The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) assessment is a psychometric questionnaire designed to measure psychological preferences in how people perceive the world and make decisions. These preferences were extrapolated from the typological theories originated by Carl Gustav Jung, as published in his 1921 book Psychological Types (English edition, 1923). The original developers of the personality inventory were Katharine Cook Briggs and her daughter, Isabel Briggs Myers. They began creating the indicator during World War II, believing that a knowledge of personality preferences would help women who were entering the industrial workforce for the first time identify the sort of war-time jobs where they would be "most comfortable and effective." The initial questionnaire grew into the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, which was first published in 1962. The MBTI focuses on normal populations and emphasizes the value of naturally occurring differences.
The MBTI instrument is called "the best-known and most trusted personality assessment tool available today" by its publisher, CPP (formerly Consulting Psychologists Press). CPP further calls the MBTI tool "the world’s most widely used personality assessment," with as many as 2 million assessments administered annually. Some academic psychologists have criticized the MBTI instrument, claiming that it "lacks convincing validity data." Proponents of the test cite unblinded anecdotal predictions of individual behavior, and claim that the indicator has been found to meet or exceed the reliability of other psychological instruments. For most adults (75–90%), though not for children, the MBTI is reported to give the same result for 3–4 preferences when the test is administered to the same person more than once (although the period between measurements is not stated). Some studies have found strong support for construct validity, internal consistency, and test-retest reliability, although variation was observed.
The definitive published source of reference for the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator is The Manual produced by CPP, from which much of the information in this article is drawn, along with training materials from CPP and their European training partners, Oxford Psychologists Press. Also, a related model, with an original test, is published in David Keirsey's books Please Understand Me and Please Understand Me II .
The registered trademark rights to the terms Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and MBTI have been assigned from the publisher of the test, CPP, Inc., to the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator Trust.
Concepts
As the MBTI Manual states, the MBTI "is designed to implement a theory; therefore the theory must be understood to understand the MBTI."
Fundamental to the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator is the theory of psychological type as originally developed by C. G. Jung. Jung proposed the existence of two dichotomous pairs of cognitive functions:
- The "rational" (judging) functions: thinking and feeling
- The "irrational" (perceiving) functions: sensing and intuition
Jung went on to suggest that these functions are expressed in either an introverted or extraverted form. From Jung's original concepts, Briggs and Myers developed their own theory of psychological type, described below, on which the MBTI is based.
Type
The Myers-Briggs typology model regards personality type as similar to left or right handedness: individuals are either born with, or develop, certain preferred ways of thinking and acting. The MBTI sorts some of these psychological differences into four opposite pairs, or dichotomies, with a resulting 16 possible psychological types. None of these types is "better" or "worse"; however, Briggs and Myers theorized that individuals naturally prefer one overall combination of type differences. In the same way that writing with the left hand is hard work for a right-hander, so people tend to find using their opposite psychological preferences more difficult, even if they can become more proficient (and therefore behaviorally flexible) with practice and development.
The 16 different types are often referred to by an abbreviation of four letters, the initial letters of each of their four type preferences (except in the case of iNtuition, which uses N to distinguish it from Introversion). For instance:
- ESTJ - Extraversion, Sensing, Thinking, Judging
- INFP - Introversion, iNtuition, Feeling, Perceiving
And so on for all 16 possible type combinations.
The four dichotomies
The four pairs of preferences or dichotomies are shown in the table to the right.
Note that the terms used for each dichotomy have specific technical meanings relating to the MBTI which differ from their everyday usage. For example, people who prefer judging over perceiving are not necessarily more judgmental or less perceptive .
Nor does the MBTI instrument measure aptitude; it simply indicates for one preference over another. Someone reporting a high score for extraversion over introversion cannot be correctly described as more extraverted: they simply have a clear preference .
Point scores on each of the dichotomies can vary considerably from person to person, even among those with the same type. However, Isabel Myers considered the direction of the preference (for example, E vs. I) to be more important than the degree of the preference (for example, very clear vs. slight).
Attitudes: Extraversion (E) / Introversion (I)
The preferences for extraversion (thus spelled in Myers-Briggs jargon) and introversion are sometimes referred to as attitudes . Briggs and Myers recognized that each of the cognitive functions can operate in the external world of behavior, action, people and things ( extraverted attitude ) or the internal world of ideas and reflection ( introverted attitude ). The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator sorts for an overall preference for one or the other of these.
The terms extravert and introvert are used in a special sense when discussing the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. People who prefer extraversion draw energy from action: they tend to act, then reflect, then act further. If they are inactive, their level of energy and motivation tends to decline. Conversely, those who prefer introversion become less energized as they act: they prefer to reflect, then act, then reflect again. People who prefer introversion need time out to reflect in order to rebuild energy.
The extravert's flow is directed outward toward people and objects, and the introvert's is directed inward toward concepts and ideas. There are several contrasting characteristics between extraverts and introverts: extraverts are action-oriented and desire breadth, while introverts are thought-oriented and seek depth. Extraverts often prefer more frequent interaction, while introverts prefer more substantial interaction.
Functions: Sensing (S) / iNtuition (N) and Thinking (T) / Feeling (F)
Jung identified two pairs of psychological functions:
- The two perceiving functions, sensing and intuition
- The two judging functions, thinking and feeling
According to the Myers-Briggs typology model, each person uses one of these four functions more dominantly and proficiently than the other three; however, all four functions are used at different times depending on the circumstances.
Sensing and intuition are the information-gathering (perceiving) functions. They describe how new information is understood and interpreted. Individuals who prefer sensing are more likely to trust information that is in the present, tangible and concrete: that is, information that can be understood by the five senses. They tend to distrust hunches that seem to come out of nowhere. They prefer to look for details and facts. For them, the meaning is in the data. On the other hand, those who prefer intuition tend to trust information that is more abstract or theoretical, that can be associated with other information (either remembered or discovered by seeking a wider context or pattern). They may be more interested in future possibilities. They tend to trust those flashes of insight that seem to bubble up from the unconscious mind. The meaning is in how the data relates to the pattern or theory.
Thinking and feeling are the decision-making (judging) functions. The thinking and feeling functions are both used to make rational decisions, based on the data received from their information-gathering functions (sensing or intuition). Those who prefer thinking tend to decide things from a more detached standpoint, measuring the decision by what seems reasonable, logical, causal, consistent and matching a given set of rules. Those who prefer feeling tend to come to decisions by associating or empathizing with the situation, looking at it 'from the inside' and weighing the situation to achieve, on balance, the greatest harmony, consensus and fit, considering the needs of the people involved.
As noted already, people who prefer thinking do not necessarily, in the everyday sense, "think better" than their feeling counterparts; the opposite preference is considered an equally rational way of coming to decisions (and, in
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