Is the Myers-Briggs personality assessment just an example of modern-day snake oil sold by corporate soothsayers? Or does it really work? Certainly a huge industry has built up around this test. If it needs to be debunked, you're just the guy to do it. -Jim
I'm of several minds about this one-possibly as many as 16, the number of personality types the Myers-Briggs people claim to be able to distinguish based on a 93-question "instrument," or test, as the simple folk call it.
My INTJ (Introversion-Intuition-Thinking-Judgment; "intuition" is abbreviated as "N" in M-B parlance) side says the whole thing is rubbish. My ENFP (Extraversion-Intuition-Feeling-Perception) self figures what the hell, it's harmless and maybe even useful. I can't decide, and I sure can't keep all the four-letter personality-type labels straight. So we'll let the different aspects of my psyche speak for themselves using the simplified Straight Dope personality code, which employs only two letters.
First, an overview from the AK (Anal Know-it-all) Cecil: Nothing about the origin of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, or MBTI, inspires much confidence. The test was developed starting in the 1940s by the mother-daughter team of Katherine Briggs and Isabel Myers with the goal of sorting people based on Carl Jung's theory of psychological types.
The best that can be said about the Swiss psychiatrist's ideas is that they were ingenious-he made no attempt to validate them via experiment. Briggs and Myers, for their part, had no expertise in psychology other than what they picked up from Jung and in consultation with people in the testing business. Nonetheless, the MBTI began attracting professional attention in the 1960s, and Consulting Psychologists Press (now CPP) began publishing it in the 1970s.
My DL (Droning Lecturer) side continues: Myers and Briggs claimed their test could categorize people based on four either-or sets of characteristics, or dichotomies: Extraversion-Introversion, Sensing-Intuition, Thinking-Feeling, and Judgment-Perception. The premise of the MBTI is that in each set, you fall into one category or the other.
For example, you're either an extrovert or an introvert. You can't be a mix of both, and your personality doesn't change.
My CA (Cold-eyed Analyst) self thinks this is a dubious contention. Common sense suggests that a trait like extroversion/introversion is a continuum. We all know people at the extreme ends of the scale, but most of us cluster near the middle. What's more, how outgoing we are depends partly on the situation. Sure enough, when people take the MBTI multiple times, it's not uncommon for them to flip-flop from one side of a dichotomy to the other, usually on traits where their initial score pointed only weakly in one direction.
Adds my VR (Voice of Reason) self, MBTI types correspond reasonably well with the basic personality traits identified by more scientific researchers. Collectively known as the five-factor model, these traits conveniently form the acronym OCEAN: openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism.
One study suggests the MBTI Extraversion-Introversion scale matches up statistically with the spectrum of extroversion in the five-factor model, and the Sensing-Intuition scale does likewise with openness. More modest relationships were found between the Thinking-Feeling scale and agreeableness and between the Judging-Perception scale and conscientiousness.
The CR (Cheerful Realist) in me now begins to understand the marketing brilliance of the MBTI. First, as the above research suggests, the MBTI evidently tests something.
Second, the MBTI accentuates the positive. No matter what you score, you're a winner: an ISFJ is a protector, a ENFP a champion, an ENTP an inventor, and so on.
Does your MBTI type tell your boss what kind of job you'd be best at? I wouldn't go that far. On the other hand, does taking the test and discussing the scores make for an entertaining team-building exercise? You bet, and that's undoubtedly why human-resources types love it. What's not to like about an assessment that tells you you're a born healer, mastermind, or field marshal? Conversely, who wants to take a boring five-factors test and be told he's a disagreeable, neurotic slob?
