So, I did this Myer Brigg online test at 16personalities.com
I red the description of my personality and it was like reading in my head.
I bought the longer version and it really helped me better understand myself.
Hope it can help you too.
ENTP
I, too, took a lot of personality tests 4-5 years ago. Briefly got a bit obsessed with them, particularly MBTI (Meyers-Briggs). The problem with these tests is that they play on the archetypes that we would like to be. Also, the minutia of being a living person can not be captured by a system with so few inputs.
Anyhow, I still think it was very helpful, because it got me started on a track. Exploring intuition vs. sensing, thinking vs. feeling got me thinking about who I was, and how I respond to things. I wouldn't have been as rigorous was it not for the fact that I constantly thought about what my 4-letter combination was. I've probably thought I was 8 of them during my studies. Always an intuitive, though.
What I think is particularly bad with these tests are the way they highlight the personality's shortcomings or dificulties. They are portrayed as the opposites to the good parts of the personality, that you already resonate with. Since you resonate so much with the good parts, you can sort of logically repulse the shortcomings as "that's just the way I am", and then sort of brush it off. At least I found it to be the case.
Anyhow, I recommend the MBTI still, since it is what got me started on this track, and I've never been the same after spending the past 5 years introspecting.
While the wikipedia page of MBT succeeds in hiding the critique to the end it's luckily there [1]. 'Psychometric specialist Robert Hogan wrote: "Most personality psychologists regard the MBTI as little more than an elaborate Chinese fortune cookie"'
Katherine Briggs and Isabel Meyers (a mother and daughter) should be considered as literary authors at most rather than psychologists [2][3]. Katherine apparently had a lot of ideas about personalities in general and she wrote them down. But it's not like she did massive field work or performed anything that could be recognized as credible research.
Luckily some enterprising consultants recognized her work was easy to sell. The rest is marketing...
People find comfort in lot of things. I don't mind people turning to charlatans like horoscope readers if they know what they are getting into.
MBT is entertaining fiction that is marketed by profiteering consultants as an actual psychometric tool. Fiction can be valuable in understanding the world but it is not a scientific instrument. The fact that it is marketed as such makes it very distasteful.
The only well respected psychometric model that has not failed in one way or another that I'm aware of is the five-factor model [0].
The main problem with MBT is when people think they can use it in some structured manner. The marketing around is so solid it succeeds in fooling some people into actually employing MBT consultants. People in actual workplaces have suggested forming teams based on a balancing made through MBT analyzes.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers%E2%80%93Briggs_Type_Indi...
For example, I’m a solid, hardcore ENTJ at work but a sensitive-flower INFP at home — it’s hard to get much more diametrically opposed than that.
IMO the “intuitive/sensing” dimension is the only one that is close to “innate” since it just describes how you make inferences and decisions. The rest change based on context.
It’s almost better to look at the “16 personalities” as the different mindsets people can come from. MB tests are useful, but take them with a grain of salt. It’s not some innate thing that you can’t change.