Xinhua News Agency, Beijing, April 19, 2019 Title: Is the MBTI personality test that has swept social networks a science or a metaphysics?
"I have been in the INFP for many years, and recently became an ISFP..."
Recently, the 4 mysterious letters have replaced the constellations and become the new labels for young people to express themselves, and the new code for internet surfing. This is the CURRENT POPULAR SOCIAL NETWORKS MBTI PERSONALITY TEST, WHICH DIVIDES PEOPLE INTO 16 DIFFERENT PERSONALITY TYPES. For example, ENFJ represents the protagonist personality with leadership, and INTJ represents the rational and courageous architect personality...
From the detailed version of more than 100 questions to the quick test version of 28 questions, various versions of the question "there is always a suitable one for you". Some people shouted "good accuracy" after measuring, and some people called it "scientific fortune telling". Can the 16 personalities really define us? Is the MBTI science or metaphysics?
16 personality types tested by the MBTI. (Website screenshot)
What is the MBTI? Why is it so popular?
At present, the topic "MBTI" has been read 1.6 billion times on Sina Weibo, and the related playback volume of the Douyin platform has exceeded 1.1 billion. "What is your MBTI" has become a hot topic for young people to warm up socially. What is the sacredness of the MBTI test of the sudden fire?
The MBTI, known as the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, is a personality test compiled in the 1940s by American writer Isabel Briggs Miles and her mother, Catherine Cook Briggs.
The basis of this test comes from the theory of psychological types proposed by the famous psychologist Jung. Jung divided people's personality types into two basic states of mind: "introvert (I)-extroversion (E)" and "feeling (S)-intuition (N)" and "thinking (T)-emotion (F)" four functions. In these three sets of opposing dimensions, human personality bias can be combined into 8 types.
Miles and Briggs added a dimension to this: "judgment (J)-perception (P)", which constitutes 16 types, each represented by 4 letters, such as INTJ or ENFP.
Wang Fang, a professor at the Psychology Department of Beijing Normal University, said that MBTI can be said to be the "most popular personality test in the world" at present, and its commercial promotion is quite successful, and it is widely used in corporate training, career counseling and personal growth.
THE MBTI that swept social networks. (Phone screenshot)
Why is THE MBTI so popular? Experts believe that in addition to marketing promotion, it does fit the processing rules of the human brain and some of the current social mentality.
"At the heart of this type of test is the classification of people, and the human brain is best at simplifying complex worlds by processing categories to quickly understand a person or thing." On the contrary, the test that describes personality in five qualities is now less understandable and is therefore difficult to popularize. Wang Fang said.
And the intuitiveness of MBTI also makes it rely on entertainment "out of the circle" into the trend, from a variety of MBTI memes to play with the mediocre, to MBTI book list, MBTI wear, MBTI decoration style... This string of letters has become the "traffic password" of the current Internet.
16 Sciences of Personality? Can we be defined?
The text worker Xiaoqi has been sensitive to numbers since childhood, and is good at statistical induction, and her MBTI test points to "actuaries". Surprised by the high degree of coincidence in the results, she began to doubt her career choices: "Maybe I am really better suited to be an actuary or accountant, would I be better than I am now?" ”
Xiao Qi's MBTI test results. (Phone screenshot)
Wang Fang said that choosing a type of occupation is actually choosing a way of life, personality is only one of the factors to consider, it is important, but it is not so important.
"Whether your interests, abilities and values are appropriate for the job, as well as the life status, autonomy and flexibility of the practitioner are all important considerations. Moreover, personality is not immutable. Therefore, personality tests should not be a major guide or obstacle to career choices. Wang Fang said.
Studies have found that the association between MBTI types and various job performances is very weak, and it measures preference rather than ability, just as a person's preference for thinking does not equal being good at thinking. Zhang Kan, a psychologist and researcher at the Institute of Psychology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said that the result of this type of test may be an ideal or beautified self, calming down, "knowing, good, happy."
Despite its theoretical background in psychology, the scientific nature of the MBTI test has been controversial.
On the one hand, Jung's "psychological type theory" has not been empirically tested, and based on this psychological test, it is naturally "unstable"; on the other hand, scientific personality tests need to pass the quality test of reliability and validity, and MBTI's performance on these two indicators is not convincing enough.
Graduate student Xiaosun had a lot of criticism of the test: "I tested three times, the results are different, and I still haven't remembered which 4 letters I am." ”
Wang Fang introduced that the question of the general personality test is usually to give a sentence describing behavior or feelings, allowing the test taker to choose the degree of conformity from "very disagreement" to "very agree". This approach allows the tester to express his or her state in more fine detail.
Although the MBTI test questions are also distinguished by degree, in the steps of scoring the results, each dimension is still an "either-or" classification. The quick test version of the simplified question simplifies the options to one of the two, making the results more absolute. In fact, most people are in the middle, and for them, a change in the answer to one or two questions can lead to inconsistent retest results.
"Human beings are far more similar than they are different, they are not so barriers to each other, and people around the world cannot be divided into only 16 categories. This is also where this type of test is not scientific enough. Wang Fang said.
Be wary of the self-solidification that "labeling" brings
Some netizens said: "I have always thought that I am an outlier who does not like to socialize, but this test let me know that I am an ISTJ, and found that there are so many people like me, which made me accept my original self." ”
The popularity of MBTI in the Internet age is moving from self-understanding to "hugging and warming". In various online communities, people of the same type seek answers to life questions from each other and talk about all-encompassing topics.
In this regard, psychologists remind that while quickly finding social belonging and group identity, we must also be wary of the self-solidification and group polarization tendencies brought about by "labeling", that is, to make people who may have only a little similarity become more similar after constantly exchanging similar views, which in turn will make individuals attach their labels tighter.
Wang Fang said that in recent years, the psychological community has proposed the "intermediate personality advantage", that is, non-extreme personality characteristics can make people flexible in different situations to adopt appropriate behaviors, and it is easy to obtain better results.
"Whether it's the enneagram personality, personality color or the current MBTI, in this era of efficiency, the popularity of similar tests is always 'you sing me'. But all psychological tests are only reference tools, and they do not have to be enshrined as truths or even become shackles, and human change and growth are more worth looking forward to. Wang Fang said.
The popularity of MBTI has also led to various types of psychological counseling-related commercial marketing. Randomly click on a promotion link, do 93 questions, but also pay dozens of yuan to view the results. According to the homepage of a WeChat public account registered a year ago, nearly 200,000 people have purchased the company's MBTI test and further promoted career counseling and MBTI courses at different prices.
MBTI tests the promotion link and pays to unlock the report. (Phone screenshot)
Experts said that the test results are for reference only, and the qualifications of the so-called professional consultants are difficult to distinguish, and the effect of the consulting course is unknown, compared with the professional improvement of themselves may be more realistic. (Xinhua News Agency reporter Wen Jinghua)
Source: Xinhua Net