From formspring.me: Have you ever taken the Myers-Briggs? What do you think about it?

I have taken the Myers-Briggs – an “official” version too, not just some random version on the internet. As a freshman at Purdue I was selected as part of President Jischke’s Leadership class, a weekly meeting of 30 students from the incoming freshman class who were apparently being primed to be the leaders of the future. Little did they know they were grooming an atheist leader, mwahaha.

Ahem.

But one of the first things we did in the class was take the Myers-Briggs, and then have someone come explain what everything meant and how we could learn to work together better from that. I consistently come out as an INTJ – Introversion, Intuition, Thinking, Judgment. I think the whole description fits me to a T, but I won’t bore you with what you can read on Wikipedia. But just to illustrate my point:

INTJs are analytical. Like INTPs, they are most comfortable working alone and tend to be less sociable than other types. Nevertheless, INTJs are prepared to lead if no one else seems up to the task, or if they see a major weakness in the current leadership. They tend to be pragmatic, logical, and creative. They have a low tolerance for spin or rampant emotionalism. They are not generally susceptible to catchphrases and do not recognize authority based on tradition, rank, or title.

I was going to bold everything that blatantly applied to me, but then I realized I would be bolding the whole quote. Of course, maybe I just like being called a “Mastermind” and being one of the rarest personality types.

While it seems fun, there has been a lot of criticism about the validity and scientific nature of the test. It’s likely it’s relying on the Forer effect, where “individuals will give high accuracy ratings to descriptions of their personality that supposedly are tailored specifically for them, but are in fact vague and general enough to apply to a wide range of people.” This is the same reason why astrology seems so convincing.

But this isn’t my area of expertise – is anyone out the more knowledgeable about the Myers-Briggs test?

Poppycock or not, what result do you get? There’s a decent test here if you want to find out. Do you think it describes you well, or do all the descriptions fit you in some way? I wonder if atheists and skeptics would be more likely to fit in certain categories. Maybe INTJ isn’t that rare amongst skeptics.

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