Myers-Briggs The personality test that conned the world

By Xah Lee. Date: . Last updated: .

I am INTP! The logician, the mad scientist!

The Personality Brokers Myers-Briggs zb46f-s400
[The Personality Brokers: The Strange History of Myers-Briggs and the Birth of Personality Testing By Merve Emre. At Buy at amazon ]

i was gonna post about following the author. but i looked into her tweets, most of it is marketing of her book. Then, i saw possible hints about anti Jordan Peterson , and she titled one of her article on debunking by associating with Capitalism.

so, am currently in the middle of few-hours research into her.

article by the author:

History Myers-Briggs 2015 Merve Emre 2022-10-29
[Uncovering The Secret History Of Myers-Briggs By Merve Emre. At http://digg.com/2015/myers-briggs-secret-history ]

this is a great article. It uncovers the unsavory history of the test, and how the org behind it is squeezing money.

though, the article is mar'd, by the author's leftism streak. Like, she tears down one, and installs her own.

here's another of her article, i haven't read:

Myers-Briggs 2018 By Merve Emre 2022-10-29 gcfv4
[The Capitalist Origins of the Myers-Briggs Personality Test By Merve Emre. At https://medium.com/s/story/the-capitalist-origins-of-the-myers-briggs-personality-test-309187757d4e ]

at one point, for a few years, i think was early 2000s, the test is online everywhere, in every discussion forum. i recall, there was dedicated intp or was it intj forum. all the nerds comes forward and declare themselves.

i read a book on it back in 1996 or so. found it:

[Please Understand Me: Character and Temperament Types By David Keirsey , Marilyn Bates. At Buy at amazon ]

i read extensively on psy stuff. part of it is self analysis, always thought i got some problems. (turns out, my type, problem, is called schizoid personality “disorder”.) part of it, is extreme fascination with brain washing, propaganda, thought controll, marketing, cult, methods.

self psychology test, is 1 of those things people love but also a common pseudo science. Lots orgs use it to recruit or deceit. e.g. scientology uses it. women particularly love astrology stuff. and in china japan taiwan, it's blood type, and palmistry.

however, personality, is undeniable, and has some scientific basis. The test accepted by psychologists today is Big Five personality traits. Based on 5 factors: openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, neuroticism. Go there and rate urself on these scales.

here's Wikipedia on Big Five:

The Big Five personality traits, also known as the five-factor model (FFM) and the OCEAN model, is a taxonomy for personality traits.[1] It is based on common language descriptors. When factor analysis (a statistical technique) is applied to personality survey data, some words used to describe aspects of personality are often applied to the same person. For example, someone described as conscientious is more likely to be described as “always prepared” rather than “messy”. This theory is based therefore on the association between words but not on neuropsychological experiments. This theory uses descriptors of common language and therefore suggests five broad dimensions commonly used to describe the human personality and psyche.[2][3]

The five factors have been defined as openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism, represented by the acronym OCEAN or CANOE. Beneath each proposed global factor, there are a number of correlated and more specific primary factors. For example, extraversion is said to include such related qualities as gregariousness, assertiveness, excitement seeking, warmth, activity, and positive emotions.[4]

That these underlying factors can be found is consistent with the lexical hypothesis: personality characteristics that are most important in people's lives will eventually become a part of their language and, secondly, that more important personality characteristics are more likely to be encoded into language as a single word.

[2019-04-12 Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits ]

my own scores are somethin like this (from 1 to 5. 3 is neutral.):

See also: Are You Schizoid or Autistic?