[MBTI General] The MBTI Fails Standard Psychological Criteria

[Mal12345]

http://indiana.edu/~jobtalk/Articles/develop/mbti.pdf

Opens to a PDF document. I posted the last paragraphs of the PDF below...

Relation Between MBTI Type and Occupation.

Many people have examined the relation between type and
occupation by examining the proportions of type within each profession. For example, one might observe that many
elementary teachers are ESTJs and conclude that ESTJs prefer to be elementary school teachers or to work in a
related occupation. Although it sounds appealing, such a conclusion runs into many fundamental problems.
First, we need to examine the normative data to judge the relation between type and profession. For example, the
proportion of ESTJs in the teaching profession is the same as the proportion of ESTJs in the general population, or
12 percent. This similarity suggest that there is nothing special about the type of person who becomes an elementary
school teacher.

Another problem stems from jobs that are dominated by men or women. Nursing is a good example. If we compare
the distribution of type for nurses against managers, there appears to be a different pattern of type. We could
conclude that certain types are more likely to enter nursing while other types are more likely to become managers.
There is, however, an alternative interpretation. Nursing has been and remains a profession dominated by women.
There is a high correlation (r = .91) be tween the percentages of types for all women and people in nursing. The
correlation between all men and people in nursing is, by contrast, small (r= .21). In a male dominated profession such
as management, there is a high correlation between types in management positions and men in general (r=.92), but
a smaller correlation for women (r = 60).12 If it is true that certain types are attracted to certain professions, then
these correlations should be much smaller. Instead, these data suggest that the proportion of MBTI types within each
occupation is equivalent to that within a random sample of the population.

Finally, there is no evidence to show a positive relation between MBTI type and success within an occupation. That
is, there is nothing to show that ESFPs are better or worse salespeople than INTJs are. Nor is there any data to
suggest that specific types are more satisfied within specific occupations than are other types, or that they stay longer
in one occupation than do others.

In summary, it appears that the MBTI does not conform to many of the basic standards expected of psychological
tests. Many very specific predictions about the MBTI have not been confirmed or have been proved wrong. There
is no obvious evidence that there are 16 unique categories in which all people can be placed. There is no evidence
that scores generated by the MBTI reflect the stable and unchanging personality traits that are claimed to be
measured. Finally, there is no evidence that the MBTI measures anything of value.

 

[Yara the Corpse]

okay why not use it for dating services then- oh wait.... WHERE'S THE THEORY ABOUT INTERTYPE RELATIONS okay I guess you're right then. Still fun I guess.



the types should still be modified to accurately portray the most average archetypes of people with equal distance in psychological similarity between them and so must include the most equal population statistics. Whether it means redefining or adding functional dichotomies or whatever. Just get a sample of like 10,000 people, ask them questions about well defined and opposite personality traits with two options to choose from, and then use the ones that usually have an even split (50%), and then have some questions that use four personality traits (if drawn as a square: two mathematically opposite traits, and four equally adjacent functions) that appear to have around 25% for each option. Then note the patterns and try to combine all the traits together to form fully functioning types, then run a test through the sample population and hope that if like there were 27 types, that there'd be around 3.7% people allocated to each type.

 

[Mal12345]

okay why not use it for dating services then- oh wait.... WHERE'S THE THEORY ABOUT INTERTYPE RELATIONS okay I guess you're right then. Still fun I guess.

The article doesn't discuss that. It's focused on the original purpose which was to find jobs for women.

 

[Yara the Corpse]

The article doesn't discuss that. It's focused on the original purpose which was to find jobs for women.

thats dumb

 

[Mal12345]

thats dumb

What is?

 

[hjgbujhghg]

http://indiana.edu/~jobtalk/Articles/develop/mbti.pdf

Opens to a PDF document. I posted the last paragraphs of the PDF below...

Relation Between MBTI Type and Occupation.

Many people have examined the relation between type and
occupation by examining the proportions of type within each profession. For example, one might observe that many
elementary teachers are ESTJs and conclude that ESTJs prefer to be elementary school teachers or to work in a
related occupation. Although it sounds appealing, such a conclusion runs into many fundamental problems.
First, we need to examine the normative data to judge the relation between type and profession. For example, the
proportion of ESTJs in the teaching profession is the same as the proportion of ESTJs in the general population, or
12 percent. This similarity suggest that there is nothing special about the type of person who becomes an elementary
school teacher.

Another problem stems from jobs that are dominated by men or women. Nursing is a good example. If we compare
the distribution of type for nurses against managers, there appears to be a different pattern of type. We could
conclude that certain types are more likely to enter nursing while other types are more likely to become managers.
There is, however, an alternative interpretation. Nursing has been and remains a profession dominated by women.
There is a high correlation (r = .91) be tween the percentages of types for all women and people in nursing. The
correlation between all men and people in nursing is, by contrast, small (r= .21). In a male dominated profession such
as management, there is a high correlation between types in management positions and men in general (r=.92), but
a smaller correlation for women (r = 60).12 If it is true that certain types are attracted to certain professions, then
these correlations should be much smaller. Instead, these data suggest that the proportion of MBTI types within each
occupation is equivalent to that within a random sample of the population.

Finally, there is no evidence to show a positive relation between MBTI type and success within an occupation. That
is, there is nothing to show that ESFPs are better or worse salespeople than INTJs are. Nor is there any data to
suggest that specific types are more satisfied within specific occupations than are other types, or that they stay longer
in one occupation than do others.

In summary, it appears that the MBTI does not conform to many of the basic standards expected of psychological
tests. Many very specific predictions about the MBTI have not been confirmed or have been proved wrong. There
is no obvious evidence that there are 16 unique categories in which all people can be placed. There is no evidence
that scores generated by the MBTI reflect the stable and unchanging personality traits that are claimed to be
measured. Finally, there is no evidence that the MBTI measures anything of value.

What is a value? Value to who? If someone takes the test and finds the results interesting, it does have a value itself.
There is no reason why an ESFP couldn't be a good salesman or as good as an INTJ or worse, or better, that can't be messured by a type. MBTI however gives you the opportunity to choose between various options of how you like to work or process things. If you say that you like to think in an abstract menner, it's only logical to assume that you would enjoy professions that chellenges your creative abstract thinking more than those that don't. Nobody however says that you are not able to approach simple every-day tasks as well as others, it only says you'd enjoy doing something else more and thus it would be more fitting for you to find a job that suits your interests. It doesn't messure ability or disability to work or to think, IQ tests are made for that, and there are other carrier tests that actually messure how much you are able to do a job.
MBTI doesn't test your abilities, but your interests and the most common and natural way of how you approach tasks. A person who likes to be with others and is emotional, extroverted and altruistic would probably suffer in a job where they'd be forced to work on a computure with numbers with minimum or no contact with other people. Nobody says that they can't do the job, maybe they can, maybe they are good at it, but they probably will never really feel happy with what they do if their basic needs are not fullfiled.
People are funny things, simple, we usually enjoy what we are good at and we hate what we can't do. So by saying "I like to work with numbers" you probably also say you can do it and you are good at it, because why would you like something you can't do? That's not what humans do.

 

[Mal12345]

The original intent of the MBTI was to provide jobs to women. It doesn't work when the same statistics apply both to the job and the general population. For example, 12% of vocational teachers are ESTJ types. If you're an ESTJ should you consider vocational teacher as a profession? The general population is 12% ESTJ. There is no statistical correlation between being an ESTJ and becoming a vocational teacher.

 

[Mal12345]

What is a value? Value to who? If someone takes the test and finds the results interesting, it does have a value itself.

The author is probably talking about objective value, not parlor game value or web forum discussion value. An objective value would be helping someone find a suitable career.

There is no reason why an ESFP couldn't be a good salesman or as good as an INTJ or worse, or better, that can't be messured by a type. MBTI however gives you the opportunity to choose between various options of how you like to work or process things. If you say that you like to think in an abstract menner, it's only logical to assume that you would enjoy professions that chellenges your creative abstract thinking more than those that don't. Nobody however says that you are not able to approach simple every-day tasks as well as others, it only says you'd enjoy doing something else more and thus it would be more fitting for you to find a job that suits your interests. It doesn't messure ability or disability to work or to think, IQ tests are made for that, and there are other carrier tests that actually messure how much you are able to do a job.
MBTI doesn't test your abilities, but your interests and the most common and natural way of how you approach tasks. A person who likes to be with others and is emotional, extroverted and altruistic would probably suffer in a job where they'd be forced to work on a computure with numbers with minimum or no contact with other people. Nobody says that they can't do the job, maybe they can, maybe they are good at it, but they probably will never really feel happy with what they do if their basic needs are not fullfiled.
People are funny things, simple, we usually enjoy what we are good at and we hate what we can't do. So by saying "I like to work with numbers" you probably also say you can do it and you are good at it, because why would you like something you can't do? That's not what humans do.

Right. So if I like thinking and am proficient at it, then I can find a career where all I have to do is think all day long. A good choice of career would be, oh, let's say dishwashing, something that doesn't occupy much brain matter and makes it possible to think about interesting things such as metaphysics.

 

[hjgbujhghg]

The author is probably talking about objective value, not parlor game value or web forum discussion value. An objective value would be helping someone find a suitable career.



Right. So if I like thinking and am proficient at it, then I can find a career where all I have to do is think all day long. A good choice of career would be, oh, let's say dishwashing, something that doesn't occupy much brain matter and makes it possible to think about interesting things such as metaphysics.

No, I am saying if you like thinking you should find a carrier where you could apply it. When you wash dishes you don't actually use thinking....I think you had known this before you posted it so it more or less makes your post irrelevant.

 

[Mal12345]

No, I am saying if you like thinking you should find a carrier where you could apply it. When you wash dishes you don't actually use thinking....I think you had known this before you posted it so it more or less makes your post irrelevant.

That's my point. Dish washing doesn't require brain power, so that would be a great career for thinking about other things while working.

 

[Mal12345]

Question: Are CEOs of major corporations more likely to be ENTJ types than are found in the general population?

 

[reckful]

Call me a dreamer, but I continue to hope the day will come when people stop pointing to Pittenger's uninformed, straw-manny MBTI "takedown" (from 1993). Anybody who wants to read my discussion of just some of its shortcomings can find it in this INTJforum post and this follow-up post.

As the author, I may be a tad biased, but I think this TC post and the post that follows it are the best one-stop rebuttal to the sorry parade of poorly-informed MBTI "debunkers" (including Pittenger), and it discusses a number of the issues Pittenger raises at greater length than the two older (and more Pittenger-specific) posts I linked to in my first paragraph.

Among the sources cited in that last linked post is a 2003 meta-review and large-sample study by Robert Harvey that summed up the MBTI's relative standing in the personality type field this way:

In addition to research focused on the application of the MBTI to solve applied assessment problems, a number of studies of its psychometric properties have also been performed (e.g., Harvey & Murry, 1994; Harvey, Murry, & Markham, 1994; Harvey, Murry, & Stamoulis, 1995; Johnson & Saunders, 1990; Sipps, Alexander, & Freidt, 1985; Thompson & Borrello, 1986, 1989; Tischler, 1994; Tzeng, Outcalt, Boyer, Ware, & Landis, 1984). Somewhat surprisingly, given the intensity of criticisms offered by its detractors (e.g., Pittenger, 1993), a review and meta-analysis of a large number of reliability and validity studies (Harvey, 1996) concluded that in terms of these traditional psychometric criteria, the MBTI performed quite well, being clearly on a par with results obtained using more well-accepted personality tests.​

...and the authors went on to describe the results of their own 11,000-subject study, which they specifically noted were inconsistent with the notion that the MBTI was somehow of "lower psychometric quality" than Big Five (*aka* FFM) tests. They said:

In sum, although the MBTI is very widely used in organizations, with literally millions of administrations being given annually (e.g., Moore, 1987; Suplee, 1991), the criticisms of it that have been offered by its vocal detractors (e.g., Pittenger, 1993) have led some psychologists to view it as being of lower psychometric quality in comparison to more recent tests based on the FFM (e.g., McCrae & Costa, 1987). In contrast, we find the findings reported above — especially when viewed in the context of previous confirmatory factor analytic research on the MBTI, and meta-analytic reviews of MBTI reliability and validity studies (Harvey, 1996) — to provide a very firm empirical foundation that can be used to justify the use of the MBTI as a personality assessment device in applied organizational settings.​

And it's worth noting that Harvey specifically points to the goofy Pittenger article linked in the OP as an example of the kind of biased and poorly supported criticism of the MBTI that's been convincingly refuted by decades of respectable studies that show that the MBTI is, in Harvey's words, "on a par" with more well-respected Big Five tests.

 

[reckful]

The original intent of the MBTI was to provide jobs to women.

The idea that the primary purpose behind Briggs and Myers' development of the MBTI was job placement is pretty much just one of those internet memes that get passed around.

Briggs and Myers developed the MBTI with the same core aim as Jung — namely, to help people better understand themselves and others who differed from them. Briggs was working on her own typology — not with any business purpose in mind, as I understand it — before Psychological Types was published, and later published two articles about Psychological Types in The New Republic. The Myers-Briggs typology was basically just a family hobby for the next 20 years or so, until the outbreak of World War II prompted Isabel Myers (Briggs' daughter) to start work on an MBTI test because — as described in the introduction to Gifts Differing — "the suffering and tragedies of the war stirred Myers' desire to do something that might help peoples understand each other and avoid destructive conflicts." In addition, as noted on a CAPT website, "she noticed many people taking jobs out of patriotism, but hating the tasks that went against their grain instead of using their gifts."

The revised Preface (by Peter Myers) to the 1995 edition of Gifts Differing notes that Briggs and Myers put together an initial (largely untested) version of the MBTI in 1943 in hopes that it might be used in connection with wartime job placement, but no one was interested, so that trial version was never used for that purpose. Undaunted, Myers forged ahead with her type work, and for many years most of the widespread administration of the MBTI (during its initial development and evolution) involved student populations. It looks like the first official publication of a version of the MBTI indicator (Form F) didn't happen until 1958. And the test questions themselves, besides not having anything remotely resembling a predominant job focus, were painstakingly developed and adjusted based on statistical factor-correlation results — just like a Big Five or any other respectable personality self-assessment test.

Gifts Differing includes a chapter on Type and Occupation, along with chapters on, among other things, Type and Early Learning, Type and Growing Up, Type and Marriage, and Good Type Development. As Myers explained:

In this material I hope parents, teachers, students, counselors, clinicians, clergy — and all others who are concerned with the realization of human potential — may find a rationale for many of the personality differences they encounter in their work or must deal with in their private lives. ...

Whatever the circumstances of your life, whatever your personal ties, work, and responsibilities, the understanding of type can make your perceptions clearer, your judgments sounder, and your life closer to your heart's desire.

As a final note, and for what it's worth, the official MBTI folks have made it clear they consider it inappropriate and unethical to use the MBTI in connection with hiring, firing, job placement and/or promotions, and also consider it unethical to require any employee to take the MBTI in the first place. (For more on that, see here and here.)

 

[Mal12345]

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.99.4902&rep=rep1&type=pdf
"...(e.g., Pittenger, 1993) who charge that the MBTI lacks the status, measurement quality, and overall gravitas associated with traditional assessment instruments (e.g., MMPI, CPI, 16PF, NEO-PI)."

Did Pittenger say all that? Nope. He didn't reference the gravitas of other psychometric instruments at all. I know that the "e.g." means that Pittenger is an example of one author. But it also tells me that the author of this article doesn't have any other reference points, and that the "e.g." is just for show.

 

[Mal12345]

"Somewhat surprisingly, given the intensity of criticisms offered by its detractors (e.g., Pittenger, 1993)..."

The author is trying to make it look like he's taking on a larger number of detractors, when in fact he is just taking on one detractor, Pittenger.

 

[Mal12345]

So I read through http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.99.4902&rep=rep1&type=pdf, and did not see any response to Pittenger's analysis at all. Did you? (And no idea of who "e.g." implies. Are there other vocal critics?) Theirs was a model fit analysis, i.e., a comparison study with the Big 5 used as the model. Pittenger (e.g.) did not use a model fit analysis. His criticism was on a more practical level, e.g., actual percentages of MBTI types in a population. The authors of your paper only addressed Pittenger (e.g.) in an oblique manner. Meanwhile, Pittenger's own analysis goes unchallenged on its own.

 

[Mal12345]

The idea that the primary purpose behind Briggs and Myers' development of the MBTI was job placement is pretty much just one of those internet memes that get passed around.

So you assert. Anyway, I said it was the test's original purpose, not primary purpose.

Briggs and Myers developed the MBTI with the same core aim as Jung — namely, to help people better understand themselves and others who differed from them.

But that's not the original purpose, that came later on.

Briggs was working on her own typology — not with any business purpose in mind, as I understand it — before Psychological Types was published, and later published two articles about Psychological Types in The New Republic. The Myers-Briggs typology was basically just a family hobby for the next 20 years or so, until the outbreak of World War II prompted Isabel Myers (Briggs' daughter) to start work on an MBTI test because — as described in the introduction to Gifts Differing — "the suffering and tragedies of the war stirred Myers' desire to do something that might help peoples understand each other and avoid destructive conflicts." In addition, as noted on a CAPT website, "she noticed many people taking jobs out of patriotism, but hating the tasks that went against their grain instead of using their gifts."

Right. Rosie the Riveter, who was a real person, only lasted two weeks as a riveter. So the family hobby found a real purpose, which was to help women find jobs suitable to their "gifts."

The revised Preface (by Peter Myers) to the 1995 edition of Gifts Differing notes that Briggs and Myers put together an initial (largely untested) version of the MBTI in 1943 in hopes that it might be used in connection with wartime job placement, but no one was interested, so that trial version was never used for that purpose. Undaunted, Myers forged ahead with her type work, and for many years most of the widespread administration of the MBTI (during its initial development and evolution) involved student populations. It looks like the first official publication of a version of the MBTI indicator (Form F) didn't happen until 1958. And the test questions themselves, besides not having anything remotely resembling a predominant job focus, were painstakingly developed and adjusted based on statistical factor-correlation results — just like a Big Five or any other respectable personality self-assessment test.

So the original purpose failed. That doesn't mean the original purpose didn't exist as when you stated "The idea that the primary purpose behind Briggs and Myers' development of the MBTI was job placement is pretty much just one of those internet memes that get passed around." I never said anything about a "primary" purpose anyway. I said that its original purpose was job placement

Gifts Differing includes a chapter on Type and Occupation, along with chapters on, among other things, Type and Early Learning, Type and Growing Up, Type and Marriage, and Good Type Development. As Myers explained:

I know all this. I've read that book. I've read many others like it. But that doesn't say anything about the original purpose of the MBTI.

As a final note, and for what it's worth, the official MBTI folks have made it clear they consider it inappropriate and unethical to use the MBTI in connection with hiring, firing, job placement and/or promotions, and also consider it unethical to require any employee to take the MBTI in the first place. (For more on that, see here and here.)

I know. But what does that have to do with anything?

 

[Mal12345]

From your article posted at Ever meet an XXXX? - Page 2 - INTJ Forum

Surely you're aware that introversion/extraversion, for example, is one of the most well-established and long-studied dimensions of temperament. Different theorists disagree about exactly what's involved, and there's much more to learn, but few would disagree that the Big 5, the MBTI and most of the other temperament typologies that include an "introversion" dimension are (with greater and lesser degrees of perfection) tapping into the same personality dimension. It's a bogus concept unless it shows a bimodal distribution? Say what?​

True. Actually, the MBTI is bimodal even if one considers bimodality to be a relevant criterion of validity. But then I didn't mention this factor when I first brought it up.

If I wanted to defeat my own point made above, I would have mentioned Pittenger's bimodality argument. But I'm really not prone to shooting myself in the foot, not out of habit anyway.

You wrote the following:

It's also important to distinguish between typologies and particular instruments that purport to measure them. Whether the 4-dimension Jungian/Myers-Briggsian typology is grasping (however imperfectly) four real dimensions of human temperament is a substantially separate issue from how good a job any particular version of the official MBTI indicator does. A reasonably bright 15-year-old should understand that, right?​

I don't suppose Pittenger (e.g.) engaged in your ad hominems, do you?

Nemesis wrote to you: "Not really. If what you think you are measuring doesn't represent something that's actually real, you're just imposing patterns on noise." You didn't respond to this valid criticism, did you?

You also wrote:

Meanwhile, though, on the subject of the official MBTI test's "validity": Pittenger hauls out the old complaint that the results only get "replicated" X% of the time.​

However, Pittenger never mentions replicating anything in his 1993 article, although you used quotations as if he did bring it up. Is that honest or dishonest?

Near the end, you wrote:

Why am I giving this guy so much time? Why?​

I for one didn't see where you spent much time with that article at all, and mostly just in the pursuit of ad hominem attacks such as the one you ended with.

You did respond to this from the Pittenger article:

The MBTI reminds us of the obvious truth that all people are not alike, but then claims that every person can be fit neatly into one of 16 boxes. I believe that MBTI attempts to force the complexities of human personality into an artificial and limiting classification scheme. The focus on the "typing" of people reduces the attention paid to the unique qualities and potential of each individual.​

But your response was just an ad hominem:

There's a dimension of human personality that I like to refer to to categorize the type of academic who's inclined to try to score points by doing the kind of dishonest, cartoonish straw-manning on display in those quoted passages, Nem. I call it the Sleazebag dimension. I'll confess that I don't know if its distribution is bimodal or falls more along a bell curve.​

One would think that, in the pursuit of disproving someone's article, that you would at least try to achieve its level of academics. And even then, I don't think you made it even 1/4 of the way through Pittenger's article, much less answering anything I mentioned about it above.

 

[Mal12345]

I edited and re-edited the above in an effort to make it clearer to read.

 

[reckful]

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.99.4902&rep=rep1&type=pdf
"...(e.g., Pittenger, 1993) who charge that the MBTI lacks the status, measurement quality, and overall gravitas associated with traditional assessment instruments (e.g., MMPI, CPI, 16PF, NEO-PI)."

Did Pittenger say all that? Nope. He didn't reference the gravitas of other psychometric instruments at all. I know that the "e.g." means that Pittenger is an example of one author. But it also tells me that the author of this article doesn't have any other reference points, and that the "e.g." is just for show.

"Somewhat surprisingly, given the intensity of criticisms offered by its detractors (e.g., Pittenger, 1993)..."

The author is trying to make it look like he's taking on a larger number of detractors, when in fact he is just taking on one detractor, Pittenger.

What does "gravitas" mean to you, Mal? Harvey didn't put "gravitas" in quotes, and Pittenger didn't use that exact term, but if you're suggesting that Pittenger's take on the MBTI isn't reasonably characterized as asserting that it's lacking in gravitas, I'm afraid I'm going to have to question the gravitas of your assertion. Among other things, Pittenger suggests that MBTI personality descriptions are examples of "the Barnum Effect, named in honor of the great entertainer."

Similarly, various of the qualities that Pittenger (inaccurately) accuses the MBTI of lacking (e.g., reliability and validity) are unquestionably qualities that are, as Harvey says, "associated with traditional assessment instruments (e.g., MMPI, CPI, 16PF, NEO-PI)." Harvey doesn't say Pittenger specifically referred to those other instruments. But Pittenger does say that "the MBTI does not conform to many of the basic standards expected of psychological tests" — and by contrast, Harvey points to an impressive body of data that suggests that, as he puts it, the MBTI is more or less "on a par" with the leading Big Five tests.

You say Harvey refers to Pittenger as an example of the MBTI's detractors, but that he wasn't aware of any other detractors that had made the charges addressed in his article. Well, just for starters, Mal, how could you possibly know that? And second, since your OP was all about the same Pittenger article Harvey cited, even in the ridiculously unlikely (IMHO) event that Harvey really wasn't familiar with any of the MBTI's other critics, what difference would that make for purposes of the present discussion? Why, it's almost as if you seized on that bogus non-issue because you didn't have any meaningful responses to offer to the rebuttals to Pittenger (and other critics of the MBTI) that Harvey offers in his article, and that I offer in that long, two-part TC post I linked to.

So the original purpose failed. That doesn't mean the original purpose didn't exist as when you stated "The idea that the primary purpose behind Briggs and Myers' development of the MBTI was job placement is pretty much just one of those internet memes that get passed around." I never said anything about a "primary" purpose anyway. I said that its original purpose was job placement.

The Myers-Briggs typology had existed for many years as a "family hobby" — based on a combination of Jung's ideas and a personality typology that Briggs had been working on before she read Psychological Types — before Myers put together a first version of the MBTI instrument for potential use by a third party. And as previously noted, Myers was moved to put that first test together for at least two "purposes" that have been reported: "the suffering and tragedies of the war stirred Myers's desire to do something that might help peoples understand each other and avoid destructive conflicts"; and "she noticed many people taking jobs out of patriotism, but hating the tasks that went against their grain instead of using their gifts."

And furthermore, and also as previously noted, that first version of the MBTI instrument — put together before Myers had done the vast majority of the data-gathering and psychometric analysis that contributed to the first published version of the MBTI around 20 years later — was never used.

So if you want to say that there was a crude and very early "first draft" of the MBTI instrument that was never used, and that was partly aimed at "help[ing] peoples understand each other," and that was also offered to the U.S. military to help them avoid putting people in jobs that "went against their grain," you would be correct.

But simply saying that "the original intent of the MBTI was to provide jobs to women" is a major distortion of the story, and it's most often heard from internet sources who cite that "fact" as a way of (wrongly) implying that job placement issues played a major role in the development of the typology itself.

You also wrote:

Meanwhile, though, on the subject of the official MBTI test's "validity": Pittenger hauls out the old complaint that the results only get "replicated" X% of the time.​

However, Pittenger never mentions replicating anything in his 1993 article, although you used quotations as if he did bring it up. Is that honest or dishonest?

It sounds like you missed my follow-up post (which I also linked to), where I admitted that I should have used the word "reliability" when I was discussing that part of Pittenger's article. (Those posts are from 2011, and I was relatively new to the psychometrics biz.)

Pittenger does indeed "haul out the old complaint" that the MBTI is weak in the test/retest reliability department, and Harvey addresses that misguided charge in his article, and I address it in the two-part TC post I linked to. As previously noted, Harvey concludes that the MBTI is essentially "on a par" with the leading Big Five tests in both the validity and reliability departments. And as explained in my linked post, it's not uncommon to find forum posters who've been misled on that issue because they've confused test/retest percentages on individual dimensions (the way Big Five stats are often reported) and test/retest percentages for four-dimension MBTI types.

For anyone else who's interested, I've put that part of my linked post in the spoiler.

Reliability

The idea that the Big Five is substantially superior to the MBTI in the test/retest reliability department is another canard that periodically pops up in these kinds of articles. And claims to that effect are often accompanied by statistics that confuse retest rates on single dimensions with retest rates for a complete four-letter type.

I once corrected a forum poster who'd noted that the MBTI "has a test-retest rate of some 60%, meaning two out of every five people get different results when retaking the test," while the NEO-PI-R's "levels of consistency are incredibly high (N= .92, E= .89, O= .87, A= .86, C= .90)." In my reply, I explained:

That 60% MBTI statistic relates to a retest standard that says you got a different result if any one of the four dimensions is different. That corresponds to an average test-retest rate of 88% for the individual dimensions.

If you apply the same test-retest standard to those Big 5 statistics you gave us, you get .92 * .89 * .87 * .86 * .90 = a 55% test-retest rate (or 60% if you leave out Neuroticism).​

It's probably also worth noting that if you assume (as previously discussed) that most or all of the MBTI and Big Five dimensions exhibit something like a normal distribution, and if you assume (accordingly) that a large portion of the population is in or near the middle on at least one dimension, and if you add to that the many potential sources of error in self-assessment personality tests — from the fact that personality type is a relatively young science and psychologists are quite a long ways from nailing down exactly what the temperament dimensions consist of, to flaws in particular tests (including items that tap into more than one dimension), to multiple kinds of misunderstanding and other human error on the part of the individuals taking the test — it would strain credibility if the test-retest statistics for any personality typology didn't indicate a significant percentage of cases where at least one of the dimensions came out with a different preference on retesting, and one letter change is all it takes to constitute an MBTI retest "failure."

As a final note, it should also be kept in mind that a typical MBTI test-taker is someone with little or no familiarity with the typology who simply takes the MBTI test along with a group of fellow employees or students. It's reasonable to assume that, to the extent that a person actually has four reasonably-well-defined preferences, they're likely to come up with a result that's considerably more accurate if, rather than just accepting the test result, they spend some time reading about the preferences and the types — which is something the MBTI Manual (among other sources) has always encouraged people to do.