Is the Myers-Briggs (MBTI) Test Legit or “Totally Meaningless”?

Carl Jung Smoking Pipe
Carl Jung, author of “Psychological Types”

Maybe you’ve seen the Vox hit piece making the rounds online that foolishly and very arrogantly confuses and conflates the Myers-Briggs MBTI test with the Jungian-derived system it’s based upon. What these snarky critics fail to mention — or perhaps they don’t actually know — is that the study of psychological type came well before the existence of any of these “personality tests” that are based on it! The study of types and the systems that the test is related to are amazingly accurate, that is, when someone’s test results have been verified. And therein lies the source of most of the frustration and confusion: the vast majority of the millions of people who have been given these tests, whether at their workplace, college, military or other government agencies, have not been told that their result needs to be checked and verified — and most importantly, taught how to put it to good use to benefit their lives!

What the MBTI test attempts by asking questions about opposite preferences is to uncover which of the 16 known and very definite patterns of behavior (which come from the SYSTEM) is a correct match for you.

Here are some problems with the tests and causes for inaccuracies in the results:

The test taker:

  1. May not understand the question, causing their 4 letter result to be inaccurate
  2. May not know themselves as well as they think they do and answer accordingly
  3. May be answering on a whim that simply reflects their mood that day and not their true self
  4. May not be a fully developed, mature, self actualized person yet, and answer accordingly
  5. The test’s lingo and syntax may be misunderstood by younger generations or certain demographics

So, again, as my article “Test But Verify” explains, the true gold mine in psychological types is not found in the tests, but in learning about the system that they point us to, which is a fascinating, accurate and incredibly valuable tool for families, relationships and careers, workplaces.

We’ve put a lot of time into making the best test available, and it’s free!
Check it out at: http://test.psychetype.com/

If you’re already sure of your type, or if you would like to make sure that you’ve got it right and want to get more out of your result, check out our Personality Type Decoder materials

Thanks for reading!

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