this post was submitted on 02 Jul 2024
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Yeah, MBTI is a topic I could probably get into at great length. Spent a lot of time in it on and off over the years. I think a lot of its problem is that people see the surface level MBTI categorization, especially as pushed on them in workplaces and the like, and justifiably think it's an annoying oversimplification. But I've also seen quite a lot of sincere effort into digging deep into psychology and using theories relating to Psychological Types and MBTI as a means of understanding each other better and being more accepting of cognitive differences. Then again, I've also seen people who use it for obsessing over how they are better than others, or uniquely unique and special, or becoming so enmeshed in viewing the world through an MBTI lens that they lose sight of more complex dynamics beyond it. So it can go a number of ways.
MBTI makes the fundamental assumption that each personality axis is bimodal, and pushes people to one side or the other. Actual research shows that people tend towards the center.
The whole test is pseudoscience made by non-psychologists and propped up by "research" from organisations that profit from the test.
https://www.idrlabs.com/articles/2014/02/mbti-for-skeptics/
Notably, the authors don't give their own qualifications.
wow.
Saying that the theoretical basis of MBTI is beyond empirical analysis doesn't help their case.
You'll probably get just as much out of this test from the same site: https://www.idrlabs.com/pusheen/test.php
It's made by professionals!
Tbh I just linked it because they agree with what you said about the bell curve.
Sorry, I was definitely overly aggressive.
That's fair. I don't pretend it is "scientific." Where I've seen value in it, in practice, is as a framework (like a lens through which to think about thinking), not an empirical description of reality. I'm just not sure if the potential benefit outweighs the harm it can cause. Now I'm reflecting on it more, the notion of tension in the psyche between the dominant and inferior function might be the most salvageable part of the theory, on the fact that it's looking at contradiction and tension between opposites that is never fully resolved. Not unlike dialectics, in spirit, even if the rest of it is a bit iffy. I could maybe see value in examining the psyche as tension between contradictions, where instead of viewing the "cognitive functions" as static preferences that stay dominant and inferior throughout life, there are primary contradictions and secondary contradictions that can shift and change as you develop as a person. This is closer to one alternative take on the theory, which views the cognitive functions more as something you flow between rather than as static preferences.
But in practice, it would still probably be more useful to ground such a view of contradictions in the details of a person's life and upbringing and so on, rather than through a generic lens of preferences like Intuition or Sensing.
MBTI is fine as far as personality systems go, but the reason I bounced off of it was that it eventually became clear there's zero method to objectively distinguish one type from another. Every single person who gets typed and classified by this system is categorized by vibes, and that's pretty much it.
That's reasonable to me. "Objective Personality System", a derivative of it that is intended to be more scientific, is the closest I'm aware of to going beyond that. And as far as I know, they have yet to actually publish their findings in any meaningful capacity that others can study and reproduce, so it's sort of down to trusting they are doing any kind of research diligence.