Improving MBTI

[MacGuffin]

I found this recent article: MBTI, If You Want Me Back, You Need to Change Too {clickable link}

Of course, Big Five’s parents realized that language is only one of many ways to see personality. To make sure that their categories were meaningful, they collected genetic evidence and fMRI data. They also found that there was really no such thing as a type—every personality trait was on a continuum, and it was very rare to be on one extreme or another. Type wasn’t the only one of Jung’s original ideas that didn’t pan out. You said extraverts focused on the outer world and introverts on the inner world, but Big Five’s ancestors discovered that this was really about sensitivity to stimulation and social attention. You taught me that most people had a dominant preference for thinking or feeling, but research demonstrates that whether you prefer to use logic when making decisions has nothing to do with whether you’re concerned about how those decisions affect others. Giving me a thinking-feeling score is not like assessing whether I’m right-handed or left-handed. It’s more like evaluating whether I prefer soccer or Swiss cheese.

He focuses on ways MBTI can be improved, by acknowledging scientific research on the subject and updating the theory to match that research, as well as start doing actual controlled experiments and abandon case studies.

For further background, see his article Say Goodbye to MBTI, the Fad That Won't Die {clickable link}, and the response The Myers-Briggs Assessment is No Fad – It’s a Research-Based Instrument That Delivers Results {clickable link}.

[JollyBard]

So... does he talk about the cognitive functions? Because that's what matters. Jungian typology is great because it allows us to understand how other people think. The dichotomies are stupid. Myers and Briggs mostly focused on the four dichotomies because they wanted to market them, and it worked. Companies love the MBTI. But as far as personality assessment tests go, the Big 5 is superior, especially when it comes to statistics. But the Big 5 doesn't tell you shit about what's going on inside our heads.