Circular Cruises/Sixteen Pigeonholes

Sixteen Pigeonholes

7 September 1998

It's taken a while to write this. I made the mistake of doing some research.

It's always easier to fire off an fervent opinion, good or bad, if you don't bother to research. And it's so tempting! Just toss those flames out into the void. This is why the credibility level of the web as a whole is sometimes less than optimal.

But when you look into the matter, you find that your saint has ghosts of the past, or your sinner has some merit, and nothing is as simple as you make it out to be.

No good deed goes unpunished, eh?

I have noticed, of late, that an awful lot of the people on the web whose words I love to read have taken the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator test, or at least seem to know what type they are.

(I am going to assume you're marginally familiar with the Myers-Briggs types. If not, the Typelogic site has as good a description of each type as you're likely to get.)

Let me state right now that I haven't taken it. I haven't taken it mostly because the opportunity hasn't come my way, but even if it did, I don't think I would. The test costs money - quite a lot, depending on how big a markup the test-giver thinks she can scam you for. It is given only by licensed testers, who must buy only the official materials from the company which now sells them, Consulting Psychologists Press.

In other words, it is impossible for the layman to get his or her hands on this material without jumping through considerable hoops and giving a certain amount of money to CPP. They will only sell MBTI materials to people with "appropriate training and credentials," and although the exact wording of the requirements is vague, it's clear that the intent is to prevent someone from getting a copy of it just to look at.

As for money ... at the time I write this, a package of ten answer forms costs $37.50, and the big booklet for the person giving the test (which has the questions, I imagine) costs $42.10. So, adding those together and dividing by ten, your tester spent about eight bucks on your test paperwork. Everything else was her markup for time and labor.

I don't expect CPP to give away their intellectual property for free. Beyond that, everything else about this MBTI stuff sounds like a racket. The last time I saw a similar approach was with CEEB (now The College Board), the people who administer the SATs and other big academic tests, and at least there the secrecy about test materials is somewhat justified - people are deciding who gets into what schools based on that, for heaven's sake.

By the by, I don't really approve of that practice either. If you're beginning to think I don't like standardized tests at all, you're probably not far off.

The problem with standardized tests - all of them - is that they are only averages at best, educated statistical guesses. Standardized tests all work on the principle that "All people who answer in a similar way have similar underlying characteristics which can be predicted." It's a nice idea, as far as it goes.

Specifically, I don't have a problem with the MBTI as a fun method of taxonomy - of classification - but I do have a problem with anyone using it as anything more than that. That includes not only anyone who may want to make guesses about you based on your test results, but also you yourself. It is a very bad predictive tool.

I don't think real discrimination is a big danger with the MBTI. The test has been around in one form or another since 1942, and I haven't heard of an employer refusing to deal impartially with an employee because of his or her personality type ... or someone not getting a job because they were an I or a J ... or other horror stories of that sort.

Again, though, going back to the SAT example: People are routinely given short shrift in college admissions because they did poorly on a test which for years was known to be culturally biased and flawed in many of its measurements. Stranger things have happened.

While writing this, a friend heard - via ICQ - that I was working on it. She said she hated that test. I asked why. She said because at a previous job, everyone had had to take it and then had to stand in little groups by type - and, as she said, "For the rest of the time I was there everyone classified me only by those four letters." That's not exactly discrimination, but it's a miserable way to treat someone.

What's worse is that people sometimes seek out this kind of treatment by choice.

For something where the process is guarded so jealously, a lot of people seem eager to share their MBTI results. I've already noted how a lot of my online friends seem to state their type publicly. There are websites for people of the same type, and mailing lists too.

I suppose it's no less likely a common ground than going to the same coffee house or bowling on the same night or anything like that, but for me it just rings wrong - I don't see a difference between stating one's MBTI type and stating what sign of the Zodiac you are ... and, frankly, it's just as ludicrous for you to say to someone "we have commonality because we're both Pisces" as it is for you to say "we have commonality because we're both INTJs."

If you made a remark like that to me, my response would be to do something ludicrously out-of-type and thus hopefully shatter the pigeonhole you were trying to put me in. I would be tremendously offended by your remark, even if it happened to be true, because I expect to be assessed for something a little less shallow than my ostensible personality type.

Yet the danger of the MBTI is that it does encourage the use of these tidy little pigeonholes - and that it encourages people to behave in a way such as to remain within them. Although one correspondent felt that

... Rather than pigeonholing people, it has the opposite effect, in my experience; it liberates one from preconceived notions about people, as it emphasizes the diversity of outlooks and inclinations ....

I tend to see evidence in the opposite direction.

For example, a person I spend a lot of time around is a INTJ. Again, the accuracy of the classification isn't the issue - in point of fact, she fits the Typelogic definition of an INTJ pretty well in my estimation. The thing is, to an extent she uses it as a shield for some of the more negative aspects of her behavior - she's been classified, after all, and there's nothing she can do about it, no way she can change where she's been pigeonholed. Which is poppycock.

(She's going to read that and say she doesn't do it. Perhaps I overstate. Let me try again.)

The MBTI is a pretty decent snapshot of whatever you were like at the time you took the test. The day after you took the test, it's already inaccurate. It has a short lifespan. I repeat: It's a fun tool for Seeing Where You Are Now. It is absolutely useless at Seeing Where You Will Be.

If you try to conform to the snapshot - if you let the snapshot influence you or steer you in any way - you're making it serve a function it wasn't meant to serve, and you're doing your own personality a big injustice.

Of course, to a certain extent, once you know your MBTI type, you can't help but be influenced by it a little. Which is why, ultimately, I won't take it. Even if someone else pays for it.

You may be wondering where the research I complained about at the beginning comes in.

Well, originally I was going to gripe about the categories somewhat. For example, I was going to note how one of the most Joe Btfsplk characters I've ever met online, a sullen and lonely soul with a perpetual stormcloud overhead, is an E (Extrovert), and how all these online journallers who share the details of their lives with strangers around the world all seem to be I (Introvert).

But then I read a book called Gifts Differing, by Isabel Briggs Myers. Do I need to give her MBTI credentials, given her name? Suffice to say that she is permitted the luxury of Making Pronouncements about this test. Myers notes what several other places have also noted: an Introvert draws her strength from herself, is mostly fascinated by her own inner workings and interests; an Extrovert draws strength from being around others.

Crudely put and oversimplified, these journallers all like to talk about their lives - their own ongoing stream of events is what interests them - and my E is always miserable because she lacks the company and support of the friends she so badly needs. Myers triumphant!

But, had the journallers been Es and my lonely friend an I, I could have equally justified it the other way around. The fact of the matter is that all the MBTI explanatory material is worded that way.

Listen: I gave Tarot readings for some years. I never charged for it; if I had, my conscience would still haunt me. I can make the same set of ten cards fit anyone's personal circumstances and have them leave the table wondering at how accurate the details were. I know this trick well. And I see it in this book.

When all else fails, the old "your mileage may vary" caveat is in there. From a mailing list FAQ:

Often, one will read a portrait of his or her type and find material that fits and material that does not. No single description of a personality type can encompass all the nuances of that type. More importantly, no one INTJ is the same as all other INTJs. Just as each human being is like each other human being in those characteristics that make him/her human, but has specific characteristics that set her/him apart as well, so each INTJ is like each other INTJ but is also a unique individual.

If "no one INTJ is the same as all other INTJs," a statement I heartily agree with, then the classification's not much use, is it?

So due to my researches, I realized I cannot pick on the MBTI for accuracy - since that complaint has already been deflected with some skill. And at any rate accuracy, as I have said several times before, is not my primary problem with the MBTI - more of a side issue.

Now, having read all this bile, I feel you deserve the truth. I have a confession to make.

Although I have not taken the MBTI itself, and do not plan to, I have taken the Keirsey Temperament Sorter, which produces a similar result. Yes, it's true. For all that talk above, my curiosity eventually overcame my judgement.

Since I believe a seventy-question test is rather short for this kind of thing, I took it three times over a two-month period to see how much the results would vary - leaving myself enough space between tests to forget what answers I'd picked the previous time. And each time I got the same result.

I feel that with all the venom, I owe defenders of the MBTI a chance to give some back. If you can guess which type the Keirsey test says I am, and I confirm it, you will be justified in assuming that a lot of this article is just so much bluster.

Actually, this article has a lot of bluster whether you agree with it or not. All right. If you get it, you will have the privilege of gloating. That's my final offer.

Copyright © September 1998. All rights reserved.