DEV Community

Discussion on: Discuss: What is your Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)?

Collapse
 
stephanie profile image
Stephanie Handsteiner • Edited

Yeah, those texts are (just like horoscopes) written in a way, that you'll go “Wow, that's totally me!“, that's called the Barnum effect. ;) Sneaky edit: The criticism section of the MBTI article is even linked under 'See also'.

Also there's the thing with self-questionnaires not being objective. Self-bias, people tend to fill out online questionnaires in a way they get their desired result.

Like I said in my other comment, I took this test a few years ago in school and I used the remainder of the lesson to research this a bit. Turns out everyone and their mother wants to be an INFJ, probably because of the very first sentence in the text. Who doesn't want to be in the 1% of the world (together with Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, Goethe and Morgan Freeman)?

Collapse
 
ardennl profile image
Arden de Raaij

Very insightful! I guess I did actually learn something today :D. I tried to do some very unbiased googling as well and it seems that most people agree that MBTI is something that should've been gone already, but it just refuses to die. I'm thinking that a lot of people actually like the results and it's very much catering to the ego (as far as I can see there is no wrong in this test).