harmless way of classifying people, unlike race, class, nationality, profession, etc.
The MBTI is more useful than an astrological sign, and less useful than a 15 minute conversation with someone, if you want to understand their personality. That said I think it's a mostly harmless way of classifying people, unlike race, class, nationality, profession, etc.
I would like to raise the issue of nature vs. nurture in this context: Does Myers-Briggs really identify stable characteristics of someone's current personality or merely the way in which it currently expresses itself.
E.g. consider someone who has previously worked in a dysfunctional corporate environment but was unable to quit that job for financial reasons. They were very well rewarded for superficial qualities like punctuality and tidyness and thus learned that it was necessary to prioritize these values.
Does that mean that this person now has a personality which prioritizes these values? What if their ``natural'' personality in another environment would have been to only emphasize utility to their company even at e.g. the cost of tidyness. What if their natural personality will quickly adapt once they are put in an environment that emphasizes these qualities?
These issues seem to be given oddly little weight by advocates of Myers-Briggs classification for the purpose of hiring decisions.
E.g. consider someone who has previously worked in a dysfunctional corporate environment but was unable to quit that job for financial reasons. They were very well rewarded for superficial qualities like punctuality and tidyness and thus learned that it was necessary to prioritize these values.
Does that mean that this person now has a personality which prioritizes these values? What if their ``natural'' personality in another environment would have been to only emphasize utility to their company even at e.g. the cost of tidyness. What if their natural personality will quickly adapt once they are put in an environment that emphasizes these qualities?
These issues seem to be given oddly little weight by advocates of Myers-Briggs classification for the purpose of hiring decisions.
Fully agree, and I think this makes results ambiguous. Testers might take any of the two perspectives: "what I usually do in this situation", vs. "what I would instinctively do". For example, a religious person would respect her religious moral principles even against her instinct - what should she answer - isn't her will also a part of her personality? Should she ignore her will and answer with her instinctive impulse instead?
The Birkman Method is a far better tool that doesn't 'put you in a box' so to speak. We use it exclusively at Elaura and with our hoozyu and expresso apps.
https://hoozyu.com https://expresso.elaura.com
https://hoozyu.com https://expresso.elaura.com
I found this blog post interesting along the same lines: The Tests Who Think They Know Me http://exilelifestyle.com/tests/
Disclaimer: I work for Birkman
Disclaimer: I work for Birkman
Here's the correlations between MBTI dimensions and the "big five" personality traits that are commonly used in social-sciences research:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers%E2%80%93Briggs_Type_Indi...
When I look at those, I think "Not everything, but not nothing either". A correlation of 0.7+ is pretty high for anything in the social sciences - by comparison, the correlation between intelligence and genetics is about 0.4. It's certainly a lot higher than astrology, which has a correlation of roughly 0.0 with anything other than birthdate.
A lot of the criticism of MBTI is that it breaks people down into 16 arbitrary categories, and there's no way a single category can reflect everything about a person. This is true; there is no way a single category will reflect everything about a person. But we break people down into arbitrary categories all the time - race, social class, profession, job title, political party, ethnicity, place of residence, generation, etc. Categorization by MBTI brings all of the pitfalls of these - you're stereotyping, and you're going to miss important details about the person themself - as well as all the benefits, in the form of a quick mental shorthand to draw inferences about their future behavior on little data.
You can think of it in "Thinking fast and slow" terms: MBTIs and other social categories are in the "thinking fast" category, where you make quick but error-prone judgments on limited information, while actually getting to know someone is the "thinking slow" side, where you get a much more accurate picture of who they are at the cost of significantly higher effort. Indeed, the MBTI has a dimension for this (iNtuitive vs. Sensing), and I've found that online MBTI tests tend to overrepresent the number of Ns in the population compared to offline, professionally-given tests, because Ns tend to be more attracted to the MBTI as a way of thinking about the world.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers%E2%80%93Briggs_Type_Indi...
When I look at those, I think "Not everything, but not nothing either". A correlation of 0.7+ is pretty high for anything in the social sciences - by comparison, the correlation between intelligence and genetics is about 0.4. It's certainly a lot higher than astrology, which has a correlation of roughly 0.0 with anything other than birthdate.
A lot of the criticism of MBTI is that it breaks people down into 16 arbitrary categories, and there's no way a single category can reflect everything about a person. This is true; there is no way a single category will reflect everything about a person. But we break people down into arbitrary categories all the time - race, social class, profession, job title, political party, ethnicity, place of residence, generation, etc. Categorization by MBTI brings all of the pitfalls of these - you're stereotyping, and you're going to miss important details about the person themself - as well as all the benefits, in the form of a quick mental shorthand to draw inferences about their future behavior on little data.
You can think of it in "Thinking fast and slow" terms: MBTIs and other social categories are in the "thinking fast" category, where you make quick but error-prone judgments on limited information, while actually getting to know someone is the "thinking slow" side, where you get a much more accurate picture of who they are at the cost of significantly higher effort. Indeed, the MBTI has a dimension for this (iNtuitive vs. Sensing), and I've found that online MBTI tests tend to overrepresent the number of Ns in the population compared to offline, professionally-given tests, because Ns tend to be more attracted to the MBTI as a way of thinking about the world.
Correlation of 0.4 means generally "it could be" in proper statistics. As in "it is also probable for a normal variate that you're seeing a spurious one". You probably wanted effect size instead and a good statistical test.
It's not foolproof, much like a lie detector test. But I do think it has value. I'm an INTJ, and understanding that other people are wired differently in very demonstrative ways, helped me understand how to relate to people. When I thought people were "phony" it was just that they were more extroverted than me. I've been told I'm too black-and-white, whereas I hated the wishywashiness in people that couldn't be decisive. This is also reflected in the Myers-Briggs test.
So it might not be completely accurate, but it did help me understand how I relate and differ with others due to these 4 major personality characteristics.
So it might not be completely accurate, but it did help me understand how I relate and differ with others due to these 4 major personality characteristics.
I've never been interested in Myers-Briggs. I have no idea what the designations are or what they mean. I have no idea what my score (?) is, and I'm profoundly uninterested.
My uninterest only increased when I was in an environment where this was a frequent point of reference among co-workers, as I watched people with no education and training in psychology or other relevant fields make pronouncements and direct people's work lives based on four letters.
As far as I can see (and obviously, I don't know a lot about MB), it's words pulled out of legitimate fields of study and used ignorantly and out of context, sometimes with real consequences.
My uninterest only increased when I was in an environment where this was a frequent point of reference among co-workers, as I watched people with no education and training in psychology or other relevant fields make pronouncements and direct people's work lives based on four letters.
As far as I can see (and obviously, I don't know a lot about MB), it's words pulled out of legitimate fields of study and used ignorantly and out of context, sometimes with real consequences.
I greatly appreciate the Myers-Briggs test, but I've only seen it applied as a tool for self-understanding: I think I've been given the test a couple of times by schools and universities. Taking it has helped me understand a little bit more about myself and there are very few tools in the world that help you learn anything about yourself.
AFAICT, the only reasons for a company to administer it are: employee development (same as universities); to attempt to fix a deficient interview process (which is BS).
AFAICT, the only reasons for a company to administer it are: employee development (same as universities); to attempt to fix a deficient interview process (which is BS).
Sooo INTJ-ish all this! Disclosure: I am INTJ and see this as a tool among other tools to understand where I do stand socially within a few business-oriented group dynamics.
The comments here so far seem to be jumping too far the other direction. It is an imperfect test, which does not give meaningful results for all people, and should not be a factor in business decisions. That does NOT mean that is has no meaning at all, or is a complete hoax, or is like unto astrology. Like almost all things, it is a tool that has a purpose, and understanding where it can or cannot be applied is a prerequisite to getting value from it.
It's funny but I have a relative who was into the works of Carlos Castaneda and I've read quite a few of them (they're a bit magical realism, remind me a bit of J. L. Borges). In one of the books, Don Juan (his guru) describes a personality system based on the cardinal directions which ends up classifying every member of the human species in one of sixteen distinct personality types. As is typical for Castaneda's stories, Carlos immediately challenges the idea that there are only sixteen types of people in the whole world - which is really just a plot device to keep Don Juan talking and move the description of the whole system along.
Anyway, this personality system is what I thought when I first heard of the Myers-Briggs test and I thought it has exactly the same merit as any other system that arbitrarily groups people into 16 types based on whatever perceived characteristic of theirs, which is to say: none at all. In Castaneda's case you need to have special seer powers to see peoples' type. In Myers Briggs all you need is an MBTI test.
There is progress even in magic, it seems.
Anyway, this personality system is what I thought when I first heard of the Myers-Briggs test and I thought it has exactly the same merit as any other system that arbitrarily groups people into 16 types based on whatever perceived characteristic of theirs, which is to say: none at all. In Castaneda's case you need to have special seer powers to see peoples' type. In Myers Briggs all you need is an MBTI test.
There is progress even in magic, it seems.
If such a test is administered in connection with some external consequences for someone which vary depending on the outcome, the subject can game the test to obtain results which are favorable or desirable to him or her.
The four letters that pop out are purely a function of some responses given, and not of actual personality. Anyone who understands the mapping from answers to outcome can just give the answers to produce a desired outcome.
Any test that a subject can game is inherently unscientific.
The above would be true even if the model of personality were actually valid, and indicated something meaningful in the case of honest, accurately introspective answers. (That it isn't and doesn't is what is called into question by the article.)
This section of the Wikipedia page on it suggests that some other personality tests have some built-in sophistication to detect dishonest answers, which is lacking in Myers-Briggs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers%E2%80%93Briggs_Type_Indi...
The four letters that pop out are purely a function of some responses given, and not of actual personality. Anyone who understands the mapping from answers to outcome can just give the answers to produce a desired outcome.
Any test that a subject can game is inherently unscientific.
The above would be true even if the model of personality were actually valid, and indicated something meaningful in the case of honest, accurately introspective answers. (That it isn't and doesn't is what is called into question by the article.)
This section of the Wikipedia page on it suggests that some other personality tests have some built-in sophistication to detect dishonest answers, which is lacking in Myers-Briggs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers%E2%80%93Briggs_Type_Indi...
I always considered the problem with personality tests is that it tells you what the person thinks about themselves, which is always going to be an inaccurate picture, since everyone has a lot of blind spots about themselves.
As a citation, pretty much all of these: https://youarenotsosmart.com/all-posts/
As a citation, pretty much all of these: https://youarenotsosmart.com/all-posts/
Really? I used to have to take these tests in the '80s but nobody has made me do one for decades. I thought we were all past this hoax years ago.
What is wrong with recording personality traits of people, and determining correlations between them? Because that is essentially what the test does.
No statistical measurement or actual attempt at a scientific investigation was done.
The classification was purely validated by Isabel Briggs Myers' own free interpretation of what a particular trait should be.
That's self-deception, not science.
There's nothing wrong in trying to build an understanding of personalities but making things up just because you think your intuition is all you need to build theories, well, that doesn't inspire much confidence.
The Myers-Briggs Test smells like science -it has codes and categories!- but like most pseudo-sciences, no-one has really been interested in validating the assumptions with actual data.
Pseudo-Psychology is rife with these wishful-thinking theories that sound kind of right but have no solid data to support them.
Not bashing Psychology, I think it's a hugely interesting field, but the science behind a lot of it still remains fishy.
The classification was purely validated by Isabel Briggs Myers' own free interpretation of what a particular trait should be.
That's self-deception, not science.
There's nothing wrong in trying to build an understanding of personalities but making things up just because you think your intuition is all you need to build theories, well, that doesn't inspire much confidence.
The Myers-Briggs Test smells like science -it has codes and categories!- but like most pseudo-sciences, no-one has really been interested in validating the assumptions with actual data.
Pseudo-Psychology is rife with these wishful-thinking theories that sound kind of right but have no solid data to support them.
Not bashing Psychology, I think it's a hugely interesting field, but the science behind a lot of it still remains fishy.
> The classification was purely validated by Isabel Briggs Myers' own free interpretation of what a particular trait should be.
This is like saying that somebody who claimed that 1+1=2 is wrong because they came up with the left hand side of the equation themselves.
Yes, the MBTI is arbitrary to a large extent, but that does not make it meaningless.
This is like saying that somebody who claimed that 1+1=2 is wrong because they came up with the left hand side of the equation themselves.
Yes, the MBTI is arbitrary to a large extent, but that does not make it meaningless.
The whole point of the article is that the test does not accurately record personality traits of people or the correlations between them.
I've never bought into the test. IMO, it's much too simplistic to describe human behavior. People don't fit cleanly into one of just a few categories.
I've never bought into the test. IMO, it's much too simplistic to describe human behavior. People don't fit cleanly into one of just a few categories.
Nothing's wrong with the idea, but the MBTI does it in a way which does not have external validity.
Interesting to see the results of the polls on HN:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=204240
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7365294
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=204240
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7365294
[deleted]
The MBTI asks you what your preferences are, and then tells you what you said. That's not "meaningless," but it's certainly not a tool for doing science.
For me, it's been meaningful in that it emphasizes that my preferences can be different from those around me, and that that is just fine. It's helpful to consider that some prefer to think for a while before speaking, even if that's not my preference because silence makes me uncomfortable. It's helpful to acknowledge that some people like to make detailed plans whereas I prefer to be more flexible and open to possibilities. The attitude of the MBTI is that neither approach is wrong but that it helps to recognize which approach you prefer.
Does each person fit comfortably into one of 16 categories? No, of course not. But it might be a useful framework for introspection and thinking about your relationships.
For me, it's been meaningful in that it emphasizes that my preferences can be different from those around me, and that that is just fine. It's helpful to consider that some prefer to think for a while before speaking, even if that's not my preference because silence makes me uncomfortable. It's helpful to acknowledge that some people like to make detailed plans whereas I prefer to be more flexible and open to possibilities. The attitude of the MBTI is that neither approach is wrong but that it helps to recognize which approach you prefer.
Does each person fit comfortably into one of 16 categories? No, of course not. But it might be a useful framework for introspection and thinking about your relationships.
The Myers-Briggs was developed in a time where lobotomies were still considered to be a valid psychological treatment.
I am always amazed by how many discussions of MBTI go on without any consideration of the Jungian cognitive functions that the 16 MBTI types are based on. Without seeking to understand the function stack associated with a MBTI personality type it's hard to use MBTI usefully/as it was intended to be used.
The weirdest job interview I ever went to was for a sales position at a software development company. These guys had me do a Myers-Briggs test online a few days before the interview. After taking a day off and making a long drive to see these guys, the manager introduced himself by saying "We don't want you for this job. With your personality type you can't be a salesman. I let you come here anyway, though, because our web developer is really overwhelmed. Would you be willing to meet him and talk about working for him?"
It was so bizarre it took me a while to decide if they were insane or just incredibly rude. Upon reflection, they were both.
It was so bizarre it took me a while to decide if they were insane or just incredibly rude. Upon reflection, they were both.
"SMARTNEWS"
"The Myers-Briggs Personality Test Is Pretty Much Meaningless"
promises explosive insights such as:
"[...] and statistical analysis reveals even data produced by the test shows a normal distribution rather than bimodal, refuting the either/or claims of the MBTI."
It is really surprising that aggregation of a number of binary questions results produces a normal distribution. In all my experiments with a randomly selected coin from my purse I got something close to bimodal - not.
MBTI may be flawed, overused and too simplistic. However simplifying statistical arguments down to that level is not the way to advance science.
"The Myers-Briggs Personality Test Is Pretty Much Meaningless"
promises explosive insights such as:
"[...] and statistical analysis reveals even data produced by the test shows a normal distribution rather than bimodal, refuting the either/or claims of the MBTI."
It is really surprising that aggregation of a number of binary questions results produces a normal distribution. In all my experiments with a randomly selected coin from my purse I got something close to bimodal - not.
MBTI may be flawed, overused and too simplistic. However simplifying statistical arguments down to that level is not the way to advance science.
I remember taking the test in high school and just feeling the bias creep into my answers. Like, I would answer in ways I wanted to be viewed, not how I actually act.
Apart from that, I don't think there are necessarily problems in treating it as a fun personality test, like "astrology or tarot cards" as others have said. But in the digital marketing space, Buyer Modalities is a popular model used to segment site visitors. It's based on the Myers-Briggs so it's inherently useless, but makes you feel like you're doing rigorous work.
Apart from that, I don't think there are necessarily problems in treating it as a fun personality test, like "astrology or tarot cards" as others have said. But in the digital marketing space, Buyer Modalities is a popular model used to segment site visitors. It's based on the Myers-Briggs so it's inherently useless, but makes you feel like you're doing rigorous work.
> I would answer in ways I wanted to be viewed, not how I actually act.
Do you know if it was an official MBTI test or something else? In keeping with the "no wrong personality" mantra, I found the test questions to be fairly neutral. By that I mean neither option would be perceived as socially unacceptable, just different personal preferences.
Do you know if it was an official MBTI test or something else? In keeping with the "no wrong personality" mantra, I found the test questions to be fairly neutral. By that I mean neither option would be perceived as socially unacceptable, just different personal preferences.
In one of my courses we took Myers-Briggs, which the professor scored and then handed us a summary of our results and asked people how they felt the results actually matched up with them. Virtually everyone agreed that the results were fairly accurate, at which point our professor provided us with our real results and we went through the various possible results to understand how they're designed in such a way that you can generally find ways to agree with the results no matter what you got.
Needless to say I've ignored any MBTI results since.
Needless to say I've ignored any MBTI results since.
I wonder how MBTI would be perceived if instead of simply a binary EI/NS/FT/PJ, anyone within a standard deviation of the mean got an X, so you could be INXX if you were solidly introverted and intuitive, but not particularly strongly aligned on the later two axes.
Naturally most people would have at least an X or two, but it would be much more useful if people didn't have to advertise an F or T if it didn't really matter for describing them.
Though it probably wouldn't have caught on. Who wants to be the XXXX in a situation.
Naturally most people would have at least an X or two, but it would be much more useful if people didn't have to advertise an F or T if it didn't really matter for describing them.
Though it probably wouldn't have caught on. Who wants to be the XXXX in a situation.
It might be perceived differently, but the underlying system would still not be a solid one.
I get a different score nearly every time I take it. Am I alone in this?
No, I get a different one nearly every time too. I figured it was part of learning: I adapt my personality as I learn.
Of course, my theory is that personality tests just tell you what you think of yourself, and I change my opinion about that often.
Of course, my theory is that personality tests just tell you what you think of yourself, and I change my opinion about that often.
This is a subject I spend a lot of time reading about. It's interesting because I think the field of psychology is going to have a bit of a (computational) overhaul soon as we acquire more data about people and develop new models of behavior. I wouldn't be surprised if machine learning ends up revolutionizing psychology twenty years form now.
A few points:
- Science is concerned with making accurate predictions about the future
- Predictions range in quality: QFT can predict the gyromagnetic moment of the electron to 12 decimal places, but psychiatrists still have trouble figuring out which medications serve as effective antidepressants (nothing against them — it's a complex subject)
Also, good science is able to find correlations between things, and these correlations allow you to improve your predictions. How much of the variance in a dataset is explained by a given model? In this sense:
- Astrology has almost zero predictivity (I say "almost" because there are extremely weak, but non-zero correlations with the month that someone was born in)
- Myers-Briggs has weak, but non-zero predictivity that is still much higher than that of astrology
- Big Five has weak, but non-zero predictivity that is slightly higher than Myers-Briggs
- The field of psychology has weak, but non-zero predictivity (http://www.nature.com/news/over-half-of-psychology-studies-f...)
- The field of biology has adequate predictivity
- The field of particle physics has extremely high predictivity
See where I'm going with this? The math may be hard, but quantum mechanics is actually pretty easy as far as accurately predicting the future goes. Understanding the human brain is a far more difficult task than making sense of C* algebras.
There's been quite a few studies on Myers-Briggs, and I think it has more value than the Smithsonian article gives it credit for. That said, I think Big Five has much less value than most psychologists give it credit for.
In terms of determining the eigenfactors of personality, something recent like this goes much further than Big Five:
http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/pdf/10.1176/ajp.161.10.1...
A few points:
- Science is concerned with making accurate predictions about the future
- Predictions range in quality: QFT can predict the gyromagnetic moment of the electron to 12 decimal places, but psychiatrists still have trouble figuring out which medications serve as effective antidepressants (nothing against them — it's a complex subject)
Also, good science is able to find correlations between things, and these correlations allow you to improve your predictions. How much of the variance in a dataset is explained by a given model? In this sense:
- Astrology has almost zero predictivity (I say "almost" because there are extremely weak, but non-zero correlations with the month that someone was born in)
- Myers-Briggs has weak, but non-zero predictivity that is still much higher than that of astrology
- Big Five has weak, but non-zero predictivity that is slightly higher than Myers-Briggs
- The field of psychology has weak, but non-zero predictivity (http://www.nature.com/news/over-half-of-psychology-studies-f...)
- The field of biology has adequate predictivity
- The field of particle physics has extremely high predictivity
See where I'm going with this? The math may be hard, but quantum mechanics is actually pretty easy as far as accurately predicting the future goes. Understanding the human brain is a far more difficult task than making sense of C* algebras.
There's been quite a few studies on Myers-Briggs, and I think it has more value than the Smithsonian article gives it credit for. That said, I think Big Five has much less value than most psychologists give it credit for.
In terms of determining the eigenfactors of personality, something recent like this goes much further than Big Five:
http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/pdf/10.1176/ajp.161.10.1...
Personality typing is obviously incredibly shaky ground because of the huge potential for the suggestion bias, but we shouldn't throw out the baby with the bathwater.
It's almost obvious that there are patterns of human behaviour that are often distinctive and repetitive across society. It's hard to identify these regularities and we should be sceptical about any blatant simplifications, but we shouldn't stop trying to understand them.
There is another personality typing method called Enneagram, that takes a more interesting approach than static M-B. Rather than attributing some essential properties to each person, it assumes that personality is formed by a set of cognitive habits. These habits condition our attention to pick specific aspects of experience and giving it interpretation in line with this bias. Most people use all of these 9 identified patterns, but one is dominant, and hence it defines what we perceive as personality.
These habits are mostly crystalised in childhood and depend on the environment and upbringing. Eg. when a child is punished at random without any consequence there's a chance it will become type 8, on the other hand if there's great deal of regularity and rules at home, it may and up as type 1 etc. Seems like a gross oversimplification, but it's just an example of this type of conditioning.
The general approach seems legit (based on what we know about cognitive science), but what's more important, learning about these 9 habits/types usually leads to incredible insights into one's behaviour. There's lot of regularities that we suddenly find in our actions that fit specifically to one of these 9 types.
Unlike what article states about M-B, Ennegram mostly focuses on the dark, habitual and unconscious aspects of each personality, so it's much less susceptible to the "horoscope effect" (where we're more likely to attribute anything positive to ourselves).
I try to challenge it as much as possible, because as anything related to personality it may become a self fulfilling prophecy, but still I found it very hard to falsify, there's just a lot of positive evidence.
Since there's strong overrepresentation of rational thinkers on HN I'd love to hear some comments from anyone here who took Enneagram test or heard about it (there's a lot of free tests on the internet).
There is another personality typing method called Enneagram, that takes a more interesting approach than static M-B. Rather than attributing some essential properties to each person, it assumes that personality is formed by a set of cognitive habits. These habits condition our attention to pick specific aspects of experience and giving it interpretation in line with this bias. Most people use all of these 9 identified patterns, but one is dominant, and hence it defines what we perceive as personality.
These habits are mostly crystalised in childhood and depend on the environment and upbringing. Eg. when a child is punished at random without any consequence there's a chance it will become type 8, on the other hand if there's great deal of regularity and rules at home, it may and up as type 1 etc. Seems like a gross oversimplification, but it's just an example of this type of conditioning.
The general approach seems legit (based on what we know about cognitive science), but what's more important, learning about these 9 habits/types usually leads to incredible insights into one's behaviour. There's lot of regularities that we suddenly find in our actions that fit specifically to one of these 9 types.
Unlike what article states about M-B, Ennegram mostly focuses on the dark, habitual and unconscious aspects of each personality, so it's much less susceptible to the "horoscope effect" (where we're more likely to attribute anything positive to ourselves).
I try to challenge it as much as possible, because as anything related to personality it may become a self fulfilling prophecy, but still I found it very hard to falsify, there's just a lot of positive evidence.
Since there's strong overrepresentation of rational thinkers on HN I'd love to hear some comments from anyone here who took Enneagram test or heard about it (there's a lot of free tests on the internet).
The wikipedia article has way too little psychology references (I counted none - did I miss some?), and way too many theology references. No problem with the later one, except that it should bias researchers into getting many of the first ones, yet those are missing.
I tend to doubt classifications with dimensions that lack opposing extremes. Yes, I can imagine how is a person with heavy reforming personality, but how is one with very little of it? Besides the idea that those traits are formed at the infancy, or that they crystallize at all is so opposed to my experience that I can't take the idea seriously.
I tend to doubt classifications with dimensions that lack opposing extremes. Yes, I can imagine how is a person with heavy reforming personality, but how is one with very little of it? Besides the idea that those traits are formed at the infancy, or that they crystallize at all is so opposed to my experience that I can't take the idea seriously.
Indeed the Wikipedia article doesn't paint it in a great light. The system itself seems to be quite old, but I'd love to see some serious studies of it. The only thing I can add here is that our understanding of human mind is really basic at this point and we have to wisely balance between what we can already measure and our intuitions. That's how all sciences evolved.
I understand your point about classifications, but it assumes that Enneagram spectrum is a result of random distribution of X values in some vector. In such case indeed each dimension should have 2 extremes. However, according to my vague intuition Enneagram is somewhat different. Rather than describing the whole space in which each solution (personality type) is equally possible, it seems to describe specific points in the space that seem to act like attractors. For some reason these specific behavioural patterns crystalize, because they tend to create very specific meaning/identity and way of making sense of the world around us. You can't create an identity/self around 'lack of something', it needs to be some specific quality that allows to interpret reality in given fashion.
The example you bring up (type 1, the Reformer) is not about reforming vs not reforming, but rather about seeing the world in terms of perfection: this is perfect and this is not perfect. Hence they may end up as a reformer or just someone overly pedantic. Other types have completely different perspective (eg. this is safe and this is not safe), so in a way each type is a separate according to which a given person interprets the same reality.
This is very subtle and more complex than M-B. In M-B we have one 'objective' world and set of values in which various types rank differently. In Enneagram each type has a different way of defining the world/experience so in each case the measuring axes are different. It's as if you had different formal systems based on different axioms - each would end up with different consequences and you wouldn't be able to compare their statements directly. You'd have to compare the properties of the systems as a whole.
Your last point about infancy - that was my mistake, I shouldn't write 'early childhood' (edited). The theories I heard mentioned some formative, sometimes traumatic (single, or repetivie) experiences in childhood/adolescence that shaped given perspective.
I understand your point about classifications, but it assumes that Enneagram spectrum is a result of random distribution of X values in some vector. In such case indeed each dimension should have 2 extremes. However, according to my vague intuition Enneagram is somewhat different. Rather than describing the whole space in which each solution (personality type) is equally possible, it seems to describe specific points in the space that seem to act like attractors. For some reason these specific behavioural patterns crystalize, because they tend to create very specific meaning/identity and way of making sense of the world around us. You can't create an identity/self around 'lack of something', it needs to be some specific quality that allows to interpret reality in given fashion.
The example you bring up (type 1, the Reformer) is not about reforming vs not reforming, but rather about seeing the world in terms of perfection: this is perfect and this is not perfect. Hence they may end up as a reformer or just someone overly pedantic. Other types have completely different perspective (eg. this is safe and this is not safe), so in a way each type is a separate according to which a given person interprets the same reality.
This is very subtle and more complex than M-B. In M-B we have one 'objective' world and set of values in which various types rank differently. In Enneagram each type has a different way of defining the world/experience so in each case the measuring axes are different. It's as if you had different formal systems based on different axioms - each would end up with different consequences and you wouldn't be able to compare their statements directly. You'd have to compare the properties of the systems as a whole.
Your last point about infancy - that was my mistake, I shouldn't write 'early childhood' (edited). The theories I heard mentioned some formative, sometimes traumatic (single, or repetivie) experiences in childhood/adolescence that shaped given perspective.
The origins of the MBTI are closely related to the Enneagram, and much of what MBTI is getting decried for is far removed from its history - Jung and Myers both laid down an incredible foundation for psychology and introspection. It's a shame MBTI has been swept up by pop culture as there is a great deal of insight to be had both in learning of the cognitive functions and Jung's works on the unconscious.
I have studied the Enneagram deeply. It is a far more profound system than the MBTI, and far more useful for understanding oneself and others.
The MBTI has some correlation to the Enneagram, and it is from that correlation that it takes most or all of its validity. But the correlation is only partial. If you look in Jung's Psychological Types, you will see that he correctly characterized eight of the nine Enneagram types (which one he missed I leave as an exercise for the reader). Missing one type, he was unable to see the whole structure with its deeper properties, such as integration/distintegration, that reflect the way the types relate to one another. Nor did he pick up on how the types develop as childhood survival strategies (which is not as simple as you're suggesting).
The MBTI starts with Jung's already incomplete system and just messes it up further.
Someone will probably ask me whether the Enneagram has been objectively validated. It has not been, and can never be, because it contains an inherent element of subjectivity. The way you know your Enneagram type is not by taking tests. Tests can provide useful hints, but if all you have is a test result -- even if it's correct! -- you do not know your type. The way you know is by studying the types until one of them clicks for you, and you see yourself in a new way: then you know.
The Enneagram does talk about our dark sides, and that's important; but it isn't only about that by any means. It can also show us positive aspects of ourselves that we have not accepted, and it's very much about how to develop those aspects further.
ETA: if you would like help figuring out your type, I would be delighted to assist. My email address is in my profile.
The MBTI has some correlation to the Enneagram, and it is from that correlation that it takes most or all of its validity. But the correlation is only partial. If you look in Jung's Psychological Types, you will see that he correctly characterized eight of the nine Enneagram types (which one he missed I leave as an exercise for the reader). Missing one type, he was unable to see the whole structure with its deeper properties, such as integration/distintegration, that reflect the way the types relate to one another. Nor did he pick up on how the types develop as childhood survival strategies (which is not as simple as you're suggesting).
The MBTI starts with Jung's already incomplete system and just messes it up further.
Someone will probably ask me whether the Enneagram has been objectively validated. It has not been, and can never be, because it contains an inherent element of subjectivity. The way you know your Enneagram type is not by taking tests. Tests can provide useful hints, but if all you have is a test result -- even if it's correct! -- you do not know your type. The way you know is by studying the types until one of them clicks for you, and you see yourself in a new way: then you know.
The Enneagram does talk about our dark sides, and that's important; but it isn't only about that by any means. It can also show us positive aspects of ourselves that we have not accepted, and it's very much about how to develop those aspects further.
ETA: if you would like help figuring out your type, I would be delighted to assist. My email address is in my profile.
What you mention about Jung/enneagram correlation is interesting. You'd think that since he's based on different partitioning scheme (2 * 2 * 2) he should end up without any types matching exactly, but you seem to suggest that it's the case and he's just missing one. I guess it could make sense provided he based his type descriptions on empirical evidence (clustering his patients) that he later artificially pushed into 8 categories.
I don't know M-B well, but since it's a M-B thread and it may be useful to other readers, I tried to pursue your exercise and based on type descriptions tried to match it. Here's what I managed to do, based on vague Jung type descriptions I've found on the internet:
ET - 1,IT - 5, EF - 3, IF - 9?, ES - 8, IS - ?, EI - 7, II - 4
Does it make some sense? Where are the gaps?
Are there any Eneagram specific resources that you'd recommend? I've found A.H. Almaas and Eli Jaxon-Bear books the most insightful. I'd love to read/hear something original on the topic that doesn't come from the echo chamber of people who are in these circles, make money from it etc.
As to the type, just as you said one of them "clicked" with me strongly and I'm almost 100% sure which one is mine.
Does it make some sense? Where are the gaps?
Are there any Eneagram specific resources that you'd recommend? I've found A.H. Almaas and Eli Jaxon-Bear books the most insightful. I'd love to read/hear something original on the topic that doesn't come from the echo chamber of people who are in these circles, make money from it etc.
As to the type, just as you said one of them "clicked" with me strongly and I'm almost 100% sure which one is mine.
Here are my pairings. (I'm at work and don't have my copy of Psychological Types handy, so this is going off someone else's interpretations [0]. But I think this is probably right.)
[0] http://www.watchwordtest.com/types.aspx
ES - 7
IS - 9
EI - 8
II - 4
ET - 1
IT - 5
EF - 2 (but see below)
IF - 6
[0] http://www.watchwordtest.com/types.aspx
We used a system called Facet5 at work once. I'm still not convinced these types of things are actually worth the money in terms of productivity gains but it did seem to do a decent job addressing the biggest flaws with the MBTI (Rates things on a scale and uses a 5th scale that determines the expression of the other 4).
Again, not sure if it actually made any difference in interactions with coworkers but it was kinda interesting.
Again, not sure if it actually made any difference in interactions with coworkers but it was kinda interesting.
Is any personality test really meaningful? I mean the entire field of psychology apparently doesn't care much about correctness or falsifiability? Why bother to hold MBTI to a higher standard? [1]
[1]: http://www.nature.com/news/smart-software-spots-statistical-...
[1]: http://www.nature.com/news/smart-software-spots-statistical-...
Yes, there are models of personality that, unlike MBTI, have a scientific basis for the selection of their dimensions.
That there are widespread problems with psychological research does not mean that there is no reason to apply standards when evaluating proposed models in the field (in fact, it's a good reason to be particularly careful in doing so.)
That there are widespread problems with psychological research does not mean that there is no reason to apply standards when evaluating proposed models in the field (in fact, it's a good reason to be particularly careful in doing so.)
I was merely being fatous, I don't seriously think it isn't, I'm just saying MBTI seems like pretty par-for-the-course psychology as far as things go. Sadly.
Except for what you put into it. The conceptualization of meaning as being located only in quantifiable scientific measurement is a denigration to the immense benefits and resilience a person can derived from the places they choose to locate meaning, rather than only the places that any formalized worldview insists are the acceptable ones.
We recently took the Kolbe Index test and I found it WAY more useful than the Myers-Briggs. It's much more intuitive and the results, at least to me, seemed to be much easier to relate to. It's a great process to put higher level execs and team members to learn how best to draw from their strengths and weaknesses.
Emotional styles by Richard Davidson are a much better and neuro-scientifically / experimentally validated way of mapping personalities:
http://www.beinghuman.org/article/six-emotional-styles
http://www.beinghuman.org/article/six-emotional-styles
The sad thing about these tests is that it puts people in closed boxes. I've used to be an introvert, now I'm an extrovert. Depending on my mood, tiredness, hour of the day, I'd answer differently a test. People are more complex and have richer personalities than 2^4.
Last time I read about Myers-Briggs, I got the impression that it was to be used strictly for self-assessment and not externally, and I recall the article I was reading specifically saying that the test only makes sense for personal use because it was too easy to game otherwise...
I had a hard time understanding how people were comparing meyers briggs to astrology and I think the problem is that they don't know the full idea behind the meyers briggs classification. I thought I should give a brief description of what it is, or at least what I think it is.
What meyers briggs is NOT is a group of 16 types each with a description of what the person is like. This looks like astrology. This 16 groups is just a summary of what people might be like based on the test results.
Meyers briggs IS a group of four classifications. A person falls on a continuum related to each classification. For each classification there is a letter associated with each end of the spectrum. For a given classification you can label yourself as one of the two letters based on which side of the continuum you fall, though this is just a simplifying representation. The true representation is a place on the continuum between each of the two letters.
The four categories are give below, in my matchbox description:
E vs I - extroversion/introversion. An I is a person who recharges by being alone. An E recharges by being with other people. An I type person will typically be tired after spending a lot of time in a group of people and will want to spend some time by themselves. An E will be drained if they are by themselves for a while. Keep in mind, there is no such thing as a pure E or a pure I. We are all a combination of the two.
N vs S - intuitive/sensing - An N person relies on subconscious thinking, whereas a S person relies on conscious thinking, or reasoning. We can thinking much faster subconsciously but the problem with it is that it is when are brain produces a result, such as "That person doesn't like me", it is difficult to know if it is right if it is based on subconscious reasoning.
T vs F - thinking/feeling - An F is more sensitive to another's feelings where as a T is less concerned with a persons interpretation of what they say than with how true it is. A T is more the brutally honest type.
P vs J - perceiving/judging - a J is a planner and doesn't like when the plan changes. A P likes to take things as they come and doesn't like to be tied down.
I see this as a very scientific classification. Of course, what people do with the classification may be a different story, such as how it is used in the hiring process. I find it very useful in understanding how people react to situations differently than I do, and that I should not judge them negatively for this.
What meyers briggs is NOT is a group of 16 types each with a description of what the person is like. This looks like astrology. This 16 groups is just a summary of what people might be like based on the test results.
Meyers briggs IS a group of four classifications. A person falls on a continuum related to each classification. For each classification there is a letter associated with each end of the spectrum. For a given classification you can label yourself as one of the two letters based on which side of the continuum you fall, though this is just a simplifying representation. The true representation is a place on the continuum between each of the two letters.
The four categories are give below, in my matchbox description:
E vs I - extroversion/introversion. An I is a person who recharges by being alone. An E recharges by being with other people. An I type person will typically be tired after spending a lot of time in a group of people and will want to spend some time by themselves. An E will be drained if they are by themselves for a while. Keep in mind, there is no such thing as a pure E or a pure I. We are all a combination of the two.
N vs S - intuitive/sensing - An N person relies on subconscious thinking, whereas a S person relies on conscious thinking, or reasoning. We can thinking much faster subconsciously but the problem with it is that it is when are brain produces a result, such as "That person doesn't like me", it is difficult to know if it is right if it is based on subconscious reasoning.
T vs F - thinking/feeling - An F is more sensitive to another's feelings where as a T is less concerned with a persons interpretation of what they say than with how true it is. A T is more the brutally honest type.
P vs J - perceiving/judging - a J is a planner and doesn't like when the plan changes. A P likes to take things as they come and doesn't like to be tied down.
I see this as a very scientific classification. Of course, what people do with the classification may be a different story, such as how it is used in the hiring process. I find it very useful in understanding how people react to situations differently than I do, and that I should not judge them negatively for this.
The main value of any "personality type" inventory is to help people with different personalities interact in mutually agreeable and beneficial ways. The very fact that people cling to their MBTI type designators indicates that the see some value in that, even if the value they see is not there. With that in mind, I have a simple question:
** If not MBTI, then what else instead? **
it's almost self confirming right? so if you believe you are an INTJ, you might start taking on INTJ traits or become biased in self evaluating those in yourself.
i get the business and HR "value" (yes, in quotes :), but i largely view this as "astrology for top 50 university people", ie people who want to believe in some collective unconsciousness affinities, peppered with scientific plausibility. especially with regard to application in personal life
i get the business and HR "value" (yes, in quotes :), but i largely view this as "astrology for top 50 university people", ie people who want to believe in some collective unconsciousness affinities, peppered with scientific plausibility. especially with regard to application in personal life
As someone who can control what I get on the test pretty successfully (never tested for exact numbers but it changes every time I take it) I have thought this for a while.
If anything, Myers-Briggs forces introspection and reflection.
But it really shouldn't be used as an employee classifier... just personal growth only.
But it really shouldn't be used as an employee classifier... just personal growth only.
This article simply quotes verbatim other sources without providing much insight of its own. That's not very good.
[deleted]
I thought the MBTI was fun because it made me feel better about myself.
It didn't actually solve anything though.
It didn't actually solve anything though.
I thought this was old news but any reputable publication helping to slay this dinosaur is welcome.
OK, i'll bite: so what do psychologists believe is a good way to learn about people?
Oh no! Now where will I get my smug sense of satisfaction from?
MBTI is a very misunderstood system. People tend to take it too far and in directions it shouldn't go. It's not surprising when it's labeled as meaningless.
Here's one example: I'm an ISTP which is only one letter away from ISFP. That's pretty similar right?
No, they're actually pretty different.
The letters ISTP are just a shorthand for a system developed by Carl Jung. ISTP actually means that I have a stack of behaviors that I tend towards and that I've developed as I've aged.
The stack goes as follows: Introverted Thinking which I have (supposedly) developed since I was young. http://personalitygrowth.com/introverted-thinking/
Extraverted Sensing which, again supposedly, I started developing since I was in my teens and through my 20s. http://personalitygrowth.com/extraverted-sensing-se/
Introverted Intuition which I've been developing more recently (30s). http://personalitygrowth.com/introverted-intuition/
And finally Extraverted Feeling which is still moderately awkward for me (like trying to write with my off hand). It's getting less awkward as I get older. http://personalitygrowth.com/extraverted-feeling-fe/
An ISFP, on the other hand, has the following stack: Introverted Feeling, Extraverted Sensing, Introverted Intuition, and Extraverted Thinking.
And other types have their own function stack that they've developed as they've aged. Some faster, some slower. This is one potential reason why people test differently as they age. I first took the test I was in my 20s when I was at a different point in my maturation process. Nowadays I'm much more focused on long term goals as opposed to short term satisfaction. Maybe I'm just developing my Introverted Intuition which is typically associated more with long term thinking. Maybe it's just part of the maturation process everyone goes through.
I will say, though, some people I've observed have gone through the process in reverse -- being interested in long term goals when they're young and then realizing they should also pay attention to short term gratification a little as they age. Maybe they're a type that leads with Introverted Intuition. Who knows.
Here's one example: I'm an ISTP which is only one letter away from ISFP. That's pretty similar right?
No, they're actually pretty different.
The letters ISTP are just a shorthand for a system developed by Carl Jung. ISTP actually means that I have a stack of behaviors that I tend towards and that I've developed as I've aged.
The stack goes as follows: Introverted Thinking which I have (supposedly) developed since I was young. http://personalitygrowth.com/introverted-thinking/
Extraverted Sensing which, again supposedly, I started developing since I was in my teens and through my 20s. http://personalitygrowth.com/extraverted-sensing-se/
Introverted Intuition which I've been developing more recently (30s). http://personalitygrowth.com/introverted-intuition/
And finally Extraverted Feeling which is still moderately awkward for me (like trying to write with my off hand). It's getting less awkward as I get older. http://personalitygrowth.com/extraverted-feeling-fe/
An ISFP, on the other hand, has the following stack: Introverted Feeling, Extraverted Sensing, Introverted Intuition, and Extraverted Thinking.
And other types have their own function stack that they've developed as they've aged. Some faster, some slower. This is one potential reason why people test differently as they age. I first took the test I was in my 20s when I was at a different point in my maturation process. Nowadays I'm much more focused on long term goals as opposed to short term satisfaction. Maybe I'm just developing my Introverted Intuition which is typically associated more with long term thinking. Maybe it's just part of the maturation process everyone goes through.
I will say, though, some people I've observed have gone through the process in reverse -- being interested in long term goals when they're young and then realizing they should also pay attention to short term gratification a little as they age. Maybe they're a type that leads with Introverted Intuition. Who knows.
Against stupidity the Gods themselves contend in vain.
All models are flawed, but sometimes they are useful.
Similar comments have been raised about the MMPI. On a quick look again, I found:
https://www.minnpost.com/second-opinion/2009/08/fascinating-...
he original developers of the MMPI questionnaire went about choosing their "normal" control group. They compared test answers from patients in hospitals for the mentally ill with answers from people working in and visiting those hospitals.
Who’s to say those workers and visitors were mentally healthy?
It's well known that certain kinds of mentally ill people are drawn to working in the mental health industry. I know a psychiatrist who's a narcissist, and a psychiatric nurse who's probably BPD or NPD.
Bootstrapping a test from a hand-picked set of people is just bad methodology.
https://www.minnpost.com/second-opinion/2009/08/fascinating-...
he original developers of the MMPI questionnaire went about choosing their "normal" control group. They compared test answers from patients in hospitals for the mentally ill with answers from people working in and visiting those hospitals.
Who’s to say those workers and visitors were mentally healthy?
It's well known that certain kinds of mentally ill people are drawn to working in the mental health industry. I know a psychiatrist who's a narcissist, and a psychiatric nurse who's probably BPD or NPD.
Bootstrapping a test from a hand-picked set of people is just bad methodology.
[deleted]
One big problem I have with these personality classifications (MBTI, Type-A/Type-B) is it assumes that personality traits are bimodal instead of normally distributed. MBTI would have made sense if the population was split 50-50 into E/I etc. but in reality most people fall somewhere in the middle.
The more I learn, then more all of the social sciences appear to be less solid regarding the demarcation problem.
You know what kind of responses you are asking for without adding: /s ? :)
We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12687196 and marked it off-topic.
I hear this and I'm a huge man of Science, but I can't ignore the similarities I have with my designated type ISTP and the lack of with the other types. Very interesting either way.
And it can be harmful. People use their categorization as an excuse (I know I have). "I'm an INTP, I can't have a normal career, I always lose interest and move on to the next thing!"
Yeah... this is called being undisciplined. Experts and Masters aren't born with the discipline to master their craft. They struggle like anyone else, but they break through those barriers and continue their mastery.
Don't use your personality as an excuse to get around the discipline and practice components of success. Don't let the introvert label be an excuse for you being a standoffish asshole or a hermit.
Go on the subreddits for these ... such as /r/INTP and browse a bit ... they are sad.
Yeah... this is called being undisciplined. Experts and Masters aren't born with the discipline to master their craft. They struggle like anyone else, but they break through those barriers and continue their mastery.
Don't use your personality as an excuse to get around the discipline and practice components of success. Don't let the introvert label be an excuse for you being a standoffish asshole or a hermit.
Go on the subreddits for these ... such as /r/INTP and browse a bit ... they are sad.
I believe it, but I don't find it hard to believe that, to some extent, differences in diligence are ingrained.
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.