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Rebranding the MBTI

á´…eparted

passages
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My opinion on MBTI: It's a fun toy sort of like roll-playing. You can gain some things (some more than others) by playing around with it, or perhaps not.

That's about it.
 

highlander

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Found yet another article today about how the MBTI is "worthless" because it doesn't do what it "claims" to do -- namely pick the perfect job, spouse, and life for your type.

Hmm.. Is it marketed that way? I think it is marketed to help you figure out a job you might enjoy doing. I think it works a lot better than blind luck from that perspective. Is it marketed to help you pick a spouse? I don't think it is. Is it marketed to pick the life for your type? I don't think so there either.

I think the problem is that it is often used in quite a shallow way. Let's say people go to a marriage counselor or there is a group thing a work - everybody takes this test and says, "Oohhh... now i see how you are different from me." Then they pretty much forget about it within a few weeks. They can't even remember their type let alone what it means or what others is. There is too much inference that type determines behavior as well, relying on these profiles that can feel a bit like reading a horoscope.

At its best, when you're an enthusiast -- like many on this forum -- it becomes a language with which you can discuss the social and internal realm and come to better and deeper understandings about how you and others operate.

I like MBTI because it has opened my eyes to a lot of communication styles, thinking styles, and techniques for dealing with others and myself. It opened a lot of doors for me, and even if those doors weren't all founded entirely in the principles it set out for, for me they were positive and useful.

Whether the MBTI is statistically valid or not, it is still useful. I think it has really helped me understand myself and others on a deeper level. I think the perspective I've come to is that behavioral and cognitive processing patterns do exist. The MBTI just kind of puts a label on them enabling us to discuss them further. Whether Ne or Fi are actually things are not isn't the point. The point is that the represent behaviors and thought patterns that do exist, and enable us to discuss them.

That is how I use it and to that end, it has been of enormous value to me personally. The single most important thing it has given me is an ability to do a better job of putting myself in another person's shoes. My career is almost a textbook example of the type of career an INTJ would enjoy. In fact, going a step further, I'm a prototype for Enneagram 6 as well. So the combination of those two types together, and what you might consider going into from a career standpoint, would actually be much more valuable than just looking at MBTI. That would be something really useful. Maybe an idea for the Wiki...

Is it helpful for self understanding? I think it is actually. It can also be a way of putting yourself in a box though. It's something to be watchful for.

So my discussion question here is: What can the general public -- i.e. those of us not part of the official MBTI establishment -- do? Is there anything that can be done? Clearly we are the weaker side, even though we predominate the Internet. Is there any chance that, at some point in the future, other authors on the subject can take control of this narrative and help the world see the MBTI for what it's REALLY good at?

What can be done about the marketing? The typeism? The abuse of type profiles and what people infer by reading them?

The best way to fight bad information is with good information and to make that information popular. So let's do that here. I don't the the MBTI establishment really causes the problem. I think they help by promoting deeper understanding of the topics. Many of them tend to look at it mostly as an "instrument" though, which I think fails to recognize the deeper value of the thing. On the flipside, some of the Enneagram practitioners go overboard in the deeper value that Enneagram brings. It is an interesting dichotomy. The criticism the MBTI establishment has of Internet forums is that there is so much bad information that people communicate. They don't seem to understand the idea that people can be fully capable of separating good information from bad information, thank you very much, and that "experts" don't always know everything.

Maybe this is something to mention in our "introduction to typology" for the forum.

If we can weed out some good quotes or comments, yes I think that might be good.
 

Mole

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Our job was to improve productivity on the Leyland assembly line, so we made a change and we found it increased productivity. But we found the productivity declined after a while so we tried a new change, and guess what, productivity increased for a while then declined. And this happened with every change we made so we concluded, it didn't matter what the change was, it was the change itself that increased productivity.

This is very similar to the placebo effect which can be as much as 30% as effective as prescribed medicine.

However the only way to test effectiveness is with random, double blind experiments. And guess what, in 75 years there has been not one random, double blind experiment done with mbti.

So mbti is effective because it is like a placebo or a new change, not because it is a psychometric measure.

And the tragedy is that the effectiveness lies in increasing our ability to manipulate ourselves and one another as things.

So mbti reifies.

And because our society reifies us into factors of production or consumers, we find mbti makes us socially successful.

And we are prepared to sell our souls for social success.
 

Firebird 8118

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Awwww!!! :hug: If you believe in MBTI, we can both see each other in Heaven YAYAYAYAYAY!!!!

"Behold, in my father's theory there are many mansions --16 of them. And I go there to prepare a place for you."

YAY! :D :hug: Thanks Jennifer!
 

21%

You have a choice!
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Personally, the MBTI has helped me immensely in understanding where people are coming from and bridging communication gaps. I do like the Myers-Briggs book title "Gifts Differing" as it seems to suggest that other people are just 'different' and there is no one right way to approach anything.

So, as an MBTI community, I think we really should get that message across and learn to celebrate differences!
 

uumlau

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So, as an MBTI community, I think we really should get that message across and learn to celebrate differences!

^^ I think this would be a good overall theme for our forum! [MENTION=8936]highlander[/MENTION]
 

Werebudgie

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Personally, the MBTI has helped me immensely in understanding where people are coming from and bridging communication gaps. I do like the Myers-Briggs book title "Gifts Differing" as it seems to suggest that other people are just 'different' and there is no one right way to approach anything.

So, as an MBTI community, I think we really should get that message across and learn to celebrate differences!

^^ I think this would be a good overall theme for our forum! [MENTION=8936]highlander[/MENTION]

In my observations, this site does not actually practice such a thing in its group culture and how people interact with each other. So if it is a theme that will be more than words, it would need some real changes.

On this site, from what I have seen, it is pretty common for participants to post incredibly negative, flowing into vicious, characterizations of entire MBTI types and encourage each other in doing so. Often, the source for this approach seems to come from participants' personal issues with people in their lives who either are or are presumed to be a particular type. Among other things yielding type bashing here, people use bashing entire types as a way to evade honest exploration about whatever went wrong in bad relationships, conflicts with people in their lives etc. For example, because I am an INFJ and gravitate toward threads addressing our functions etc, I have seen that there have been more than one incredibly nasty and extremely long/ongoing threads in which multiple participants bash INFJs as a type (including anyone on the site who identifies as that type) based on participants' exes or others in their lives who are actually or assumed to be INFJ.

And that's just one example based on my limited observations and time here. I've been told that here at typologycentral, type-bashing is not limited to any one type, that all types get their turn on this site. I'm inclined to believe it - there's a real lack of concern with type-bashing here.

I think it would be incredibly deceptive for this site to claim its theme is celebration of difference - or any variation of the theme of using MBTI to respectfully interact across differences without superiority/inferiority - without substantial changes to the core of this site and what is actually acceptable here.
 
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EJCC

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[MENTION=20789]Werebudgie[/MENTION]

Type-bashing is natural and inevitable in a place like this. As [MENTION=4939]kyuuei[/MENTION] and others have mentioned on this thread, it's easy to look to something like the MBTI as the answer to why such-and-such relative or ex-husband or whoever is a horrible human being. Having those people on TypeC is only a problem so long as others are unwilling to correct them. And it's important to note that since I joined, the vast majority of typism has been met with civil conversation and rebuttal. That's all we can realistically ask for, since typism can never be 100% eliminated.
 

Werebudgie

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[MENTION=20789]Werebudgie[/MENTION]

Type-bashing is natural and inevitable in a place like this. As [MENTION=4939]kyuuei[/MENTION] and others have mentioned on this thread, it's easy to look to something like the MBTI as the answer to why such-and-such relative or ex-husband or whoever is a horrible human being. Having those people on TypeC is only a problem so long as others are unwilling to correct them. And it's important to note that since I joined, the vast majority of typism has been met with civil conversation and rebuttal. That's all we can realistically ask for, since typism can never be 100% eliminated.

Yeah, there will always be individuals who do stuff like that. But the focus I was seeking to bring up is: how the collective (group culture, standards for whether X or Y is appropriate in this space) responds. And I have seen a pattern of really ugly stuff here, unchecked by any mod concern or collective participant concern with type bashing being inappropriate behavior.

And for sure, you and I have different observations of this site. We also have different relationships to it (you as a full participant and mod, me as someone who barely participates anymore due to what I experience as dysfunction here). I don't want to get into a whole debate (or even dialogue about it), but I will suggest that you consider the possibility that even time spent on refuting type-bashing can validate that bashing in certain ways. It's like ... like if people regularly came along and went off about how all women are hysterical due to our bodies being the way they are and so women shouldn't be trusted with any responsibility, and there was a whole lot of energy poured into treating that as a reasonable thing to consider, discuss and debate. What is and isn't at the center of attention is a pretty subtle but often quite powerful part of group culture.

Again, not going to debate this. You'll get what you get. I maintain that it would be really deceptive for this site to claim a theme as noted above. But the thread is about "rebranding" and perhaps that is more about how to market (use words to project an image, disconnected from actual practice) than actual reality anyway.

Not going to respond further on this topic, though. As is typical for me I lack energy for dialogues here, and there's a strong group-cultural bubble here.
 

uumlau

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In my observations, this site does not actually practice such a thing in its group culture and how people interact with each other. So if it is a theme that will be more than words, it would need some real changes.

The point is to say what we WANT the forum to be like, possibly preventing much of the nonsense you detail. It's not a lie, or hypocrisy. It's a vision, an ideal.
 

wolfy

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"I was confused and didn't know who I was. My life was going in circles.

"But after listening to the preaching of Carl Jung and Katherine Briggs and Isabelle Myers, I invited MBTI into my heart and now I have a personal relationship with it. The whole world changed for me. I finally had a reason and purpose to live, and I'm so much happier now that I know who I am. Everything finally makes sense.

I just want to share this happiness that I have found with the rest of the world. it can change your life too, just like it changed mine! Won't you consider inviting MBTI into your heart? Praise Jung, Praise Myers, Praise Briggs (but everyone beware of the false prophets like David Keirsey)."​

That is really good. Maybe at the end we could have...

When you find the real you, you'll never be the same again.
 

highlander

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In my observations, this site does not actually practice such a thing in its group culture and how people interact with each other. So if it is a theme that will be more than words, it would need some real changes.

On this site, from what I have seen, it is pretty common for participants to post incredibly negative, flowing into vicious, characterizations of entire MBTI types and encourage each other in doing so. Often, the source for this approach seems to come from participants' personal issues with people in their lives who either are or are presumed to be a particular type. Among other things yielding type bashing here, people use bashing entire types as a way to evade honest exploration about whatever went wrong in bad relationships, conflicts with people in their lives etc. For example, because I am an INFJ and gravitate toward threads addressing our functions etc, I have seen that there have been more than one incredibly nasty and extremely long/ongoing threads in which multiple participants bash INFJs as a type (including anyone on the site who identifies as that type) based on participants' exes or others in their lives who are actually or assumed to be INFJ.

And that's just one example based on my limited observations and time here. I've been told that here at typologycentral, type-bashing is not limited to any one type, that all types get their turn on this site. I'm inclined to believe it - there's a real lack of concern with type-bashing here.

I think it would be incredibly deceptive for this site to claim its theme is celebration of difference - or any variation of the theme of using MBTI to respectfully interact across differences without superiority/inferiority - without substantial changes to the core of this site and what is actually acceptable here.

I think those things do happen and typism is a concern. We had a very healthy discussion on it in the Forum Improvement committee, which included sharing your feedback on this topic. My inclination is to focus on practical solutions and direction, which is laid out beginning with this post. I like the fact that [MENTION=4945]EJCC[/MENTION] started a thread about this because she is focusing on we can do to make a difference. She is asking honest questions to try and address what she sees as a problem.

I'm a believer that honest and respectful discussion and debate results in learning. We influence not only ourselves but everyone who has access to our forum by facilitating that here. Should we censure criticism of any particular type? Where do you draw the line on what is acceptable or not? Do we squash people from communicating those frustrations in their real life with a particular type and the dialogue that ensues? We thought about it when we revised the Forum Rules last fall and we ended up drawing the line where we did here.

The kind of type bashing you mention is responded to on this forum. People may challenge it if they are trying to set someone straight. People may ignore it if person X is going on about type Y again because they don't want to encourage the conversation. In either case it's an opportunity for a dialogue and for people to challenge each other. I like that focus more than complaining and then saying you don't want to engage on something. It's a discussion forum.

Edit: As an aside, I think INFJs are awesome. I think most people here think that. You could start a thread on why INFJs are awesome with a poll and I predict you would get a lot more positive votes than negative ones. Is that typism? I don't know. I generally just tend to appreciate the way their mind works and how they communicate.
 

atlascatcher

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*abandons idealism and puts practicality cap on*

If you are really sold on this idea of bringing the MBTI into a better public light, basically you will have to fight fire with fire in terms of systematizing your approach in a way that subverts the monopoly currently serving the consumer base. Maybe a way to do this is to set up a non-profit, research based institution that operates on a level of transparency as far as its goals and what its participants hope to achieve themselves. You would probably need a very clear mission statement that purports exactly what you intend for the public to learn, in this case self-discovery and ways of managing community ties with others. On top of this, you would likely need to base it more on Jung's original work rather than trying to make a simplified version. This would entail very specific definitions of what the functions are all about and how they manifest in each type--Oh snap, good luck with Ni and Si; maybe socionics can help you there. Sarcasm aside, I have seen many people who tend to only want to speak of cognitive functions so perhaps this might be a good approach. Rather than someone being an ESFJ with all of the stereotypes that encompasses, perhaps an overarching Fe dominant type with two subtypes of Ni and Si might be more appropriate. I am quite the flag waiver for using JCF over dichotomies, personally! I feel as though you would probably need to abandon any mention of temperaments or anything that oversimplifies an approach. Real world examples might be your best friend in really reaching out to the public.

This of course only implies a bureaucratic or organizational approach. The larger task will be convincing the public to buy into your system or at least give it a chance. You run the risk of becoming another variation of pod people, or worse, those astrological hippies! Oops the sarcasm came back, sorry. I suppose this is where the research based area comes in and in a sense perhaps you could invite people to be apart of your study under the umbrella of being able to better understand themselves (it is really important all of this is free) and a way to provide public feedback of their experiences. An underground advertising campaign may also be effective through "stickering" with QR codes to reach a younger audience. A separate political activist-like campaign could also be initiated in a way that exposes the MBTI for what it is, a mindless corporate profit method. The image of Michael Moore going to big business intending to make citizen arrests comes to mind. Another alternative is to somehow appeal to university students (will bring this up more later on) who really have this concept of career exploration imposed upon them. You might need a way to somehow make friends with the public education system and insist reasons why your system trumps their's. Not costing the institution anything would be a giant plus and you might be able to get more psychology staff on your side.

Another idea might be turning this into a type of movement as a way to bring local communities together. I am certain there are people from all over the world on this forum and it would not take a lot of organizing to put on free educational sessions in a town square bringing together for introspection and common interest. You are likely to get a lot of people on your side that way who will then mention their experiences to their friends and families. Of course the key here is to again systematize so everyone is having the same information. Having an argument break out over what Se is will not help your case. This makes everything difficult.

But those are just some ideas...I have probably put too much thought into this. The more I learn about personality theory the less I care about it. Somehow it manages to hold my attention reading the various online communities. I think the only useful thing I still use in my everyday life is considering whether a person is FiTe or FeTi. The latter I know I will have an easier time with and am generally more comfortable around because I understand them better. I originally got into MBTI as a tool of self-discovery. It was not until later that I even knew there was a capitalistic side of it. But just to give you an idea of what you are up against, here is an example of the "in depth" report on my personality through an online career planning website my uni offers to its students (it is interesting to note there is no blanket statement of what INFJ is): http://s21.postimg.org/q2rl18hdx/mbti_test.jpg

The company is Myplan.com, L.L.C. My "composite score" essentially has me placed in any number of STEM majors...Funny, there is no mention of artistic pursuit.
 
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Werebudgie

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Edit: As an aside, I think INFJs are awesome. I think most people here think that. You could start a thread on why INFJs are awesome with a poll and I predict you would get a lot more positive votes than negative ones. Is that typism? I don't know. I generally just tend to appreciate the way their mind works and how they communicate.

Response to your aside: Personally, I really don't want to be framed as "awesome" because I'm INFJ. Speaking specifically for myself, that approach to me would, much like negative generalizations, take the complexity and human-ness out of the interaction and quite possibly reduce the focus to some two-dimensional projection. I would prefer not to be exoticized (overly praised) or demonized based generalizations about my MBTI type/cognitive function stack. I think that those two things (exoticization/over-praise and demonization) are in many ways two sides of the same coin. A more matter of fact approach to the realities of how these functions work in limited and complex ways in our actual lives seems much more human, respectful, and useful to me. So yeah, I myself personally would likely find the thread and poll you suggest to be pretty cringe-worthy and yes, quite possibly linked to the same sort of unreal overgeneralized two-dimensional approach to MBTI that underlies type-bashing.

(As for your specific appreciation, exploration of why you might appreciate how INFJs' minds work could IMO be useful under some circumstances. If it sources at least partly to cognitive functions, I suspect the place to begin such an exploration would be the shared Ni-dom. Personally, I've tended to enjoy and learn lots from dialogue with INTJs when neither of us is too attached to and rooted in our aux functions at the time; the differences become something to look at with interest and the shared Ni-dom can yield some really fascinating dialogue, in my experience.)
 

reckful

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[1 of 2]

It seems like the MBTI "debunkings" have been coming thicker and faster lately, but their quality certainly isn't improving — which is hardly surprising, given the extent to which each one seems to be based largely on a quick review of previous "debunkings," rather than on the authors actually doing much serious homework.

I'm going to take more time than the latest debunker really deserves to address some of the points in the article by Joseph Stromberg (a dude who "writes about science" at the Vox website) mentioned in the OP, partly because they're mostly points commonly found in these kinds of articles, so addressing this one also addresses several previous articles, as well as (I assume, alas) several more that are still to come.

The Big Five is science and the MBTI is astrology

I have more to say about the scientific status of the MBTI below, but wanted to begin by noting that, like most MBTI debunkings, this one points approvingly at the Big Five and characterizes it as a very different kind of animal. But McCrae and Costa — the leading Big Five psychologists (and creators of the NEO-PI-R test) — long ago acknowledged (1) that the MBTI (and this was an older version than the current one) basically passed muster in the validity and reliability departments, (2) that the MBTI was effectively tapping into four of the Big Five dimensions, and (3) that the Big Five and the MBTI might each have things to learn from the other.

Discrete, bimodal types



The MBTI simply implements Jung's types



Reliability



Myers didn't have a psychology degree!



Real psychologists reject the MBTI



[continued in next post]
 
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reckful

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[2 of 2]

The Forer effect


Predictive power



Beyond the metrics


Dichotomies vs. functions


Want moar?

For anyone who's interested, here's another long — and reasonably good — critical review of Stromberg's article.
 
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citizen cane

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It's not so much that MBTI needs rebranding as much as it needs to not be branded. Just let the experts speak and be heard about MBTIs proper usage, and for fucks sake let at least one thing in the world not be ruined by money and/ or incompetent people.
 

Eilonwy

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So my discussion question here is: What can the general public -- i.e. those of us not part of the official MBTI establishment -- do? Is there anything that can be done?
Try to model what we've learned. Keep learning. Keep working on ourselves.

Is there any chance that, at some point in the future, other authors on the subject can take control of this narrative and help the world see the MBTI for what it's REALLY good at?
Probably not.
 

highlander

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(As for your specific appreciation, exploration of why you might appreciate how INFJs' minds work could IMO be useful under some circumstances. If it sources at least partly to cognitive functions, I suspect the place to begin such an exploration would be the shared Ni-dom. Personally, I've tended to enjoy and learn lots from dialogue with INTJs when neither of us is too attached to and rooted in our aux functions at the time; the differences become something to look at with interest and the shared Ni-dom can yield some really fascinating dialogue, in my experience.)

Of course that is the whole thing. It's due to cognitive functions. It's like talking to a kindred spirit but with important differences. What's wrong with that?

People often don't know why they react the way they do to others. The beauty of the interaction on a forum like this is you get to see how people are different than you and if they publish their type you begin to discern patterns. I can think of one person here who tends to bash 6s. It doesn't bother me at all. I enjoy seeing him deal through his frustrations and don't take criticisms of my type seriously enough to be offended by it. It's just a lens.

You might think type is more clumsy and overly generalized than I do. My guess is that you see things in a more nuanced way. Maybe that's part of the difference between how INTJs and INFJs tend to think.
 
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