BLUF

In this article, academic psychologist Art Markman states that the Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is, in so many words, neither accurate nor helpful in identifying personality types.

Summary

Art Markman makes the following points about the Myers Briggs Type Indicator  (MBTI):

  • Many managers want a simple classification system for understanding their people
  • The MBTI forces people into one of four categories:
  1. Extraversion (E) vs. Introversion (I)
  2. Sensing (S) vs. Intuition (N)
  3. Thinking (T) vs. Feeling (F)
  4. Judging (J) vs. Perceiving (P)
  1. Openness
  2. Conscientiousness
  3. Extraversion
  4. Agreeableness
  5. Neuroticism
  • People are generally a combination of the Big Five.
  • Psychologists have been studying, measuring and replicating the Big Five for decades.
  • MBTI that classifies people will force them into a category, even if they are really a mix of more than one.
  • People are also likely to behave differently depending on the context.
  • Personality characteristics predict only about 20% to 30% of the difference in behaviours among people.
  • MBTI gives people a false sense of how extreme they are along a particular dimension.
Learn more about why so many psychologists regard the MBTI as inaccurate.

References