Comment by wisty | Hacker News Reader

Comment by wisty | Hacker News Reader

Here's my copy-pasta:

MBTI is braindead pop-science which is based on the rantings of Jung. It was good for the time (when measuring people's skulls to determine their personality was popular) but has no place in modern science.

The biggest problem is, it's deliberately polarising. Jung thought there were fundamental personality types, and that everyone would fall into a specific box. That's good if you want to write a "what career is best for you" article for Cosmo, or for school kids. But it's bad science. Most personality traits are normally distributed, not categorial.

Most people are ambiverts, not introverts or extrovert. There's plenty of people who are heavily introverted, and plenty of people who are heavily extroverted, and it's useful to have a word for it, but most people aren't.

The other problem is, the traits it measures aren't important. Big 5 (Introversion, Openness to experience (i.e. culture / intelligence), Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism) is better. It uses more interesting traits, and puts them on a scale (rather than using categories). It's not perfect (there's no real model, it's just common factors in personalities - psychologists often say it's overrated) but it's much better than MBTI.

All models fall short of reality, it doesn't mean they aren't useful models. Saying something isn't useful because it categorizes people rather misses the point of modelling in the first place; of course it categorizes people, that's the point, to simplify reality.

It doesn't matter if the model has 5 types or 200 types, if the model is useful in grouping like minded people, then it's a useful model and the number of categories is simply a matter of how accurately I want to measure. I can create a model of 2 kinds of people, haters and non-haters; this is a useful model. Meyers Briggs is also a useful model especially as shorthand for Young's functions, which are also useful models.

While the big 5 might map closer to reality, it seems a less useful model precisely because it doesn't categorize. Giving me 5 scores on a scale isn't very useful in finding like minded people because I can't say "what's your big 5 type?" It doesn't simplify enough. Knowing I'm an INTP on the other hand, is very useful in finding like minded people.

As someone who is ambi in several of those categories I still think there's utility in the classifications. It's definitely pop-pseudo-science, but I'm not convinced proper science can even distill something as complex as personality into something a lay person can understand. Maybe it's the best most people will do in understanding themselves.

A friend of mine who also recognizes the pseudo-scientific nature of MBTI put it well: use the test to pinpoint where people may differ from you and learn why they do. He claims he has almost mastered all eight letters (he still stuggles with T), and I have to say that he is one of the most well-balanced people I know. Personally, the test revealed to me why people may think I come off as arrogant (it apparently comes with the J and T), which I have become more aware of in my interaction with others.

Meyers-Briggs was never meant to pigeon-hole people so that organizations could be better aligned, or for social engineering purposes. As a psychoanalytic tool, its main purpose is to help the subject understand his or her own inclinations.

Any application outside of therapy or introspection is pop-science; and any application within those fields is only relevant if the subject accepts the categorizations of the test.

In that sense it's never struck me as anything more than horoscopes for those who don't believe horoscopes.

Horoscopes base their descriptions on time of birth, Meyers Briggs on actual answers from you; they are hardly comparable.

The more important point about the Big 5 is that Introversion and Extroversion aren't opposing qualities - so "ambivert" no longer means you sit in the middle of some bipolar scale - more likely you just score high in extroversion and conscientiousness.

Neat. When explaining myself with MBTI terms, I usually say that while my default state is introverted, I have 'learned' to overcome this and act extroverted in many situations.

With the Big 5, I would instead classify myself as an introvert with a high degree of "openness to experience".

The other thing few people realize about personality assessments is that they are almost always RELATIVE, not ABSOLUTE, values.

Where you rank on any scale is a function of the population you're being compared to - so, for instance, if you take an assessment as an undergraduate, you may score lower in Extraversion or Openness compared to your peers (since studies show people tend to peak in those values at that time of life) as opposed to the general population. Practically speaking, your results from an assessment are often benchmarked against a group, but it's rare you know who that group is.

The article only talks about correlating Introversion to sales ability, so big 5 or MBTI wouldn't terribly matter. Further, in this case they used a different, 7 point scale.

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