Typealyzer - Find Your Myers-Briggs Type Indicator | Hacker News Reader

Typealyzer - Find Your Myers-Briggs Type Indicator

typealyzer.com

33 pointstortilla47 comments

Having worked on a product that made extensive use of them, I can confidently say that these personality tests are complete psychobabble bunk. The only thing worse than thumping your chest with pride for falling into an overgeneralized and mostly arbitrary population group is being profiled and judged for falling into one.

First of all, personality traits change over time. Even if it were possible to create an accurate assessment, the results would be invalid after a year. The creators of these tests like to say that they identify persistent traits that underly the changes, but these are little more than meandering PR rationalizations. Behavioral bases change gradually over time also. Life experiences have a way of doing that.

Second, the human psyche is far too complex to draw any kind of reasonable conclusion from a result along 4 axes. Imagine that you're trying to find a location in the middle of a vast forest, and your map is a blank sheet except for the temperature, elevation, wind speed, and air pressure of the destination at the time it was measured.

So, that'd make you ISTJ, yeah? :P

more detail:

http://skepdic.com/myersb.html

The recommended site is good in general, links to a lot of scientific literature, and is especially strong about fallacies in psychology.

But in all seriousness, why so negative? It can only ever be considered as a guide, and if the end is understanding (i.e. reaching your destination through the forest) then who cares if the map isn't a complete map? Isn't that the point of maps?

If the goal is 100% correctness of analysis down to the letter, than the instrument fails miserably. If the goal is perhaps, an increased self awareness, the possibility of understanding your other crazy peers and friends, figuring out what your strengths are and playing to them, then, isn't the instrument worthwhile?

It's nothing more than a conceptual framework with the goal of measuring and typecasting for deeper understanding. This is what I like about the instrument the most: answer a bunch of questions, get some hopefully insightful profile.

To outright poo-poo it is incredibly negative nancy. What about the people who became more effective at work and at home as a result of taking it? What about the couple that were able to work out their differences and be understand each other? Are you going to invalidate the instrument despite it may have some positive influence on peoples lives? You barstard!

And in closing, the instrument has been verified with a scientific statistical method. I have no idea what that means, but it sounds important. Certainly more thorough than tickle.com.

The reason I poo-poo it is that I see many people using these results as nearly the final word on how to judge someone, rather than just a guide. Which is dangerous, in my opinion. The map isn't dangerous in and of itself, but it becomes dangerous when the mapmaker gives the impression that it gives more detail than it actually does.

edit: Additionally, there's a large psychological bias on the first information you receive about a person. If you see these results before meeting the subject, you will be likely to frame him according to the results, whether they fit him or not.

> The map isn't dangerous in and of itself, but it becomes dangerous when the mapmaker gives the impression that it gives more detail than it actually does.

I agree. I've seen this misused quite a lot.

Psychometric testing is interesting, and can reveal tendencies - but that's about it. Certainly using this as "hard data" for things like hiring, corporate restructures, etc, is fraught with issues.

In reality, the best predictor of a person's behaviour is (a lot of) detail on past performance. Even then, there are flaws.

Then the problem is with the people misusing the results, not with the test itself. The MBTI doesn't claim to be a perfect predictor at all; instead it's supposed to measure tendencies.

People are judging each other left, right and centre on much more biased criteria every day whether you like it or not.

Don't have an instrument to judge someone with? They'll judge you based on their preconceptions, their life experience, and a number of other factors that are quite likely more unsound than an external instrument.

People are going to judge you anyway, buddy. Just hope the guy calling the shots isn't an arsehole and has your best interests in mind. Which leads me to believe that your problem isn't with the MBTI itself but the human tendency to judge one another on any basis of criteria. That's life.

Those looking to apply MBTI for any particular reason to any particular person (including themselves) isn't any worse or wrong or ill-meaning than the next fellow. It just depends on whether they're an arsehole or not. Please, don't confuse the two.

The problem here is that these assessments make people think that they have a strong scientific basis for making those judgments. Obviously people always judge each other, but they will feel far more validated in doing so if there's a team of guys in lab coats behind them.

There is no question that the MBTI as a whole does not hold up to scientific testing, but individual pieces of it do work. For example, the (E/I) portion of the type indicator is supported by empirical psych studies. Also, just about everyone on Hacker News is an NT, which surely must mean something. (Regardless of what the site you submitted says.)

Woooo for being in the minority. I'm a rare ENFJ in the developer community.

i think part of the problem is that people simply aren't knowledgeable about the theory. what Jung described is not at all as trivial as the Myers-Briggs implementation makes it seem. this combined with the natural difficulty of figuring out anything about people through their own volition makes it a messy issue

Says I'm an ESTP, but I'm an ENTP. I wonder how many NT's are on HN? I'd say it's a pretty high percentage. According to David Keirsey they're represented by roughly 12%, so not very much, but on HN it wouldn't surprise me if it was ~70%.

76% (506/667) were NT as of six months ago.

Only 7 people out of 667 were neither N nor T (i.e. SF), whereas statistically 37% of the general population should fall into this category.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=204240

typealyzer gave me SF on the two instances of my writings online. I don't think that those blogs are particularly representative of my personality though - more of the persona I inhabit when I write them.

same here, the tests I've done usually say I'm ENTP, and Typealyzer said I'm ESTP.

About this part: "They might be very impulsive and more keen on starting something new than following it through."

Is that a nice way of saying my blog doesn't get updated often enough? :)

Cool.

I tested it out on a few articles/blogs that I've had.

Typealyzer pretty well guesses how I felt when I write things. INTP (my essays, overall), ISFP (a brief story I wrote), INFP (private journal), ENTP (some posts on entrepreneurship), ENTJ (my startup's site overall), ENTP (the FAQ on the startup's site), INTJ (the team page on my startup's site).

This is like Mood Rings 2.0.

I wonder if the mere existence of a blog tips the scale towards E instead of I. That would be based on an extremely common misconception that most people have of introversion on MBTI--namely, that it equates to being shy or private.

If I recall from the last time I took the test (administered by MS in clinical psychotherapy, scored almost the complete opposite from Typealyzer), the score differentiators had to do with behavioral responses. I doubt blog writing is a good indicator of actual social behavior.

Interesting. Trying this http://www.typelogic.com/esfj.html gives INTP, as it does for most of the websites I tried. It loads pretty damn fast, so my guess is they have a simple word or n-gram dictionary that is weighting each term.

Pretty entertaining! : With http://www.lyrics007.com/Nelly%20Lyrics/Country%20Grammar%20... (ESFP Performers )

I feel like these personality tests could essentially delineate any combination of letters and have the user feel as if the judgment represents them. All people are multifarious in the sense that we each share both introverted and extroverted characteristics, albeit usually at different times, and within different circumstances. These words have come to describe behavioral patterns that are not nearly as trenchant as we have come to assume they are.

This reminds me of a story my introductory psychology professor told in an early lecture:

A few years earlier, teaching that class, he handed out a "personality test" questionnaire and collected the responses. The next class, he handed each person an envelope with their name on it containing their results. They were told not to reveal their results to anyone. He then asked the class for a show of hands of who thought their results accurately described them. Most of the class put their hand up.

Then he started reading from a page in front of him, and then they realized they were set up: he had given the same results to everyone, yet they all thought it described them.

That's the Forer effect, a very well replicated result in psychology,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forer_effect

and a very good reason not to believe Myers-Briggs type results, which have never been carefully validated.

That only applies to the description of the typical person with that type indicator, which is different than the type indicator itself. I.e., it may be possible that the categories (E/I)(N/S)(T/F)(P/J) have some validity, without the descriptions being accurate.

How would you design a validation procedure for anything that is output by the Myers-Briggs test?

I would start by creating really tight definitions. With the exception of the E/I factor, which has already been validated, I'm not sure if the other factors are well-defined enough to measure.

Interesting! I'm pretty sure I'm an INFJ, though, and Typealyzer got three out of four wrong: ISTP.

I got ESTP and I've done the test before and gotten INTJ.

Anecdotally, I've heard a common complaint against MBTI is that it often changes by just retaking the test. (And it's horribly unfalsifiable.)

Ha. I also got ESTP and I'm an INTJ (I took the test from a few sources because of that compliant actually--still all said INTJ).

I got ESTJ and I'm INTJ/INTP.

Sensors are more in the moment, and intuitives like to abstract. It'd be difficult to make a variable for that one.

Interestingly, I got Extrovert even though I tested 19/1 in favor of Introvert on the real test. Must have too many posts with the word "friend."

I have similar results.

I think its because I tend to write about what I'm not used to, good at, or what needs to improve either in a form of a complaint or a resolve to do better.

No, you're totally a water sign. I can tell from your username.

You're probably in flux due to the dawning of Aquarius.

This one made me an ESTJ, which is completely unlike me. Organizing and efficient? Preferring highly structured work environments?!

I'm actually an INTP, which means that this test gave the direct opposite of the correct results... doesn't seem to be very accurate at all.

Apparently we as a group are ENFJ! That's the current result for news.ycombinator.com.

lol, that is kind of neat. You should have mentioned that it analyzes a blog instead of actually giving you the questions. I don't know how well it works, but neat none-the-less

why was that comment down voted? Did I say something controversial?

Probably the unnecessary "lol"

Who is this lol person to whom everyone keeps addressing their comments? I tried Googling for pictures, but all I found where fat people and cats.

If you're interested in myers-briggs, you may want to check out the http://str8.to/my-type-facebook app.

Sweet :-) The quickest personality test ever: don't answer any questions, just type in your URL.

The result from my weblog test was exactly the result of my real Myers-Briggs test, INTJ. How?

http://www.typealyzer.com/en/about?lang=en

I would have expected an INTJ to click on the "about" link to get some hints at how it worked.

(I'm also supposedly INTJ -- based on other tests, not this one -- and that and a couple bucks can buy a cup of coffee.)

My blog about my outdoor adventures gives me ESFP and my political blog gives me ISTP. Am I normal?

Most of my tests comes back as thai language, ):

HN is ESFJ :)

And this page (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=373814) is ISTP

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