{"id":5141,"date":"2014-07-15T22:05:34","date_gmt":"2014-07-15T22:05:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.idrlabs.com\/articles\/?p=5141"},"modified":"2020-06-20T22:38:52","modified_gmt":"2020-06-20T22:38:52","slug":"17-reasons-that-joseph-strombergs-critique-of-the-mbti-is-uninformed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.idrlabs.com\/articles\/2014\/07\/17-reasons-that-joseph-strombergs-critique-of-the-mbti-is-uninformed\/","title":{"rendered":"17 Reasons That Joseph Stromberg\u2019s Critique of the MBTI Is Uninformed"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Sigurd Arild, Ryan Smith, and Eva Gregersen<\/strong><\/p>\n

Regular readers know the drill by now: We have no affiliation with the MBTI; we just don’t like seeing lazy and uninformed critiques misguiding the public. The latest example of such a critique is the journalist\u00a0Joseph Stromberg’s article:\u00a0Why the Myers-Briggs test is totally meaningless<\/a>, as featured in Vox.com. The article is basically non-news, lazily re-hashing older articles that we have previously debunked on the site. But what’s worse, the article is also factually incorrect in several places. Let’s go over Stromberg’s points:<\/p>\n

1
\n<\/strong>\u201cThe test is completely meaningless. \u2026 \u2018There\u2019s just no evidence behind it,\u2019 says Adam Grant, an organizational psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania \u00a0\u2026 \u2018The characteristics measured by the test have almost no predictive power on how happy you’ll be in a situation, how you’ll perform at your job, or how happy you’ll be in your marriage.\u2019\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

If the test is \u201ccompletely meaningless,\u201d why does it have “some” predictive power? It can\u2019t be both.<\/p>\n

Adam Grant should not be treated as a credible source. As we have previously documented<\/a>, Grant quotes unfaithfully from the scientific source material that he bases his argument on. He says that the test is \u201ccompletely meaningless,\u201d but the scientific study<\/a> that Grant himself has referenced concludes that: \u201c\u2026 the four MBTI indices did measure aspects of four of the five major dimensions of normal personality\u2026\u201d and that \u201ceven critical reviewers \u2026 see promise in the instrument.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is true that the MBTI has little predictive power with regards to happiness in marriage or job performance, but the MBTI doesn\u2019t claim to measure those things, so why should that be a problem?<\/p>\n

2
\n<\/strong>\u201cMost of the faithful think of it primarily as a tool for telling you your proper career choice.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

It is true that some people think that, but there is no basis for claiming that \u201cmost\u201d of the people who are sympathetic to the MBTI think that it can meaningfully determine which careers you will thrive in. Some people also think that microwave ovens can be used to dry their pets, but that doesn’t really reflect badly on microwave ovens.<\/p>\n

3
\n<\/strong>\u201cBut the test was developed in the 1940s based off the untested theories of an outdated analytical psychologist named Carl Jung, and is now thoroughly disregarded by the psychology community.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Jung\u2019s theories weren\u2019t out-dated in the 1940s; on the contrary, the Allies used him as an intelligence agent, crafting psychological reports on Hitler, which were read by Eisenhower, among others. Also the matter of Jung’s relation to mainstream psychology is not as black and white as the writer lets on. More about that later.<\/p>\n

4<\/strong>
\n\u201cSeveral analyses have shown the test is totally ineffective at predicting people’s success in various jobs, and that about half of the people who take it twice get different results each time.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

It is true that the test is ineffective at predicting job performance, but again, the MBTI itself says that it should not be used to determine job performance, so the MBTI is like a microwave with a big yellow warning sticker that says: \u201cWARNING \u2013 SHOULD NOT BE USED TO DRY PETS,\u201d but which nevertheless attracts scores of detractors who voice their offense at the fact that the microwave isn’t a suitable way of drying your pet.<\/p>\n

5<\/strong>
\n\u201cIn 1921, Jung published the book Psychological Types. In it, he put forth a few different interesting, unsupported theories on how the human brain operates.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Not brain \u2013 psyche. Anachronisms are unseemly. It was important to Jung that his theories were not materialistic or Aristotelian, which is why he avoided giving them a physiological basis.<\/p>\n

6<\/strong>
\n\u201cAmong other things, he explained [in Psychological Types] that humans roughly fall into two main types: perceivers and judgers.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

This is not correct. Judging and Perceiving are Myers\u2019 and Briggs\u2019 inventions, based only loosely on Jung\u2019s original concepts of rational and irrational. If you are going to report on the contents of a book,\u00a0do yourself the trouble of reading it.<\/p>\n

7<\/strong>
\n\u201c[The theory of types] didn’t come out of controlled experiments or data. \u2018This was before psychology was an empirical science,\u2019 says Grant, the Penn psychologist. \u2018Jung literally made these up based on his own experiences.\u2019 \u2026 \u00a0None of this came out of controlled experiments or data \u2013 it was all theoretical.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Neither Darwin\u2019s theory of evolution nor Einstein\u2019s theory of relativity came out of \u201ccontrolled experiments or data.\u201d Like Jung\u2019s theory of types, they were initially made up and later confirmed to some degree by experiments. In the same way, Jung\u2019s theory of the elements that constitute the personality have also been confirmed to some degree by later experiments. It seems disingenuous not to inform the reader that the basic gist of Jung\u2019s postulates have been confirmed in experiments to some degree<\/a>.<\/p>\n

8
\n<\/strong>\u201cJung’s principles were later adapted into a test by Katherine Briggs and her daughter Isabel Briggs Myers, a pair of Americans who had no formal training in psychology.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Myers and Briggs were not psychologists, but they nevertheless succeeded in doing what academically certified people in their own time failed to do<\/a>. If someone runs a marathon and finishes ahead of the pros, should he then be stripped of his victory because he isn\u2019t a professional runner?<\/p>\n

9<\/strong>
\n\u201cMyers and Briggs gave titles to each of these types, like the Executive, the Caregiver, the Scientist, and the Idealist.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

This is factually incorrect. The writer is confusing the official MBTI material with fan-generated material that he has found online. If a Richard Dawkins fan believes in astrology, does that constitute a sound basis for claiming that Richard Dawkins believes in astrology? The logic seems to be limping here.<\/p>\n

10<\/strong>
\n\u201cBut the fact is that [the indices measured by the MBTI] come from the now-disregarded theories of a early 20th century thinker who believed in things like ESP and the collective unconscious.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Actually, the two areas of Jung\u2019s theories that are widely regarded as being non-mystical and compatible with empirical science are his studies in word association and his theory of types. It seems disingenuous not to inform the reader of this.<\/p>\n

11
\n<\/strong>\u201cActual data tells psychologists that these traits do not have a bimodal distribution. Tracking a group of people’s interactions with others, for instance, shows that as Jung noted, there aren’t really pure extroverts and introverts, but mostly people who fall somewhere in between.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

This point will be dealt with in conjunction with point #15 below.<\/p>\n

12
\n\u201c<\/em><\/strong>All four of the categories in the Myers-Briggs suffer from these kinds of problems, and psychologists say they aren’t an effective way of distinguishing between different personality types. \u2018Contemporary social scientists are rarely studying things like whether you make decisions based on feelings or rational calculus \u2014 because all of use both of these,\u2019 Grant says. “<\/em><\/p>\n

It doesn’t seem like the writer has any sources for his claim that \u201cpsychologists\u201d are of this opinion, and Adam Grant\u2019s assertion is incorrect. Grant hasn’t done even the most basic\u00a0research on the MBTI\u00a0and\u00a0mistakenly\u00a0thinks that the MBTI’s “Feeling” category is about actual feelings. But the very first hit on Google for \u201cMBTI thinking feeling\u201d takes you to the official Myers & Briggs Foundation and tells you<\/a>\u00a0that it is not.<\/p>\n

Again, we must urge journalists not to use\u00a0Grant as a serious source. The fact that Grant misconstrues scientific source material<\/a> to make his point should be a huge disqualifier in and of itself. Grant is basically someone with a fancy academic title who keeps insisting that microwaves should be able to dry pets.<\/p>\n

13
\n<\/strong>\u201cThis is why some psychologists have shifted from talking about personality traits to personality states \u2014 and why it’s extremely hard to find a real psychologist anywhere who uses the Myers-Briggs with patients.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

This point seems like a non sequitur. The MBTI doesn\u2019t purport to measure any kind of psychopathology, so why should clinical psychologists use it? On the other hand, it is easy to find organizational psychologists who use it.<\/p>\n

Also, one might get the idea from the article that the very practice of testing static personality \u201ctraits\u201d is on the retreat. The state of the art in personality testing is still the Big Five test<\/a> and so the practice of measuring personality in static terms rather than fluid ones is not at all on the retreat.<\/p>\n

14
\n<\/strong>\u201cThere’s also another related problem with these limited choices: look at the chart above, and you’ll notice that words like \u2018selfish,\u2019 \u2018lazy,\u2019 or \u2018mean\u2019 don’t appear anywhere. No matter what type you’re assigned, you get a flattering description of yourself as a \u2018thinker,\u2019 \u2018performer,\u2019 or \u2018nurturer.\u2019\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Again, the writer is confusing the official MBTI material with the fan-generated material found online. But disregarding that, it is generally true that the MBTI has a positive bias. We have dealt with that criticism here<\/a>. Yes<\/em>, the MBTI is generally too positive, but one reason for the positivity was that it was developed to be used in organizations where the practitioners\u00a0had to get people to accept their results. The Big Five was developed to be used by researchers and did not need to win the acceptance of the test takers.<\/p>\n

Now that psychologists are seeking to use the Big Five in organizations, they have found it necessary to adopt a positive bias which is akin to the one used in the MBTI, and even to postulate personality types, which is one of the\u00a0things that the adherents of the Big Five started out criticizing the MBTI for. The process can be compared to a child who criticizes his parents for the slights in their parenting. The child vows to himself that when he grows up and becomes a parent, his parenting will be much better. But then, when he actually is<\/em> a parent, and stands there with the crying children, he finds himself repeating many of the \u201cmistakes\u201d that his own parents made.<\/p>\n

Additionally, if people want negative type descriptions, they need to look no further than Jung\u2019s Psychological Types<\/em>. Since the writer has ostensibly read that book (see point #6 above), it seems like an oversight that he doesn’t mention these non-positive type descriptions to his readers.<\/p>\n

15
\n<\/strong>Returning to the criticism cited in point #11 above: \u201cActual data tells psychologists that these traits do not have a bimodal distribution. Tracking a group of people’s interactions with others, for instance, shows that as Jung noted, there aren’t really pure extroverts and introverts, but mostly people who fall somewhere in between.\u201d<\/em>
\n<\/strong>
\nThe criticism ties into another observation furnished by the writer, namely that: \u201cResearch has found that as much as 50 percent of people arrive at a different result the second time they take a test, even if it’s just five weeks later.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

This criticism is true, as we have examined here<\/a>. It is the single biggest problem with the MBTI.<\/p>\n

<Stromberg\u2019s article then continues for some time, recycling the points he has already made. We avoid insulting the reader\u2019s intelligence by repeating the rebuttals.> <\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

16
\n<\/strong>Stromberg then writes:\u201cApart from the introversion\/extroversion aspect of the Myers-Briggs, the newer, empirically driven tests focus on entirely different categories. The Five Factor model measures people’s openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism \u2014 factors that do differ widely among people, data has told us.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\"bellcurve\"<\/a>This assertion seems to rest on multiple misunderstandings on the writer\u2019s part:<\/p>\n