science

Myers–Briggs Type Indicator

Myers–Briggs Type Indicator is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Myers–Briggs Type Indicator rather than just read about it. In short: The Myers–Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is a self-report questionnaire that makes pseudoscientific claims to categorize individuals into 16 distinct psychological types (often called personality types). The test assigns a binary letter value to each of four dichotomous categories: introversion or extraversion, sensing or intuition, thinking or feeling, and judging or perceiving.

Key takeaways

Myers–Briggs Type Indicator belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Myers–Briggs Type Indicator to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Myers–Briggs Type Indicator from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The Myers–Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is a self-report questionnaire that makes pseudoscientific claims to categorize individuals into 16 distinct psychological types (often called personality types). The test assigns a binary letter value to each of four dichotomous categories: introversion or extraversion, sensing or intuition, thinking or feeling, and judging or perceiving. This produces a four-letter test result, such as "INTJ" or "ESFP", representing one of the 16 types. The original version of the MBTI was constructed during World War II by Americans Katharine Cook Briggs and her daughter Isabel Briggs Myers, inspired by Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung's 1921 book Psychological Types. Isabel Myers was particularly fascinated by the concept of "introversion", and she typed herself as an INFP. However, she thought that the book was too complex for the general public and tried to organize the Jungian cognitive functions to make it more accessible. As a psychometric indicator, the test exhibits significant deficiencies, including poor validity, poor reliability, measuring supposedly dichotomous categories that are not independent, and not being comprehensive. Most of the research supporting the MBTI's validity has been produced by the Center for Applications of Psychological Type, an organization run by the Myers–Briggs Foundation, and published in the center's own journal, the Journal of Psychological Type (JPT), raising questions of independence, bias and conflict of interest. Nevertheless, due to the Barnum effect, participants often attribute a level of accuracy to the results that is disproportionate to their scientific credibility. The MBTI is not considered useful in psychological practice or study, since it lacks predictive power. According to University of Pennsylvania professor Adam Grant, "There is no evidence behind it. The traits measured by the test have almost no predictive power when it comes to how happy you'll be in a given situation, how well you'll perform at your job, or how satisfied you'll be in your marriage." Despite controversies over validity, the instrument has demonstrated widespread influence since its adoption by the Educational Testing Service in 1962. It is estimated that 50 million people have taken the MBTI and that 10,000 businesses, 2,500 colleges and universities, and 200 government agencies in the United States use it.

History

Briggs began her research into personality in 1917. Upon meeting her future son-in-law, she observed marked differences between his personality and that of other family members. Briggs embarked on a project of reading biographies and subsequently developed a typology wherein she proposed four temperaments: meditative (or thoughtful), spontaneous, executive, and social. After the publication in 1923 of an English translation of Carl Jung's book Psychological Types (first published in German as Psychologische Typen in 1921), Briggs recognized that Jung's theory resembled, but went far beyond, her own. Briggs's four types were later identified as corresponding to the IXXXs (Introvertsion: "meditative"), EXXPs (Extraversion & Perceiving: "spontaneous"), EXTJs (Extraversion, Thinking & Judging: "executive") and EXFJs (Extraversion, Feeling & Judging: "social"). Her first publications were two articles describing Jung's theory, in The New Republic, "Meet Yourself Using the Personality Paint Box" (1926) and "Up From Barbarism" (1928). After extensively studying the work of Jung, Briggs and her daughter extended their interest in human behavior into efforts to turn the theory of psychological types to practical use. Although Myers graduated from Swarthmore College in political science in 1919, neither Myers nor Briggs were formally educated in the discipline of psychology, and both were self-taught in the field of psychometric testing. Myers therefore apprenticed herself to Edward N. Hay (1891–1958), the head personnel officer for a large Philadelphia bank. From Hay, Myers learned rudimentary test construction, scoring, validation, and statistical methods. Briggs and Myers began creating their indicator during World War II (1939–1945) in the belief that a knowledge of personality preferences would help women entering the industrial workforce for the first time to identify the sorts of war-time jobs that would be the "most comfortable and effective" for them. The Briggs Myers Type Indicator Handbook, published in 1944, was re-published as "Myers–Briggs Type Indicator" in 1956. Myers' work attracted the attention of Henry Chauncey, head of the Educational Testing Service, a private assessment organization. Under these auspices, the first MBTI "manual" was published, in 1962. The MBTI received further support from Donald W. MacKinnon, head of the Institute of Personality and Social Research at the University of California, Berkeley; W. Harold Grant, a professor at Michigan State University and Auburn University; and Mary H. McCaulley of the University of Florida. The publication of the MBTI was transferred to Consulting Psychologists Press in 1975, and the Center for Applications of Psychological Type was founded as a research laboratory. After Myers' death in May 1980, Mary McCaulley updated the MBTI manual, and the second edition was published in 1985. The third edition appeared in 1998.

Format and administration In 1987, an advanced scoring-system was developed for the MBTI. From this was developed the Type Differentiation Indicator (TDI), which is a scoring system for the longer MBTI, Form J, which includes the 290 items written by Myers that had survived her previous item analyses. It yields 20 subscales (five under each of the four dichotomous preference scales), plus seven additional subscales for a new "comfort-discomfort" factor (which parallels, though not perfectly measuring, the NEO-PI factor of neuroticism). This factor's scales indicate a sense of overall comfort and confidence versus discomfort and anxiety. They also load onto one of the four type-dimensions:

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Myers–Briggs Type Indicator

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Myers–Briggs Type Indicator claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Myers–Briggs Type Indicator before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Myers–Briggs Type Indicator ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Myers–Briggs Type Indicator

In research: Myers–Briggs Type Indicator appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Myers–Briggs Type Indicator in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Myers–Briggs Type Indicator is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Carl Jung, Personality typologies, Pseudoscience, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Myers–Briggs Type Indicator outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Myers–Briggs Type Indicator in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Myers–Briggs Type Indicator means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Myers–Briggs Type Indicator out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Myers–Briggs Type Indicator in simple terms?

Why does Myers–Briggs Type Indicator matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Myers–Briggs Type Indicator?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Myers–Briggs Type Indicator.