MBTI as a Western cultural construct

[Jaguar]

Depends what you mean by "type as".
If you mean: how would she score in an MBTI questionnaire? Then yeah, that will likely be affected,

MBTI questionnaire.

 

[Pionart]

MBTI questionnaire.

There are already questions over the interplay of culture with MBTI results,

e.g. Are Ns really rarer than Ss? Are females really more likely to be Fs and males more likely to be Ts?

We need valid typing approaches applied to a random subset of the population to really answer questions like that.

Also, congrats on 16,000 posts.

 

[Virtual ghost]

I was thinking about this last week when a woman from China was on the Stephen Colbert Show. She said something to the effect of "You people in the U.S. are different from us. You're thinking of the individual and we think of the group or the collective." Well, if that's her culture, I can already guess what she will not type as - anything involving individuality. So would the MBTI work for her? She'd get a result, but one that reflects her culture.

Actually China is in many ways even more radical than my corner of the world when it comes to this.
She would get a test result which would be the mix of her culture, experience and natural personality. However MBTI profiles have plenty of cultural upgrades added into the mix. Like the one that you want to earn plenty of money, however would that stand if you were growing up in the environment where everything is public property? Would you become this spiritual NF if spirituality is forbidden ? Or to twist this around: if you live in a theocracy how independent minded would you be ? While western logic in general presumes that you can be whatever you want to be and that you will always be what you are. While around the world this can get foggy fast.



Some years ago I was in the group that was everyone from my part of Europe and professor from Western Europe. In other words she found all of us and our work regardless of the type to be pretty blunt and rude. Which is because we all grew up in the middle of major political crisis and our first languages were all formed in their current forum during the 4 centuries of constant war and unrest, since large empire was invading and chopping my region constantly. What probably speed up the language greatly, so that every crisis can be addressed properly. In my first language there is no word for uncle, but two separate words for the mother's and father's side. Same goes for all in law combinations in order to make it clear how you are related to this person. Also every action has a male and female version of the word, so that you are constantly aware of the person's gender in the story (in my country we don't have "I thought you were a guy" posts). There also isn't "the", which can make you guess about which one is "the ....", instead we say "one we last used" or "third in line" or person's name ... etc. What has big impact on MBTI since by using this kind of first language logic/approach you can heavily disrupt the whole N/S scale. Since there is by default stronger desire to go "directly for the kill", what is probably even visible in my posting style. What annoyed the already mentioned teacher pretty badly since she wanted it more subtle.


Plus on that comes conversation "But you must be more careful with your words, since that will greatly effect your business opportunities!" to which the reply is "But that doesn't matter, I am here just to absorb the facts and when I go home this whole industry is directly under government control, so my family that is already in will make sure that I get into the club. Where I will stay until retirement and without having to worry about the marketing since government gives money and takes the product if quality is on the level. In my place we don't have used car salesmen or televangelists. " What directly effects Fe as MBTI knows it even if "group think" is probably even stronger than it would be in the west. In the western logic there is much stronger interconnection between words and money while MBTI reflects that for the most part. I was personally a witness to long time bullying of the employer by the employees, since many circumstances allowed this to happen.


I am pronouncing the differences to make the point clearer.

 

[Virtual ghost]

There are even more ways how to take a stab this topic.


Typology tends to proclaim that there are certain typological groups that are very focused on injustices and all law braking. As a matter of fact MBTI generally claims that SJs are about half of the population. However if that is true then what is this ?

What suggests that SJs aren't half of global population or that their profiles are "idealized" to fit certain environment or culture. Since the difference between the west and everyone else is pretty obvious on that map. Also it is in the nature of western mind to see corruption as something that is by default bad. West often says "But your country is corrupt!?" while some elements of the story they don't grasp. For example if your country is totalitarian, without free elections and with strict laws the corruption is basically the only way you can get any mercy. Therefore the last thing you need is closing of even this gap. The closest we ever got to totalitarian and uncorrupt was Nazi Germany and such mix evidently doesn't bring comfort in people when you think about it. Totalitarian and uncorrupt is the worst it can get and that is why authoritative countries tend to be corrupt, in order to have at least some flexibility, even if it is under the table. Corruption is generally bad but there are alternative ways of thinking about it.



Another thing I would dare to throw in the mix is fiscal conservatism. In my city were currently have 6th political system over a last century and some of those had even more than one currency, plus since the country wasn't always in one piece or independent some parts had even more changes. In other words what is the point of fiscal conservatism if the system will be blown up by regional instability every decade or two ? So no matter how good or bad you are doing eventually you will hit a reset and past wouldn't matter. You can perhaps "smuggle" a physical possession from a political system to next political system but value to all money will be lost with new revolution. What directly undermines the concept of fiscal conservatism as well as all those MBTI profiles that are about stability and linearity, since reality and many parents teach kids that everything will go up in flames anyway and therefore there is no need to smash your head to the death with certain principles. Once you teach SJs to act like SPs it is a "brave new world out there".


So MBTI is evidently culturally biased on many levels.

 

[Tengri]

I don't have much information on this myself, and I'm not deliberately trying to be contrarian, but I'm curious. Can the MBTI be considered something specifically Western? It sprung from a German guy and continues to be mainly popular in Western cultures, as far as I'm aware. I've gotten a bit into k-pop, and I've noticed that they use the Myers-Briggs in reality or talk shows in Korea as some kind of ice-breaker, but also as some kind of pigeon-holing device (knowing how South Koreans in this day and age like to classify). But considering that a lot of the lingo can be difficult to translate, I can't help but wonder if it should remain in er, Western "canon." Many Korean idols take the tests and don't know what's going on, and I attribute this to them having a collectivist culture where taking cute personality quizzes isn't viewed the same way as in individualistic cultures like the US or Canada. You must belong to the crowd, not stand out from it. But can these tests really describe them as people, being that they view reality so differently? Of course, we'd be debating the validity of MBTI as a whole at that point... (But why not, honestly...)

This is something I wonder about a lot, as well, particularly the approximate interpretations many Asian cultures make with the generalized categorizations of archetypes and functions. I've often read that the failure of MBTI to catch on in Japan, for instance, is precisely because its communitarian culture does not emphasize concepts of ego, atom, id except in very specific contexts - and major philosophical umbrellas of the region (Shinto, Shinten, Zen, Pure Land Buddhism, bushido) also discourage and make irrelevant the celebration of the individual. Talking about the Continent is incredibly more complicated, as China and the Indian subcontinent contain the oldest persistent religious traditions in the world, none of which ever resembled Greco-Roman individualism. Instead what emerged on the crossroads of the Occident, the near East, and the East were unlikely pluralist, cosmopolitan societies like the Persian Empire, Mughal dynasty, and especially Muslim missionary influence in the melting-pot of southeast Asia where collectivism and free will found an interesting middle ground.

Histories aside, it would not be inaccurate to say that Jung's archetypes and MBTI types assign people, if you'll excuse the expression, shades of character through a lens of religious-rational bias endemic to European history, not necessarily valid temperaments of physiological consciousness. Comparative psychologists, ethologists, linguists, and increasingly geneticists are working out the evolutionary linkages between human and animal cognition, the physiological basis of language and thought (presence of 'mind' and how cultural concepts and specific language influence sense of self), and a more accurate understanding of waking brain function, personality in humans and animals, and how to measure self-awareness in order to tease out a horizontal definition of consciousness (and the implication of individual personality, as a result) vs. Myers-Briggs and functional hierarchy.

What say you? Is MBTI universally compatible with any type of belief system or walk of life or was it made for a certain type of people with mostly common roots, therefore lending to shared understanding?

No, as generalized as MBTI and to a lesser extent cognitive functions tend to be, its categorization system has its conceptual and lingual roots in the German, French, Roman (and Arabic), Greek and earlier traditions translated and approximated over time - like Jung's alchemy of western ideas or the visual example of once-gaudily painted Greek architecture and statuary emulated for its later skeletal-white beauty - simplified as rational ideal, not biologically accurate. Like the Pali canon or egalitarian jungle tribes can be incomprehensible outlooks divorced from historical and cultural context for Western minds to grasp accurately, so too is the opposite true for applying MBTI to collectivist cultures. As Mircea Eliade observed in Myths and Reality, "In one way or another one "lives" the myth, in the sense that one is seized by the sacred, exalting power of the events recollected or re-enacted." Archetype and western myth-making of the individual's struggle to exist as atom in a cosmos of human constellations is totemic, a story of one small chapter in the human experience.

 

[Norexan]

Perspectives.

 

[Norexan]

There are even more ways how to take a stab this topic.


Typology tends to proclaim that there are certain typological groups that are very focused on injustices and all law braking. As a matter of fact MBTI generally claims that SJs are about half of the population. However if that is true then what is this ?

So MBTI is evidently culturally biased on many levels.

Si is about preservation of status quo not not breaking the laws. Defending the system (Te) or traditional values of group (Fe). IT IS CONFORMISM.

Literally dom Si is
Because it is logical to everybody so I wll do. (Te)
Because it is values of everybody so I wll do (Fe)


Si collect internal facts what you are thought, learnt not what you see, hear, touch...hard facts from your admmistration, books, customs and others things...

In the system of corrupt people you won't break the law if most of them are corrupted. You are defender of system.
In the system of immoral people you won't break the law if you do immoral things. You are defender of customs of group.


When I read some text about functions first I what I notice is its shallowness of idiotic definition. I won't accept everything I read in the book nor I will follow authority blindly. (Si).
And what I see, hear or touch I even question my senses because senses is so subjective and there is a case that they don't represent reality.
For example, you see Si as "good citizen" but in the system where everybody is criminal the good citizens are criminals. It is only matter of perspective.