reckful
New member
- Joined
- Jul 6, 2013
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- 656
- MBTI Type
- INTJ
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- 5
In 1943 mbti was introduced to induct women into the war machine, and mbti was sold to the military. And you thought mbti was all about you.
The idea that the primary purpose behind Briggs and Myers's 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's 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."
Myers' focus was on the employees, not the employers, and she wanted the employers to try to do a better job recognizing each individual's "gifts" rather than giving them "tasks that went against their grain." And in fact, the official MBTI folks have made it clear that 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.)
As noted in the revised Preface (by Peter Myers) to the 1995 edition of Gifts Differing, Briggs and Myers did indeed 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 the military wasn't interested, so that trial version was never used for that purpose.
You titled this thread, "Mbti and the facts," Mole. But for as long as I've been reading your MBTI-related posts at this forum, you've consistently demonstrated a jaw-dropping lack of concern for the facts, and the post I've quoted is just one more example.