{"id":5468,"date":"2014-10-09T19:20:40","date_gmt":"2014-10-09T19:20:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.idrlabs.com\/articles\/?p=5468"},"modified":"2020-06-20T22:38:52","modified_gmt":"2020-06-20T22:38:52","slug":"todd-essigs-misconstrual-of-the-mbti","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.idrlabs.com\/articles\/2014\/10\/todd-essigs-misconstrual-of-the-mbti\/","title":{"rendered":"Todd Essig\u2019s Misconstrual of the MBTI"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

In a quote that is popularly misattributed to Joseph Goebbels, it is said that \u201cif you repeat a lie often enough, it eventually becomes the truth.\u201d Since Adam Grant kicked off his sensationalist critique of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) last year<\/a>, there has been no shortage of uninformed bloggers willing to sacrifice scientific integrity in order to bring down the Myers-Briggs. The latest of these derogators is Todd Essig, in a piece<\/a> written for Forbes<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Since we have dealt with the majority of the issues raised by Essig long ago, we will ignore the idle repetitions and only respond to what\u2019s new in his piece. Essig could have saved himself and his employers at Forbes<\/em> some embarrassing misconstruals if he had read our<\/a> previous<\/a> articles<\/a> first<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Here, in brief, is why Essig\u2019s article fails:<\/p>\n

1<\/strong>
\nEssig\u2019s headline says that the MBTI is \u201cmeaningless.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the MBTI is not \u201cmeaningless.\u201d Every single scientific, peer-reviewed study ever conducted into the validity of the MBTI has ended up concluding that there is some<\/em> truth to the assessments yielded by the MBTI, while at the same time it is also true that the instrument has noticeable shortcomings.<\/p>\n

2<\/strong>
\nEssig writes that: \u201cThe MBTI is pretty much nonsense, sciencey snake oil. As is well-established by research, it has no more reliability and validity than a good Tarot card reading.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

But Essig is flat-out wrong here. There is no well-established body of research proving that the MBTI has “about the same reliability as Tarot cards.” To furnish evidence for his point, Essig links to a scientific article<\/a>. But this article does not conclude that the MBTI has no more reliability than a Tarot reading \u2013 on the contrary, the article concludes that \u201cThe available evidence suggests that the MBTI does measure constructs related to personality.\u201d So the very article provided by Essig himself concludes the opposite of what Essig says it does.<\/p>\n

Like Adam Grant<\/a>, Essig belongs to a band of MBTI critics who are so willing to bring down the Myers-Briggs that they are willing to misquote from the scientific sources when they can\u2019t find proper studies to back up their assertions.<\/p>\n

3<\/strong>
\nEssig then addresses one of the well-known empirical problems with the MBTI instrument, namely that it breaks the indices measured into halves. Essig purports to illustrate this weakness by the following analogy: \u201cConsider an imaginary single-letter Myers-Briggs Weight Indicator. The fictional MBWI, just like its namesake, is an either\/or designation. You stand on the MBWI scale and it says your weight type is either obese (O) or anorectic (A). Can you imagine taking that seriously? Saying one\u2019s weight is either obese (O) or anorectic (A) is not just lacking validity, it\u2019s actually pretty absurd. And so too is the MBTI itself with its \u201cfour pairs of opposing preferences.\u201d Personality traits just don\u2019t fit the either\/or structure of the MBTI any more than weight does. And like our absurd fictional example, it is absurd to say they do.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

The basic criticism voiced here is a sound one \u2013 the cut-up indices are<\/em> an empirical problem for the MBTI. But the analogy is misleading because it suggests that the MBTI\u2019s categories are either 0 or 100 when in fact its categories are rather 0-50 and 51-100. In Essig’s own analogy, it would be more accurate to say that the MBTI purported to tell you whether your body weight was over or under 150 pounds, not whether you were anorectic or obese.<\/p>\n

However, as we have previously covered on the site<\/a>,\u00a0the MBTI is not an end in itself: It is an attempt to quantify C.G. Jung\u2019s cognitive theory empirically, which means that\u00a0the scores\u00a0yielded by the MBTI are indicators<\/em> and\u00a0should not be taken to be direct\u00a0depictions of the type preferences involved, just like a column of smoke should not be taken to be fire itself, but indeed can often be taken as a legitimate\u00a0indicator<\/em> of fire.<\/p>\n

4<\/strong>
\nFinally, Essig\u00a0gives us a rundown of some of the criticisms that his own reporting is based off: Adam Grant, Joseph Stromberg, and Drake Baer, as well as\u00a0a New York Times<\/em> article<\/a>\u00a0re-hashing the pieces of Adam Grant, Joseph Stromberg, and Drake Baer. In other words, we are dealing with a mindless copy-paste job of fallacious reasoning\u00a0going back and forth between\u00a0the usual suspects, all of whom\u00a0we have previously debunked on the site, and all of whom\u00a0can be\u00a0demonstrated to be ignorant of even the most basic tenets concerning\u00a0the MBTI. There is nothing new going on here – it is merely par for the course that the\u00a0lie, repeated often enough, eventually becomes the truth.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Article Series: CelebrityTypes Debunks Bad MBTI Criticisms:<\/strong><\/p>\n