Test HN: Briggs & Myers' 16 personality types | Hacker News Reader

Test HN: Briggs & Myers' 16 personality types

16personalities.com

10 pointsgalfarragem14 comments

This test is quite criticised[1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers%E2%80%93Briggs_Type_Indi...

I can see it being useful for team training though.

Also:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/give-and-take/201309/go... http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Myers-Briggs_Type_Indicator http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/the-myers-briggs-pe...

The MBTI is about as valid as a horoscope, and people actually make hiring decisions based on it.

It is probably useful to help introverts understand extroverts and so on, and maybe help people have conversations about personality differences, but it is pretty bad at diagnosing actual personalities beyond "a dark-haired stranger will meet you"

I don't see how you can say an assessment based on people's actual behavior is about as valid as completely made up predictions based on the alignment of the stars when you were born. I think it's pretty obvious your MBTI can say more about you than your horoscope can.

Not that I disagree with you that hiring decisions should not be made based on MBTI, nor can we categorize all people into 16 personality types.

The point is more along the lines of: the MBTI really can't tell you much. It has very bad psychometric properties (people regular test differently on different days, or show as a mix of two supposed opposing factors). As a theoretical framework, there is little in the way of peer reviewed work to even support anything other than introversion - extroversion as a measure. MBTI is pretty much pseudoscience that we keep using because it Feels Correct.

Psychics and astrologers do the same thing - make broad and generic claims to make you think they're talking to you because you fill the gaps in the story.

So, it's an aggressive claim I make yes. Partly (perhaps largely) driven by the fact that too many otherwise reasonable people do not treat the MBTI with the skepticism it deserves (again, hiring decisions are made and justified based on this pseudoscience). But partly because I've been through both the long form MBTI test and explanation (with subfactors, where I was thoroughly mixed with stuff that wasn't supposed to correlate) and the explanation phase felt precisely like a psychic reading.

My experience is purely anecdotic, but I found MBTI to be incredibly accurate. I can't think of anything that lead to more introspection than this test.

I've taken it several times and always come back as an INTJ.

At my last gig, the manager was an expert on all the Briggs-Myers types. He made everybody on the team take the test and then put up the chart where it shows where everybody on the team is.

TBH, it helped a LOT in how the team communicated with each other as well as conflict resolution because it gave you a really good insight into their personality.

That's fantastic!

Although it is fun to try to categorize ourselves into 16 personality types, what these categories really describe are behavior, which is dependent on way more than personality traits alone (e.g., what about context? What about reinforcement contingencies?). I'm not trying to be a hater, I just want people to take the test and read the questions with a critical eye. Behavioral science has come a long way scince this test was published over 60 years ago. Your personality type does not define you and does not determine how you behave in real world situations.

INTP. It really hits home. The suggested jobs are exactly the ones that I see myself doing professionally and amateurly: architect, software designer, financial analyst, ..

Should we turn this post into a poll?

If not, here's one: http://www.polljunkie.com/poll/wrtqqk/whats-your-mbti-type

I was an INTJ when I did it before.

INTP

INFP

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