Myers-Briggs Type Indicator: Theory, Uses, and Criticism

Introduction

Human beings have always been interested in understanding their own personality and the personalities of the people they live and work with. It has long been understood that genetics and environment both play an important role in human behavior. It is intriguing to find that people of even the same parentage, exposed to the same living environment, can display totally different behavior and responses to identical situations.

Astrologers try to explain differences in human personalities and traits as effects of individuals' sun signs, a method that divides the population into twelve categories. It is surprising that millions of people identify with the traits ascribed to their sun signs and have faith in their validity. In Hinduism, the astrological system is widely recognized and influences important life-altering decisions such as marriage, business choices, and other relationships. However, there is no scientific support for the astrological division of human personality, and the practice carries no scientific credibility.

Scientists and health professionals who deal with a range of mental health issues have developed several tests to identify behavioral problems. The development of personality theory has long been an area of intense interest to psychologists and psychoanalysts alike, and many different theories of personality have emerged over the years. From Sigmund Freud to B.F. Skinner, researchers have proposed not only definitions of personality and accounts of its development, but also methods for measuring it. When dealing with the general population, subjective judgments about an individual's suitability for certain tasks have always been difficult to make, creating a persistent demand for objective assessment instruments.

IQ tests, the Rorschach Test, the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT), the Socionics Indicator, and the MBTI have all found application in psychological evaluation and personality testing. For the general population, MBTI has achieved such widespread acceptance as a "potentially reliable" instrument that over two million tests are administered each year for a variety of purposes. This popularity might lead one to assume the test is effective at predicting personality, but it is worth noting that astrology commands substantially more believers without any scientific proof of accuracy. This paper investigates the theory behind the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and presents a critical review of its application.

Jungian Theory of Personality Type

Carl Jung's work had a great influence on psychology and on wider society. Jung believed that "type preferences" are innate rather than socially constructed through interaction with parents, family, culture, or other external influences. He held that the environment played a role in either supporting or impeding these inborn preferences. Jung argued that the conscious mind and the personal unconscious were closely related, and he developed the concept of the collective unconscious — a body of knowledge that, in his view, all human beings are born with. This collective unconscious influences all of our experiences and behaviors, most especially emotional ones, but we know of it only indirectly, through its effects.

Jung considered the contents of the collective unconscious to be archetypes — organizing principles that shape how we perceive and interpret experience. He also described the concept of opposites, arguing that one must have a concept of the bad in order to appreciate the concept of the good.

Jung further developed the concepts of introversion and extraversion. Introverts are people who prefer their internal world of thoughts, feelings, fantasies, and dreams, while extraverts prefer the external world of people, things, and activities. Both introverts and extraverts use four functions — sensing, thinking, intuiting, and feeling — to engage with the real world, though each person uses these functions to a different degree. According to Jung, everyone possesses a superior function that is most fully developed, supported by secondary and tertiary functions, while a fourth, inferior function remains poorly developed. Myers and Briggs later built upon Jung's personality types to form the foundation of the MBTI. A separate framework based on Jung's work, known as Socionics, was also developed in Russia for personality analysis.

Myers-Briggs Personality Indicator

Katharine Briggs and her daughter Isabel Briggs Myers, both Americans, extended Jung's theory of introversion and extraversion and his four functional types, adding judging and its opposite, perceiving, as new parameters to create a personality indicator. Although neither Myers nor Briggs had formal training in psychology or statistical analysis, Katharine Briggs's firm conviction that Jung's theory was consistent with her own observations prompted the mother-and-daughter team to undertake extensive empirical testing and to gather a vast body of data. The first version of the MBTI manual was published in 1962, and revisions continued until Myers's death. The credibility of the MBTI has been enhanced by the volume of data collected and analyzed by its developers; Myers and McCaulley drew on records from 250,000 individuals for the revised manual published in 1985.

In the MBTI instrument, participants complete a multiple-choice questionnaire either online or on paper. They are advised that there are no "right or wrong" answers and are encouraged to choose whichever response best fits them. MBTI administrators provide a printed profile in the form of a four-letter code and often supply a detailed report explaining the identified personality type and its characteristics. Depending on the administering organization, participants may also have the opportunity for an interactive discussion with someone qualified to interpret the results. Interpretive reports can be downloaded from service providers and are often expanded into an MBTI Interpretive Report that analyzes how the candidate is likely to manage different situations.

The test uses four pairs of attributes drawn from Jung's and Myers's dichotomies to derive a personality type. These pairs are: Extraversion (E) versus Introversion (I); Sensing (S) versus Intuition (N); Thinking (T) versus Feeling (F); and Judging (J) versus Perceiving (P). Extraverts tend to relate easily to the outer world of people and things, while introverts tend to relate to the inner world of ideas and impressions. Sensing types focus on what the five senses reveal, while intuitive types use imagination to perceive new possibilities. Thinking types base decisions on objective analysis and logic, while feeling types base decisions on values and people-centered concerns. Judging types prefer decisions to be settled and their lives to be planned and orderly, while perceiving types prefer to remain open and flexible.

A person identified as ENFP, for example, is expected to display characteristics associated with each of those four preferences. A graphical output indicates the degree to which the person falls into each category, typically on a four-point scale: slight, moderate, clear, and very clear. An ENFP individual might be rated as very clear on E and N, clear on P, and moderate on F — indicating strong extraversion, strong intuition, a clear perceiving orientation, and only a moderate inclination toward the feeling preference.

The combination of four letters produces 16 possible personality types. These 16 types of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator are commonly displayed in a "type table": ISTJ, ISFJ, INFJ, INTJ, ISTP, ISFP, INFP, INTP, ESTP, ESFP, ENFP, ENTP, ESTJ, ESFJ, ENFJ, and ENTJ.

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