Poll: What is your Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)? | Hacker News Reader

Poll: What is your Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)?

18 pointssoneca15 comments

I think would be useful to understand how HNers perceive the world and make decisions.

You can do the test here: http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/jtypes2.asp

from wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers-Briggs_Type_Indicator

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) assessment is a psychometric questionnaire designed to measure psychological preferences in how people perceive the world and make decisions

A good summary of the 16 types

http://www.myersbriggs.org/my-mbti-personality-type/mbti-basics/the-16-mbti-types.asp

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As an INTJ, I know better than to take this personality stuff seriously. :D

http://www.amazon.com/The-Cult-Personality-Miseducate-Misund...

According to that test, I'm ENFJ, but usually these tests tend to tell me that I'm INTP or INTJ. I'm also an Aries, born in the year of the monkey and I'm pretty sure I would be labeled an SP by Scientology.

I took the test 3 times, at longish intervals, each sincerely and without much recollection of the questions (for informal workplace occassions) - and scored INTP, INTJ, INTP.

Remarkably, these patterns are found in a small percentile in the population, but (as of early 2014.03.08) are represented way out of proportion here. This is consistent with these types going into software and related (IT-ish) fields. (BTW I suspect these types also attract Aspergers/high-ASD individuals.)

And INTJ are supposed to be one of the rarest personality type.

Ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INTJ

I'm ENTJ--I don't think these things mean a lot but they are one datapoint. And I'd be surprised if there aren't a lot of E/I NTJs on HN. But yeah, I guess it's only a slight improvement over astrology...

ISTP - sometimes I score INTP. I guess I'm still waiting for all the facts ;). I'm bored ... moving on.

Me? I'm a Leo.

ENTJ but it has morphed over time.

MBTI is almost pseudoscience. It is popular, but it is not a valid psychometric instrument. Do NOT take it seriously!

MBTI polls are regularly posted here.

Every time the claim is made that MBTI is pseudoscience, comparable to astrology, meaningless, etc. Sometimes this claim is accompanied with mentions or links to other psychometric assays to use instead.

And every time the same two very rare MBTI types end up being the majority of HN readers. Which are already known as being the two most common types among software developers, something that has been a consistent result for decades.

(Side Note: the linked to humanmetrics web quiz correctly notes that it is not the same as the MBTI. No information is provided as to its validity or to how well it correlates with MBTI types that it uses the names of. Therefore, observations that the humanmetrics web quiz (or any other similar free web quiz/personality test/etc) does not provide consistent results over time for some people may not necessarily indicate that the same effect would be observed taking the MBTI assay.)

I posted similar comments before seeing yours.

Yes M-B is probably pseudo-science (and of course this poll is unscientific). However, I suspect that some moderate (better-than-chance) degree of validity has kept people using it all these years.

The MMPI supposedly was validated by assessing personality types independently by other methods and then empirically finding corresponding patterns of answers. I don't think that's viable for the M-B, however, as it's shorter, has been more exposed to the public and probably easy to game.

> Yes M-B is probably pseudo-science (and of course this poll is unscientific). However, I suspect that some moderate (better-than-chance) degree of validity has kept people using it all these years.

People have kept using astrology for a lot more years than M-B has been around, too. Perceived utility and validity don't always go hand-in-hand.

The consistent result from this group doesn't make it any less pseudoscience.

You could equally well poll something like 'do you enjoy solving intricate problems' and 'would you rather relax and watch tv than learn something new' and you'd get a strong consistent result when you polled this group.

The theory underlying the Myers-Briggs is pseudoscience, which was par for the course in Psychology when it was developed in the early 1920s.

From the paper "Measuring the MBTI... And Coming Up Short" by David J Pittenger. [0]

Because the MBTI is a typology, we would expect that its scores would be distributed bimodally and not be normally distributed... We would expect that since people are either introverts or extroverts, the test results should yield two different curves. One curve would represent all the introverts, the other, all the extroverts... The data indicate that there is no evidence of bimodal distributions for the MBTI. Instead, most people score between the two extremes. This means that although one person may score as an E, his or her test results may be very similar to those of another person's, who scores as an I.

Reliability refers to the consistency in measurement of a test... It is important that the MBTI be reliable for many reasons. As Tieger and Barron-Tieger note in their article, "The Type to which you are born will be the one you take to your grave."... Several studies, however, show that even when the test-retest interval is short (e.g., 5 weeks), as many as 50 percent of the people will be classified into a different type.

The factor analysis is a type of statistic procedure that consists of making an analysis of the correlations among the questions in the test. If the MBTI theory is correct, three results should come from the factor analysis. First, the results should show that there are four clusters, or factors, of questions. Each of the questions within a factor will be highly correlated with the other questions in the factor... Secondly, we would expect each factor to be independent of the other factors, inasmuch as the MBTI theory states that each of the four preference dimensions stands alone.... Finally, we would expect that the factors would account for most of the differences among individuals... Research on the factor analysis of the MBTI has not produced convincing results. In one study, based on the results of l,29l college aged students, six different factors were found. 10 In addition, the study authors found a high level of measurement error. Specifically, 83 percent of the differences among the students could not be accounted for by the MBTI... In sum, the statistical analysis of the test does not support the theory used to describe the MBTI.

[0] http://www.indiana.edu/~jobtalk/HRMWebsite/hrm/articles/deve...

Thanks, I'm always looking for a good review of research on the MBTI.

Sadly, when I make these points to proponents of the test, it always seems like proponents don't really understand why test-retest reliability would be a problem, or why it matters that there's no basis to promote these four random factors to the center of all personality analysis, or why logical keying would invalidate any personality inventory.

That's what makes me think it's pseudoscience most of all: discussion seems impossible.

Gladwell also provides some history of the test and some major concerns, if you're more into his style:

http://gladwell.com/personality-plus/

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