Myers-Briggs uncovered

[bjorn2bwild]

Debuting in 1943, the MBTI - Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator is the most popular personality test in the world.
Many if not most here are familiar with the ‘test’, yet what do you know about the secretive, Jung channeling, co-creators - mystery writer Isabel Meyers-Briggs and her mother Katherine Cook Briggs? This interesting, not exactly favorable, and very long piece uncovers the story. For the impatient or time constrained ‘type’ (not that there is anything wrong with that) I have included a second link to a shorter synopsis.

Yet though her creation is everywhere, Myers and the details of her life's work are curiously absent from the public record. Not a single independent biography is in print today. Not one article details how Myers, an award-winning mystery writer who possessed no formal training in psychology or sociology, concocted a test routinely deployed by 89 of the Fortune 100 companies, the US government, hundreds of universities, and online dating sites like Perfect Match, Project Evolove and Type Tango............
Its populism is most clearly demonstrated by MBTI's astonishing geographic reach: Last year, two million people took the test, in seventy different countries, and in 21 languages.

.......one in five of the Fortune 1000 companies uses personality testing to screen job candidates. I have heard bemused stories of how applicants to elite, cultish hedge funds and Silicon Valley startups are asked to take a Myers-Briggs test early in their job searches, only to be weeded out as unfavorable candidates based on their type.

Across all languages and continents, however, the first rule of speaking type remains the same. You do not, under any circumstances, refer to MBTI as a "test." It is a "self-reporting instrument" or, more succinctly, an "indicator." "People use the word 'test' all the time," Barb complains. "But what you're taking is an indicator............
Each test costs $49.95 per person, more if you want a full breakdown of your type, and even more if you want an MBTI-certified consultant to debrief your type with you. No one questions the sheer ingenuity of this sales scheme. We are paying $1,695 to attend a course that authorizes us to recruit others to buy a product — a product which tells us nothing more than what we already know about ourselves.

......and repeat this mantra — "Type Never Changes" — to our future clients. "We will brand this into your brain," she vows. "The theory behind the instrument supports the fact that you are born with a four letter preference. If you hear someone say, 'My type changed,' they are not correct."

Only now her racialized judgements were dressed up in the language of psychoanalytic authority. When a female office worker advocated for human equality across all races and ethnicities, Isabel declared her to be immature and typologically under-developed. "The very warm evidence on the colored woman to whom one could talk exactly as to equals is another case in point," she wrote. "Members of a dark and supposedly inferior race are standard symbol for the suppressed and considered-inferior part of one's own psyche."

Uncovering The Secret History Of Myers-Briggs - Digg

Who Was Isabel Briggs Myers? -- Science of Us

 

[MBAustin]

Interesting. Thanks for sharing.

 

[Bestwifeever]

Not one article details how Myers, an award-winning mystery writer who possessed no formal training in psychology or sociology, concocted a test routinely deployed by 89 of the Fortune 100 companies, the US government, hundreds of universities, and online dating sites like Perfect Match, Project Evolove and Type Tango............

How funny if she and her mother just made it all up.

 

[lemming]

if?

 

[lemming]

How funny if she and her mother just made it all up.

if?

 

[donheff]

I read some sort of meta analysis or something debunking Myers-Briggs recently. It found that the test type results change significantly from test to test and have no predictive value. I know my type was different from test to test. Basically, the test is pseudo-science.

 

[zedd]

I read some sort of meta analysis or something debunking Myers-Briggs recently. It found that the test type results change significantly from test to test and have no predictive value. I know my type was different from test to test. Basically, the test is pseudo-science.

You're bring too kind. More like junk science.

 

[candrew]

if?

But they did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.

 

[growing_older]

I always used to like when corporate HR rolled out a new round of MB testing to help us all learn how to interact with each other. It was like being invited to an astrology festival, although it was hard to get anyone to acknowledge the fakery. I did notice that if I considered different parts of my day I could get almost any score on the test. Which meant I got grouped with different people almost every time, which was interesting.

 

[bjorn2bwild]

The motivations of the dynamic duo remain elusive, their business acumen however, has proved to be quite good. The present day structure of the organization as depicted by the author, has a kind of EST feel to it. My SIL and her husband were paid staff there in the early 80's.

 

[Lisa99]

First time I took the test I was in my early 20s. INTJ

30 years later I'm still an INTJ. I've taken the test several times and it always comes out the same.

 

[Amethyst]

It always annoyed me that people at work would use their MBTI letters to "excuse" bad behavior in themselves and others.

Rudeness is rudeness, I don't care if you're an "E," "I," "T," whatever.

Amethyst

 

[HFWR]

Mine is LSD25. No, wait, wrong test...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Electric_Kool-Aid_Acid_Test

 

[ls99]

Never taken the "test". Nor do I have any intentions to do so. I am very comfortable with definite dislike of crowds or BS artists.

 

[bjorn2bwild]

Mine is LSD25. No, wait, wrong test...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Electric_Kool-Aid_Acid_Test

I took that test.......I passed with flying colors.

 

[mpeirce]

Huh, I wonder how I avoided this stuff all my life. Lucky I guess.

 

[ERD50]

Interesting. I guess I never really thought about whether the initials themselves are meaningful. I think I looked at as a process (a journey, not a destination). This tells you a little about yourself, and the people you interact with may be different from you, so you need to learn how to interact with them.

Funny thing is, that kind of thinking probably goes totally against whatever my initials would say about me (and I forget what they were, but very likely INTJ?).

-ERD50

 

[bclover]

Never taken the "test". Nor do I have any intentions to do so. I am very comfortable with definite dislike of crowds or BS artists.

+1. Never heard of it

 

[HFWR]

I took that test.......I passed with flying colors.

Excellent pun! Oh, and +1...

 

[rodi]

I took that test.......I passed with flying colors.

That made me laugh.

 

[unclemick]

First time I took the test I was in my early 20s. INTJ

30 years later I'm still an INTJ. I've taken the test several times and it always comes out the same.

The J has floated over the years - especially if I'm talking to a female.

heh heh heh - I never even heard of Myers-Briggs until two years into ER on a temp. contract engineering job(1995). Now I embrace my INTJ like E.O. Wilson's ants - it's tribal.

 

[Koolau]

"Creative Thinking" in the '80s, "Performance Excellence" and the ubiquitous Analytical/Driver/Expressive/Amiable testing in the '90s, M-B in the '00s: My megacorp did all these and many more - slavishly. They ignored all the results and simply went on to the next fad as if it would somehow be better or more useful than the last. The only thing the whole process created was a lot of (even more) cynical w*rker bees in our drab cubicles. YMMV

 

[big-papa]

"Creative Thinking" in the '80s, "Performance Excellence" and the ubiquitous Analytical/Driver/Expressive/Amiable testing in the '90s, M-B in the '00s: My megacorp did all these and many more - slavishly. They ignored all the results and simply went on to the next fad as if it would somehow be better or more useful than the last. The only thing the whole process created was a lot of (even more) cynical w*rker bees in our drab cubicles. YMMV

Same at my MegaCorp. CEO reads an airplane book and talks to head of HR who, of course, has gone to a seminar. Head of HR then contacts a consultant who then comes in and assesses everybody. We then sit in a room talking about where we came out. Then back to work. A year or two later, rinse and repeat. Always thought the key was to become one of those consultants $$$$$$.

 

[Walt34]

Always thought the key was to become one of those consultants $$$$$$.

Be careful what you wish for. Are you sure you want to live out of a suitcase and spend your days talking to cynical nutjobs?