Reynierse's revised type theory

[Hemd]

Now i've read Reynierse whole article and i a fully agree with him in almost all points. Many of his proposals seem quite natural and logical to me, and the question arising is, why no one before him has raised these questions and issues with MBTI.

The MBTI is now more than 50 years old, and in this 50 years there have been only slight improvements. Behavioral and psychological science is on a completely new standing point and has come up with many things the last 50 years, but the MBTI stayed where it was, mostly ignoring everything whats going on around him, staying in its bubble of jungian theory (which is 90 years old). In MBTI-Terms, MBTI would be pretty high in S and J.
Strange thing is, MBTI did ignore not only the contradicting scientific results and miss the chance of improving the theory, but ignored also the confirming scientific results, which could be used to give MBTI much more scientific credit. Especially the thousands of Big Five studies could be used to advantage for MBTI, but not without acknowledging some of MBTI's shortcomings. And thats where the problem lies.

I also read some of Reynierse cited studies (many i already knew), for example the very critical (but factual and reasonable) works of Pittenger, and it becomes clear that many areas of MBTI theory are not better than astrology:

- there is no evidence for dichotomous preferences, eg. clear "types". All studies show that human preferences are organized in continous traits.
But even accepting that, with continous preferences types are still a useful and needed simplification to understand those traits. But also much information about an individual is lost, when referring to types, because people within one type can differ dramatically, for example a low I and low E type have more in common than a low I and a high I type.

- type dynamics and function theory are - sorry - simply crap. They work the same way than astrology: people believe in the system and therefore see themselves according to it and interpret everything in favor of the system, ignoring the contradictions. In 50 years of MBTI research and hundreds of (MBTI-backed) studies there has been NO evidence for type dynamics. It simply doesn't work. But talking people out of it often is like triyng to talk someone out of religion: people simply believe in it, regardless of any evidence. They simply like the idea of having an exact plan for human behavior, when in reality people are much more individual and don't behave according to such a rigid system.

I think Reynierse ideas are very good and currently the only way for MBTI to get away from outdated theories and overdone and wrong simplification of personality. The first steps have already been done in the new MBTI step 2, which introduced facets for every preference. But if there is to be any mayor change in MBTI, it will surely take many many years.

 

[Mal12345]

Now i've read Reynierse whole article and i a fully agree with him in almost all points. Many of his proposals seem quite natural and logical to me, and the question arising is, why no one before him has raised these questions and issues with MBTI.

Are you talking about its non-empirical basis? This has been brought up many times. As for the logical scheme itself, try this on for size:
http://tap3x.net/EMBTI/j7nomenclature.html

 

[Mal12345]

From http://tap3x.net/EMBTI/j7nomenclature.html -

"But if it is not true that everyone who has an I orientation and a 'F-N-S-T' preference order is 'p', then some of those who are inF would in actuality turn out to also be 'j' !!! This would result in a new label, the inFj - standing for the person who is an introvert, with F-N-S-T preference order, but a 'j' disposition (prefering closure, etc). It would also result in 15 other previously unrecognized new type-labels. The new four-letter nomenclature would thus not be redundant at all, nor trivial. For it would open up 16 new possibilities that are by DEFINITION outlawed by the assumptions according to which the MBTI works."

By F-N-S-T, Fudjack is referring to what we today call Fi-Ne-Si-Te.

Fudjack pointed out, 12 years ago, that the formula for generating an MBTI type from function order is based merely on an assumption. It is true "by definition." We already know that the empirical basis is lacking. But Fudjack takes the disagreement to a deeper level. We don't know if it's true in reality. But we do know that revealing the fact that the formula is only an assumption opens the door to its denial via the fact that other assumptions may be possible from what we know about functions.

The function-based MBTI can be logically expanded to include 16 new types. This involves a two-step procedure.

1. Take out the J/P. Include only the first 3 letters, such that, for example, INFP becomes I-N-F. But maintain the idea that F is in the dominant function of INFP. This gives a new nomenclature, let's call it inF. At this point, however, this is no different than the INFP we had in the beginning.

2. Put the J/P back in. But we don't use these letters anymore merely as logical placeholders determined by the dominant function. We recognize them, realistically, as representing a psychological tendency toward either Closure (J) or Non-closure (P).

This is now no mere change in nomenclature, as it was in step 1. Because it opens up the possibility of a never-before recognized type, the inFj. That is, according to the old system, an Fi-Ne-Si-Te type who prefers closure over non-closure.

I grant, however, that Fi-Ne-Si-Te still maintains the function ordering system being taken to task by Reynierse.

 

[Hemd]

Are you talking about its non-empirical basis? This has been brought up many times. As for the logical scheme itself, try this on for size:
http://tap3x.net/EMBTI/j7nomenclature.html

I know it has been critisized many times. What i meant was not only seeing its flaws, but trying to actively change MBTI to fit it to the facts.

 

[*avariel*]

My preference-type would be INJFtpse.

 

[GavinElster]

Old dug up thread, I guess?

I'll just add a small comment: Reynierse's views to me can more or less be summarized as follows:I would not EXPECT a dichotomies system like MBTI (the test) to in any way predict functions types, even if Myers may have thought that. His commentary is more, to my understanding, about whether the MBTI instrument itself predicts functions types than if functions types exist in any meaningful sense.

And here's the thing -- why would one take a model that's about 4 independent scales and predict that, say, INTJ and ESFP share something in common that INTJ and INTP simply don't? There's not even a basis I can see from which one could predict that based on the model of 4 independent dimensions -- which is the operative assumption that underlies things like Big 5. That's why MBTI and Big 5 can correlate better than MBTI and Jungian functions theory.

Now, a deeper but not quite directly related issue is that of types vs trait theories: in general, I believe types are rarely exhaustive of the possibilities encompassed by a corresponding trait theory. That we choose to mark them more rigidly is to me because we want to create what I call higher-level definitions, which is fine, but we need to realize that's what we are doing. A word in the dictionary describing personality is a pattern. A model as we see in functions theory is a more complicated pattern.
What we cannot say is that everyone falls into one of those patterns, but we can certainly argue from definitions that someone meets a given pattern, or that someone meets one better than another.
Whereas if we're working with a trait theory, while it still is controversial whether their personality is described by the purported structure (for example, the Big 5 does not replicate as well in some populations as others), what is being claimed is still much less rigid than a claim that personality must fall into one of these patterns, and thus in a way less subject to being knocked down.
In fact, when types have been discussed in context of Big 5, it seems they are discussed more from the vantage point that high scores in certain directions of the dimensions produce a typical character of sorts.

Interestingly, if one really examines Jung, he may have felt the same way: his all-important introvert-extravert distinction was one where he accepted many would fall in between roughly, and that his types were the differentiated versions.

What I think people should take away, though, is that there's a subtlety I think Jung was missing, and that's this: given there are various regions of personality at the regions of intercorrelation of various scales, there's a lot of merit to the idea that, while someone may not be all that differentiated on a given scale, this doesn't mean he/she is a glorified undifferentiated blob. Rather, he/she may simply be differentiated on a different scale.

For example, someone may be middle-ish on T vs F dichotomies, yet have strong NT tendencies -- NT seems to be the region of greatest rationality/logic focus. This may result in a strong independent/reason-oriented thinking tendency without as much of the tough-minded tendencies attributed to T.

 

[Eric B]

Like I keep saying in these Reynierse debates, it all works "holistically". It's not "either/or", the different sub-models all work together. When you divide type up into temperament and Interaction Styles, it's covering behavior that is associated with functions. For an NT, P, for instance, will soften the T-"toughmindedness" a bit, because N plus P is "informative" (rather than "directive"), and this is what makes them often confuse as F's.

 

[Seymour]

My main problem with Type Dynamics (much less empirically unlikely things like Interaction Style, or logically impossible things like "The Tandems") is that it doesn't actually explain anything more in reality than preference combinations... plus Type Dynamics doesn't seem to predict anything observable empirically. So, if it adds nothing and can't be measured empirically (despite lots of people trying)... what's the point?

If one wants to treat Type Dynamics as a lens that can reveal patterns I'm fine with that... but even the Tarot (or any other randomly applied pattern) can make that claim.

I admit there remain the questions of "do we develop other sides of ourselves as we mature?" (although there are good Big Five studies for that one) or "what approaches/perspectives do we turn to under stress?" But so far I've found Type Dynamics to be extremely unconvincing, and something like the Enneagram (despite its lack of studies) to be better descriptor of unhealthy defense mechanisms.