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The Myers-Briggs Personality Test Is Pretty Much Meaningless

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

#201

Post by maverick_iceman »

amelius wrote: post #181
eivarv wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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

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

#202

Post by robobro »

taplogger wrote: post #196
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 (…

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' personalit…

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)

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

#203

Post by analog31 »

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…

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.

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

#204

Post by torbjorn »

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.

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

#205

Post by SomeStupidPoint »

Bartweiss wrote: post #145
rdeboo wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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 axe…

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.

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

#206

Post by visarga »

ivraatiems wrote: post #26
JohnKacz wrote: post #15

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

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.

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

#207

Post by amelius »

maverick_iceman wrote: post #201
amelius wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

Read this: http://www.medicaldaily.com/how-birth-month-influences-perso...

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

#208

Post by rayiner »

triplesec wrote: post #135
rayiner wrote: post #71

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 sufficientl…

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.

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

#209

Post by Graphon1 »

Karunamon wrote: post #182
ebbv wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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

#210

Post by Graphon1 »

floopidydoopidy wrote: post #108
0xfffafaCrash wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I agree that it has a use: it helps identify gullible people. Extremely valuable in that regard.

ha, got a laugh from that.
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