Why are people suckers for the Myers-Briggs, Zodiac signs, and other phony personality tests?
Scientists love to hate on the Myers-Briggs Personality Test, easily the most popular and well-known measure of personality. For good reasons. As explained in this excellent article by Laith Al-Shawaf, experts believe that the Myers-Briggs has dubious predictive ability and is grounded in debunked theory. To make matters worse, it’s unreliable. Which means that if you take the test more than once to learn more about your “true self”, it’s quite likely to give you different answers each time.
The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator is the most popular personality test in the world. It’s a favorite among Fortune 100 companies and government agencies. It is a thriving multimillion dollar industry and it’s now being used to determine our love life — funders just gave 1 million dollars to develop an app that matches couples based on their Myers-Briggs personality types.
As Al-Shawaf notes, “any psychologist will tell you, it’s mostly bullshit.” The open joke is that it offers little more value than your astrological sign.
