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The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator categorizes people into 16 personality types based on answers to 93 questions like “Do you usually: A) Value emotion more than logic? Or B) Value logic more than feelings?” The test is taken by about 2 million people a year in academic and professional settings, and some organizations use the results when making hiring decisions. It is also largely bullshit—basically a more complicated version of a horoscope.
“For most people, the MBTI personality test is neither accurate nor reliable,” Jaime Lane Derringer, a psychologist at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, told Discover. “Personality traits, including the four measured by the MBTI, are normally distributed. That is, most people score in the middle, with few people scoring very high or very low on any trait.”
Analysis has shown that there is no predictive value in the test for satisfaction or competence at different kinds of jobs; other research indicates about half of test takers will receive different results if they take the test a second time.
