They champion the notion of the “Big Five” personality traits - openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness and neuroticism. “Some psychologists believe that independent, peer-reviewed research in the decades since the MBTI was devised has provided something better than Myers-Briggs. So while the MBTI assessment may be a good method of self-understanding at a particular moment, many in the Occupational Psychology community advises caution in its use and would advise the adoption of the Five-Factor Model instead. Even the Myers-Briggs foundation agrees that “ it is not ethical to use the MBTI instrument for hiring or for deciding job assignments” due to the limitations of the test. The main cause for concern is that the MBTI is designed to be binary in nature, meaning that a person is categorized in an “either this or that” position. While it is a nice way of simplifying a complex concept, even Jung admitted that “ there is no such thing as a pure extrovert or a pure introvert,” and that “such a man would be in a lunatic asylum.” Instead, rather than looking at personality traits as static, modern practice in psychology is to view personality as a spectrum or in states.īy limiting the results to one or the other, studies have shown that it limits the accuracy of the results and does not allow for proper comparison in situations, such as prediction of job success. Likewise, in The Cult of Personality Testing by Annie Murphy Paul, her research finds “ as many as three quarters of test takers achieve a different personality type when tested again.” What to Look Out for in Myers-Briggs? What’s particularly shocking is that independent research has found as many as 50% of takers of a Myers-Briggs assessment have different results, and are classified into a different type, even if a test-retest interval is as short as five weeks. This procedure is known as “test-retest reliability”. Reliability, on the other hand, focuses on whether an assessment is designed to reproduce the same or very similar results when it is again administered. The validity of whole types or particular combinations of preferences.The validity of the four preference pairs as dichotomies.The validity of the four separate preference scales.

The Myers-Briggs Organization addresses this topic directly and mentions that through many studies over the years, their MBTI is valid in the following three categories: Validity looks at whether an instrument or tool measures what it claims to measure. The two most important aspects to look for in any well-designed assessment is that it is both valid and reliable. With a brand that has been marketed as the premier personality test for 70 years and is used in schools and 89 of Fortune 100 companies, we need to ask… What’s The Science Behind Myers-Briggs? This makes the report easier to share and more openly accepted by more organizations in fear of not offending any test taker. The personality assessment was designed to be introspective (inward reflection by the reader) and accordingly, the language of the report is written in a gentle and flattering tone with no negative feedback. Based on the theories of psychologist Carl Jung in his written work “ Personality Types“, the mother-daughter team built upon Jung’s work and categorized human behavior and personality into 16 distinct groups. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, also known as the MBTI, is a personality assessment developed in the 1940s by Katherine Briggs and Isabel Myers. Explaining The Difference Between Myers-Briggs & The Big Five Introducing the Myers-Briggs

4 personality types chart