"Ben INFJ girl, want to know INFP", "Leo's ENFJ", "ENTJ collection"... Recently, the use of four mysterious letters to refer to their personality has become a new trend for young people on social platforms.
The MBTI personality test, a personality type theory model jointly developed by American writer Isabel Briggs Miles and her mother Catherine Cook Briggs, is one of the many personality test scales in the field of psychology. However, when it became a social trend, the charging platform under the guise of free, the self-proclaimed professional fee analysis, the personality test that originally meant "looking for yourself", was more like a game of "harvesting leeks".
The MBTI personality test became the new password for social interaction
"Big data looks at the fortunes of 16 personalities", "Gu Ailing and I are both INFJ", "If you are ISTP, then we are good friends"... Recently, many young people are keen to summarize themselves in four letters.
Some personality types on the 16 personality websites
These 16 personality types are derived from the MBTI personality test. The MBTI Personality Test divides individual behavioral differences into four dimensions, including sources of energy, how information is accessed, how decisions are made, and how attitudes are made toward life. Each dimension includes two directions, namely extroverted (E) - introverted (I), real sense (S) - intuition (I), emotional (F) - thinking (T), judgment (J) - perception (P). The combination of different preference tendencies in the four dimensions leads to 16 personality types.
For a time, the four mysterious letters became a new label for young people, and various personality analysis also became a new topic on social platforms. On Douban, there are 260,000 people in a group called Personality Temperament who discuss the characteristics of each personality; the video on Douyin about the personality test topic of MBTI has been played more than 600 million times; and there are more than 20,000 notes about MBTI on the Little Red Book, which involve tests, personality memes, exclusive personality wear, makeup and song lists.
Blogger Xiao Chen has recently gained a large number of fans with various MBTI personality memes. "An emoji can simply and rudely express the characteristics and contrasts of a personality." Xiao Chen told reporters that in order to resonate with everyone, he will chat with friends with different personalities around him, and will also interact with fans to get inspiration.
In order to integrate into the topic of MBTI, you must first know your corresponding personality, in this way, the test has become a must for young people to keep up with the trend, and the MBTI personality test has begun to flood on the web page and various platforms, and test links and advertisements can be seen everywhere.
"Are you quiet or do you love to make friends?" "Which description is more appropriate for you, quiet or lively?" "When it comes to getting along with friends, are you more inclined to talk or listen?" "Do you plan ahead or do you do whatever you want when you go out?" ...... The reporter randomly clicked into a test platform, in the standard version of 65 questions, starting from the first question, it is an either-or multiple choice question. About ten minutes later, after answering all 65 multiple-choice questions, the reporter obtained a four-letter result, ENFJ.
In order to find out the meaning of these four letters, the reporter spent 9.9 yuan to buy an analytical report, which contains the advantages and disadvantages of the personality, such as "you like to communicate, attach importance to harmony" and "not suitable for a competitive and tense working environment", which are some general and universal content.
"Seeing that everyone was testing, I followed the trend and tested." Ye Yu told reporters that after doing 93 test questions, she felt that the questions were very watery, and the questions were all straightforward questions, "Basically when you do the test, you know what type of personality you are." ”
Pretending that a professional "free" testbed is not really free
"It's a pit! Obviously said that it is free, and when I finish the test questions, I have to charge to see the results. Ms. Tang excitedly talked about her experience of doing THE MBTI test on the website, clicked to enter the free test website, and after carefully doing the questions, she had to pay 9.9 yuan to view the analysis.
In the investigation, the reporter found that most OF THE MBTI test platforms are attractive under the brand of "free", but the free is only the test process of answering questions, and it is not free to get test results.
Two price point reports are available
On the 20th, the reporter randomly clicked on a test platform marked "MBTI Personality Test Free Version", and when he finished doing 93 questions and was ready to view the results, what popped out was not an analysis report, but a two-dimensional code for payment, which required "29.9 yuan to unlock the personal in-depth analysis report". The platform's payment page shows that more than 70,000 people have spent $29.90 to unlock the report.
Payment is required to unlock the test report
Subsequently, the reporter successively checked the other two platforms that wrote free MBTI tests, which also cost 9.9 yuan and 29.9 yuan to unlock the report, and also showed that tens of thousands of people had paid to complete THE MBTI tests on the platform.
The reporter compared and checked the three platform link portals, and found that it was obviously three different URLs, but they had exactly the same entrance interface, and even the number of paid testers displayed was not bad at all. What is even more outrageous is that after the reporter clicked on the completed test page, he found that the number of people who had completed the test displayed on the website had not changed. "The number of people on this entrance page is just a sticker, not real data at all, just to show the popularity of the boom to induce users to pay." A person familiar with the matter said.
Different URLs use the same page entry, and the number of tests has not changed
Different URLs use a fake sticker entrance to "support the façade"
At the same time, the reporter noticed that there was a line of small characters under a test platform, saying that the copyright belonged to Wuhan Hongge Yibai E-commerce Co., Ltd. Yunnan Branch. According to the public information of the national enterprise credit information publicity system, the company's registered business scope is very extensive, including food sales, clothing, shoes and hats, daily necessities, wholesale and sale of used cars, and business information consultation, etc., and does not have any qualifications related to psychological counseling.
The reporter then inquired about the companies behind the 5 personality test platforms and found that only one of the business scopes included psychological consulting services, and the others were small companies with extremely extensive business operations.
4 Days Express Policymaker Certification
In addition to the test fee of 9.9 yuan and 29.9 yuan, the low-cost character test drainage, and then the collection of a large consulting fee, analysis fee, and even training certification fee, has also become a part of the current MBTI test chain.
On Dianping, there are group purchase products tested by MBTI. On the afternoon of the 20th, the reporter selected a consulting agency near Yong'anli and purchased the "9.9 Yuan Group Purchase Occupational Personality Assessment Scale (MBTI)", which can provide a 30-minute visit to the store according to the description. After the purchase, the staff immediately threw over an online test link, asking the reporter to complete the online test independently, and will use the test results as the basis for consultation.
Subsequently, the reporter took the test report with only one page of content and went to the store according to the appointment time. The consultancy's offices are located on the second floor of a building, small in size but more elaborately decorated. But strangely enough, when I arrived at the store, there was no consultant present, only a staff member who received the reporter.
"The description on Dianping's website is not accurate, and the service includes only an online test scale." According to the staff, if you want to continue to analyze the report, you need to make an appointment with a consultant again, and the cost ranges from 300 yuan to 500 yuan every 50 minutes.
On platforms such as Douyin and Xiaohongshu, there are also many active so-called "MBTI certified strategists", which not only provide personality test analysis services with a cost of about a few hundred yuan, but also provide certification training services. However, when the reporter asked the psychology professors of the two universities, they both said that they had "never heard of the MBTI strategists."
A blogger who calls himself an MBTI Certified Strategist on Douyin
The staff of a policymaker certification training institution told reporters that they only need to participate in 4 days of offline training, and complete an exam with multiple choice questions within one week, and they can get a certificate in one month.
"We plan to hold one in Beijing in July, the cost is about 30,000 yuan, and we can come to class." According to what he said, as long as the reporter gets the MBTI policy, he can analyze, "At present, our students will charge an analysis fee of 500 yuan to 800 yuan after graduation, and some can also be thousands, and the consultation fee of our institutional teachers is 5,000 yuan an hour." ”
Expert: Personality tests are not conclusive personality
From a set of test questions, can you really summarize the complete outline of personality? Zhang Xin, an associate professor at the School of Psychology and Cognitive Sciences at Peking University, gave a different answer, "The conclusion of the personality test does not give the personality a conclusion." ”
Zhang Xin said that people will continue to grow themselves, and their personality is developmental, not static. For example, as you age, the scores for each dimension of personality change. Personality testing is one of the ways to help people understand their true selves, but do not blindly believe in its results, and do not classify yourself as "labeled" because of the test results. At the same time, when individuals conduct personality tests, they should also try to choose tools with high reliability and validity. The so-called reliability refers to the stability and reliability of the measurement results, while the validity represents the accuracy and authenticity, referring to the degree to which the measuring tool or means can accurately measure the things that need to be measured.
"The popular MBTI personality test is acceptable, but the validity is not very good. The results of this type of personality test are not rigorous and are rarely used in scientifically demanding measurements. Zhang Xin suggested that people with different personalities have different types of lifestyles, and they should learn to understand themselves and accept their own characteristics.