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The Myers-Briggs Personality Test Is Pretty Much Meaningless

smithsonianmag.com

11–20 of 352 posts

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

#11
This is making light of a difficult problem. Personality is an interesting and relevant aspect of individual behavior and socialization that remains incompletely characterized by science. One of the most popular modern alternatives to Meyers-Briggs is the Five Factors model which also has limitations. Utility for corporate applications may not be the best metric for these early attempts to characterize personality.

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

#12
This is not a new finding. MBTI has never really been a serious psychological tool. In fact, a lot of the personality assessments used in business are really just woo - MBTI isn't even the worst. It at least is internally consistent.

For a real personality exam with actual use in psych research, check out the Five Factor metric.

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

#13
It's basically horoscope for geeks

More articles

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/give-and-take/201309/go...

Edit: http://www.forbes.com/sites/toddessig/2014/09/29/the-mysteri...

And the Guardian article https://www.theguardian.com/science/brain-flapping/2013/mar/...

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

#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

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

#18
It is well worth watching Derren Brown's demonstration of the Barnum / Forer effect [0].

If you've never heard of it, I recommend watching the video before you Google anything. It's only a short video (less than 4 minutes) and is a brilliant demonstration.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bCjzLij54k

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

#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 test results.

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

#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 to be gained by getting a group of people in a room to talk about the different ways they interact with the world and how they go about solving problems. However, as soon as you start providing formulas for how to interact with people my bull shit detector goes off.

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