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The Myers-Briggs Personality Test Is Pretty Much Meaningless

smithsonianmag.com

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Re: The Myers-Briggs Personality Test Is Pretty Much Meaningless

#51

Post by amirmc »

liquidise wrote: post #19

> 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 te…

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.

Re: The Myers-Briggs Personality Test Is Pretty Much Meaningless

#52

Post by Bartweiss »

n-exploit wrote: post #24

As an individual (INFJ) thoroughly interested in Myers-Briggs, I often see this discussion brought up. As a short rebuttal, I feel as though many of those who tout Myers-Briggs as a comprehensive personality test fail to understand what the Myers-Briggs attempts to identify. While the "value-add" is more subjective, I'm going to go ahead and say it's not as useless as this article claims. While I don't think anyone (…

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.

Re: The Myers-Briggs Personality Test Is Pretty Much Meaningless

#53

Post by ivan_gammel »

n-exploit wrote: post #24

As an individual (INFJ) thoroughly interested in Myers-Briggs, I often see this discussion brought up. As a short rebuttal, I feel as though many of those who tout Myers-Briggs as a comprehensive personality test fail to understand what the Myers-Briggs attempts to identify. While the "value-add" is more subjective, I'm going to go ahead and say it's not as useless as this article claims. While I don't think anyone (…

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"?

Re: The Myers-Briggs Personality Test Is Pretty Much Meaningless

#55

Post by cazum »

0xfffafaCrash wrote: post #28

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…

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.

Re: The Myers-Briggs Personality Test Is Pretty Much Meaningless

#56

Post by CoffeeDregs »

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).

Re: The Myers-Briggs Personality Test Is Pretty Much Meaningless

#57

Post by Anasufovic »

jplahn wrote: post #27
liquidise wrote: post #19

> 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 te…

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.

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.

Re: The Myers-Briggs Personality Test Is Pretty Much Meaningless

#58

Post by anbende »

wutf wrote: post #6

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 st…

That's very interesting. I'm in psychology and I've never heard this. Do you have a source for that covariation?

Thanks!

Re: The Myers-Briggs Personality Test Is Pretty Much Meaningless

#59

Post by delgaudm »

parasubvert wrote: post #30

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…

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.
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