How an untrained, obsessive mother, with her daughter, created MBTI, the world’s most popular personality test and fooled millions
The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator is the world’s most popular personality test, taken by 2.5 million people every year and used by 88 per cent of the Fortune 500 companies
A monk-like man appeared at the door one evening when I was at a friend’s place. He asked to see my thumb, applied some ash on it and after some peering, told me I was independent, rebellious and did not much like my father dictating what I should do in life. I didn’t like college very much, he said, and ate dinner in a restaurant.
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All true. I was stunned.
Like most baby boomers in their youth, I was a sucker for personality tests. I mastered the Max Luscher Color Test, which describes who you are from the colours you choose. I studied palmistry (which has certain undocumented uses when scoring points with the opposite sex) and I dived deep into astrology.
But, of them all, the most sensible-sounding, professional test has always been the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, or MBTI. Its appeal lies in its utter simplicity. You answer a 93-question test made up of Agree/Disagree questions—like I love people vs I am happiest when by myself—and then receive a four-letter classification.
I learned that I was an INFJ—Introverted-Intuitive-Feeling-Judging. Only 2% of the people in the world are INFJs. I felt very special.
The letters reflect a simple classification. A person can be Introverted (I) or Extraverted (E); Sensing (S) or Intuitive (N); Thinking (T) or Feeling (F); and Judging (J) or Perceiving (P). In their permutations, these letters yield the 16 personality types of the MBTI typology.
An INFJ, I was told, was idealistic, organised, insightful, dependable, compassionate, gentle, harmonious and enjoyed intellectual stimulation. Sounded exactly like a certain me.
The MBTI is the world’s most popular personality test, taken by 2.5 million people every year and used by 88% of the Fortune 500 companies. It’s used in the military, industry and universities. During World War II, it was used to match spies to the covert missions that best suited their MBTI personalities.
The Myers-Briggs Company earns $20 million a year just from people taking their test.
I became an MBTI groupie. I began reading whatever I could about Messrs. Myers and Briggs.
I learned that Katherine Briggs was Isabel Myers’ mother. That their test was derived from the thinking of the eminent psychologist Carl Jung. I started recommending a website called truity.com where you could answer questions and find out your MBTI personality type.
I was just 20.
Half a century later, last week, I learned that I had been suckered. Along with a few million others.
It’s called the Forer Effect. It’s what happens when people read a horoscope and feel that it described them and them alone specifically and accurately. It’s why I was fooled by the quack who read the ash on my thumb, though his statements would have applied to most any college student. To test myself, I read several other MBTI descriptions—and by gum, they all sounded like me. Mr Forer would have been proud.
But there’s more, and it’s insidious. Neither Katherine nor Isabel had ever studied psychology or personality development. Katherine was a mother who’d aborted three babies, and therefore wanted to make the only one who survived, Isabel, into Wonder Woman. She set up what she called the Cosmic Laboratory of Baby Training—aka living room— and programmed her daughter like a laboratory mouse. Isabel also happened to be clever and that helped her shine in everything she did.
Other mothers began coming to learn from Katherine Briggs, super-mom.
One day, Katherine read Carl Jung’s The Psychology of Types, became a fan and started creating her own personality classification system with three pairs of traits. She saw this as a sacred art, but her daughter recognised it as a money machine.
Isabelle added a fourth pair of traits—Judging-Perceiving—that had nothing to do with psychology or Jung, though much to do with dollars. She simplified the test, making it easy to answer. People loved it.
Recent articles have exposed the sinister side of MBTI. Katherine and Isabel were both eugenicists, and strongly believed that some people were superior to others and should receive more attention. Eugenics, now discredited, was popular in Hitler’s Germany and underlies white supremacy. Isabel believed that people like truck drivers, or indeed anyone with an IQ below 100, did not deserve to be tested because they would be too stupid to express personality preferences.
Their test was so popular with businesses because it helped sort people into neat, functional boxes, some superior, some worthless.
For a while, MBTI made me feel special because who doesn’t like reading nice things about themselves? After all, I apparently shared my personality type with Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Nicole Kidman, Lady Diana and Martin Luther King.
But also, I learned recently, with Osama bin Laden and Adolf Hitler, both INFJs.
Here, viewed from there. C Y Gopinath, in Bangkok, throws unique light and shadows on Mumbai, the city that raised him. You can reach him at cygopi@gmail.com
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The views expressed in this column are the individual’s and don’t represent those of the paper.
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