Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Myers-Briggs Personality Test Is Pretty Much Meaningless

smithsonianmag.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 352 posts

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

#191

Post by dragonwriter »

Simon321 wrote: post #183
jfoutz wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It's much more than 'astrology or tarot cards'. MBTI correlates with the big five personality traits. Which are backed up scientifically.

It correlates poorly with any of the competing empirically-supportable models; e.g., as I recall, the I-E axis seems to be a blend of the extraversion and neuroticism axes shared by the EPQ (3 factor) and Big Five (5 factor) models. Better to use one of the scientific models directly than MBTI.

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

#192

Post by SomeStupidPoint »

Retric wrote: post #133
radlad wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, a type (e.g. INFP) does say a lot about the magnitude of different cognitive processes. Take a look at this website (INFP linked as an example): http://www.cognitiveprocesses.com/16Types/INFP.cfm

There are only 4 bits of information. E v I, S v N, T v F, J v P. So, if you are 'strongly' I and weakly P that does not change the order to show P is more dominate over J than I is over E. AKA, magnitude is literally not part of the test.

When I took the MBTI as part of a college psych course, our test results came back with magnitude scores: moderately I, very N, barely T (ie, almost X), and very P. (The actual scores were numeric, but I only remember the relative strength years later.)

When discussing the results as a class, the strength of a type seemed to correlate reasonably with behavior, and explain more than the clusters on their own, eg, all the strong NPs had similar epistemological views and styles, fading towards an SJ style as the scores people had changed.

What a lot of people seem to forget, though, is the MBTI doesn't account for effects from disorders only healthy variation and it's about who you are right now, not who you are permanently. People vary over time.

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

#193

Post by david927 »

triplesec wrote: post #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/...

I think your missing the point. Do you know what flavor of ice cream you like? I think you do -- and why not know that about yourself?

Everyone is some range of introverted to extroverted, for example. It's their preference, such as the flavor of ice cream they like. It can change often, under circumstances, or even not be present, of course. It's not set in stone; it's just a preference. It doesn't define you; you define it.

Myers-Briggs is unfortunate in that it assigns that preference as letter. You like Chocolate. You're a C. There are some who have no problem with this sort of designation. They love chocolate always and in every circumstance. Many, however, are not one letter, and so it's a poor test.

The point is not the letter. The point is asking yourself the question: do you feel more energized after a dinner party or after a quiet day alone? The point is to know, not just what flavors your prefer usually, but what situations (in this case) you prefer. And why not know that about yourself?

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

#194

Post by eivarv »

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.

Unless it is demonstrated to have some predictive power, it isn't certain at all.

Additionally, the added (relative) complexity doesn't imply anything about its qualities.

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

#195

Post by ck425 »

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 used MBTI in a similar way when I was younger. I identified strongly with the INTP type and wanted to become more outgoing and confident so I studied the descriptions of the ENTP type and deliberately cultivated some of those behaviours. It actually worked fairly well (though admittedly this was also around my 18th birthday so maybe it was just alcohol), nowadays I don't find it particularly useful nor the descriptions at all accurate but as a starting base for self analysis and improvement it's great.

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

#196

Post by taplogger »

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' personalities, even if the categories are incomplete, nonlinear, redundant, or transient.

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

#197

Post by maverick_iceman »

amelius wrote: post #119
AlexandrB wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's meaningless unless you confirm that their fitness for that task was actually correlated to their MTBI, e.g. by mixing those "fit" and "unfit" (based on MTBI) on the same task and comparing their performance. I'm pretty sure most companies don't do this. They just assume MTBI has predictive power and use it anyway since it gives them something to go on besides gut instinct.

Well, I know for sure that a person with an INTJ personality type is not suited for marketing and sales (statistically speaking of course). Would you claim otherwise?

Have you done any controlled experiment to test this hypothesis?

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

#198

Post by maverick_iceman »

amelius wrote: post #175
foopityfop wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes I would. Given the inconsistency of results that the Myers-Briggs test outputs for individuals, the personality of that person who tested as an INTJ could be far from it normally. Furthermore, your willingness to buy into the narrative (and others' willingness to also believe it) that by categorizing certain people into stereotypes and assuming that most of these people tend to excel at a particular set of tasks…

Then please point me to the research, because the article does a lousy job at it. Saying that any profiling technique has zero predictive value is a very bold claim. Even one's astrological sign has predictive value: [1]. And yes, this has been scientifically proven. [1] http://www.medicaldaily.com/how-birth-month-influences-perso...

Don't invert the burden of proof.

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

#199

Post by amelius »

taco_emoji wrote: post #190
amelius wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then please point me to the research, because the article does a lousy job at it. Saying that any profiling technique has zero predictive value is a very bold claim. Even one's astrological sign has predictive value: [1]. And yes, this has been scientifically proven. [1] http://www.medicaldaily.com/how-birth-month-influences-perso...

Why is it the job of the skeptic to prove that a profiling technique does not have predictive power? Shouldn't you have to prove that it does ?

Because it is very hard for a test not to have predictive power.

For example, companies fruitfully extract predictive power from whether a user clicked a link or not. Facebook extracts predictive power from whether users like videos, et cetera. So why shouldn't an elaborate test that was developed to have meaning, not have any predictive power?

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

#200

Post by wutf »

bradleyjg wrote: post #149
wutf wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can see the original mapping here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers%E2%80%93Briggs_Type_Indi...

Interesting. Looks like extroversion is the best correlated (.74) which I suppose makes sense. But nearly as strong (.72) is intuition/sensing to openness to experience, which I would not have predicted. Conscientiousness to judging/perceiving is only .49 and agreeableness to thinking/feeling is only .44. MBTI has no good correlate for neuroticism. I'm no statistician, but "is approximately as valid" looks to be over…

You're no statistician or psychologist. Those loadings are huge.
Post reply on HN