*This is a single installment in a larger series dedicated to examining some of the most popular, influential, and historically important personality testing models and assessment tools.
Any discussion on personality testing and assessment must include an acknowledgement of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), both for its central role in popularizing personality testing and for its profoundly flawed and oft-critiqued method. The MBTI has a history that stretches back to World War II and for all of the criticism that its methodology has generated, it remains in use in many professional contexts today.
For this reason, no true history of personality assessment testing would be complete without a meaningful reflection on MBTI. There is particular use in examining the MBTI because it did play such a central role in helping to proliferate personality assessment in both popular psychology and professional development; but also because of its flaws.
In many ways, the popularization of the MBTI helped to catalyze the work of its biggest detractors. Because of its visibility, but also its scientific shortcomings, the MBTI has inspired decades of challengers including the creators of our Success Portraits Personality Test (SPPT)–Clemson Professors Fred Switzer and Jo Jorgensen.
In the discussion that follows, we’ll highlight their critique of MBTI, as well as the concerns of other detractors, while also highlighting the assessment tool’s central role in the popularization of personality testing.
The Origin of the MBTI
The MBTI is the brainchild of an American mother-daughter duo–Katharine Cook Briggs and Isabel Briggs Myers. Briggs was particularly intrigued by the work of Carl Jung. The Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalysis posited a number of theories on personality in the early 1900s that would play a major role in shaping the field of modern psychology. Jung’s 1921 book Psychological Types put these ideas into print.
When the text was translated into English in 1923, Briggs found herself particularly compelled by Jung’s approach to categorizing human behavior and preference. In particular, Jung identified a number of key psychological functions contributing to behavioral dynamics such as introversion and extraversion; thinking and feeling; and sensing and intuition.
Adapting Jung’s Theories on Personality
Briggs was inspired by Jung’s work, but she also believed his text was too complex for mainstream applications. She set out to develop a simpler system that could classify different personality types and measure the impact of individual preferences of people’s lives. Such preferences might include whether individuals:
- Prefer solitude or social interaction,
- Make decisions based on logic or emotions,
- Focus on details or the big picture, etc.
Together with her daughter Isabel Briggs Myers, Katherine worked to devise a personality assessment framework with a focus on both accessibility and simplicity.
Then, in 1941, the U.S. entered into World War II. The demand for troops proved a major disruption of the American workforce, creating a pressing demand for quick and effective job placement. In particular, with many of America’s prime working-age men shipping off to combat, many women were entering the workforce for the first time.
The mother-daughter duo saw an opening and jumped into it with their Myers-Briggs Indicator. The goal of the testing method was to help place first-time workers in jobs where they could simultaneously feel most comfortable and be most effective.
Briggs and Myers officially unveiled the personality assessment tool in 1943, and published their Briggs Myers Type Indicator Handbook the following year.
How The MBTI System Works
Briggs and Myers marketed their new assessment tool to businesses as a strategy for supporting personal development and career counseling. The MBTI system deployed four personality dichotomies that could be used to categorize individuals according to 16 distinct personality types.
The four dichotomies–closely informed by Carl Jung’s groundbreaking personality theories–are as follows:
- Extraversion (E) vs. Introversion (I) refers to an individual’s tendency toward either outward or inward focus of attention.
- Sensing (S) vs. Intuition (N) refers to an individual’s preferred approach to gathering information either by way of concrete information or abstract ideas.
- Thinking (T) vs. Feeling (F) refers to an individual’s tendency toward making decisions based on either logic or emotion.
- Judging (J) vs. Perceiving (P) refers to an individual’s approach to navigating the world around them either through structure or flexibility.
Each individual test-taker is assigned one of two tendencies for each dichotomy. The resulting assessment is consequently expressed as a four-letter acronym. For instance, an individual who scores for Extraversion, Sensing, Thinking and Perceiving would be categorized as ESTP.
There are 16 possible permutations of this four-letter acronym, and therefore, 16 possible personality types expressed by the MBTI.
How the MBTI Helped Popularize Personality Assessment
Briggs and Myers initially set out to create an assessment tool that was both simple and accessible. They were very successful in this mission. By the 1950s, the name of their tool had been changed to the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, and the assessment had gained widespread popularity in both corporate and education settings. Its proliferation was accelerated in 1962 when it was officially adopted by the Education Testing Service (ETS).
This led to the publication of the first MBTI manual (which would be followed in subsequent years by numerous updates and adaptations). Its adoption by the ETS was the landmark moment that ultimately led to the mainstream popularization of the MBTI. It received endorsement from a number of prominent scholars. Though Briggs passed away in 1968, her daughter helped steer the indicator into widespread acceptance over the next decade.
The 1970s and early ‘80s proved particularly fertile for the self-help, career-counseling, and HR fields, all of which tightly embraced the MBTI. This embrace bled into the worlds of literature, celebrity and business.
Myers would pass away in 1980, but rapidly rising corporations like Apple and Microsoft openly adopted her ideas to help improve personnel management and internal communications. The late mother-daughter duo envisioned an assessment that could help to simplify the decidedly complex subject of personality.
The popularity of their assessment suggests that they were successful in this ambition. However, as we’ll discuss in the following section, this popularity also overshadowed many of the test’s clear shortcomings.
What are the MBTI’s shortcomings?
It is notable that neither Briggs nor Myers were themselves social scientists, nor were the methods selected for use in the MBTI assessment held up by its creators against scientific experimental scrutiny. These conditions help to explain the MBTI’s fundamental flaws.
The MBTI may have gained widespread popular appeal for its simplification of a complex subject. But there is a compelling argument that this was in fact an oversimplification, and that the MBTI lacks scientific validity, reliability, and meaningful predictive power.
Indeed, the creators of our SPPT assessment tool have been vocal in their critique of MBTI. Fred Switzer argues that “the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator may be the ultimate example of what appears to be a common cognitive bias—overcategorizing continuous variables. People don’t come in ‘types.’ That’s just a heuristic we use to make the world appear more predictable and therefore safer.”
This observation is consistent with a long history of skepticism over the actual value of the MBTI and underscores the first of several noteworthy flaws:
Unfounded Reliance on Bipolarity
As demonstrated in the section above, the MBTI depends on categorical dichotomies. Classifications depend on individuals falling into “either/or” categories in each of the areas being measured. However, many scholars, including the creators of the SPPT, have argued that human personality is far too complex and nuanced to be cast into these rigid categories.
Researchers have long argued that the dichotomous nature of the MBTI is inherently problematic. In fact, detractors argue that the very premise of bipolarity in each of these four areas is scientifically unfounded. For instance, researchers “confirm that introversion-extraversion, sensing-intuition and thinking-feeling are not incontrovertibly bipolar, when tested in Lickert format on 165 undergraduate and postgraduate students, since more than a quarter of the subjects in their study scored highly on both pairs of a dimension.”
This points to a popular claim against the value of the MBTI–that its findings are backed on forced-choice questions which fail to capture the true nuance of each individual test-taker’s personality. The MBTI undermines the sheer complexity of human personality.
Lack of Experimental Validity
To put it bluntly, there is simply no scientific evidence to support the view that the MBTI is capable of yielding accurate findings. Many personality psychologists dismiss the MBTI outright because it lacks experimental validity. Critics note, for instance, that the MBTI’s methodology makes no conditions for the relationship between context and behavior.
Certainly, the generality of the MBTI helped to make it a popular mainstream tool. However, this same generality invites a number of questions about the actual usefulness of its findings.
Anecdotally speaking, one could present as introverted in social settings but extroverted in professional settings. The MBTI’s methodology does not take these, or countless other variables, into consideration. This makes it especially hard to trust the predictive validity of the MBTI across a variety of testing contexts.
Lack of Experimental Reliability
Another frequently-cited shortcoming of the MBTI is its reliability. Independent research demonstrates that an individual taking the test multiple times is actually likely to receive an array of different results. This is especially true if a significant period of time has passed between testing and retesting.
This suggests that the outcomes of the MBTI assessment are not readily replicated. Any number of factors may contribute to these inconsistencies including fluctuations in personal mood, perspective, and context.
Researchers suggest that one reason for this vulnerability is the MBTI’s dependence on uncontrolled self-reporting. As researchers have observed, “the MBTI has no lie scale, nor any measures designed to tap into respondents’ inclination to make socially acceptable responses.”
To this extent, inconsistencies in individual scores may be attributable to a desire to perform according to perceived expectations; and subject to change based on fluctuations in their perception.
Lack of Empirical Support
Underlying all of the above-mentioned critiques is the central issue with the MBTI. Both the theoretical foundation and the empirical support used to justify it are rooted in pseudoscience. Such is to say that the methods used to build the MBTI, like Jung’s, are strictly theoretical.
As defenders of Jung have pointed out, his theoretical constructs were not necessarily designed to apply in the actionable way intended by the MBTI. But in pursuing this intent, Briggs and Myers did ultimately create an instrument rooted in anecdotal evidence and personal observation rather than measurable data.
And perhaps most revealing of all, in the decades that have passed since its inception and mainstream proliferation, the MBTI has received the vast majority of its published support from the Center for the Application of Psychological Type as well as the Journal of Psychological Type. Both the Center and Journal are powered by advocates of the MBTI and have benefited from sales of the examination. Findings from both the Center and Journal are widely viewed as inherently biased.
Historical Alternatives to the MBTI
As we’ll discuss in future installments of our ongoing series about noteworthy personality assessments, numerous psychologists and researchers have attempted to improve upon the MBTI in the years following its popular proliferation.
To its credit, the MBTI did help to demonstrate the perceived need for effective personality assessment tools. Its popularity proved that educational institutions, employers, and individuals can benefit from a deeper understanding of personality and how personality can influence behavior and professional outcomes. But in light of its flaws, many have focused their efforts on supplanting the MBTI with more scientifically grounded models of personality.
For instance, the Five-Factor Model (sometimes also referred to as the Big Five), emerged in the 1950s but truly only gained scholarly attention in the late ‘80s. This model measures the dimensions of openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism.
Because these traits are selected based on actual scientific experimentation, most researchers regard this approach as more reliable and valid than the MBTI. Moreover, as the Big Five model gained recognition, it was also expanded and refined.
Researchers have promoted data-driven approaches like HEXACO, which expands on the Big Five by adding a measure of Honesty-Humility. HEXACO has become increasingly popular since its introduction in 2000.
Of course, it should not escape us that even these updated and expanded models have generated their disagreements among social scientists. We will explore each of these models in its own separate discussion as part of our ongoing series on personality assessment tools. As part of each discussion, we will address some of the leading critiques.
Regardless of their substance, the existence of these critiques points to personality testing as a continually evolving space. Some credit is due to MBTI for its role in this evolution.
Continued Use of the MBTI
Though the critiques of MBTI have been well-circulated and firmly grounded in the academic and professional communities, the testing method still remains in widespread use today. Indeed, the assessment tool remains surprisingly popular in corporate environments, where it is often employed for hiring, team-building, leadership development, and career counseling.
In spite of its scientific flaws, the corporations, self-help authors and bloggers who continue to endorse MBTI view it as an effective tool for supporting professional development, fostering self-awareness, and improving interpersonal skills.
That said, most psychologists and researchers consider the MBTI outdated, and view subsequent models like the Big Five or HEXACO as preferable.
The Mixed Legacy of the MBTI
The Myers–Briggs Type Indicator does have something of a complex legacy. It certainly played a central role in popularizing the concept of personality testing. And from a strictly practical standpoint, it has helped millions of individuals gain insight–however unreliable or inconsistent–into their own preferences and behaviors.
However, its flaws would ultimately give way to its most important legacy–which is as a starting point for the improvements that would ultimately follow.
We invite you to check out our interview with SPPT creators Fred Switzer and Jo Jorgenson for a deeper discussion on the steps we’ve taken at Success Portraits to overcome the flaws inherent in the MBTI and other historical testing methods.