The Religion Of Myers-Briggs -- The Fad That Just Won't Die
Just got an email from columnist and and supposed business expert crowing about giving four students the Myers-Briggs test -- a test that supposedly measures personality (as in, measures it in a way more accurate than having your tea leaves read). Argh.
Here's Wharton School's @AdamMGrant at HuffPo on what crap it is:
My name is Adam Grant, and I am an INTJ. That's what I learned from a wildly popular personality test, which is taken by more than 2.5 million people a year, and used by 89 of the Fortune 100 companies. It's called the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), and my score means that I'm more introverted than extraverted, intuiting than sensing, thinking than feeling, and judging than perceiving. As I reflected on the results, I experienced flashes of insight. Although I spend much of my time teaching and speaking on stage, I am more of an introvert -- I've always preferred a good book to a wild party. And I have occasionally kept lists of my to-do lists.But when I took the test a few months later, I was an ESFP. Suddenly, I had become the life of the party, the guy who follows his heart and throws caution to the wind. Had my personality changed, or is this test not all it's cracked up to be? I began to read through the evidence, and I found that the MBTI is about as useful as a polygraph for detecting lies. One researcher even called it an "act of irresponsible armchair philosophy." When it comes to accuracy, if you put a horoscope on one end and a heart monitor on the other, the MBTI falls about halfway in between.
Now, if you're an MBTI fan, you might say it's typical of an INTJ to turn to science. Touche. But regardless of your type, it's hard to argue with the idea that if we're going to divide people into categories, those categories ought to be meaningful. In social science, we use four standards: are the categories reliable, valid, independent, and comprehensive? For the MBTI, the evidence says not very, no, no, and not really.
1. I'm Not Schizophrenic
A test is reliable if it produces the same results from different sources. If you think your leg is broken, you can be more confident when two different radiologists diagnose a fracture. In personality testing, reliability means getting consistent results over time, or similar scores when rated by multiple people who know me well. As my inconsistent scores foreshadowed, the MBTI does poorly on reliability. Research shows "that as many as three-quarters of test takers achieve a different personality type when tested again," writes Annie Murphy Paul in The Cult of Personality Testing, "and the sixteen distinctive types described by the Myers-Briggs have no scientific basis whatsoever." In a recent article, Roman Krznaric adds that "if you retake the test after only a five-week gap, there's around a 50 percent chance that you will fall into a different personality category."
The rest at the link.
Grant wrote an inspiring book, Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success, which has a research-based message (pretty much described by his subtitle) that dovetails with the advice I give in "Trickle-Down Humanity," the last chapter in "Good Manners for Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck."
My tests show I'm coocoo for Cocopuffs. Spot on!
I rude at January 26, 2015 10:08 AM
I hate, HATE, Myers-Briggs; along with anyone who believes in that crap!
Myers-Briggs themselves (or just one of them anyway) did get one thing right - folks will abuse their system.
That is to say, yea, Myers-Briggs can be helpful in a very general sort of way. But I believe that most folks are way too complex to always fit neatly into anyone of their categories.
Of course, whenever I point that out a "believer" tries to push me into whatever the freaking category is.
It gets really scary whenever educators uses that garbage science; but, worse is when employers try to use the same junk science when deciding who to hire.
One thing the author left out is that it is overwhelmingly self-proclaimed liberals who love Myers-Briggs - typical! For, it is liberals who love to put folks into categories; and that is one reason why Myers-Briggs is still around. Liberals control most of our US educational system.
charles at January 26, 2015 2:32 PM
I'm dismayed by how often I see people on the net (twitter, random forums) who claim to be STEM and/or skeptics of various sorts who proudly display their Myer Briggs score ... and definitely take it seriously.
And more displayed and appalled by the number of HR personnel and managers who put a huge stock in it.
jerry at January 26, 2015 2:41 PM
Ugh. Had a lunch with two "marketing professionals" this week that devolved into the two of them having a circle (or should it be battery?) jerk over how I would score on the MB. It was like that episode of Seinfeld when the Vietnamese nail stylists were talking about Elaine right in front of her. But without the funny.
snakeman99 at January 26, 2015 3:51 PM
How would you score on the Voight-Kampff test?
Radwaste at January 26, 2015 4:26 PM
"How would you score on the Voight-Kampff test?"
Tortoise. Turtle. Same thing.
Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at January 26, 2015 5:05 PM
Radwaste,
Just because I am a replicant doesn't make my views and experiences any less valid.
And MB is that wonderful kind of snake-oil people high up in industry like to use. You come up with a giberish scale. Rate people or projects on that scale. And then you do what you were going to do all along. But now you have 'SCIENCE!!!' (queue thunder) to back up your gut.
A lot of business economics is used this way too. A guy will decide where to found a store. And after the fact he pays an economist to show how that was the perfect decision. That way all of his investors feel good because it wasn't the guy's gut making the decision. There was math and stuff.
Ben at January 26, 2015 6:46 PM
Back when I had a corporate job one of the management dropped in and handed me a MB test. Then he left. I got on the internet for some research and aligned my profile with Ulysses S. Grant. Believe me, management was a bit impressed with the results.
Canvasback at January 26, 2015 6:51 PM
Most of psychology, and psychological testing is unscientific crap.
Because it is impossible to do a double blind study on what goes on inside someone's head.
Why should Myers-Briggs be the exception?
Isab at January 26, 2015 7:37 PM
A couple of years ago, when going for a nursing degree, my husband had to take a "job finding" type class as a fill in. He had to take the MB and write essays on the results. It was like half the class. Ridiculous.
Kimberly at January 26, 2015 8:58 PM
Keep in mind that the polygraph's main use is to intimidate, followed by the establishment of probable cause.
So much of what the public thinks is "science"... isn't.
Radwaste at January 26, 2015 9:01 PM
I never take these kinds of things seriously, but I am consistently either INTJ or ENTJ, depending on my mood. For some reason I find that hilarious.
Daghain at January 26, 2015 9:19 PM
Daghain: Another NTJ-er with mixed I/E scoring here. And, to be fair, that does describe my personality fairly well -- I have traits of both an extrovert and introvert. But I don't orient my life around that...
marion at January 27, 2015 4:40 AM
The last time a prospective employer insisted that I take an MB, along with a battery of other pointless tests, I told them that they could keep their job.
Who would want to work in a place where decisions are made on the basis of voodoo bullshit?
the other rob at January 27, 2015 5:33 AM
I had a manager who was a big believer in Myers-Briggs and had her department take a mini-test. Now, whether she had us take the test to better understand us or to better segregate us, I was never able to figure out.
Conan the Grammarian at January 27, 2015 11:13 AM
I had a manager who was a big believer in Myers-Briggs and had her department take a mini-test. Now, whether she had us take the test to better understand us or to better segregate us, I was never able to figure out.
Conan the Grammarian at January 27, 2015 11:14 AM
Years and years ago, I applied for a job that was very consistent with my experience. I passed the first interview with flying colors. Unfortunately, the company was in the grips of a shrink consultant who convinced them that they could make better personnel decisions if they put prospective employees through psych testing "to make sure they fit our 'culture.'" Nothing mamby-pamby like MB; heavy psych like the MMPI (Minnesota Multiphasic something-or-other). The MMPI was one of those obvious tests that asked the same questions 6 ways in different sections to "catch" your inconsistencies. One of the questions was (6 variants of) "I often have difficulty executing a BM." Others were similar. I gave them back their test, but not the partly-completed answer sheet.
I suggested that such information was inappropriate, even with the answers merely aggregated.
Shockingly, I didn't get the job.
This was one of the nails in my corporate career. A couple of years later I started my own company and haven't looked back in 25 years.
Wambut at January 27, 2015 1:02 PM
I've worked a lot coordinating engineering and marketing - and the MB test helped me understand why the Marketing folks were so much easier to work with - and gave me ideas on how to solve the difficulties working with the ISTJ types.
I suppose if you're trying to use MB to manipulate and control people it's going to be a disaster, but the system should help if you're just seeking insights into working WITH others.
But I defer to the clinically-trained among us and will offer my positive personal experience with a grain of salt.
Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at January 27, 2015 4:32 PM
I've had to take the MBTI several times. I am always I-T-, but no one who has worked in the same office with me would need a test to place me on those axes. I'm so far to the I and T end that I might be autistic. But on iNtuion/Sensing and Judging/Perceiving, my results are different every time I take the test. I'm so much in the middle on those axes that the result will flip on the answer to a single question, which is so close that I have to drop back to the Peppermint Patty method of test-taking, And those categories don't really make sense to me - how would someone intuit or judge without data from sensing and perceiving? (OK, I can see it for those who do not Think!)
Even if the axes are valid, the MBTI forces four continua into _single-bit_ measurements. AFAIK, there is no evidence to suggest that a frequency curve on any of these axes would be binary or double-peaked rather than the usual bell curve. So most people are in the middle, but it rounds their scores up or down to one extreme or the other. They can flip their results based on their mood, how long since their last cup of coffee, whether its morning or afternoon, and probably on the day of the week.
Possibly the MBTI could be greatly improved just by changing to three-value scales. I'd be I_T_, where "_" means near average. But that would give 3^4 = 243 categories instead of 2^4 = 16. It would be too complex for an HR manager or PHB to understand, and interpreting the results would take too long even for a genius manager.
markm at January 30, 2015 10:28 AM
Wambut: Unlike the MB, the MMPI is a real psychological test. It has controls against faking; I doubt that they are 100% effective, but they'll catch anyone but a genius who has studied the test scoring. It's a long test, scoring is complicated, and interpretation of the results is beyond the capability of anyone not trained in psych. I suspect that it's also beyond the capability of half the professionals with advanced degrees in Psychology and Psychiatry. (The difference between those degrees is that the Psychiatrist must qualify as an MD first. That means the -ologist can diagnose and do talk therapy, but the -iatrist can also prescribe drugs. An American MD license is a decent proxy for IQ testing plus extended proof of one's willingness to work unreasonably hard. The problem is that often all the effort put into learning medical techniques seems to blunt the med student's understanding of patients.)
As a test for all employees, the MMPI is not just overkill, but inappropriate. It's not a test for mental health, but a diagnostic aid given to people who _needed_ a "shrink". To give it to a population that is mostly mentally healthy, and have it interpreted by some second-rater who had to take a corporate job rather than compete for patients, is not going to end well.
markm at January 30, 2015 10:49 AM
Leave a comment