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In Defense of Myers Briggs (2020)

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Re: In Defense of Myers Briggs (2020)

#101

Post by bigfudge »

rewgs wrote: post #53
Xcelerate wrote: post #19

I've never really understood the harsh criticisms of MBTI. It's not super predictive, but not to be honest, nothing else in psychology is either; the whole field is just not anywhere near the level of physics or chemistry (not to blame the researchers; predicting humans is very hard). The big 5 and I think more recently an 18 dimensional breakdown (using PCA or ICA?) just aren't that much better than MBTI, despite ma…

I’ve gotten downvoted every time I’ve come to the defense of Meyers Briggs on HN, so I’m happy to see a comment with more or less my view of it voted to the top for once. I find it to be an extremely useful abstraction. Being honest with myself and really digging into how the cognitive functions “work” has been incredibly instructive and valuable in terms of further understanding myself. It’s a REALLY high level prog…

This analogy breaks down though. High level languages can be slow or inefficient because they don’t map directly into reality, but they are still correct. MBTI and FFI just don’t really work at all ... they don’t predict much and if you took them too seriously as permanent traits you would make bad decisions.

Re: In Defense of Myers Briggs (2020)

#102

Post by pseudalopex »

roenxi wrote: post #41

The article observes that if the Myers-Briggs axis are treated as continuous then they map very closely to the Big 5 personality traits. It seems to me that observation is substantially more important than the space it is given. If M-B is basically measuring 4 of the Big 5, that really sets up a lot of the rest of the conversation. Why measure 4 of the big 5 when you can measure 5 of the 5? The complaint here seems t…

Myers Briggs tests have profiles of each type usually. Big 5 tests don't.

Re: In Defense of Myers Briggs (2020)

#103

Post by bigfudge »

pzone wrote: post #97
souprock wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not that correlation with Big 5 should be a determining factor, but... The chart in the article shows that E/I is strongly correlated with extraversion, S/N is strongly correlated with openness, T/F is moderately correlated with agreeableness (and weakly with conscientiousness), and J/P is moderately correlated with conscientiousness (and weakly with openness). It's not a slight correlation, so if MBTI is useless the…

Only one of the two systems stands up to modern standards of psychological science. If you are an HR rep and you want to predict an applicant’s job performance, you are using inferior data if you choose an MBTI test. It may have other uses, like fostering a useful discussion during an interview, but there is a very real case in which it is inferior and 5-factor personality is the standard to be judged against.

If you place any weight on Ffi in recruitment you are also doing it wrong though. The studies reporting ffi correlations with real world outcomes give confidence intervals not prediction intervals. For individual cases it’s mostly just noise.

Re: In Defense of Myers Briggs (2020)

#104

Post by anotherfish »

Xcelerate wrote: post #19

I've never really understood the harsh criticisms of MBTI. It's not super predictive, but not to be honest, nothing else in psychology is either; the whole field is just not anywhere near the level of physics or chemistry (not to blame the researchers; predicting humans is very hard). The big 5 and I think more recently an 18 dimensional breakdown (using PCA or ICA?) just aren't that much better than MBTI, despite ma…

Yeah, horoscopes are fun. I used to mess with my school by shuffling the horoscopes in the weekly newsletter. No one noticed or complained.

Re: In Defense of Myers Briggs (2020)

#105

Post by anotherfish »

rewgs wrote: post #53
Xcelerate wrote: post #19

I've never really understood the harsh criticisms of MBTI. It's not super predictive, but not to be honest, nothing else in psychology is either; the whole field is just not anywhere near the level of physics or chemistry (not to blame the researchers; predicting humans is very hard). The big 5 and I think more recently an 18 dimensional breakdown (using PCA or ICA?) just aren't that much better than MBTI, despite ma…

I’ve gotten downvoted every time I’ve come to the defense of Meyers Briggs on HN, so I’m happy to see a comment with more or less my view of it voted to the top for once. I find it to be an extremely useful abstraction. Being honest with myself and really digging into how the cognitive functions “work” has been incredibly instructive and valuable in terms of further understanding myself. It’s a REALLY high level prog…

You probably hit the wrong "bubble". This happens. Then there's the various groupthink fashions that come and go like weather patterns on various comment sites. I doubt HN is much different. Probably better on HN but I've seen some oddball voting patterns around BLM and similar.

Re: In Defense of Myers Briggs (2020)

#106

Post by pseudalopex »

watwut wrote: post #80
visarga wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought all MBTI tests give you scores for each axis.

It does. And then people refer to themselves by four letter, read abour description of types by 4 letter and completely ignore the scale in it.

I've seen people call themselves xNTJ or INFx.

Re: In Defense of Myers Briggs (2020)

#108

Post by sradman »

I found this defense of Myers Briggs Type Index (MBTI) against the Big Five [1] OCEAN personality traits helpful. Neuroticism is a useful measure but has negative connotations that requires self-disclosure and, therefore, less likely to be shared with co-workers and acquaintances.

The advantage of MBTI is the value neutral labels that encourage sharing and discussion amongst laypeople. This is exactly why it is popular in corporate settings.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits

Re: In Defense of Myers Briggs (2020)

#110

Post by souprock »

smokey_circles wrote: post #75

I don't know how/why people defend this test. 1. It's inaccurate. And that's not just "technically true", it's very rare that the test reproduces results. 2. Jung's theories (the ones used in the test) aren't just "controversial". They're wrong. He says it himself, in the same document they used to create the test. It is just a cash cow now. The _biggest_ problem with the test is it is harmful, not helpful. People be…

The article covers reproducibility. The test does reliably reproduce results, at least if you don't quantize to boolean. Jung doesn't matter. Being a cash cow doesn't matter.

There is nothing in the field of psychology with better support than IQ. If you aren't going to accept IQ, then you've entirely tossed out the field of psychology. There is nothing left.

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