I’m thinking of using the Myers-Briggs Personality Type assessment in a public project.
Can anyone who is familiar with copyrights, psychology, or intellectual property tell me if the MBTI is copyrighted, and if so, point me towards some documentation on what is allowed and not-allowed usage of it?
You can copyright any one particular implementation of the MBTI, but the Jungian types (virtually the same thing) predate the Myers & Briggs expansion. They’ve been around for a long time and many websites and books have adapted the same system and produced their original interpretations of it. You can copyright specific text, i.e. any one personality test, but not the overall idea that “people who answer certain questions about themselves give certain insights about their behavior”.
For example, the HumanMetrics test is MBTI-compatible, though unofficial, and will give you the 4 letters you need to look at the results from ANY MBTI/Jung-compatible description. Once you know you’re a INFP, for example, you can just Google “INFP” and find a billion free descriptions of them and some more in-depth books (I’d recommend “Please Understand Me”, but there are lots out there).
In other words, just have your assessees use one of the freely available clones (which are more than good enough) and you don’t have to worry about the “official” MBTI copyright.
Not what the OP asked but:
There is a certain degree of skepticism in certain quarters over the validity of this test, and in particular, criticism of its rampant use by employers in making employment decisions. It is criticized as being pseudoscientific.
See also Skeptic’s Dictionary article on it. They aren’t terribly impressed either.