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Mbti, Culture/Shifting demographics? Or Biases Beyond Remedy?

Slate

New member
Joined
Sep 30, 2014
Messages
58
Hello, while I'm new to the forums, I'm quite familiar with the MBTI and Jungs original works (along with a few other systems). It has been a while since I goofed off with the MBTI, its not my favorite system (even then I'm more of a fan of Jung than Meyers), but it is easily the most popular and dominate. Anyways, I was contacted by a group looking to further analyze it and so asked me to help collaborate with their project. Essentially their past polling has yielded heavy numbers towards intuition which bring to question some of the fundamental aspects of the MBTI. So we were gathered to essentially create a measure that was as free from bias as we could possibly make, which translated to flattening the positives connotations of intuition description.

As a heads up, I'm only going to give you the very basic details and results and some of our discussions. Not looking to change your mind on anything, just looking for your opinions.


Subjects

Subjects were Senors in high school.

This demographic was chosen based on the fact that after high school issues of social stratification can occur due to varying interests and demands which might skew numbers. Polling dependent individuals (or individuals under 25) always poses threats to validity but the benefits of ease of access along with a non stratified population were deemed more beneficial, plus the 25 and under crowd were no strangers to mbti.


Methodology

We had 3 ways of measuring individuals and compressed scores into a single best fitting type, each test had different weights.

1) Instead of type listings, which individuals may recognize, letters A-P were assigned to cards, which contained strings of single word descriptors, individuals picked their top 3. Obviously this was the easiest to control for neutrality.

2) Second part also listed A-P (assigned to different types than the first), but contained short descriptors, they also picked their best 3.

3) Third we had a cognitive function test


Results

(Type) (Population) (Percent of Total)

INTJ 35 14.06%
INTP 31 12.45%
ENFP 29 11.65%
ENTP 27 10.84%
ENTJ 24 9.64%
INFJ 24 9.64%
INFP 18 7.23%
ENFJ 14 5.62%
ESTP 10 4.02%
ISTP 8 3.21%
ISFP 8 3.21%
ESFJ 6 2.41%
ISTJ 6 2.41%
ISFJ 4 1.61%
ESFP 3 1.20%
ESTJ 2 0.80%

NT 40.56%
NF 38.96%
SP 13.25%
SJ 7.23%

Total Pop 249


Post Thoughts

We were rather ineffective in providing any significant gains towards balancing out intuitive vs sensors. Obviously we are still looking for areas of improvements, but two strains of thoughts came out of it (none of it is radical or new).

1) The MBTI system has innate and ingrained biases which precludes it to any form of accuracy on any large scale.

Obviously this strain of thought in antagonistic towards the mbti itself since its an internal process based matrix as opposed to behavioral.

2) The MBTI does not correlate with core aspects of personality and is thus subject to culture

Essentially, would 18 year olds in the 30's score the same as 18 year olds in the 60's? 90's? etc? The assumption that more idealistic and eccentric attitudes are much more valued today than in in the past is certainly true, especially since the cultural revolution. So what the MBTI does measure it does so accurately because its inclusive to prevailing values.

Anyways, that is about as much as I'm going divulge on that (what I'm aloud to), if you have any critiques on the basic aspects of the reliability of the methodology I'd love to hear them, while I won't be participating if they have a next one (time constraints), I can certainly past the critiques along (or better ideas of mass surveying mbti).


On a lighter note, I also found this

Myers-Briggs personality thread - Bodybuilding.com Forums

A forum of body builders using the free online humanmetrics test, who have astonishing amounts of iNtuition types along with a high % of INTJ / INTP / ENTJ types for what I would normally/stereotypically ascribe to a population of body builders. So lesson of the story here is don't make fun of NT's, or beat you to a pulp.

------

Edited, underlined %'s because it was too hard to read otherwise
 

Kephalos

J.M.P.P. R.I.P. B5: RLOAI
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Mar 2, 2009
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Have you considered that people might prefer to see themselves as intuitives based on the words used in the test? It might be more socially desirable given culture to be seen as creative etc.
 

Slate

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Joined
Sep 30, 2014
Messages
58
Have you considered that people might prefer to see themselves as intuitives based on the words used in the test? It might be more socially desirable given culture to be seen as creative etc.

Correct, which is why efforts were made to attempt to neutralize that phenomena with more value neutral words. So given the bias which are still very lopsided and present, then one has to consider the validity of any self assessment considering the test subjectively measures cognitive functions and not visible outward behavior, this proves problematic when the best analysis is the subject themselves.

Or the test measures is more of an assessment of cultural values + personality, which could be a direction that the MBTI expands upon.

I guess the third option is that the test is more of a philosophical paradigm and we are whatever we think we are, in which case population numbers shift on a generational level.
 

Glint

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Sep 8, 2014
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TiNi
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Instinctual Variant
sp/so
Correct, which is why efforts were made to attempt to neutralize that phenomena with more value neutral words.

If you don't mind me asking, what sort of neutral-value words did you use?
Assuming the participant has a bias for N, couldn't they still arrive at the same result by avoiding words associated with sensors, as opposed to seeking out positive connotations?
 

Slate

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Joined
Sep 30, 2014
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If you don't mind me asking, what sort of neutral-value words did you use?
Assuming the participant has a bias for N, couldn't they still arrive at the same result by avoiding words associated with sensors, as opposed to seeking out positive connotations?

Sadly, I don't have them on me, and while I didn't pick out all the words, I mainly covered things they shouldn't include on their list, while what was included was based on sampling for value. One of the SvN descriptors that I do remember that was included was facts v symbols, which obviously anyone who knows the N v S divide could discern what is what. I don't think its possible to create a description that someone familiar with the mbti couldn't discern (kinda negates the definition of a descriptor). But phrases like big picture, see between the lines, among a whole class of others were excluded on my part due to the sure value we place on those even outside the mbti community.
 

chickpea

perfect person
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When my high school psych class took an MBTI test, there was an ENFP majority. Which I felt was probably not that accurate.
 

Slate

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Sep 30, 2014
Messages
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When my high school psych class took an MBTI test, there was an ENFP majority. Which I felt was probably not that accurate.

lol, I can see that.

Another thing, that I'm interested in hearing is just exactly what does the MBTI measure.

Because in theory, are we whoever we think we are as we fall onto the typology? In which case the population dynamics that are commonly listed are incorrect because mbti is more philosophical/culture based.

Or are people just getting it "wrong"? As in people don't recognize themselves with what is attributed description wise to sensors. I know I myself do not agree with what is attributed to Si and its definition, which is why I think guardian claims are so low. So I'll definitely be interested in Si discussions.

I also find it funny how Jung considered Se ( and to a lesser extent Ti/Te) as the scientific types due to its objectivity, yet that got absorbed by the mbti's Ni/Ne doms/auxs. So I do think there is something intrinsically biased in its post Jung metamorphosis.

And no, I'm not directing these questions at you in particular. I'm just throwing them out there just in case somebody wants to take a stab at them. I promise I am not a hostile person, I don't have the answers to these either.
 

chickpea

perfect person
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lol, I can see that.

We didn't take a real test either.. We just read the descriptions of the four dichotomies, E vs I, S vs N, etc. so those descriptions seperately probably sounded the most appealing. Mostly girls in the class added to F vs T I assume.
 
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