Mbti Critique

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator was developed in part to offer a form of Jung's personality type theory that is more coherent and useful in people's lives. It has become one of the most accepted and widely-used development tools for assessing personality characteristics in non-psychiatric populations. Applications have been made across a broad range of human knowledge, including in areas such as psychotherapy and counseling; education, learning methods, cognitive styles, career counseling, and management and leadership in organizations. Isabel Briggs Myers devoted a great deal of her life to the creation of an instrument that would be valuable to the largest possible population of people, initially designed to facilitate research interests and later adapted for general use. The MBTI has been continually researched and was recently revised, with the publication of Form M in 1998 (Geyer, 1998), which is the form still used today.

Overview

The MBTI is a psychometric instrument designed to sort people into groups of personality types. Based on Jungian theory which submits that variants in human behavior are not due to chance, but to fundamental and discernible disparities in the ways people choose to use their minds to collect and process information. Once a person reaches adulthood learning begins to overlay our core personality, which is when the blending of nature and nurture becomes more evident. For some people, this learning serves to strengthen what is already there, but for others it constructs assorted facets of personality.

The instrument is used to measure a person's preferences, using four basic scales with opposite poles. The four scales are: (1) extraversion/introversion, (2) sensate/intuitive, (3) thinking/feeling, and (4) judging/perceiving(Geyer, 1998). Every person moves toward one of two propensities in what you might call natural energy. While these are two different but complementary sides of our nature, most people have an inherent fondness towards energy from either the outer or inner worlds. Extraversion is an orientation toward the outer world, focusing on activities, excitements, people, and things. Introversion is an orientation toward the inner world of thoughts, interests, ideas, and imagination. Myers added a judging/perceiving index to Jung's original classifications to describe the process used primarily in dealing with the outer world, the extraverted part of life (Carlson, 1989). A judging persona approaches the outside world with a plan and is oriented towards organizing one's surroundings, being prepared for better decision making, as well as reaching closure and completion. A perceiving style takes the outside world as it comes and is willing to embrace and adapt, is flexible, unconfined and receptive to new opportunities and changing daily plans. The sensing side of our brain notices the sights, sounds, smells and all the sensory details of the present. It categorizes, records, organizes, and stores the specifics from the here and now, as it is reality based. The intuitive side of our brain seeks to understand, interpret and form overall patterns of all the information that is collected and records these patterns and relationships. It speculates on possibilities, including looking into and forecasting future occurrences, it is imaginative and conceptual. The thinking side of our brain examines information in a detached, objective method. It operates from factual principles, deduces and forms conclusions systematically, representing our more logical nature. The feeling side of our brain forms conclusions in an attached and somewhat global manner, based on relationships and values, one's own and those of others, these likes/dislikes can affect the impact on others as well as human and aesthetic values. All four indices are dichotomous, as people tend to develop one preference on the scale at the expense of the other.

Scoring

An MBTI result consists of a four-letter code to indicate the personality type of the individual. All potential sequences yield sixteen personality types, each with a unique descriptive profile of trait behavior patterns prompted by the dynamic interface of the individual patterns. People use all of the type preferences and processes at various times, and each is appropriate in certain situations. Be that as it may, one's inborn inclination will predominantly determine which are most used and which will in that case, be best developed. This gives rise to unlimited alternatives, even among people of the same code type.

Test Development

The MBTI is conceptualized as a psychological instrument to functionally apply an adaptation of Jung's theory of Psychological Types, which means that they would be attempting to measure the mind to a certain degree. The question then becomes, are the use of mathematics and statistical methods a valid means of measurement for attributes like intelligence or, in this case, personality. The word indicator, rather than test, was probably used in naming the MBTI in order to refrain from connotations of right or wrong, good or bad in completing the instrument. This fits in with Jung's theory and philosophy that all of the types are good.

Structure and Administration

The MBTI may be administered in groups or individually. All key instructions are found on the cover of the question booklets, and solutions are marked on answer sheets. The MBTI Accreditation Program is designed to facilitate a standard format of administration, scoring and interpretation by accredited users (Geyer, 1998). For valid results, respondents should be controlled and accommodating, and should accept the attitude of their most natural, level, and unforced functioning, in which they are not working against the grain (Humes, 1992). Hand scoring may be done using stencils, computer scoring services and software are available, and there is no time limit. The MBTI is not a measure strength of individual traits or degrees of type development; rather it is a self-report device with dichotomous scales, meaning to sort people into type groupings. Though written in a forced-choice format, the items are less threatening than other compulsory-choice instruments because each item deals with only one division, and the reactions reveal opposing, rather than competing choices. The map of the MBTI type tables would be a very helpful reference for inventory users, particularly when discussing career counseling or academic advisement. The map contains type distributions for the arts, business, counseling, education, health care, governmental positions, public safety, religion, science and technology, and student populations. Each table shows the number and percentage