MBTI, Strengths and Weaknesses
By Gerri Inamura
The MBTI is the world's most popular personality test. In spite of the fact that it has existed since 1943, the MBTI
is still going strong. Recently, newspaper criticisms have tended to accumulate, calling the MBTI no better than random
Facebook quizzes. These criticisms are uninformed.
It is true that the MBTI has its weak points. Like everything in life, the MBTI is not perfect. But the idea that the Big Five
test should somehow be able to replace the MBTI seems like wishful thinking on behalf of academic psychologists who want to "smash
the old icons."
In spite of the fact that the Big Five construct has been around for 35 years or more, it is not at all close to replacing the MBTI.
Ordinary people tend to find the Big Five boring and confusing, and conversely, they tend to intuitively "get" the MBTI.
Strengths
- The MBTI and Jungian Type framework packs a lot of complexity
into a deceptively simple model. Far from being static stereotypes, the 16 "types" described by Jung, Myers, and Briggs are
dynamic entities with vast descriptive potential.
- Clients introduced to the typology recognize it as a useful way of making sense of themselves and others. People with no
psychological training intuitively recognize the four dichotomies as real.
- The MBTI endeavors to be normatively neutral, avoiding negative or "wrong" personality traits like neuroticism; all
individual differences are described as normal.
- As opposed to the Big Five system of personality,
the Jungian framework that underpins the MBTI does not simply describe the respondent's personality, but also purports
to explain it.
- The MBTI is extremely simple and minimalistic. As opposed to the Big Five construct, which has 36+ elements, facets, and scales, the
MBTI has just 8: Introversion, Extroversion, Sensing, Intuition, Thinking, Feeling, Judging, and Perceiving.
- Clients almost always affirm that they have found the introduction to the instrument valuable, intriguing, and worth their
time. Far from feeling reined into one of 16 types, the vast majority of clients experience relief and positive feelings upon
getting to discover themselves and their type.
Weaknesses
- The theory is so deceptively simple that a certain subset of people believe themselves to be experts on the MBTI after
two weeks of study or less. They fail to understand how an adequate understanding of the theory is needed to administer the
test and interpret the scores.
- Following David Keirsey's corruption of Jung and Myers, clients and professionals ascribe trait qualities to type preferences,
leading to an erroneous and inappropriate understanding of type.
- Many people with serious shortcomings or psychological pathologies use the positive type descriptions provided by the MBTI to
gloss over these difficulties. Instead of spurring people on towards personal development, the MBTI becomes an excuse and a sedative.
- The simplicity of the test questions causes people to mistakenly assume that the theory itself is simple as well. Again, like
Keirsey, they treat Jung's typology as a static system and not as a dynamic one, as he and Myers intended.
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So certainly, the MBTI is not without its weaknesses. It is not a comprehensive instrument and should not be taken to say
everything about a person's personality. Nonetheless, it is the only known psychometric instrument that is universally accessible
and which consistently manages to win hearts all over the world. Thus, the people who come on strong, with their various newspaper
criticisms of the MBTI, should rather think about how to create an instrument that will emulate the unique strengths of the instrument,
rather than just banging away at the MBTI while offering nothing to replace it. For the day they offer us something similar-but-better
than the MBTI, the fans will migrate, all by themselves.
