A group of young adults shyly meet for the first time on the second floor of an empty Manhattan shopping mall. The stores are all closed for the weekend, and other than a man stopping in the lobby to read his phone, this group is the only sign of activity.
“I actually really like clubbing,†shares one guy.
The group goes silent.
“Get out of the circle,†a woman whispers.
Everyone in this group took the Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), a personality test. They all tested as the same type (one that tends to be introverted), joined an online group for others who got the same result, and decided to meet up.
Which explains why they’re meeting in an empty food court: It’s perfect for a group of people who like quietude. In this crowd of 20-something New Yorkers, the clubber is, truly, an oddball.
Katharine Cook Briggs and her daughter Isabel Briggs Myers drew from influential psychologist Carl Jung's theories to invent the MBTI personality test in 1942. In an age of “What Disney princess are you?†quizzes, MBTI is a personality test that, while still reductive, actually indicates something about personality.
