MBTI is absolutely bullshit, it's like one level above horoscopes and astrology, but very similar type of BS. There's also the Gallup crap that many corps were doing to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of each employee so they could fit them into neat buckets such as "Leader" vs "Follower", as if these aren't skills people develop over time but actual personality traits.

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cm2012 10 days ago | parent [-]

Its kind of a common thing to say Myers-Briggs typing is useless because its pseudo-science. I dont think this is supported by the data in the way people think.

For one, many studies of identical twins raised in separate households show they have the same personality type at a much higher rate than chance.

Two, there are incredibly strong correlations in the data. In different surveys of 100k+ people, the highest earning type has twice the salary of the lowest type. This is basically impossible by chance.

The letters (like ENTJ) correlate highly to the variables of Big 5, the personality system used by scientists. Its just that it's bucketed into 16 categories vs being 5 sliding scales.

Scientific studies are looking for variables that can be tracked over time reliably, so Big 5 is a better measure for that.

But for personal or organizational use, the category approach is a feature, not a bug. It is much more help as a mental toolkit than just getting a personality score on each of the 5 categories.

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BlarfMcFlarf 9 days ago | parent [-]

You can pick any set of axis you feel like and get similar results. “Do you like X? Wow you are an X person!”. So yeah, technically better than horoscopes, more like a “warm” reading where you tell a person what they told you earlier. But it’s entirely unclear why these axis are the right ones over a million other possible ones, if these are particularly stable categories in time and context, or if the harm of encouraging people to box themselves or others into specific stereotypes has any possible benefit to outweigh the obvious harms of simplifying stereotypes.

	▲	cm2012 9 days ago \| parent [-]
		It's good questions. Here's why this axis is the right one in my opinion: 1) As I mentioned, it has a lot of statistically significant correlations, including to all the variables of the Big 5. Example: Surveys show that % of the overall population that is each type (like INFJ) is very consistent across time and populations. 2) Beyond that, youre right, there are a lot of personality systems with pros and cons. But Myers-Briggs has by far the must supporting materials, tools, ease of use, and so on. I think its the quickest to make useful to the average person. 3) I've found it really helpful as a lens for self analysis in my own life.