
Uncovering the Secret History of Myers-Briggs - pfooti
http://digg.com/2015/myers-briggs-secret-history
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pfooti
A long read, but a good one. I've seen the MBTI used in lots of places, and as
someone trained in cognitive science, I've always looked askance at it. It's
tough to think about how we can reduce personality to four axes that are
immutable as you grow and change. It's an interesting intellectual exercise,
but using it in hiring decisions or to do anything other than just provoke
some thought is probably a terrible idea.

from the end...

"More unexpected is what I now know about personality. I know that it occupies
some dream state between fiction and a reality. I know that its fictions
infiltrate our lives in ways we do not always perceive — every time we decide
whether to let a stranger become a friend or a lover, every time we conclude
that someone possesses a good personality or a bad one. I know that the
reality of personality is inescapable, and that many of the people I met in
training will make irrevocable decisions about their lives based on the truths
they believe are encoded in four simple letters."

~~~
caminante
_> It's tough to think about how we can reduce personality to four axes that
are immutable as you grow and change._

I don't think that jives with MBTI. Even the harshest critics of MBTI would
acknowledge that MBTI doesn't preclude plasticity and "type development." I
think MBTI just says that you have a dominant proclivity along certain axes.
You can re-take the test at different lags to test the hypothesis for
yourself. The MBTI argument goes that you'll develop additional competencies.

Re: article, I didn't find the authors arguments compelling. Not that you need
a "cognitive science" background, but the author's an English Lit. prof who
makes hand-wavy arguments against MBTI. I suspected clickbait due to the
title, and I was right...

