The MBTI test that is all over the internet is not pseudoscience, but seriously you lose

Any test has limitations. The MBTI test can help us better understand a person's personality traits, but we can't infer a person's psychological characteristics based on a single test result alone. If you want to really examine a person, you must use a variety of methods, from multiple angles to investigate, and then use psychological test results for auxiliary analysis, so that it is possible to get a more reliable and objective result.

——Chen Zhiyan, Professor, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences

"Are you an ENTJ, or an ENTP?"

Nowadays, in the social circle of young people, if you want to make friends to "break the ice", you need to first face the "secret code". These mysterious codes composed of 4 English letters have become the social labels of many young people, and it is the MBTI test that is currently exploding in social networks.

Casually search for an MBTI test software on the Internet, and the number of testers exceeds 10 million. On Weibo, topics related to MBTI were read by up to 800 million people. Major online social platforms have emerged many groups named after MBTI personality types, and memes and various "memes" based on MBTI have been played by young people. When young people make friends and go on blind dates, they will also add MBTI codes to their self-introductions.

While the MBTI test is popular, it has also attracted a lot of controversy, many people call it "superstition" and "pseudoscience", so is this test reliable in the end?

The 4 letters "unlock" 16 personality types

The FULL English name of the MBTI test is "Myers-Briggs Type Indicator", compiled by the American writer Miles and her mother Briggs in the 1940s, is a self-reporting personality assessment tool that describes people's psychological activities and personality type performance in obtaining information, making decisions, and treating life.

"The theoretical basis of psychology involved in the MBTI test is derived from the writings of Jung, the founder of the famous analytic psychology." Chen Zhiyan, a professor at the Institute of Psychology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said in an interview with science and technology daily reporters that Jung published a book called "Psychological Types" in the 1920s and 1930s, in which he first divided personality types, such as the concepts of personality introversion and extroversion that we are familiar with.

Jung proposed the concepts of introversion and extroversion, but also proposed the four major functions of personality (thinking, emotion, intuition, and feeling). He believes that everyone may have these four functions, but the four functions are reflected in each person to a different extent. Therefore, according to the advantages of each person, coupled with introverted and extroverted variables, he divided people into 8 types, namely extroverted thinking, introverted thinking, extraverted emotion, introverted emotion, extraverted intuition, introvert intuition, extraverted feeling and introverted feeling.

The MBTI test is an assessment tool based on Jung's psychological type theory, which measures individual behavioral differences in four dimensions, including mental energy orientation, information acquisition, decision-making, and life attitude orientation.

Each dimension includes two directions that represent different preference tendencies, namely E (Extroversion, extroverted) and I (Introversion, introvert), N (Intuition, intuition) and S (Sensing, real sense), F (Feeling, emotion) and T (Thinking, thinking) and P (Perceiving, perception) and J (Judging, judgment).

The different preference tendencies of the four dimensions are arranged and combined to form 16 personality types, and the combination of the four letters forms a type of personality trait, such as ENTP represents a curious debater, and INTP is an indisputable idealist...

The scientific nature of THE MBTI is controversial

"In fact, based on Jung's personality theory, there are many measurement tools that have been developed, and the MBTI is the most well-known among them." Chen Zhiyan said that the more well-known is the Kelsey temperament type test, and the reason why MBTI can "go out of the circle" is mainly because it has done a relatively successful job in commercial promotion, so it is currently more influential in the world.

Unlike other personality tests, MBTI is easy to operate and the test results are more intuitive, often without further interpretation and thinking, what you see is what you get.

At the same time, MBTI skillfully combines the test results with romantic copywriting, such as shyness, sensitivity, perfectionism and inferiority and other personality characteristics of inflexible INFP personality, it is described as a "healer", "utopian" or "philosopher", such a statement is more acceptable, and the MBTI test has obtained a wider spread effect.

"The MBTI test is based on Jung's theory of personality and is a very widely used tool in personality testing, but researchers in personality psychology have always disputed THE MBTI." Chen Zhiyan gave an example, such as whether personality can be divided into 16 types, and some scholars believe that such a classification is very simple and crude.

In addition, the scientificity of a test is influenced by many other factors. "For example, in China, we generally use the Chinese version of the MBTI test, a psychological test imported from abroad, and multi-faceted research work is required to ensure its accuracy and application value." However, whether the MBTI test used by a person is a research-validated version of the Chinese is probably not clear to the user. Chen Zhiyan said.

Although the scientific nature of the test has been questioned, many people can't help but lament that "every one of them hit" when forwarding their MBTI type descriptions, and they think that the test results are very accurate.

"This feedback is caused by a number of reasons, one of which is that only people who think the test results are accurate will share it, and people who feel inaccurate will not share it." Chen Zhiyan analyzed, "In addition, a person feels that the test is accurate or inaccurate, which is more the result of subjective judgment, that is, a psychological feedback." Maybe only a certain part of the test results hit the tester's heart, and he will feel that the test results are very accurate. ”

Test results are for reference only and should not be blindly believed

Since the advent of the MBTI test, it has often been used for employee recruitment and blind date selection, so is it reliable to do so?

"In fact, not only THE MBTI test, but also many personality assessment tools are used in recruitment or other areas." Chen Zhiyan said.

"If the MBTI test results are obtained under the guidance of a professional, the employer can use it as a reference." Chen Zhiyan pointed out that from the perspective of professional psychology, any single test result cannot be used as the only criterion for hiring or not. To examine whether a person is competent for a job, it is necessary to combine test data and past data for analysis, so that a relatively reliable result can be obtained, so as to make a final judgment.

Chen Zhiyan believes that blind date selection is a more complex issue than recruitment. "Most of the problems involved in recruitment are at the level of human consciousness, and the blind date selection also involves a lot of problems at the unconscious level, which is difficult to test." She said.

"I also found that some online MBTI tests, in order to allow the test takers to get the results in a short period of time, will greatly reduce the number of test questions, which may increase the error of the assessment results." Chen Zhiyan reminded that after the error increases, the test results will be more inaccurate, and at this time, the risk is greater to find the other half or recruit employees according to Tu Suoji.

"So whether you're using the MBTI test for blind dates or hiring employees, the first thing that needs to be clear is that any test has limitations." Chen Zhiyan said, "The MBTI test can help us better understand a person's personality characteristics, but we cannot infer a person's psychological characteristics based on a single test result." If you want to really examine a person, you must use a variety of methods, from multiple angles to investigate, and then use psychological test results for auxiliary analysis, so that it is possible to get a more reliable and objective result. (Reporter Chen Xi)

Source: Science and Technology Daily