The Myers-Briggs Personality Test Is Pretty Much Meaningless • Hacker News Board

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

#81

Post by cossatot » Tue, Oct 11, 2016, 2:53 PM UTC

Bartweiss wrote: post #52

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 tha…

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.

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

#82

Post by gh1 » Tue, Oct 11, 2016, 2:53 PM UTC

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.

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

#83

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Oct 11, 2016, 2:53 PM UTC

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 (…

[deleted]

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

#84

Post by 0xfffafaCrash » Tue, Oct 11, 2016, 2:53 PM UTC

ivraatiems wrote: post #77

0xfffafaCrash wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 res…

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 f…

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.

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

#85

Post by imagist » Tue, Oct 11, 2016, 2:53 PM UTC

grandalf wrote: post #41

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…

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).

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

#86

Post by ivan_gammel » Tue, Oct 11, 2016, 2:53 PM UTC

0xfffafaCrash wrote: post #65

ivraatiems wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 b…

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 res…

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

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

#87

Post by Angostura » Tue, Oct 11, 2016, 2:55 PM UTC

0xfffafaCrash wrote: post #69

Analemma_ wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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…

Given the fact that repeated testing over a period often comes out with entirely different results - yes.

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

#88

Post by trendia » Tue, Oct 11, 2016, 2:57 PM UTC

Bartweiss wrote: post #76

0xfffafaCrash wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 som…

> 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 t…

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.)

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

#89

Post by kazinator » Tue, Oct 11, 2016, 2:57 PM UTC

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...

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

#90

Post by Renaud » Tue, Oct 11, 2016, 2:57 PM UTC

amelius wrote: post #3

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.