How Seriously Do You Take The MBTI?

[Moiety]

I'm only asking because I personally don't take it all that seriously. It's hella interesting to be sure, but I start pulling back when it begins treading into stereotype territory, or narrowing the landscape in terms of getting to know a person.

The thing that strikes me most about these boards is the constant back and forth about the types. One person will post something about a particular type as if it accepted fact that all people of a certain type are a certain way, then it is followed by a bunch of people with the previously mentioned type piping up to say "That's funny because that's not like me at all!!".

I get a little whingey when it starts getting into "I know you better than you know yourself because I've read more about your type than you have" territory. I get more than a little bothered when the MBTI (when in certain hands) seems to turn into more fodder for discrimination towards others. I'm not hating on it, far from it, these are just some thoughts.

Agreed on all accounts.

I don't know what "taking it seriously" means. I don't see it in terms of right or wrong. I see it as a study of patterns with all it's benefits and pit falls. But there is enough conflicting information out there. I sure as hell haven't read Jung or Myers-Briggs so I'm clueless as to what they had to say on the subject. All the "info" I have comes via various proxies. As such, and since I know I'm not the only one, the "data" tends to be somewhat biased. So I discard most of what could be considered "data".

MBTI profiles, to me make very little sense since they talk about behavior. I'm different enough from those descriptions to be cynical about them for other types too. What it says about cognition, that's the real interesting aspect of it. It basically says we think differently. The interaction with the external world though...there is a myriad of variables.

I think people who are offended by MBTI and by people making generalizations based on it actually take MBTI more seriously. I think the generalizations mostly open up productive discussion and broaden people's views on types.

I don't like people making generalizations based on it because I don't trust other people's ability to put things into perspective. Specially with so many giddy INTs that "finally found their way to understand people"... I am not offended by MBTI though. My problem with it is very simple.

People like to use the implication "cognition => behavior" which I think is a wrong way to look at the world. Instead of using "behavior => cognition", which is more accurate. The ultimate fools are the ones who use "behavior <=> cognition", though.

 

[kelric]

I was just wondering how seriously YOU take the MBTI?

Not very, in the details. It's quite vague, not really scientific, and has dubious (at best) value in predicting much. I'm even less a fan of the whole cognitive function stuff.

But I do find MBTI a useful prism for emphasizing differences and similarities between people - not so much trying to decide what someone else might be thinking, but simply to recognize that they may *not* be thinking the same things that I am, that things I take as a given may not apply to them, and vice-versa. Most of the value I've gotten from it over the years is self-validation - that just because I don't "fit in", that I'm not alone or defective. That's big... but it's not something that really depends on the details of the system itself.

 

[heart]

Less serious that I was at one point. It is begining to have served it's usefulness to me and I don't talk about it with anyone except here. But I like it here. So I keep coming here and thinking about MBTI.

I begin to think there's a LOT of confusion over what T-F really is and that T becomes a cover for outright selfishness in some and F becomes a cover for refusal to be realistic in some and that the whole issue of what T or F was really supposed to mean becomes so confused it becomes meaningless.