Say Goodbye to Myers-Briggs, the Fad That Won’t Die

Once in our Learning Sciences seminar, we all took the Myers-Briggs test on day 1 of the semester, and again at the end.  Almost everybody’s score changed.  So, why do people still use it as some kind of reliable test of personality?

A test is reliable if it produces the same results from different sources. If you think your leg is broken, you can be more confident when two different radiologists diagnose a fracture. In personality testing, reliability means getting consistent results over time, or similar scores when rated by multiple people who know me well. As my inconsistent scores foreshadowed, the MBTI does poorly on reliability. Research shows “that as many as three-quarters of test takers achieve a different personality type when tested again,” writes Annie Murphy Paul in The Cult of Personality Testing, “and the sixteen distinctive types described by the Myers-Briggs have no scientific basis whatsoever.” In a recent article, Roman Krznaric adds that “if you retake the test after only a five-week gap, there’s around a 50% chance that you will fall into a different personality category.”

via Say Goodbye to MBTI, the Fad That Won’t Die | LinkedIn.