The following is the opinion of the editor. The Journalism Club neither endorses nor condemns the views expressed in this article.
If you haven’t already come across it, the Myers-Briggs test is everywhere. As of 2015, there were nearly 3.5 million tests administered per year in institutions like businesses, schools, government agencies, and even the military (Forbes). In fact, the Myers-Briggs test has made its way into the halls of AOC, often resurfacing in Advisement or Counseling classes. But how valid is the test? The truth is, the MBTI is outdated and unscientific.
What is the MBTI? The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator test is a questionnaire that uses four categories to “break down” your personality. Each of the four categories has two outcomes. At the end of the test, you are said to be one of 16 personality types. As if by magic, you have supposedly discovered yourself.
Where is the Myers-Briggs test in AOC? Everywhere. It is often utilized in Advisement or Counseling to help students pick a career path. It appears on the AOC ASB application and the Anonymous Acorns form. Companies often use the MBTI to evaluate candidates and ensure that their teams don’t have conflicting personalities, without acknowledging that the Myers-Briggs test is not a reliable indicator of personality type.
The MBTI was developed by Katherine and Isabel Briggs in the early 1940s, yet neither woman had any training in the sciences (Indiana University). The MBTI is purportedly based on the theories of famous psychologist Carl Jung, yet Carl Jung himself did not consider his “types” to be as rigid as the test implies (Vox). Websites like 16personalities.com would like to have you believe that these 16 personality types accurately reflect you, but the truth is they don’t. They may claim to use the Big Five traits, but the fact is that these binary classifications are problematic.
Quite simply, what the MBTI purports is impossible. To be able to categorize nearly 7 billion people in to 16 categories is absurd. More absurd, however, is the widespread use of the MBTI despite its lack of scientific credentials.
Over time, the MBTI has been thoroughly debunked. Scientists have shown that the personality traits featured in the MBTI are not the traits that determine personality, and the test has been shown to have low validity and low reliability (Indiana University). This means it is often false and inconsistent, a likely due to the binary classifications. Because, according to the MBTI, people supposedly fall rigidly into one category, people who may be similar or near average could be arbitrarily categorized into one category or another. Imagine if we measure someone’s introversion on a scale of 1-10. If one person has a score of 4 and another person a score of 5, they are arguably very close in introversion, but they would be categorized as opposite in personality.
Today, psychologists have changed how we evaluate personality. They employ what is called the Big Five personality traits: Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism (U.S. Army). These are much better indicators of personality, and they exist on a spectrum rather than in binary opposition.
So why has the MBTI persisted? In all honesty, people prefer to think it’s true. For the same reason people take BuzzFeed quizzes, people enjoy the MBTI. People love to be categorized, to explore themselves. They love to compare themselves to others. The MBTI only provides positive results which, while valuable in raising self-esteem raise self-esteem, is not the way to choose a career or employee. It’s high time AOC and other institutions abandoned the MBTI in favor of more credible tests. After all, imposing a system of personality types onto individuals which endorses the need to belong doesn’t provide direction; it provides limitation.