So there's a 93 question test called the Myers Briggs type indicator.
You've probably heard of it.
It's the most widely used personality test in the world.
And the company that makes, CPP, reportedly earns about $20 million dollars from the 2
million people that take it and companies that administer it every year.
You answer these 93 questions and it tells you you're one of these 16 different personality
types.
But the only problem is that this test is totally meaningless.
Clinical psychologists, psychiatrists, anyone working to understand human behavior who doesn't
have a stake in the financial success of this test doesn't believe in it.
They don't use it at all.
So, let's step back a little.
In 1921 Carl Jung, an enormously influential early psychologist, hypothesized that humans
fall into a number of different types.
There are perceivers and judgers.
People who prefer sensing over intuition.
There are thinkers and there are feelers.
But even at the time he realized that most people don't fit neatly into one category
or another.
Most people are extroverted in some circumstances and introverted in others.
He wrote:
"Every individual is an exception to the rule."
A few decades later a pair of Americans who had no formal training in psychology, Catherine
Briggs and her daughter Isabel Briggs-Myers
decided to take these ideas and turn them into what they called a type indicator.
In 1942 they first began testing it.
They took Jung's types but slightly altered the terminology and changed it so that every
single person was assigned only one possibility or another.
You couldn't be a little bit of an extrovert or a little bit of an introvert.
But people don't actually work that way, so the results simply aren't reliable.
One study found that as much as 50% of people who took the test twice arrived at different
results even though it was only 5 weeks later.
CPP peddles the test as 'Reliable, valid, backed by ongoing global research and development
investment.'
And a reported 89 of the Fortune 100 companies and 200 federal agencies use the test to
separate employees and potential hires into 'types' and assign them appropriate training
programs and responsibilities.
But multiple studies have shown the test totally fails to predict people's success in various
jobs.
The really strange thing is that there are leading psychologists on their board and none
of them use the test in their personal research.
In 2012, Carl Thoresson, a Stanford psychologist, admitted that it would be questioned by his
academic colleagues if he used the Myers Briggs in his research.
"Why is the Myers Briggs so popular?"
Well, it really on gives positive results and it plays into the idea of people fitting
neatly into categories.
People love categories.
You can't take the test and be told you're selfish or lazy or mean.
Because the descriptions are vague, they're hard to argue with.
This is called the Forer effect, and is a technique long used by purveyors of astrology,
fortune-telling,
and other sorts of pseudoscience to persuade people they have accurate information about
them.
There's something really attractive about assigning ourselves personalities.
That's why horoscopes are so popular and Buzzfeed quizzes go viral.
But the truth is that human personalities are really complicated.
We all have different facets and different nuances that make us span a lot of different
categories at once.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with taking the test as a fun, interesting activity.
The Myers-Briggs is useful for one thing: entertainment.