I had to take the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) several times in my life. My personality apparently from high school to college—I became more extroverted as I emerged from teenaged angst, perhaps?—so the solidity of the test’s outcome crumbled for me then. My college-aged personality indicated that I would be a CEO, an unlikely career for someone who hates business politics and power plays.
Every time I took the test, I felt like I was reading a fortune cookie. Type descriptions described me—and everyone else I knew with slightly different adjectives—as warmhearted, outgoing and friendly and said that I wanted to make work fun! Each personality type’s description is vague and non-threatening, crafted, it seems, to fit everyone fairly well and to make each person think that his or her personality type is best. I remember bonding with my fellow—exceedingly rare—INTJ personality type in high school, but what would we have in common now that I have changed?
Most people take the MBTI more seriously than I do, sincerely using it to pick careers and shape social interactions. What is about this short questionnaire that makes people think the Type Indicator has them pegged? And, perhaps more frightening, what makes people want to get pegged in the first place?
Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung introduced the idea of psychological types in the 1920s. Isabel Briggs Myers continued with his research in the 1940’s and 1950’s, with the first publication of the indicator in 1962. The MBTI is said to be valid and reliable. Psychologists say that it both measures what it says it will and will remain the same each time the tester takes the assessment.
The MBTI is divided into four letters that represent different parts of a person’s personality. These represent the flow of energy: extroverted or introverted, how a person takes in information: sensing or intuiting, the way a person prefers to make decisions: thinking or feeling and lifestyle preference: judging or perceiving. The MBTI, like in Jung’s original model, structures each of these parts on a scale so that a person is dominant in one aspect, but also has aspects of the others in his or her personality.
On the MBTI website, it is quick to note that all personality types are equal. Separate but equal, but much of the material entered note the types of jobs suited. Only four types are meant to business-savvy Trumps and Gateses out there.
To me, the saddest part about this test, and psychology in general, is its striving to take away randomness and individuality in people. According to the MBTI website, “ The essence of the theory is that much seemingly random variation in the behavior is actually quite orderly and consistent, being due to basic differences in the ways individuals prefer to use their perception and judgment.” In this way, the MBTI tells people that they will behave a certain way--it is their personality destiny--and that everyone else will behave in a way that they can predict and understand. Who wants to predict and understand?
Personality tests take out the uniqueness in people as well as the excitement that comes with the belief that there is spontaneity in every person. Personality tests both predict and encourage people to become cookie cutouts of their alleged INTP, ENTJ or ISFP selves.