Myers-Briggs Should be Much Maligned

What we have here, in developing the test, is a failure to engage in induction and integration.

In “Why the Myers-Briggs test is totally meaningless” (Vox Media, July 15, 2014), Joseph Stromberg says:

Actual 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.

With most traits, humans fall on different points along a spectrum. If you ask people whether they prefer to think or feel, or whether they prefer to judge or perceive, the majority will tell you a little of both. Jung himself admitted as much, noting that the binaries were useful ways of thinking about people, but writing that “there is no such thing as a pure extravert or a pure introvert. Such a man would be in the lunatic asylum.”

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[T]he test is notoriously inconsistent. Research 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.    

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