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Introduction: A Classification That Can Change Each Time You Take It
Four letters of the alphabet, sorting people into sixteen types. Type indicators, MBTI foremost among them, are the most widely enjoyed instruments of self-understanding available today. People add the name of a type to a profile, discuss compatibility, and treat the result as an owner’s manual for themselves. Few readers will not have nodded deeply over a result and thought that is exactly me.
Material on how to make good use of MBTI is plentiful. What this article treats is the ground beneath it: why we take a classification whose result can change each time we take it and believe it to be who we really are, then fit ourselves to the name.
Here is the conclusion first. The problem is not the use of type indicators. It is receiving a rough tendency that fluctuates as an unwavering essence, and erecting on top of it the heavy building of a self-image. Types are useful as instruments. What is at issue is how the result is received.
📖 Contents
The Type Changes Between Sittings: Weak Test-Retest Reliability
There is a basic measure of whether an instrument can be trusted: test–retest reliability. Take the same test twice, with an interval between, and does the same result come out? If something genuinely stable is being measured, retaking it a few weeks later should not change the result much.
For sixteen-type instruments, however, the education researcher David Pittenger pointed out how weak that reliability is [Pittenger, 1993]. Retested after a period of weeks to months, a substantial proportion of people are classified as a different type from before. Someone sorted into one type yesterday is sorted into another today. That does not permit the claim that the instrument is measuring a type you were born with.
An objection may suggest itself here: results change because answers wobble with the mood and condition of the day, while the real self has not changed. But the objection deepens the problem. If results are so susceptible to wobble in the answers that the type changes with the mood of the day, then the result is measuring the condition of the day rather than an unwavering essence. Either way, a result that changes between sittings cannot serve as the foundation of a lifelong self-image.
The Violence of Cutting a Continuum Into Two
Why does this happen? The reason lies in the machinery of type-sorting itself.
A type indicator divides people into two groups on each of several scales. Introverted or extraverted. But actual human characteristics are distributed along a gradual continuum between introversion and extraversion. The mainstream of psychology attempting to measure personality scientifically now measures several characteristics along continuous scales rather than sorting people into types [John & Srivastava, 1999]. Most people sit somewhere in the middle. Force those in the middle onto one side or the other, and a slight wobble at the boundary changes which side they land on.
Consider height and the crudeness is immediately apparent. Given an instrument dividing people into tall and short at some threshold, two people either side of it receive opposite labels while being almost identical in height. Type-sorting of personality does the same thing to characteristics that are harder to see. The confusion we would never make about height, we make readily about a personality we cannot see.
▸ Where the very sensation that a type fits comes from is treated in what the Barnum effect is.
Building a Self-Image on Shifting Ground
The fragility matters at the point where a fluctuating classification is believed to be who you really are and you begin fitting yourself to the name.
Once a type is believed, a different result on the next sitting is dismissed as an inaccurate measurement this time, and only the type believed first survives as genuine. Among several shifting foundations, the one that suits you is taken for solid ground. And you begin narrowing your options along the type: I am this type, so this is not for me. A heavy building called a self-image is being erected on ground that is moving.
None of this makes type-sorting useless. As an entrance for grasping rough tendencies, as one angle from which to view yourself, a type has its uses. The problem is not the use but the reception. Receive a fluctuating tendency as an unwavering essence and the instrument turns into something that binds you. Or rather — it is not the instrument doing the changing. It is the reception, taking what moves for what does not, that turns an instrument into a binding.
Conclusion: Rest the Type on Your Palm Instead of Gripping It
However accurate MBTI and its relatives appear, the classification fluctuates between sittings and cuts a continuous characteristic crudely into two. Grip it as an unchanging essence you were born with, and paths you have not yet tried become invisible for no reason other than lying outside the type.
What is required is not a more accurate type indicator. It is to rest the same result on your palm instead of gripping it — returning I am this type, an assertion about being, to I currently tend to behave this way, a changeable observation. That difference of a single phrase leaves a margin for change in a self-image. Receive the overall design as your next step. How identification with a diagnosis operates across self-understanding as a whole is set out in are personality tests accurate.
References
Academic papers and theory
- Pittenger, D. J. “The Utility of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator” (1993) Review of Educational Research, 63(4)
- John, O. P., & Srivastava, S. “The Big Five Trait Taxonomy: History, Measurement, and Theoretical Perspectives” (1999) In Handbook of Personality: Theory and Research (2nd ed.), Guilford Press
