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Does Myers-Briggs Type Indicator tell something objective and predictive about the persons decision making tendencies? In other words, can a Myers-Briggs score give you useful information about what decisions a person is likely to make in future scenarios, or about his/her abilities?

Suma
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  • Voted to close, it's really just an opinion topic. – Russell Steen Mar 10 '11 at 16:04
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    @Russell Steen: You mean it is impossible to decide by scientific method if MBTI tells something or not, or that you do not want this particular question to be discussed here from some other reasons? – Suma Mar 10 '11 at 16:07
  • I mean that it's impossible to decide conclusively what makes sense for employers at large regarding the use of this test. If you asked if Myers-Briggs measures what it claims to measure (and explained what that was), then I would have no problem with the question. As it stands, that's not what was asked however. – Russell Steen Mar 10 '11 at 16:10
  • By the way, this is not a bad question. You just need to elaborate more. – Borror0 Mar 10 '11 at 16:19
  • I have tried to improve it. I am afraid this is more or less the best I can do, therefore if you still do not consider it a good question, and cannot suggest some particular way ho to improve it, I guess I will rather delete it. – Suma Mar 10 '11 at 16:39
  • @Suma -- I tried to help with an edit. See if that is a reasonable re-phrasing for you. – Russell Steen Mar 10 '11 at 16:41
  • Brian Dunning of Skeptoid has devoted [an episode](http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4221) to MBTI, I recommend it. – Hans Westerbeek Mar 24 '11 at 14:59
  • The MB is based on Jungian archetypes - thus it is on shaky ground to begin with. It also tends to produce less reliable results over time. When it comes to personality research and tests as a general rule tests based on the "big 5" dimensions (Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Neuroticism and Openness to experience. (OCEAN or CANOE)) are most reliable and other personality tests more flawed. – Keir Liddle Mar 11 '11 at 11:14

2 Answers2

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Actually, there is little evidence to support that the Myers-Briggs gives us much useful information, at all. The M-B was based on Jungian ideas, but the people who developed it were not even psychologists. They based the questions on a variety of things, only some of which can be linked to Jungian ideas on psychology. Jungian ideas have not necessarily been supported, consistently, when tested. The test, itself, has shown to be problematic in determining behavior simply because people's results are often inconsistent.

Basically, the MB test is a very widely used measuring tool which hasn't been proven to be either consistent or even very useful.

There's a decent breakdown of the history of the test and its flaws at skepdic, here.

SophieMonster
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I was able to find this study which seems to indicate that the MBTI was predictive for the Extravert/Intravert and Sensing/Intuition dimensions. People who ranked high on these tended to be in jobs which aligned with their scores.

I could not find any studies which focused on the abilities of the person versus the MBTI score, so I'm not sure a correlation would make sense as the test focuses on personality and not skill.

Flimzy
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Francis Shanahan
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