MBTI Personality Test: Science or Pseudoscience?
The MBTI personality test has become popular on social networks, but its scientific nature is controversial. This article discusses the pros and cons of MBTI and reminds people not to be overly dependent on it.
MBTI Personality Test: Science or Pseudoscience?
In recent times, four mysterious letters have replaced horoscopes and become the new labels for young people to show their individuality and new codes for surfing the internet. This is the currently popular MBTI personality test on social networks, which divides people into 16 different personality types. For example, ENFJ represents the leadership-oriented protagonist personality, and INTJ represents the rational and resolute architect personality.
The MBTI, short for Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, was developed by American writer Isabel Briggs Myers and her mother Katherine Cook Briggs in the 1940s. This test is based on the psychological type theory proposed by the famous psychologist Carl Jung. Jung divided people's personality types into two basic mental attitudes of 'introversion (I) - extraversion (E)' and four functions of 'sensing (S) - intuition (N)', 'thinking (T) - feeling (F)'. From these three pairs of opposing dimensions, people's personality tendencies can be combined into eight types. Myers and Briggs added another dimension of 'judging (J) - perceiving (P)', forming 16 types, each represented by four letters.
Why is MBTI so popular? Experts believe that in addition to marketing promotion, it does fit the processing patterns of the human brain and some current social mentalities. The core of such tests is to classify people, and the human brain is best at simplifying the complex world by processing categories to quickly understand a person or thing. On the other hand, more scientifically described personality tests with five traits are not so easy to understand and therefore difficult to become popular.
However, MBTI has its limitations. For example, the results of MBTI types and various job performances are very weakly correlated. It measures preferences rather than abilities. Also, the test may not be very scientific as Jung's 'psychological type theory' has not been empirically tested, and MBTI's performance on reliability and validity is not very convincing. Moreover, most people are in an intermediate state, and a small change in answers to one or two questions may lead to inconsistent retest results.
MBTI's popularity has also led to various commercial marketing related to psychological counseling. But experts remind that while quickly finding social belonging and group identity, we should also beware of the self-solidification and group polarization tendencies brought about by 'labeling'.
In conclusion, although MBTI has a psychological theory background, its scientific nature is controversial. All psychological tests are only reference tools and should not be regarded as absolute truth or become shackles. People's change and growth are more worthy of expectation.