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[MBTI General] Scientific Validity of Personality Classifications and Tests

entropie

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I once somewhere heard the sentence that anything that is not natural science, may not be labeled as science. So the term "social science" would be wrong from the start.

Tho that's quite hard, it bears some truth, cause especially with the mbti what would be the definition of the point at which one can clearly say: ok now, I achieved validity with my social / human theories.

----

Regarding scientific validity in general: I yesterday saw a documentary on television about a guy, who was a chemist and wanted to make a new plastic out of natural waste; like nut shells. His first attempts were working and he figured to make the whole process work, he'ld need a catalyst.

So he tried like a billion different catalysts and nothing worked. Then he had the idea to try gold. Gold is nearly catalytically dead and that has been scientifically validated for centuries.

He nevertheless tried a combination of gold and chlorine and made the thing work.

After that he spent years to refine his theory and when he published it, it needed the scientific community in his field 3 full years to accept what he had just done, which is he rewrote what was scientifically valid.

---

Therefore, in the light of both of that examples, I like to think that social science is an especially hard field to be validated at all but then again validity is never valid.
 

simulatedworld

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Why does some n00b ask this stupid question every other week? Why do you guys never bother to check the other 400 threads on this topic before posting it?

sigh...

look...this shit doesn't purport to be scientific. It's not. It's philosophy. It's just an arbitrarily made up classification system.

It's obvious that people have different personalities, and this is just one way of choosing to classify them.

There's no scientific claim being made at all; the whole thing is subjective and untestable.

This is like asking for scientific proof that some movies are comedies and other movies are dramas. There's no "proof" because there's no testable claim being made; they're just made up labels for arbitrarily defined categories.
 

entropie

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Why does some n00b ask this stupid question every other week? Why do you guys never bother to check the other 400 threads on this topic before posting it?

sigh...

look...this shit doesn't purport to be scientific. It's not. It's philosophy. It's just an arbitrarily made up classification system.

It's obvious that people have different personalities, and this is just one way of choosing to classify them.

There's no scientific claim being made at all; the whole thing is subjective and untestable.

This is like asking for scientific proof that some movies are comedies and other movies are dramas. There's no "proof" because there's no testable claim being made; they're just made up labels for arbitrarily defined categories.

Of course you make sense, but if you say that out loud you endager yourself of being questioned in your reasoning, cause in the greater sense physics is nothing but philosophy aswell.

In that regards I remember the quote from Stargate, when Sam asked the guy from the Tolans what he studied and he replied Quantum Science. She then said, oh cool me too, so whats the latest and he said the latest ? I studied that as part of my history classes, labeled as one of the courses "where mankind was wrong" :D
 

Kalach

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Why does some n00b ask this stupid question every other week? Why do you guys never bother to check the other 400 threads on this topic before posting it?

sigh...

look...this shit doesn't purport to be scientific. It's not. It's philosophy. It's just an arbitrarily made up classification system.

It's obvious that people have different personalities, and this is just one way of choosing to classify them.

There's no scientific claim being made at all; the whole thing is subjective and untestable.

This is like asking for scientific proof that some movies are comedies and other movies are dramas. There's no "proof" because there's no testable claim being made; they're just made up labels for arbitrarily defined categories.

They do claim validity. The MBTI Manual presents all sorts of what it calls validity data. Usually with respect to trends. They observe that an MBTI type is not predictive of what an individual will do, but it is predictive of what persons of a given type will be drawn to (and quite possibly enjoy). Thus, (I guess at the level of type but not at the level of the individual) it is testable. For eg, research shows you find lots of STJs in the military, lots of SFJs as doctors, lots of SFPs as GPs, lots of TJs in management.

I feel some tremor in the force, however. Hearing this kind of claim sets off an alarm of some kind, but I don't know why just yet because I haven't thought it through.

However, to the point, practitioners are taught that there is "validity" data available for when a skeptical client chooses to skept while in a session and may be in need of comfort, the loving punch of "proof".
 

Orangey

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Generally, I take a theory to be any coherent set of propositions about the world. Since I've deemed MBTI incoherent, I cannot regard it as theoretical. As far as what empirical meant, I certainly had no intention of suggesting that MBTI can pass any standard of scientific investigation. One of your guesses regarding what I meant by that term was correct.

Ah.

Precisely, MBTI is an arbitrary collection of extremely vague assertions about the behaviors of people and how they define their characters.

Yeah, pretty much.

There is no contradiction between our views, my purpose was merely to make an addition to your post rather than to refute one of your claims. I intend to draw a sharper distinction between MBTI and a study of temperament. This distinction is relevant because your previous conversation was about how a person's identity may be influenced by MBTI. However, at first, I think I've misinterpreted your post as suggesting that the study of MBTI was non-empirical because it dealt with a study of temperament. Yet, in your last post you've clarified that it is non-empirical for a different reason, because it cannot be supported by empirical evidence.

Gotcha.

I am puzzled by just one thing: why you even bothered responding to that.

I'm a teacher. I felt I had an ethical obligation. /sarcasm

That determines the four letter code you'll receive as a result of your MBTI test, but not the nature of your temperament. Altogether, I insist on a sharp separation between MBTI and the study of temperament. To be clear, I am not claiming that you do not recognize this difference, but merely that it has not been clearly expressed in your post. Since the above discussion was about how MBTI impacts a person's identity, it is quite relevant. By separating MBTI from the study of temperament, we effectively show that a person's four letter code has little to do with their identity, temperament or solidified habits of thought and action.

Granted the bolded part. And I definitely agree that MBTI does not reveal anything real about a person's essential identity or their cognitive proclivities. My previous post was probably unclear on this matter because I honestly did not have that distinction in mind as I was posting.

I was mostly concerned with the idea that the MBTI instrument can say anything accurate about one's outward behavior (which it cannot...for the methodological reasons I mentioned); I had not even broached the question of whether MBTI can say anything accurate about one's essential temperament or identity.
 

Chunes

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Dr Helen Fisher - Biological Anthropologist - Home Page

Also, the basic premise of her personality theory is that the behaviors of Artisans, Guardians, Rationals, and Idealists (whom she calls Explorers, Builders, Directors, and Negotiators) are based on the dopamine, serotonin, testosterone, and estrogen systems, respectively.

Based on what you guys have said, she may have more empirical evidence than Kiersey does, although still not enough to make SciAm Mind happy (I read an article last year that critiqued her findings).

Curious: has she explained why male negotiators seem to be every bit as negotiator-ish as their female counterparts?
 

peterk

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Jung's theory of psychological type(the MBTI is an extension of that theory) posits that types are modes of consciousness,i.e., the types are different kinds of mind. The BIG-5 is a theory about what is in those minds. Jung/MBTI theory is more concerned with the forest(type) while the BIG-5 is more concerned with the trees(traits).

All psychological tests are of a statistical nature that rely on imperfect questions that may be given imperfect responses depending on the mood of the individual. In spite of all these factors the fact that the MBTI accords with Jung's theory is impressive.
 

Katsuni

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They're all 'tests' trying to explain a complex concept with a multitude of intricate, interwoven factors, into a black and white easy to understand phraze.

It doesn't work fully, and never will, regardless of the test.

Yeu can't dump the entirety of the planet's population into 16 boxes and pretend that we are all clones of 16 people and there is no variation at all.

Obviously, each test is flawed in its' own way, no matter how much, or how little evidence there is for them. They are attempting to quantify things which can't be quantified.

I'm fine with that; I do it myself all the time. It's an easy to understand generic 'close' model that can be reasonably semi-accurate, as long as yeu take it with a grain of salt that it can't measure things perfectly.

A combonation, such as MBTI+Enneagram, tends to be more useful, since they are testing completely different areas of ones' behaviour, and they obviously influence each other, and testing one or the other won't give accurate results. A 7w6 entp is not the same as a 3w4 entp by any means, and even there, there are distinctions among even those subgroups.

The best we can do is classify whot we know, to the best of our ability. Some tests may have further factors that determine more aspects, but none determines all. There is no magical "do this test and we know who yeu are"; the closest we can get is a vague insight through a thick fog.

If yeu understand that, then yeu can appreciate such, and make use of the generic information presented, without taking it too strictly.

MBTI is not some uber-godlike-perfect description of human behaviour. Whot it does do, is try to group people using whot makes "sense for the most part". Everyone is E and everyone is I at different times in their lives; mbti just assumes that the dominant of the two is yeur 'tendancy' to do one or the other more frequently. If yeu take it as general tendancies it's great. Same as most of these other models. Some may be more 'accurate', by testing different factors than others. They're still all inherently flawed however.

I have no perfect clone of myself, no doppleganger. I have some which are vaguely close, which may be very similar in some regards, but no perfect identical twin. I can still be understood, though, in a more generic sense. I think we should at least TRY to understand each other, even if it's flawed or inaccurate to some degree. To give up just because it's impossible to be flawless in the evaluation is foolish.
 

simulatedworld

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They do claim validity. The MBTI Manual presents all sorts of what it calls validity data. Usually with respect to trends. They observe that an MBTI type is not predictive of what an individual will do, but it is predictive of what persons of a given type will be drawn to (and quite possibly enjoy). Thus, (I guess at the level of type but not at the level of the individual) it is testable. For eg, research shows you find lots of STJs in the military, lots of SFJs as doctors, lots of SFPs as GPs, lots of TJs in management.

Any such research is inherently bullshit because there's no way to prove the types of the people in question.

The best you can do is show that, for instance, many people in the military come out as xSTJ on a type test...unfortunately type tests frequently don't correspond to reality. There's currently no way to objectively verify anyone's type.

I feel some tremor in the force, however. Hearing this kind of claim sets off an alarm of some kind, but I don't know why just yet because I haven't thought it through.

However, to the point, practitioners are taught that there is "validity" data available for when a skeptical client chooses to skept while in a session and may be in need of comfort, the loving punch of "proof".

Yep, the MBTI people do a lot of stupid shit. I think it's pretty clear in Jung's work, though, that he didn't believe his ideas could be tested objectively through a self-report inventory.


Obviously, each test is flawed in its' own way, no matter how much, or how little evidence there is for them. They are attempting to quantify things which can't be quantified.

The best we can do is classify whot we know, to the best of our ability. Some tests may have further factors that determine more aspects, but none determines all. There is no magical "do this test and we know who yeu are"; the closest we can get is a vague insight through a thick fog.

Yay! Somebody gets it!
 

peterk

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KATSUNI,

Anything can be quantified if one has enough knowledge about the thing and goes about it in the right way. At this stage of our knowledge some human behavior can be quantified. Of course there are real differences between people but there are also real similarities and it's one set of similarities that the MBTI tries to quantify(if that's the right word). If the MBTI puts everyone in one of 16 boxes, I would say that all the people in one of those 16 boxes is in a box of his own.
 

BlackCat

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If you don't think that it's valid, then why study it? Why even care?

It's proven by your experience and applying the theory to your life. It works.
 

ChildoftheProphets

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Curious: has she explained why male negotiators seem to be every bit as negotiator-ish as their female counterparts?

No she has not, at least as far as I know (her research is ongoing however, and I think she just released an updated edition of her book on personality last month). Perhaps Negotiator-ness has more to do with testosterone-estrogen ratios than actual levels of either hormone by itself, or perhaps estrogen is just a red herring, and it's really only testosterone that matters (just give or take a given quantity).

Anyway, on a similar note, Fisher does believe that her theory may account for why so many more women seek treatment for depressive mood disorders then men--it's not that men are trying to keep up a macho image and women are more honest (as most psychologists have guessed), it's really just that most men are chemically less attuned to emotional and interpersonal interactions, ever-ready to fight their way through life because of their higher testosterone levels. NF males seem to have less, so we end up coming off all sensitive and emo . . .

And singing high tenor. :cheese: :headphne: :cry:
 

hermeticdancer

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even if your behavior changes that doesent change your type, you can learn to use different functions on situations that doesent come naturally from you. this can develop your type in a way that you can use some functions easier than you used to. for example intj can learn to use Fe if he uses it enough and even if he would notice that most situations involving other people go better with Fe and Te and he would start using Fe more when handling with people, that wouldnt mean that he would change to infj, it would just mean that he has developed his intj personality.

maybe some heavy realization with hallucinogens or long time depression or something like that could change your type, but personally i think that you need to lose your mind big time to change your type

I completely disagree. You can loose your personality, easily, with brain damage and change type. It documented in the literature. The man who becomes erratic and unstable, when part of his brain is not able to function, after a traumatic event. His emotional intelligence is impaired, I believe I read this in the book emotional intelligence. A long time ago...

Sorry but too lazy to quote and fuzzy on the details right now. But the book is Emotional Intelligence.
 
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