Okay, time for some expertise. I’m a personality psychologist myself who has been in HR consulting and leadership assessment and development consulting for most of the last 20 years. The MBTI is indeed a crap test, which happens to be so overwhelmingly popular that it isn’t going away. I have used it when I have to, and the one thing it does well is raise people’s awareness about how differences between people need not be negative, and that you tend to make assumptions based on your personality. Technically you could do this with your astrological sign, too, but at least there is some mild validity to the MBTI.
Under no condition should you use personality tests – be they MBTI or Big-Five-based – to select people for jobs unless you have compelling empirical evidence that it matters. Because generally, it doesn’t. Furthermore, recent research suggest that even in the best case personality tests explain no more than 10-15% of variation in performance. The best use of them is as part of a development process to explain gaps in competence after the fact, but even then the assumption is that there are ways to perform despite your personality. The best change leader I have personally met was a profound introvert, contrary to what people imagine – and even used his introversion in ways that added to it.
I believe BigT was referring to the many double-blind tests on the MBTI, not anything I said.
However, what I said isn’t a defense, it’s just something that is obvious. There are many psychometric tests out there. Some are unproven, while some are extensively tested and verified. It’s not a No True Scotsman fallacy - it’s just a fact.
BTW the reason I know about this and have an opinion is that I work for a psychometric company - and said company is as fucked up (if not more) than any other I’ve worked for - despite (or perhaps because of) using the tests extensively. IOW, what ianzin said.
We were bumping against the word limit and so slid over this detail, but yes, I’m sure the Master will want to clarify.
I think with the M-B, and I believe also with the Keirsey, it is important not to place a value on a personality characteristic. Each of the sixteen factors is a facet of personality according to the designers, and neither positive quality nor negative of itself.
It seems to be human nature to put values on them. Such as the thought that an introverted person is less desirable in certain positions than an introvert. This doesn’t take into consideration the adapted functioning skills of the individual.
To use a test as the only indicator of desirability would be a mistake as it is the larger picture that must be taken into consideration.
I’ve been familiar with the M-B for forty years and find it to be surprisingly helpful in relationship issues.
I must disagree, rather strongly. If they want an extrovert for the job, then being an introvert won’t get you hired.
I’m thinking that the tests can be useful if the people using them truly understand their uses and limitations.
I applied for a job and was rejected based upon the personality test that I was given. I have no idea what the test was. All I remember it was a personality test and most of the questions involve me choosing colors.
A few months later, they were desperate for someone with my expertise, and I was hired as an independent consultant. Because they were so desperate for someone with my qualifications, I was able to charge them a much higher premium than I usually make for my work. They ended up paying me a bit more than double what they would have paid me if they had originally hired me as an employee.
Funny thing was that I wasn’t hired because their personality test said I was an immature personality who would be unforgiving and to seek vengeance when I feel wronged. Maybe there is something to these personality tests after all.
I’m not a professional, but I have personal experience with these tests and I’ve read a lot about psych testing history as it evolved in the 20th century.
My conclusion is that the test results yield genuine insight into the testee only if analyzed by a very sophisticated and talented psych. or personnel professional. As in most professions, it’s the exception that the psych. or personnel professional is really that good at what they do. Most of them are somewhat below or above average. Thus, when they analyze test results, there’s lots of potential for misunderstanding, over-generalization, or even projective identification on the part of the professional. This is all counterproductive, of course.
As for the MBTI, I remember that I had an difficult time answering many of the questions. This is because so many of the answer choices were equally plausible, or one or another answer choice was best depending on the context (in terms of my life circumstances, etc.) in which the question was considered.
At least the MBTI is used, generally, only for career related matters. What’s really tragic is the misuse of other psych. tests, such as the Rorschach or the Thematic Apperception Test, in ways that can ruin lives.
I’ve heard about cases where child custody has been assigned to one or another parent based on how some psych. professional interprets the results of a Rorschach or TAT. I’ve heard also – although I don’t know if it’s true – that defendants in capital cases are sometimes given these tests by shrinks working for the prosecution. Not good.
The “big five”/“five factor model” of personality mentioned already is based on statistical analysis of language itself, i.e. how we define ourselves. This is the most accurate description model of personality based on correlational analysis- that is, the categories are general, but not so general that they begin to overlap.
In addition, job “testing” has been mentioned already, and although it is generally legal, i find it extremely unethical to use such tests. Imagine if you had a personality disorder- you would have a more difficult time discerning the “correct” answers.
As for accuracy of testing, something like a MMPI should be used to counter testee biases.
So, does anyone have a case to report of the MBTI being used in hiring decisions? Because that would be a non-trivial consideration in determining whether this is a parlor game that encourages tollerance, or another noxious pseudo-science to be shunned by all thinking and feeling people.
It should be noted that there are partisans for the system who will insist that it is based on scientific research. As Cecil’s column mentioned, it is based on the theories of Carl Jung, which have never really been supported in clinical observations. I’ve heard the same observations made about Jung’s contemporary Freud. Their insights into human psychology, right or wrong, are of more of a literary nature than scientific. But some people really, really want this stuff to bear the gravitas of Science.
The test is based on something relevant to the outcomes it claims to produce, unlike horoscopes. That right there is the big argument for taking it seriously. But even that, as pointed out above, is of dubious value for a lot of reasons. Weighed against that are a lot of eyebrow-raising markers of pseudoscience. The Barnum Effect is clearly in play. It’s unapologetically reductionist, although attempts to counter this charge have been made – suggestions that there are ‘morning temperments’ and different temperments for different situations, ect., which smack of adding epicycles on top of epicycles to avoid admitting to a fundamentally flawed model. It also worries me that in my personal experience, fans of the system are prickly and defensive about it, and prone to feel persecuted when questioned about it. The MBTI is deeply redolent of quackery.
But doesn’t this raise the question of whether our self-definition is genuine (i.e., based on reality testing), or just a reflection of how we’d like to think of ourselves as (without insight into reality)? Maybe I’m missing something here, but I don’t know that the tests can recognize this distinction.
Well, maybe this is me being prickly about it, but it seems to me that people with similar personalities tend to score similarly on the MBTI. And as noted upthread, studies have borne this out.
I think we can all agree the MBTI isn’t a definitive assessment of immutable personality traits, but as a tool, used to gain insight into how one’s personality compares to others’, I think it’s bordering on obvious that it has some value.
Powers &8^]
I am INFP/J (right on the cusp, apparently, and T or J changes with my mood). That make you feel better? 
(I think INFs are supposed to be rare, too, IIRC. One at 1% and the other at 2 or 3% or something like that? Though I can’t remember which is which.)
The trouble with using it for hiring decisions, IMHO, is that doing so presumes that no one is capable of learning behaviors outside of their “type” and performing them well if and when necessary. I am an introvert – I am very much an introvert – yet most people who meet me at, say, a networking event, don’t realize this. I have learned out to be outgoing and engaging; and to a certain extent this does come naturally to me, as I do genuinely like to talk to people and learn about them. However, crowds wear me out. Approaching and engaging total strangers is very difficult for me. After attending an “industry party,” I normally am exhausted for the next 24-36 hours.
But being an introvert doesn’t mean that I can’t be social. It doesn’t even mean that I don’t like being social (I do like it). It just means that being social in a context that encompasses more than, say, 3 other people that I know relatively well wears me out, and I need more time to recover. It doesn’t mean that I can’t do it at all.
It can be useful in terms of learning how to adapt the person to the job, and the job to the person (with the ideal of meeting somewhere in the middle).
BTW, is there a significant difference between Myers-Briggs and the Keirsey Temperament Sorter? Both use the same “types,” although I don’t know how their testing methods compare. (For reference, the tests I’ve taken have been mainly the Keirsey test, as far as I’m aware.)
This part of the original column is inaccurate. The point of the MBTI is not to tell you what you are but to tell you how you operate. For instance, it’s not that I’m an introvert, but that I operate most comfortably and capably in an introverted mode. I can behave like an extravert if need be (my I score isn’t nearly as extreme as, say, my N score), but my preference is for introversion. And people’s scores do change over time, depending on their experiences and maturation; a person may test as INTP as a teenager (when it seems “cool” to put off decisions and judgments) but as INTJ as a young adult (when he decides he needs to get his shit together). The Jungian ideal, in fact, is to become XXXX – fully balanced, equally capable of operating in any mode, depending on what the situation demands.
This stands in contrast to other empirically compelling but scientifically questionable personality typing schemes, such as the Enneagram, in which your type is defined by your fundamental drives, and if you come out as a Type One, as time goes by, you may become a less healthy One or a more healthy One, or the “flavor” of your One-ness (wings and subtypes) may fluctuate somewhat, but you’ll never become a Five, because what you fear and desire most deeply is not the same thing as what a Five fears and desires.
Quoth DocCathode:
I never said anything about hiring. The M-B is a lousy tool for deciding whether to hire somebody, and I would never claim otherwise. But just because it’s the wrong tool for that particular job doesn’t mean it’s a lousy tool: I wouldn’t want anyone to make hiring decisions based on blood type, either, but that doesn’t mean that blood type is pseudoscience. In any circumstance where it is reasonable to apply a Myers-Briggs test, it is meaningless to talk about “gaming the system”, since you’ll only be hurting yourself.
Some doesn’t commit you to much. Let’s hazzard a bit further to say that the MBTI has value in that it dissuades people from their instinctive assumptions that there’s something wrong with people who interact with the world differently than they do. You can and should question the model that is supposed to make these differences are measurable, have predictable consequences and thus prescribable solutions for efficiency and conflict resolution.
I took the MBTI about 25 years ago, and the results indicated that I am an extrovert. In truth, I have always been known as a very introverted person.
The person who gave me the test was very accomplished in his field, having an impressive record of published articles, over three decades of experience, and holding a PhD from an Ivy League school. That individual told me that the MBTI, although a valuable tool, was not failproof. He agreed that I am almost certainly an introverted person, and that the test had misread my personality. According to this professional, it’s entirely possible that testees answer MBTI questions according to how they’d like to see themselves, as opposed to how they really are, and that they do this unwittingly. Thus, the test results cannot be always be taken at face value.
This particular professional, thankfully, had the experience and sophistication to recognize the MBTI’s limitations. He knew where to draw the line regarding the test’s reliability. I doubt very much that the majority of professionals who administer this test, including psychologists and HR managers, are sophisticated enough to recognize the test’s potential failings. Thus, meaningful insight yielded via the MBTI probably goes right out the window all too often.
Cecil,
As the past CEO of a national, employee-owned company, and currently an executive coach and business culture consultant, I’d like to weigh in on your recent column (2/12/10) about the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, and the comments that others posted on that column.
First, let me state up-front that I am outspoken proponent of the constructive understanding and use of personality differences in all aspects of our lives: in our work environment, our family life, and any other type of social interaction. I also understand the concern people have for:
• Being “pigeonholed” into sixteen, or however many personality types.
• The misuse of personality type to hire, assign work, or otherwise discriminate against an individual.
With that as background, here are my comments about the MBTI, personality type, and your column:
• A well-informed professional who uses the knowledge of personality type in their work with clients will never “test and tell.” Self-assessment, guided by a qualified professional, is the only clear way to determine an individual’s personality “preferences”. An instrument purporting to determine an individual’s personality is simply a data point; a hypothesis to be tested over one’s lifetime.
• Healthy, mature individuals can access a variety of behaviors, as called for in various social interactions.
o However, we prefer to behave and think in particular ways. Think of these preferred behaviors as our default modes of operating in the world.
o We will often default to the less attractive aspects of our preferences when we are tired, upset or otherwise stressed.
o When we use our preferred mental functions constructively, our best work, our enjoyment of others and they of us, comes effortlessly.
• There are approximately 6.8 billion people in the world. To say that they all neatly fit into one of sixteen different personality types defies logic. Yet there are some universal aspects of personality that can be categorized.
• It is less important that you “nail down” which of the four-letter type codes you fit into than it is to understand that not everybody thinks and acts alike. Such understanding then becomes the basis for using differences constructively.
• I would never recommend using a psychometric instrument, like the MBTI, for hiring decisions.
o First, the instruments are not 100% accurate (see first bullet above)
o Second, if you want to hire only a particular personality type for, say, your sales department, you will have the workforce equivalent of inbreeding: the worst aspects (recessive genes, figuratively speaking) of that type will have a greater impact on your team than the good aspects you intended to promote.
o Finally, it is highly unlikely that your clientele are of a similar, or complimentary, personality type as your monolithic sales force, so it is not likely that every client will respond well to your cloned sales people.
• Cecil, you state, “Nothing about the origin of the … MBTI inspires much confidence.” I beg to differ:
o Jung’s work continues to be a major force in the field of psychology today
o Katherine Myers and Isabel Briggs Myers both spent their entire lives researching and making Jung’s theories accessible to the general public (beginning in the early 1920’s, not 1940’s)
o No psychometric instrument has been more studied, and found to be reliable (its results are consistent), and valid (it measures what it says it measures). Contact me if you’d like to see the actual studies.
• Dr. David Kiersy’s work with temperament theory was done independently of Jung, Myers and Briggs’ work on personality type. He later recognized the how there was a relationship between temperament theory and the sixteen personality types, and many of us in the personality type professional community use this relationship to better inform our clients.
I hope you find this information helpful.
Not sure about Jung - but I believe that Freud was a Fraud who recognized early in his career that he was treating people traumatized by early childhood abuse. He made up his Freudian hogwash rather than come out with the career-limiting move of accusing the high society of Vienna of being child molestors, and he took psychology down a century-long dead end detour in the the process.
Quacks like a duck.
Okay, but let’s look at it this way. How many professionals who administer the MBTI and interpret its results have actually read and comprehended Jung’s abstruse theories? Not many, I’ll bet. Most professionals don’t need to understand these arcane theories in order to get a graduate degree in psychology or something related to human resources management. They just need to have a concrete understanding of less complicated texts to know something about the MBTI. This results, all too often, in misuse of tests like the MBTI.
The unsophisticated professional, over-impressed with his or her own constricted understanding of theory, is then in a position to make the myopic and sanctimonious (sometimes even petty) judgment that a testee is “personality disordered.” In truth, these professionals are just using the MBTI as a divining rod, enabling them to project qualities onto testees that, in fact, may not really exist. This, I’m sure, is not the object that Jung, Myers, Briggs, and Kiersy had in mind.
The MBTI should be administered only by that small percentage of professionals who are truly experienced and sophisticated enough to know what they’re doing. The use of these tests on such a widespread basis in schools, industry, and psychotherapeutic settings should stop.