The popularity and controversy of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator
The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is a personality assessment tool that categorizes individuals into 16 distinct personality types based on four key dichotomies: Introversion/Extraversion, Sensing/Intuition, Thinking/Feeling, and Judging/Perceiving. Developed from Carl Jung’s theory of psychological types by Katharine Cook Briggs and her daughter Isabel Briggs Myers, the MBTI offers insights into personal preferences and decision-making processes by assigning each person a 4-letter personality type. It has been widely used in many places, including for corporate, educational, and personal development, to facilitate better self-understanding; an estimated 2 million people take the test annually, and over 50 million people have taken it since 1960.
The MBTI operates on the principle that these dichotomies combine in various ways to form distinct personality types, each with its own set of preferences and ways of interacting with the world. Its primary goal is to help individuals understand themselves better, including their motivations, natural strengths, potential growth areas, and how they perceive and interact with the world around them.
As an individual who has personally engaged with the MBTI, I've experienced the allure of identifying with a specific type, specifically as an "INTJ," and the sense of community it fosters. It has been a fun talking point with my friends, and many others online feel so as well. However, I feel that it should not be used for professional scenarios or for stereotyping people based on their personality test results: I noticed that when I took the test, I would have biases toward certain answers.
Dan McAdams, a professor at Northwestern University, critiques the MBTI for its dichotomous approach to personality traits, particularly the Thinking/Feeling dimension, which he considers to lack empirical evidence. He asserts that the MBTI's dimensions, except for possibly the Introversion/Extraversion scale, do not have psychological reality: “They were not interested in the criteria for scientific inquiry in personality science. And so it puts you into a type… It doesn’t matter what your score is on that dimension. That truly is like a horoscope there. It’s completely random. People don’t sort out that way. And so when they’ve done research and by the way, the people who push the Myers Briggs don’t do research.”
Stephen Benning, director of the Psychophysiology of Emotion and Personality Laboratory at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, agrees with this view, stating that “The MBTI is not a reliable sorter of people into ‘types,’ which means that those types are not scientifically meaningful.” He highlights how “results suggest the MBTI types are highly unstable over time” over time, with “[m]ore than one-third of people receiv[ing] different four-letter types after a four-week period” and how “other studies have shown that over a five-week period, about 50 percent of people will receive different four-letter types”, suggesting the MBTI's lack of reliable classifications. People scoring closely to each other may even be assigned completely different personality types!
This criticism is echoed in a critique on Recruiter.com, which compares the MBTI's binary categories to an inaccurate classification system. The forced-choice format of the MBTI and its binary categories are seen as oversimplifications of the complex spectrum of human personality. As mentioned by the critique, Dr. Pittenger, psychometric researcher and Dean of the College of Liberal Arts, Marshall University, warns: “Although the MBTI is an extremely popular measure of personality, I believe that the available data warrant extreme caution in its application as a counseling tool, especially as consultants use it in various business settings.”
The MBTI's widespread use can be attributed to its simplicity and the appealing narratives it offers for self-perception, which I have subconsciously experienced myself. Jaime Lane Derringer, Ph.D, a psychologist at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, tells Discover Magazine, “We are fundamentally driven to understand ourselves and others, and often seek that understanding in the form of labels that can stand in for complicated ideas,” adding that The idea of being able to know a person from a single word or acronym is appealing because, if accurate, it would save us a lot of time. But we’re more complicated than that, and there are more than 16 types of people in the world.” This psychological phenomenon also explains the appeal of astrology and fortune-telling.
Compared to the MBTI, the Big Five Dimensions of Personality, which breaks down personality into five components, is often cited as a more scientifically robust model for assessing personality. The Big Five model identifies five broad dimensions of personality (Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism). Its emphasis on a spectrum of traits rather than fixed types aligns more closely with contemporary psychological research, offering a more nuanced understanding of personality.
While the MBTI provides a framework for self-reflection and understanding interpersonal dynamics, it should be used cautiously and in conjunction with other assessment methods. Though fun, as experienced myself, it should not be taken seriously and used for recruiting purposes: according to the Myers Briggs Foundation itself, it is completely unethical to use the MBTI assessment for hiring, due to the test's limitations and lack of empirical support. In less formal settings, like among friends, the MBTI can be entertaining. However, its application should be limited to casual engagement rather than serious, decision-making scenarios. If you want to try out this test by yourself, here’s a great place to try!