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A CRITIQUE OF THE MYERS-BRIGGS TYPE INDICATOR AND ITS OPERATIONALIZATION OF CARL JUNG

Mal12345

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The critique is found at: http://www.amsciepub.com/doi/abs/10.2466/pr0.1997.80.2.611?journalCode=pr0&

"If two individuals perceive a situation to be the same, what produces differences in behavior? Using the statements above, we would conclude that they must have different dispositions or preferences for certain behaviors. Personality theory suggests that the two may have different personality preferences which influenced behavior."

Which "statements above" is the author of this critique referring to?

He is referring back to the distinction made previously in the article between dispositions and situations - simply, an external situation can have a stronger influence on behavior than internal disposition.

But don't some people simply have a disposition to being more strongly influenced by situations? Of course they do - or else some people are no better than robots reacting to their environments. Internal disposition is therefore always to be the primary object of study in personality research, although it is often seen only indirectly, through speech and behavior.

The dichotomy or distinction created by the critique's author is thus a flawed one. The author's critique of the MBTI is therefore also flawed because it is based on an invalid dichotomy.
 

Totenkindly

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The critique is found at: http://www.amsciepub.com/doi/abs/10.2466/pr0.1997.80.2.611?journalCode=pr0&

"If two individuals perceive a situation to be the same, what produces differences in behavior? Using the statements above, we would conclude that they must have different dispositions or preferences for certain behaviors. Personality theory suggests that the two may have different personality preferences which influenced behavior."

Which "statements above" is the author of this critique referring to?

He is referring back to the distinction made previously in the article between dispositions and situations - simply, an external situation can have a stronger influence on behavior than internal disposition.

But don't some people simply have a disposition to being more strongly influenced by situations? Of course they do - or else some people are no better than robots reacting to their environments. Internal disposition is therefore always to be the primary object of study in personality research, although it is often seen only indirectly, through speech and behavior.

Internal disposition will contribute regardless to the degree of impact of external situation, yes.

The problem with interpretation occurs in the area where the external situation is either prolonged enough or powerful enough to eradicate variance/resistance of internal disposition regardless of differences in disposition and strength.

e.g., as a rather crass example, two human beings might be significantly different physically (one can be a scrawny weakling and one can be genetically powerful with great endurance), but if you drop a building on both of them, they'll both die regardless and you can't determine their differences in that scenario.
 

Mal12345

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Internal disposition will contribute regardless to the degree of impact of external situation, yes.

The problem with interpretation occurs in the area where the external situation is either prolonged enough or powerful enough to eradicate variance/resistance of internal disposition regardless of differences in disposition and strength.

e.g., as a rather crass example, two human beings might be significantly different physically (one can be a scrawny weakling and one can be genetically powerful with great endurance), but if you drop a building on both of them, they'll both die regardless and you can't determine their differences in that scenario.

There's also some hypocrisy or at least inconsistency in these professional online critiques of the MBTI. They are based on the unscientific nature of the MBTI, and on the four dichotomies. Then the authors offer Big 5 or Hexaco as scientific alternatives to the MBTI - omitting the fact that they too are based on dichotomies (e.g., agreeableness/disabreeableness).
 

Mal12345

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As for the HEXACO test itself, which is based on a 6 tier personality model, I could easily lie on the test If landing a job relied on my test performance. For example:

"I rarely hold a grudge, even against people who have badly wronged me."
If I want to appear to be a nice guy to the employer, I will put a 1 for "strongly disagree." It depends on the job, however.
"When working, I often set ambitious goals for myself." NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO, not ambition! NEVER SHOW AN EMPLOYER THAT YOU'RE AMBITIOUS!
"I rarely express my opinions in group meetings." How to answer this one? Perhaps all they want here are yes-men.
"If I knew that I could never get caught, I would be willing to steal a million dollars." YES, BECAUSE I'M TRYING TO BE A MECHANIC OR USED CAR SALESMAN!
 

Mal12345

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Look at this silly HEXACO statement:
"I find it boring to discuss philosophy."

That's like saying, "I find it boring to watch television." It depends on what's on!
 

Seymour

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There's also some hypocrisy or at least inconsistency in these professional online critiques of the MBTI. They are based on the unscientific nature of the MBTI, and on the four dichotomies. Then the authors offer Big 5 or Hexaco as scientific alternatives to the MBTI - omitting the fact that they too are based on dichotomies (e.g., agreeableness/disabreeableness).

Actually Big Five and Hexaco are based on trait theory, not dichotomous preferences. Hence, the amount or strength of a trait has significance. In MBTI terms, strength or clarity of preference has an effect, so that someone can be strongly extraverted, strongly introverted, or anywhere in-between. The Big Five and Hexaco traits tend to fall in a normal distribution, with middling scores (preferences) being the most common.

If you treat the MBTI as measuring a continuous traits, rather than dichotomies, it actually fairs about as well as the Big Five in many respects. That does create problems for type dynamics, though, since one can then fall in the middle of any of the scales, including the J/P scale.
 

Mal12345

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Actually Big Five and Hexaco are based on trait theory, not dichotomous preferences. Hence, the amount or strength of a trait has significance. In MBTI terms, strength or clarity of preference has an effect, so that someone can be strongly extraverted, strongly introverted, or anywhere in-between. The Big Five and Hexaco traits tend to fall in a normal distribution, with middling scores (preferences) being the most common.

If you treat the MBTI as measuring a continuous traits, rather than dichotomies, it actually fairs about as well as the Big Five in many respects. That does create problems for type dynamics, though, since one can then fall in the middle of any of the scales, including the J/P scale.

That's fine, since none of the articles I read even mentioned JCF.
 

Bush

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e.g., as a rather crass example, two human beings might be significantly different physically (one can be a scrawny weakling and one can be genetically powerful with great endurance), but if you drop a building on both of them, they'll both die regardless and you can't determine their differences in that scenario.
Yeah. You'll need a test with more granularity.

Drop a pebble on them. Then a brick. Then a 20lb weight. Then a boulder. Then a car. Finally, a building.
 

Jaguar

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omitting the fact that they too are based on dichotomies (e.g., agreeableness/disabreeableness)

The Big 5 , if anything, is about degree. I could be a 7, and someone else could be a 37, 67 or 97 on the agreeableness scale. The MBTI isn't structured that way; it categorizes people in either/or categories, so I don't know what you're babbling about. Big 5 and MBTI are not the same at all.

Btw, fix your caps lock key - it's stuck.
 

reckful

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The Big 5 , if anything, is about degree. I could be a 7, and someone else could be a 37, 67 or 97 on the agreeableness scale. The MBTI isn't structured that way; it categorizes people in either/or categories, so I don't know what you're babbling about. Big 5 and MBTI are not the same at all.

As I never tire of pointing out, Jung himself said he thought more people were in the middle on E/I than were significantly extraverted or introverted, and he also stressed that people of the same type varied considerably in terms of the strength (or, as he often characterized it, "one-sidedness") of their preferences. Myers likewise distinguished between people with mild and strong preferences, and allowed for the possibility of middleness on all four MBTI dimensions.

And just like the MBTI describes what characteristics people on either side of the middle tend to have, McCrae and Costa (the leading Big Five psychologists) talk about what people who are low and high on the Big Five dimensions are like. Here's an example from the NEO-PI-R Manual:

McCrae & Costa said:
The agreeable person is fundamentally altruistic. He or she is sympathetic to others and eager to help them, and believes that others will be equally helpful in return. Agreeable people tend to be more popular than antagonistic individuals. A high A may be associated with the dependent personality traits.

The disagreeable or antagonistic person is egocentric, skeptical of others' intentions, and competitive rather than cooperative. Through skeptical and critical thinking, the person scoring low on Agreeableness might contribute to accurate analysis in the sciences for example. In addition, the readiness to fight for one's own interests is often advantageous (i.e., Agreeableness is not a virtue on the battlefield or in the courtroom). Low A may be associated with narcissistic, antisocial, and/or paranoid personality traits. Extremely low Agreeableness may indicate hostile intolerance or authoritarian aggression.

The idea that the MBTI claims that everybody fits neatly into one of 16 boxes is just a straw man that turns up all too frequently in poorly informed critiques of the MBTI — often together with the notion that, if it turns out that most or all of the MBTI dimensions exhibit something like a normal distribution (with most people not all that far from the middle), that will somehow essentially debunk the whole MBTI typology.
 

Jaguar

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Jung himself said he thought more people were in the middle on E/I than were significantly extraverted or introverted

Thanks for posting what I've known for decades. Any other original thoughts? Please, by all means, waste more of my time.
 

Mal12345

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Thanks for posting what I've known for decades. Any other original thoughts? Please, by all means, waste more of my time.

Yes, everybody waste [MENTION=195]Jaguar[/MENTION]'s time because he requested it.
 

Jaguar

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Below are scores from random forum members on the agreeableness scale. Some have argued that the agreeableness score on The Big 5 is a reliable indicator of F/T preference, and the same has been argued regarding scores on the Openness scale being a reliable indicator of S/N preference. The scores from forum members have suggested otherwise for many years.

Agreeableness 1 - FP
Agreeableness 5 - FP
Agreeableness 11 - FP
Agreeableness 12 - FP
Agreeableness 23 - FP
Agreeableness 36 - FP
Agreeableness 53 - FP
Agreeableness 75 - FP

Agreeableness 16 - TP
Agreeableness 26 - TP
Agreeableness 52 - TP
Agreeableness 63 - TP
Agreeableness 78 - TP

Agreeableness 23 - FJ
Agreeableness 38 - FJ
Agreeableness 55 - FJ
Agreeableness 93 - FJ

Agreeableness 1 - TJ
Agreeableness 1 - TJ
Agreeableness 50 - TJ
Agreeableness 54 - TJ
 

reckful

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You'd think you would have figured out ahead of time that many of us have been over the "scientific status" 100 times in this forum. Now, 101.

Thanks for posting what I've known for decades. Any other original thoughts? Please, by all means, waste more of my time.

Let me take a moment to explain to you about internet forum threads. They're what's sometimes referred to as public dialogues, and part of what that means is that X's reply to Y is actually (at least potentially) X addressing not only Y, but also everybody else who might read the thread at any time.

So... when somebody posts silly misinformation in a thread and I post a corrective reply, my post is intended to correct the record for the benefit of any thread reader who might otherwise have been misled by the post I'm replying to — and those people often include readers who are relatively new to Jung and/or the MBTI and are not all that familiar with the issues involved.

In many cases I assume that it's unlikely that the specific poster I'm replying to will end up realizing they were mistaken, much less admitting their mistake, but that hardly detracts from whatever potential value my corrective posts may have to more open-minded and/or thoughtful readers.

Thanks for listening. I realize your time is very valuable.

- - - Updated - - -

Below are scores from random forum members on the agreeableness scale. Some have argued that the agreeableness score on The Big 5 is a reliable indicator of F/T preference, and the same has been argued regarding scores on the Openness scale being a reliable indicator of S/N preference. The scores from forum members have suggested otherwise for many years.

Oo, look at that. A data pool of "scores from random forum members." 21 members, no less! MBTI-typed on what basis? Big-Five-typed on what basis? Sorry to bother you with trivial details like that. Oh, and thanks for wasting our time. :alttongue:

I find it pretty hard to believe that anyone could look at the items on the NEO-PI-R (the most-used Big Five test, I believe) and the official MBTI and fail to conclude that, notwithstanding some noteworthy differences, the MBTI and Big Five are (each in their own imperfect way) tapping into the same underlying personality clusters.

That's certainly the conclusion McCrae and Costa — the leading Big Five psychologists, and the creators of the NEO-PI-R — arrived at. Based on the psychometrically respectable data McCrae and Costa examined, they concluded that "each of the four [MBTI] indices showed impressive evidence of convergence with one of the five major dimensions of normal personality."
 

Mal12345

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Let me take a moment to explain to you about internet forum threads. They're what's sometimes referred to as public dialogues, and part of what that means is that X's reply to Y is actually (at least potentially) X addressing not only Y, but also everybody else who might read the thread at any time.

So... when somebody posts silly misinformation in a thread and I post a corrective reply, my corrective post is intended to correct the record for the benefit of any thread reader who might otherwise have been misled by the post I'm replying to — and those people often include readers who are relatively new to Jung and/or the MBTI and are not all that familiar with the issues involved.

In many cases I assume that it's unlikely that the specific poster I'm replying to will end up realizing they were mistaken, much less admitting their mistake, but that hardly detracts from whatever potential value my corrective posts may have to more open-minded and/or thoughtful readers.

Thanks for listening. I realize your time is very valuable.

Yeah, right...
 

Mal12345

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Below are scores from random forum members on the agreeableness scale. Some have argued that the agreeableness score on The Big 5 is a reliable indicator of F/T preference, and the same has been argued regarding scores on the Openness scale being a reliable indicator of S/N preference. The scores from forum members have suggested otherwise for many years.

Agreeableness 1 - FP
Agreeableness 5 - FP
Agreeableness 11 - FP
Agreeableness 12 - FP
Agreeableness 23 - FP
Agreeableness 36 - FP
Agreeableness 53 - FP
Agreeableness 75 - FP

Agreeableness 16 - TP
Agreeableness 26 - TP
Agreeableness 52 - TP
Agreeableness 63 - TP
Agreeableness 78 - TP

Agreeableness 23 - FJ
Agreeableness 38 - FJ
Agreeableness 55 - FJ
Agreeableness 93 - FJ

Agreeableness 1 - TJ
Agreeableness 1 - TJ
Agreeableness 50 - TJ
Agreeableness 54 - TJ

Disagreeable is below 50%. Same thing.
 

Mal12345

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From one of my personality inventory results:

43 Feeling
68 Thinking
65 Intuition
45 Sensing
49 Extroversion
62 Introversion
52 Judging
59 Perceiving
 
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