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

211–220 of 352 posts

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

#211

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

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 (…

Your comment works surprisingly well like this:

As an individual (Taurus) thoroughly interested in astrology, I often see this discussion brought up. As a short rebuttal, I feel as though many of those who tout astrology as a comprehensive personality test fail to understand what astrology 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 (especially employers) should rely heavily on astrology, I think it can provide a decent framework (or starting point) outlining basic facets of an individual's personality based on their own perspective. Though I often distrust individual claims about belonging a sign, given my interest in understanding myself and facets of my own personality, I enjoy discussing why a person may claim to be a part of a certain sign. For me, astrology tends to be little more than a starting point for discussing the finer parts of my own personality, values, and perspectives. I find that those who are equally interested in astrology share similar values in self-understanding, thus a starting point for some interesting discussion.

Your comment can be distilled to "it's fun to talk about".

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

#212

Post by Karunamon »

Graphon1 wrote: post #209
Karunamon wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

True, but by noting your blood sugar readings over a long period of time, taking note of the spikes, drops, and so forth, you gain some insight into your health and diet.

Same thing, here. I wouldn't put much stock into a single result on a single test, but I think there's some broader value to be gained by examining the trend, the fluctuations, and what you wind up as more often than not.

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

#213

Post by 3minus1 »

grandalf wrote: post #123
3minus1 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When I read articles criticizing Meyers Briggs, I always assume it was written by one of these people how dismissive of you. do you dismiss the science in those articles as well?

That comment was intended as a joke. No, I do not. Although I think I'd view MBTI less favorably if it said I had the same personality type as a variety of dictators, etc.

fair enough. my comment was definitely overly grumpy

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

#214

Post by aaimnr »

Personality typing is obviously incredibly shaky ground because of the huge potential for the suggestion bias, but we shouldn't throw out the baby with the bathwater. It's almost obvious that there are patterns of human behaviour that are often distinctive and repetitive across society. It's hard to identify these regularities and we should be sceptical about any blatant simplifications, but we shouldn't stop trying to understand them.

There is another personality typing method called Enneagram, that takes a more interesting approach than static M-B. Rather than attributing some essential properties to each person, it assumes that personality is formed by a set of cognitive habits. These habits condition our attention to pick specific aspects of experience and giving it interpretation in line with this bias. Most people use all of these 9 identified patterns, but one is dominant, and hence it defines what we perceive as personality.

These habits are mostly crystalised in childhood and depend on the environment and upbringing. Eg. when a child is punished at random without any consequence there's a chance it will become type 8, on the other hand if there's great deal of regularity and rules at home, it may and up as type 1 etc. Seems like a gross oversimplification, but it's just an example of this type of conditioning.

The general approach seems legit (based on what we know about cognitive science), but what's more important, learning about these 9 habits/types usually leads to incredible insights into one's behaviour. There's lot of regularities that we suddenly find in our actions that fit specifically to one of these 9 types.

Unlike what article states about M-B, Ennegram mostly focuses on the dark, habitual and unconscious aspects of each personality, so it's much less susceptible to the "horoscope effect" (where we're more likely to attribute anything positive to ourselves).

I try to challenge it as much as possible, because as anything related to personality it may become a self fulfilling prophecy, but still I found it very hard to falsify, there's just a lot of positive evidence.

Since there's strong overrepresentation of rational thinkers on HN I'd love to hear some comments from anyone here who took Enneagram test or heard about it (there's a lot of free tests on the internet).

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

#215

Post by eastbayjake »

raverbashing wrote: post #156
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…

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 dist…

I don't think about M-B or Tarot or astrology as predictive, they are mindfulness prods: interesting frameworks to break up and reframe the narratives we tell ourselves about who we are. A horoscope that tells me "this week will present challenges at work about money" is likely to prod me into mindfulness about work and money than I would be otherwise. Similarly, my ESTJ M-B type is more likely to make me mindful about where I get my energy and the ways in which rigorously analytical thinking may not be the way lots of other humans approach decisions.

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

#217

Post by blahblah3 »

0xfffafaCrash wrote: post #69
Analemma_ wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I really don't get why some people can't seem to tell the difference between things like MBTIs and astrological signs/zodiacs/horoscopes Then let me try to help clarify. MBTI has no predictive power ("I'm an INTP, so... ?") and is not falsifiable. Those are the delineators between science and pseudoscience, so that's why I bucket it with astrology.

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…

absolutely agree with 0xfffafaCrash on this, just because a measure is imperfect and has varying levels of validity depending on the person doesn't mean it has no signal.

i'm pretty sure someone who has gotten INTP every single test in his life will behave differently on average than someone who has always gotten ESFJ

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

#218

Post by livingparadox »

0xfffafaCrash wrote: post #69
Analemma_ wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I really don't get why some people can't seem to tell the difference between things like MBTIs and astrological signs/zodiacs/horoscopes Then let me try to help clarify. MBTI has no predictive power ("I'm an INTP, so... ?") and is not falsifiable. Those are the delineators between science and pseudoscience, so that's why I bucket it with astrology.

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…

As an anecdote, I was able to predict my wife's results on the test, down to how strong her leanings were in each category.

I think its a mildly useful categorization which allows a simpler and more coarse view of personality than the full spectrum of data would normally allow.

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

#219

Post by visarga »

good_gnu wrote: post #178

I would like to raise the issue of nature vs. nurture in this context: Does Myers-Briggs really identify stable characteristics of someone's current personality or merely the way in which it currently expresses itself. E.g. consider someone who has previously worked in a dysfunctional corporate environment but was unable to quit that job for financial reasons. They were very well rewarded for superficial qualities li…

Fully agree, and I think this makes results ambiguous. Testers might take any of the two perspectives: "what I usually do in this situation", vs. "what I would instinctively do". For example, a religious person would respect her religious moral principles even against her instinct - what should she answer - isn't her will also a part of her personality? Should she ignore her will and answer with her instinctive impulse instead?

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

#220

Post by tallanvor »

In one of my courses we took Myers-Briggs, which the professor scored and then handed us a summary of our results and asked people how they felt the results actually matched up with them. Virtually everyone agreed that the results were fairly accurate, at which point our professor provided us with our real results and we went through the various possible results to understand how they're designed in such a way that you can generally find ways to agree with the results no matter what you got.

Needless to say I've ignored any MBTI results since.

Post reply on HN