Why the Myers-Briggs Personality Test is not Scientific

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is the most popular personality test on the Internet.:

• It claims to tell you your personality type.
• People tend to take the results of the MBTI test more seriously.

There are better ways to measure personality traits than 4-letter types:

• Psychologists define personality as characteristic thoughts, emotions, and behaviors
• Katherine Cook Briggs and Isabel Briggs Myers studied personality traits like extroversion and introversion

Myers and Briggs developed a test to apply Carl Jung's ideas and help people understand their personality types.:

• They focused on four traits: trusting senses vs intuition, thinking vs feeling, judging vs perceiving.
• They were inspired by Carl Jung but did not scientifically test their ideas.

Myers-Briggs tests are not scientific and their results are unreliable.:

• The tests provide vague descriptions and career advice based on personality types.
• Psychologists require measurements to be reliable and valid, which these tests are not.

The MBTI test is not especially reliable:

• The test forces people into extreme categories of extrovert or introvert, which doesn't accurately represent most people
• The MBTI test does not demonstrate strong internal consistency reliability or validity

Myers-Briggs has problems with internal consistency and validity.:

• The MBTI treats thinking and feeling as opposites, but other tests show that people are often good at both.
• Personality traits tend to change in different situations, making the traits studied by MBTI less reliable.

The Big Five is a reliable and valid personality test that predicts behavior.:

• Many research teams have identified the same 5 personality traits, known as the Big Five.
• Personality tests based on the Big Five have better reliability and validity than the MBTI.

Personality tests like MBTI don't say much about you:

• Our brains are affected by various factors and new connections are always being discovered.
• MBTI personality types are not a reliable indicator of who you are.