I'm an ENTJ

[Brian Howell]

I've taken the Meyers-Briggs personality assessment tool twice: once in my late 20s as part of a career assessment, and another time more than two decades later for one of the classes I took at Golden Gate University. The first time I was an ENFP: extroverted, intuitive, feeling, perceiving. The second time I was came un an ENTJ: replace feeling with thinking and perceiving with judging. 

The tool, which is administered in a booklet, requires answering a fair number of questions using Likert-scale responses. E.g., rarely, sometimes, often, very often, always. Likert questions define a a quantifiable scale along which respondents indicate self-assessed behaviors, preferences, or other psychological states. Each question classifies the respondent along one of four dimensions defined by the MBTI: 

1. introverted..extroversion (coded as I,E) 
   
2. thinking...perceiving (T,P)
3. sensing..intuition (S,I)
4. perceiving..judging (P,J)

As indicated above, the poles of each dimension are identified by single letters (two per dimension). 

After the booklet has been completed, the respondent's results are tallied and a four letter code is generated corresponding to where those results fall along each of the dimensions. 

As noted above, I’m an ENTJ. Kate, my wife, is an ISTJ. I'll leave it to you to decode it.

Four dimensions with yields sixteen possible aggregate classifications (2*2*2*2 = 16), or, as the instrument would, have it personality types, hence its full name: the Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator, or MBTI for short. Each of the sixteen types also has a categorical descriptor: (type names) ENFPs are Champions. ISTJs are Logisticians. And ENTJs are Champons. There are also Defenders (ISFJ), Mediators (INFP), and Protagonists (ENFJ), plus nine others.

Many Americans know both their MBTI codings and type names. This is not surprising given the prevalence of the instrument. It is used by many HR departments to assess potential hires, or current employes. Career search advisors use it to guide their advisees—it's very popular in college job placement programs. Employers use it to build teams. The military uses it similarly. Many other Americans think they know their MTBI for having taken a Meyers-Briggs (—style) online test. The actual instrument is administered only using paper booklets, by a certified examiner (who paid $1,700 for training) and costs $20 to take. The instrument is copyrighted; takers are not allowed to keep the booklet after completion and tallying, nor are they allowed to copy down any of the questions or in any way reproduce any of the content in the booklet. Anything found online is at best an approximation of the actual instrument—which itself is occasionally updated.

After my second taking of the MBTI, I remarked to the administrator on my change in type, which I thought strange because that seemed to imply that types weren’t constant. He replied that occasionally—rarely—does a person’s type change. And that’s usually as a consequence of dramatic life changes. Being that that was true in my case, I let the issue drop, though I was somewhat disappointed at having shifted from being a Champion to a Commander (also called a Field Marshal). Then again, upon reading about the Commander, I did feel that it well described many features of my personality: (no snide comments, please)

ENTJs are natural-born leaders. People with this personality type embody the gifts of charisma and confidence, and project authority in a way that draws crowds together behind a common goal. But unlike their Feeling (F) counterpart, ENTJs are characterized by an often ruthless level of rationality, using their drive, determination and sharp minds to achieve whatever end they've set for themselves. Perhaps it is best that they make up only three percent of the population, lest they overwhelm the more timid and sensitive personality types that make up much of the rest of the world – but we have ENTJs to thank for many of the businesses and institutions we take for granted every day.

Unfortunately, none of this is in accurate. The MBTI has as much scientific standing as astrology, which is to say none at all. It is pseudo-science. 

The instrument was originally constructed by a Michigan housewife and her college educated daughter. Neither had any training in psychology. They based their work on Carl Jung’s now discredited work on personality types.

Isabel Briggs Myers, with a bachelor's degree in political science and no academic affiliation, was responsible for the creation of what has become the most widely used and highly respected personality inventory of all time. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator® (MBTI®) instrument, now taken by at least two million people each year-and translated into sixteen languages-was developed over a period of more than forty years, progressing from Isabel Myers' dining room to a cottage industry, to the prestigious Educational Testing Service, and to its current publisher, CPP, Inc.

 

Isabel Myers and her mother, Katharine Cook Briggs, both astute observers of human behavior, were drawn to C. G. Jung's work, which sparked their interest into a passionate devotion to put the theory of psychological type to practical use. With the onset of World War II, Isabel Myers recognized that a psychological instrument that has as its foundation the understanding and appreciation of human differences would be invaluable. She researched and developed the Indicator over the next four decades, until her death in 1980. Following are the tenets of Isabel Myers' philosophy, found among her papers after her death. She was known for her keen intelligence and tenacious curiosity, as well as a deeply held set of values and generosity of spirit. She is remembered for her enormous contribution to the field of psychological testing and to the theory of typology, but also for her strength of character and her tireless pursuit of human understanding.

 The MBTI is seriously unreliable: if you take it again after a five week gap, there is a 50% chance you will end up as a different personality type. Also, like the supposed attributes and meanings of astrological signs, MBTI type descriptions are so generalized that they are applicable to anybody. Also, note that the type names, e.g. Champion, Commander, Defender, Mediator, ... each are assertive and positive. Few, I think, are those who would take exception to being designated an Advocate or an Architect. Both of these facts play to something that psychologists call the Forer Effect:“Psychologist Bertram R. Forer (1914-2000) found that people tend to accept vague and general personality descriptions as uniquely applicable to themselves without realizing that the same description could be applied to just about anyone.”

What’s your type?

Read more about the unreliability of the MBTI: https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/give-and-take/201309/goodbye-mbti-the-fad-won-t-die

Also more on the Forer Effect: http://www.newyorker.com/science/maria-konnikova/i-want-you-to-know-that-im-tyrion-lannister

[Jack Saunders]

I've taken it a few times but never bothered to record the results.  What made me most skeptical was the blurry zone between reporting and aspiring.  Even theconscientious subject will have some trouble keeping the two untangled.  And the highly salient repetition of very similar questions queers the test as consistency concerns begin to tug the test taker...even the fully cooperative subject will want to feel consistent.

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[Craig Good]

It’s astrology in a lab coat. I think Brian was being too kind in this episode:

http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4221

A couple of amateurs tried to glue numbers to some Jungian claptrap and all they got was further evidence of the Forer Effect.

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    --Craig                                                       WWJGD?

    clg...@me.com        http://www.craig-good.com

    Diplomacy: The art of saying "nice doggy" until you can find a rock