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Why companies are interested in Myers-Briggs types

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Re: Why companies are interested in Myers-Briggs types

#91

A previous company used Real Colors, an MBTI knock-off, and it was striking how attached people got to those results. People openly stereotyped whole groups of people because they appeared to cluster in one sector (e.g., SDEs must be Green). They disregarded all counter-examples because they conflicted with these biases. It was weird.

People like boxes because it gives them an easy and reassuring way to approach complexity they are not equipped to grapple with. You see it all the time in the professional world: people who have to deal with others but are poorly trained and unconfident in their ability to handle human psychology relish these kinds of crutches. You see it even in this discussion: this type must be suited to this kind of job is simpler than thinking holistically about prerequisites.

Re: Why companies are interested in Myers-Briggs types

#93

Apple went through the Myers-Briggs phase in the 90's, along with a lot of the other tech giants. It was a half-day seminar. "Professionals" gave the tests and told everyone their type. That took only an hour. The rest of the time was spent doing role-playing, where you were supposed to use your coworkers' MB types to adjust your interaction with them in various settings. It was a waste of time then and I bet it stil…

I never worked for Apple, but I went through a similar exercise in the late 1980's. I found the role-playing useful, and I found the techniques we were trained on to be enlightening. Not everybody thinks the same way, and even though it's not valid to categorize people into 16 personality groups, it's useful to understand that people prioritize things and think differently from each other. Here's a great example of t…

Do you need to spend $2000 plus $49.99 a head plus travel, catering and room hire to be told "It's useful to understand that people priorities things and think differently from each other?" If the specifics don't matter, what are you actually paying these consultants to do?

Re: Why companies are interested in Myers-Briggs types

#94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you mean True Colors? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/True_Colors_(personality) My impression from some brief training was that it's based on temperament theory and not a knock off of MBTI.

> Do you mean True Colors? No.[1] > My impression from some brief training was that it's based on temperament theory and not a knock off of MBTI. From your link: > According to this personality temperament theory, which is a refined version of the popular Myers–Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) [...] To-may-to, to-mah-to. [1]: https://realcolors.org/

Ah, that's interesting. I checked out their history page.

https://realcolors.org/what_is_realcolors/history/

Anytime they start by rewinding to millennia ago, that's temperament theory. Keirsey's temperament theory that they mention is fundamentally different from typical MBTI in lots of ways. In fact they can both be used to complement each other.

So it's different, or not, depending on whether you want to be accurate, and true to details, or not. (Also someone should correct the way the Wikipedia article is written regarding MBTI)

Re: Why companies are interested in Myers-Briggs types

#96
post #79

Interestingly, the CIA spy that Lex Fridman had on [0] his podcast said that all the spy agencies use MBTI and that he (interviewee) thinks they are of value. [0] https://youtu.be/T3FC7qIAGZk?t=6127

The list of technologies the CIA has evaluated since it's inception is long and full of quackery.

Re: Why companies are interested in Myers-Briggs types

#98

MBTI pretty much takes what are supposed to be basically unimodal binomial distributions and ... slices them and labels the halves different things. Even without getting into whether it's testing something sensible, it's pretty clear that the typology is fundamentally fucked.

This critique of typology applies to the way humans think about so many things though. Imagine a world in which we broke free of the unreasonable typology of the traffic light! Really, typologies are super helpful for solving lots of problems.

And a nice thing about MBTI in the comparing-humans world is that it's way more objective _and_ uses more than one dichotomy unlike lots of other default typologies (cf men-women, especially when MBTI was first developed) _and_ can also resolve down into things like cognitive processes, which provide even more leverage and depth.

Not that MBTI is everything, but it's damn impressive for where it came from.

And, it usually works better to criticize specific typologies using qualitative means than quantitative, just IMO.

Re: Why companies are interested in Myers-Briggs types

#99
post #4

The author says each of the big 5 is on a "sliding scale". I admit this is a bit pedantic, but isn't each just on a plain old scale? Wouldn't a sliding scale imply that one score could affect how another was graded?

> Wouldn't a sliding scale imply that one score could affect how another was graded?

Not to me; I am actually not familiar with any clear meaning for the phrase "sliding scale". It's just a thing people sometimes say.

If you wanted to say that your score on one axis could affect how your answers to questions on another axis are interpreted, you'd need to call them something like "non-independent". Not much call for that kind of terminology.

Can you provide any examples of someone using "sliding scale" in the sense you suggest?

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