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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

#151

Post by analog31 »

programmarchy wrote: post #34
bognition wrote: post #20

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 t…

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.

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

#152

Post by chx »

lmm wrote: post #33
Symmetry wrote: post #5

If you want a scientific measure of personality you can use the Big Five. 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.

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

#153

Post by imagist »

grandalf wrote: post #95
imagist wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 r…

> 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. Bu…

> 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.

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

#154

Post by Bartweiss »

Kunix wrote: post #75
Bartweiss wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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…

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.

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

#155

Post by mgkimsal »

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…

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.

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

#156

Post by raverbashing »

jfoutz wrote: post #45
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 (…

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 lo…

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)

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

#157

Post by zzleeper »

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 (…

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

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

#158

Post by amelius »

eivarv wrote: post #147
amelius wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

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?

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.

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

#159

Post by wcp »

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.

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

#160

Post by reitanqild »

zzleeper wrote: post #157
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 (…

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

I suggest reading it again.
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