Being what’s most likely the preferred persona evaluation on the earth immediately, the MBTI has, after all, come up in opposition to some criticism. Along with the analysis’s blended outcomes in terms of the evaluation’s reliability, Hallett explains a few of the essential criticisms additionally embody that individuals’s outcomes can change, or that individuals can really feel “boxed-in” by the outcomes.
In a 1993 paper titled “Measuring the MBTI and Coming Up Short,” David Pittenger, Ph.D., a professor of psychology at Marshall College, opinions the analysis on the Myers-Briggs take a look at and raises questions on its underlying ideas. “The MBTI reminds us of the apparent reality that every one individuals are not alike, however then claims that each individual might be match neatly into one among 16 containers,” he writes. “I imagine that MBTI makes an attempt to pressure the complexities of human persona into a synthetic and limiting classification scheme. The give attention to the ‘typing’ of individuals reduces the eye paid to the distinctive qualities and potential of every particular person.”
To that, Hackston and Nardi clarify that these sorts are about preferences, and your kind doesn’t mean you may’t transfer outdoors your personal preferences. Nardi says you may consider it like whether or not you are left or right-handed. “If I am right-handed, that does not imply I do not use my left hand, or I do not use my arms collectively,” he explains.
Hackston notes the outcomes are supposed to be extra of a “springboard” for understanding your preferences so you may acknowledge your personal patterns and actively select to “go in opposition to your kind” when conditions name for it.
Some consultants additionally don’t respect the work of Carl Jung, Katharine Prepare dinner Briggs, or Isabel Briggs Myers. Jung, for one factor, has acquired loads of criticism, given how a lot of his theories had been based mostly on his personal desires and concepts versus scientific truth. Prepare dinner Briggs and Briggs Myers had been additionally not educated psychologists or psychological well being professionals, although Nardi factors out that this specific criticism is “really extremely sexist as a result of, on the time, it was very troublesome for ladies to turn into psychologists and even get into faculty.”
One other criticism of the MBTI is utilizing it to evaluate or predict efficiency within the office, which Hackston, Hallett, and Nardi all agree is just not what this evaluation is meant for. “It is not about efficiency—it is about desire. No persona evaluation needs to be used for hiring, and in some states, it is really unlawful to make use of it that manner,” Nardi notes.
