[Other/Multiple Temperaments] Adam Grant's Criticism of MBTI

[highlander]

Does anyone find this guy's argument to be seriously lacking in depth of insight?

Goodbye to MBTI, the Fad That Won’t Die | Psychology Today

1. Reliability - his statistics don't seem to match up with what myersbriggs.org publishes and it would appear they have a fairly large data set that they are basing their numbers on. http://www.myersbriggs.org/my-mbti-personality-type/mbti-basics/reliability-and-validity.htm?bhcp=1

2. Application - his paragraph contains basic and fundamental flaws. "A test is valid if it predicts outcomes that matter. If we’re going to use it in organizations, it should shed light on how well I’ll perform in a particular job or with a certain group of people. Although there are data suggesting that different occupations attract people of different types, there is no convincing body of evidence that types affect job performance or team effectiveness. As management researchers William Gardner and Mark Martinko write in a comprehensive review, “Few consistent relationships between type and managerial effectiveness have been found.”

Who ever said type predicts job performance? These statements alone show a remarkable lack of knowledge about the instrument he is criticizing.

3. Categories and Mutual Exclusivity - "in the MBTI, thinking and feeling are opposite poles of a continuum. In reality, they’re independent: we have three decades of evidence that if you like ideas and data, you can also like people and emotions."

Again, shows a remarkable lack of understanding on the instrument - linking a preference for feeling to liking people and emotions.

I mean, I could go on but this guy just seems incredibly stupid. And he's got a doctorate? Don't they teach you how to do research when you do something like that? He's a professor at Wharton? If a student wrote something so poorly researched, I believe they would deserve a D or an F. Or is his integrity so low that he's just looking for clickbait in an attempt to become popular?

 

[Peter Deadpan]

I dunno man... how scientific is MBTI, honestly?

I'm sure you have dove in much deeper than I, but I have read quite a bit of criticism.
It doesn't seem to be the most reliable typing system.
Is it even testable???

 

[highlander]

I dunno man... how scientific is MBTI, honestly?

I'm sure you have dove in much deeper than I, but I have read quite a bit of criticism.
It doesn't seem to be the most reliable typing system.
Is it even testable???

History Reliability and Validity of the Myers-Briggs | CPP

"The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator® (MBTI®) assessment is the best-known and most trusted personality assessment tool available today. As many as 1.5 million assessments are administered annually to individuals, including to employees of most Fortune 500 companies.

Form M, first published in 1998, is the standard form for identifying an individual’s four-letter type. Based on results from a broad, nationally representative sample of 3,009 people, each of the four preference scales has internal consistency reliability of .90 or greater. Form Q, first published in 2001, identifies an individual’s four-letter type and produces a more detailed representation of individual differences within type by reporting 20 facets. Based on results from a nationally representative sample of 1,378 people, median internal consistency of the 20 facets is .77."

 

[á´…eparted]

History Reliability and Validity of the Myers-Briggs | CPP

"The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator® (MBTI®) assessment is the best-known and most trusted personality assessment tool available today. As many as 1.5 million assessments are administered annually to individuals, including to employees of most Fortune 500 companies.

Form M, first published in 1998, is the standard form for identifying an individual’s four-letter type. Based on results from a broad, nationally representative sample of 3,009 people, each of the four preference scales has internal consistency reliability of .90 or greater. Form Q, first published in 2001, identifies an individual’s four-letter type and produces a more detailed representation of individual differences within type by reporting 20 facets. Based on results from a nationally representative sample of 1,378 people, median internal consistency of the 20 facets is .77."

 

[highlander]

More info here

View attachment MBTI_reliability_and_validity_info.pdf

 

[highlander]

Yeah like maybe it should have been invented by a guy who is a doctorate and teaches at Wharton

 

[á´…eparted]

Yeah like maybe it should have been invented by a guy who is a doctorate and teaches at Wharton

MBTI isn't that useful to me. Hasn't been for years. It's too wishy washy and doesn't really serve much utility other than a self-reflection springboard.

I value enneagram much more. That theory has more utility, is much less wishy washy, and better defined.

 

[Peter Deadpan]

There isn't a good way to measure though. There isn't consensus on dichotemy vs function. There isn't even consensus on preference, as in an ISTP could be TSPI, for example.

There is just... so much criticism. I'm on the fence for MBTI. I prefer other systems, but am still interested in MBTI nonetheless because it's a part of the bigger picture.

 

[reckful]

Adam Grant's blog post is the kind of poorly-informed, straw-manny MBTI "debunking" that turns up with disappointing regularity, and often in sources that ought to have higher standards.

A later "debunking" by Joseph Stromberg at the Vox website — which quotes Adam Grant and makes a lot of the same points — is pretty thoroughly rebutted (if I do say so myself) in this post and the post that follows it.

Anyone interested in the "official response" to Grant from the MBTI folks can find it here — although I'd note that there's actually considerably more foolishness in Grant's post than their response covers. And here's a harsher (and well deserved) smackdown: Why Adam Grant's Critique of the MBTI Is Useless.

A-a-and as poor as Grant's critique is, that Adam Conover video Hard linked to manages to demonstrate even lower standards.

 

[notmyapples]

Most of, if any MBTI criticism I see is directly towards the dichotomy tests themselves, most popularly the one on 16personalities. I just ignore all the 'debunking' videos nowadays because they rarely touch upon functions. The people who write or film these assessments usually just take the test once or twice and decide that since the result wasn't accurate or they feel boxed in (???), the whole system is flawed. If you aren't taking the time to research whatever you're criticizing, I'm going to ignore you and view you as ignorant. And it's not like any of these people are actually angry about MBTI, they're just creating controversial titles to bag money off of the very trend they are insulting. Show me an MBTI criticism video by someone educated on the cognitive functions and I'll sit down to listen.

 

[highlander]

Adam Grant's blog post is the kind of poorly-informed, straw-manny MBTI "debunking" that turns up with disappointing regularity, and often in sources that ought to have higher standards.

A later "debunking" by Joseph Stromberg at the Vox website — which quotes Adam Grant and makes a lot of the same points — is pretty thoroughly rebutted (if I do say so myself) in this post and the post that follows it.

Anyone interested in the "official response" to Grant from the MBTI folks can find it here — although I'd note that there's actually considerably more foolishness in Grant's post than their response covers. And here's a harsher (and well deserved) smackdown: Why Adam Grant's Critique of the MBTI Is Useless.

A-a-and as poor as Grant's critique is, that Adam Conover video Hard linked to manages to demonstrate even lower standards.

Excellent posts and points. I was going to say we should put some of this in the Wiki but it's already there!

Debunking the MBTI Debunkers - Typology Wiki

 

[highlander]

Adam Grant's blog post is the kind of poorly-informed, straw-manny MBTI "debunking" that turns up with disappointing regularity, and often in sources that ought to have higher standards.

A later "debunking" by Joseph Stromberg at the Vox website — which quotes Adam Grant and makes a lot of the same points — is pretty thoroughly rebutted (if I do say so myself) in this post and the post that follows it.

Anyone interested in the "official response" to Grant from the MBTI folks can find it here — although I'd note that there's actually considerably more foolishness in Grant's post than their response covers. And here's a harsher (and well deserved) smackdown: Why Adam Grant's Critique of the MBTI Is Useless.

A-a-and as poor as Grant's critique is, that Adam Conover video Hard linked to manages to demonstrate even lower standards.

What I don't understand is why academia feels that Big 5 is any better. For the result of the instrument to have some value, I need to gain some insights about people and how they think. How does Big 5 help in that way? There seems to be a relative dearth of literature about it compared to MBTI.

 

[Peter Deadpan]

I guess I've been slacking. I'll read through these sometime.
I still like Enneagram better.

 

[GavinElster]

Honestly, you can answer pretty much all these criticisms easily by saying

- OK, MBTI =/= Jung. It's quite different what the test is really measuring -- it's some hybrid between Jungian ideas and the Big 5, and it's not formatted as a cognitive functions theory inherently -- it's really just a pretty standard 4-dimensional psychometric tool

- So we shouldn't interpret the dichotomies as dichotomies in the strict sense, but as marking the extremes of a dimension -- that is, something with lots of variation/inbetweens/potential for facets

Once you make those two clarifications, there doesn't seem to be much of substance left. Actually the test was already constructed properly, just interpreted in a somewhat outdated Jungian fashion.

There will always be a more philosophical and more scientific side to cognitive science, as far as I can tell; those interested in AI research will realize that in some ways, understanding the brain's neurons just won't help you build a theory of thinking beyond a point, because it's ultimately the patterns/ideas that are important. Here, solid philosophizing can help you.
So I far from think totally abandoning the Jungian way of thinking is the way to go.

However, recognizing that the MBTI as an instrument is different from the Jungian school of thought in its focuses helps people who are concerned with the more empirical goals (such as finding if there are consistent replicating dimensions of personality that capture many other facets of personality in an economical way) not feel they were being deceived.

 

[rav3n]

• Yeah, he doesn't appear to understand MBTI.
• I think he's an mistyped NF.
• He's also selling his own theories so taking down MBTI would open the playing field.

Adam Grant: Are you a giver or a taker? | TED Talk

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

What I don't understand is why academia feels that Big 5 is any better. For the result of the instrument to have some value, I need to gain some insights about people and how they think. How does Big 5 help in that way? There seems to be a relative dearth of literature about it compared to MBTI.

Interestingly enough, I went on r/askpsychology, where I constantly see people diss MBTI and say things in favor of the Big 5, and I asked them if they could point me towards any scientific papers that established the validity of Big Five. I explained that open access didn't matter, because I had access to university subscriptions. I got a few upvotes, but very few people responded to me, and the only thing they said was that I should be able to find something if I look hard enough. Very disappointing. I really hoped that, since so many people were convinced this was so much better, they new what the basis for that was.

I'm really open to changing my mind about this, because I have my own doubts about MBTI, so the lack of anyone coming forward with real scientific literature about this is disappointing.

 

[highlander]

• Yeah, he doesn't appear to understand MBTI.
• I think he's an mistyped NF.
• He's also selling his own theories so taking down MBTI would open the playing field.

Adam Grant: Are you a giver or a taker? | TED Talk

Interesting. I'm a taker. I do that. I'm also a giver. Those two aren't connected necessarily. There is no quid pro quo.

So this guy is basically trying to sell his own crap. He also comes across like a weirdo.

So yeah let's criticize other people's stuff so I can promote my own stuff. I think it shows a lack of integrity.

 

[highlander]

Interestingly enough, I went on r/askpsychology, where I constantly see people diss MBTI and say things in favor of the Big 5, and I asked them if they could point me towards any scientific papers that established the validity of Big Five. I explained that open access didn't matter, because I had access to university subscriptions. I got a few upvotes, but very few people responded to me, and the only thing they said was that I should be able to find something if I look hard enough. Very disappointing. I really hoped that, since so many people were convinced this was so much better, they new what the basis for that was.

I'm really open to changing my mind about this, because I have my own doubts about MBTI, so the lack of anyone coming forward with real scientific literature about this is disappointing.

I think the whole thing about Big 5 being better is typical academia criticizing things without a real solution. MBTI works. There is a lot of useful information about it. Same thing for enneagram. Big 5 is an outlier - however popular it may be amongst academia. There is little of value that is published about it that I can actually use as a normal everyday person. I can use MBTI and Enneagram. There is a ton of literature that helps me to interpret things and evaluate meaning.

 

[SearchingforPeace]

I think the whole thing about Big 5 being better is typical academia criticizing things without a real solution. MBTI works. There is a lot of useful information about it. Same thing for enneagram. Big 5 is an outlier - however popular it may be amongst academia. There is little of value that is published about it that I can actually use as a normal everyday person. I can use MBTI and Enneagram. There is a ton of literature that helps me to interpret things and evaluate meaning.

Pretty much where I stand. MBTI (especially with JCF, but even without JCF) and enneagram work in the real world. They really help people understand themselves and others. As tools go, they are very practical and useful.

The Big 5 seems like an academic attempt at relevancy, because the "professionals" didn't come up with those other two.

The problems with MBTI and enneagram relate to self-awareness. Too many people have a misunderstanding of themselves, due to all the crap people go through during childhood, so they mistype themselves and need assistance to find their types correctly. People create patterns and rules for life and action well before their brains are developed enough to actually understand what is really happening.

 

[highlander]

Pretty much where I stand. MBTI (especially with JCF, but even without JCF) and enneagram work in the real world. They really help people understand themselves and others. As tools go, they are very practical and useful.

The Big 5 seems like an academic attempt at relevancy, because the "professionals" didn't come up with those other two.

The problems with MBTI and enneagram relate to self-awareness. Too many people have a misunderstanding of themselves, due to all the crap people go through during childhood, so they mistype themselves and need assistance to find their types correctly. People create patterns and rules for life and action well before their brains are developed enough to actually understand what is really happening.

Hard to say more than I completely agree with you. I really think that this doesn't work for everyone There are many flaws. Still, I think it is a useful construct that provides data points to help in understanding people.