Art by Christopher Chen
We all, at some point in our lives, seek an answer to the question “Who am I?” In theory, personality tests are a great way to answer this question, but most of them have little to no scientific validity and thus are not meaningful. And those that do have validity, such as the Big Five, tend to test only for directly observable traits, at the expense of saying anything meaningful or eye-opening. However, there is one exception to this rule: the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). The MBTI is both highly descriptive and acceptably scientific, which makes it extremely enlightening.
As the Myers & Briggs Foundation says, the MBTI is a psychometric personality test that assesses a person’s preferences on four dichotomies. Then, it assembles the person’s tested preferences on these dichotomies into a four-letter type code, one of 16 “personality types.”
But why know your personality type? Firstly, it helps self-enlightenment and improvement. Once sorted into a type, there is a plethora of information available about your type’s traits, cognitive processes, strengths and weaknesses. This descriptive power sets the MBTI apart from other tests such as the Big Five. The MBTI descriptions are nuanced and eye-opening, and can greatly help people understand themselves. Additionally, they encourage self-improvement. By clearly documenting types’ common strengths and weaknesses, they give people the knowledge necessary to avoid or surmount their weaknesses while boosting and sharpening their strengths.
Yet the MBTI also applies very well to interpersonal relationships. Knowing someone’s personality type, particularly in the early stages of knowing him/her, can facilitate mutual understanding. It eliminates much of the ambiguity usually present when getting to know someone, which allows deep, strong bonds to form easier. Knowing some traits or tendencies of a person’s personality from the get-go is liberating; it allows people to focus on learning about the idiosyncrasies, personal traits and experiences that make the other person unique.
Beyond the personal level, the MBTI has considerable utility in the workforce. However, this is often misunderstood. The MBTI is not a career sorter, and cannot predict job performance or interests. What it can do is provide managers and employees with indications as to how each type is best motivated, encouraged, managed and put to use, which thereby increases efficiency and rapport at the workplace. As a testament to the test’s value, 89 of the Fortune 100 companies use the MBTI, according to CPP, Inc.
But is the MBTI a scientifically valid test? Some people, such as Adam Grant in the Sept. 18, 2013 Business Insider article “Why the Most Popular Personality Test Is Useless,” label the test pseudoscience. But this attitude is intellectually dishonest and at odds with the facts. The MBTI instrument “meets and exceeds the standards for psychological instruments in terms of its reliability,” according to the Center for Applications of Psychological Type. In addition, numerous studies on the MBTI’s validity, documented in the official MBTI manual supplement, all find that the MBTI is not pseudoscience, and thus is a useful tool.
The MBTI “has been the standard-bearer of testing for generations” for professionally used personality tests, according to Douglas Shuit in the Nov. 26, 2003 article “At 60, Myers-Briggs is Still Sorting Out and Identifying People’s Types,” published on Workforce.com. Additionally, “the MBTI instrument has been the subject of thousands of research projects studying the links between personality type and different aspects of life” according to the Myers & Briggs Foundation. These are both strong testaments to its utility. On both a personal and professional level, the MBTI is a highly enlightening test, and anyone interested in the question of “Who am I?” owes it to themselves to take it.
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