Let's drag the MBTI through the mud, shall we?

So while looking into the whole personality shtick, I obviously could not help but do some personality test, as well as research a few. After all, I feel like we are not always sure about our personalities and why we do certain things, so it's nice to see someone have an explanation for our strange behavior and tendencies. One of the most famous personality tests/indicators, the MBTI, or Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator, is a personality test that is based off of the psychological types of people the famous psychologist C. G. Jung described. The MBTI seems to be draw personality from cognitive theory, rather than the other famous personality indicator, OCEAN, that seems to draw personality from behavior and our interaction with our environment instead. The MBTI focuses on aspects such as how one views their inner and outer life, how one processes information, how one makes decisions, etc etc etc.

The MBTI has an online free test and website, called 16 Personalities, where apparently every person fits into one of these 16 personality types. We are classified into 16 personalities indicated by 4 letters, and for each letter, we are also given a percentage as to how much we exhibit that trait. I, myself, am an INTP. I'm given the title, “The Logician", and for the most part, I think that the test is pretty accurate, as the description they gave of people of this personality fits me pretty well, I would say. However, this is not the first time I've done this test, and I know that I have changed personality types before. This isn't the most surprising, as I believe that people's personalities are influenced by their environment and the people around them. However, I still decided to look into MBTI test's validity a little more, and found a great blog post by an organizational psychologist (according to twitter, handle: @AdamMGrant) with a PhD (so he seems like he knows what he's talking about) completely ripping apart the MBTI's validity.

In his post, he talks about how the the MBTI said that he changed from one kind of personality into a completely different type after a few months, and then started to question the accuracy of the personality indicator. After he did some research, he concluded, “...the MBTI is about as useful as a polygraph for detecting lies." Ouch.

After reading some of his reasoning and research as to why the MBTI is a sham, with some convincing arguments by him such as "I'm not schizophrenic", I, too, believe that the MBTI is, in less delicate terms, bullshit. This brings me to an impasse, though. On one hand, the MBTI and its changing results could be sign that our personality changes as we grow older and are influenced by the people and environment around us. On the other hand, it seems the changing results could just be the MBTI's own unreliability. So are our personalities actually being influenced by the people around us? I want to say yes, but it seems I can't use the argument that our personality test results change to help support this claim anymore.

Until next time,

A Little Fall of Rain

Article: https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/give-and-take/201309/goodbye-mbti-the-fad-won-t-die