The analysis is, but "types" are just preferences/tendencies that everyone has, reflected back from the test. It says "I tend towards introversion or not, being detail-oriented or not" etc. That's it. Mind you, that's of no use to your employer who wants you to do your damn job whatever it happens to be. If you want the job, it's for you.
The types themselves are also nonsense. There's sixteen of them, and all sixteen have significant tendencies in all four axes. It seems extremely unlikely that someone would always have a tendency in every axis all the time, so the types themselves are set up wrong. They're not even acknowledging the possibility of an inconclusive result.
It's also easy to see the financial incentive of removing the possibility for someone to get an "unremarkable" result. Telling people that they're mostly average, even if for a lot of people it's the truth, doesn't convince them they're getting their money's worth.
To put it more mathematically, personality traits lie on a normal distribution. Most people are in the middle. Myers-Briggs turns traits into binary options, which does not match reality.
There is no proof that personality traits have any identifiable distribution, let alone normal distribution.
Heck we don’t even know what personalty is, or if it is even a useful scientific term. Evidence suggests that peoples behavior varies wildly between situations, way more then any preconceived notion of behavior dictated by personality.
If tests show a normal distribution of a personality trait, it is most likely because it has been standardized to do exactly that. Not because people’s behavioral patterns align neatly in our favorite distribution.
If preference does not correlate with behavior, you are effectively measuring nothing.
However it does correlate with behavior, otherwise personality traits would be completely dead as a science. But the effect is very weak next to the effect of the situation. Diverse personality traits will cheat if the environment is conducive to cheating behavior.
I would put personality in the same camp as religious believes or political leanings. An effect that mildly alters behavior, but not enough to actually matter in most circumstances.
> If preference does not correlate with behavior, you are effectively measuring nothing.
Preference is not nothing. It reflects what people like and want.
Preference for these traits, e.g. introversion, is a fairly reliable predictor of behavior, but it doesn't matter if it is or not, if someone lies to themselves entirely (however likely that is). The purpose is regurgitating to the test-taker what they like and want. I don't see how a company could make good use of it.
Thanks for illustrating what parent comment said: it would be ridiculous to categorise only between “tall” and “short” when most people would fall into “kinda average”
A friendly reminder that height is not normally distributed either. Within a population it has a bimodal distribution.
Also a friendly reminder that a quarter standard deviations above the mean vs. the same distance below the mean is quite often a trivial difference in population statistics. And it should be nonsense (pseudoscience if you will) to make the distinction. A much more interesting statistic are the outliers. And grouping an outlier with a person who is 0.05 SD from the mean is just confusing at best.
Partially yes. But a distinguished homogeneous population of a single gender probably has a normal distribution. Luckily humans usually don’t live in a distinguished homogeneous population of a single gender, so comparing your self to the average is at best fun. (unless you are an outlier, then it can be interesting or medically useful).
- The types do not indicate the degree of tendency in each axis. That can vary within a type and isn't captured by the type code at all. The types just indicate the direction. There is some evidence that children tend to have more extreme preferences which balance out people mature.
- Have you seen Daniel Kahneman's Thinking Fast and Slow? The "fast" and "slow" thinking described there is very similar to what the MBTI calls "perception" (fast) and "judgement" (slow). And notably those categories do have strong evidence of an innate tendency which remains consistent over time (but only if you don't bias the participant by asking them to approach the task in certain way indicating that this tendency can be overridden by the appropriateness of certain thinking mode to the task at hand)
I don’t know how relevant it is to your particular point, but IIRC Kahneman realized a few years ago that some of /Thinking Fast and Slow/'s conclusions (specifically on priming) relied on underpowered studies: https://replicationindex.com/2017/02/02/reconstruction-of-a-....
> It seems extremely unlikely that someone would always have a tendency in every axis all the time
It's a preference. You're making it out to be more than it is. It doesn't preclude that someone can have little preference for one tendency over another. Most times test results give you percentages.
> Telling people that they're mostly average, even if for a lot of people it's the truth, doesn't convince them they're getting their money's worth.
What money? Who pays for this shit? There's like a million free MBTI tests online.
I think "you're making it out to be more than it is" sort of surrenders the whole purpose of the test. If the test isn't consistent and doesn't have the power to predict outcomes, then it is effectively the same as the "which Harry Potter Character are you" Buzzfeed quizzes - e.g. amusing but meaningless.
As for who pays for this stuff: At least two of the FAANGs pay consultants thousands of dollars to run these tests as team building exercises. There's a thriving market for this stuff.
The purpose is reflecting back to the test-taker what they like and want. Whether it's incongruous with their actual behavior is irrelevant, but people don't tend to be dishonest to themselves about things like "introversion", not entirely. Self-therapy/exploration is one use-case alongside entertainment as you said. I don't think companies should bother with it, unless they plan to give employees what they want. On the other hand, the testing itself could be regarded as something that keeps the drones amused. It's hard to imagine another purpose.
