Stuff You Should Know - Selects: How Personality Tests Work

Episode Date: November 15, 2025

For millennia, we have tried to put human personalities into neat types, an effort psychology took up early in its history in an effort to legitimize itself. But is the idea of types – which all personality inventories are based on - flawed to begin with? Find out in this classic episode.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Listen to Ellis Ever After on America's number one podcast network, IHeart. Follow Ellis Ever After and start listening on the free IHeart Radio app today. Hey, everybody. It's me, Josh, and for this week's select, I've chosen our August 2017 episode on personality tests. It turns out that the vast majority of them, maybe all of them, are scientifically faulty to at least some degree. And some of them are just outright made up. This can be a real problem if they're being used to diagnose you with a mental illness or, hire or fire you or put you in jail. And that actually happens. So dig into this deceptively interesting episode and enjoy it. And I'm an ENFP, by the way.

Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of IHeart Radio. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck. Brian, there's Jerry over there, and this is stuff you should know. Yeah, just a couple of ITJs's. I don't remember what I am. We've taken it before. How Stuff Works hosted it years back. Do you remember?

Yeah, we had, like many companies do, as you'll see, we had when we were under Discovery's Tender Wing. They paid for someone to come to our office and administer the Myers-Briggs. personality test at gunpoint yeah i don't remember but i'm pretty sure i was an enfp i i don't remember what i was i'll i'll probably say like three different things as we go through this one like just looking at it again i'm pretty sure i was an enfp okay he stands for pisces right or pooper yeah let's see extroverted intuitive okay What does the F stand for? Feeling pooper.

This is a spoiler, yeah, feeling pooper. So what we're talking about, it sounds like we're saying strings of letters. They actually do make sense if you're familiar with what Chuck just said, the Myers-Briggs type inventory, which if you are in corporate America and have been a part of corporate America

for more than probably three years, there's probably a pretty good likelihood that you've taken the Myers-Briggs' type inventory for sure like it's really widespread yeah people love it i saw something like 13% of companies in america use it it's a lot yeah it was it 89 of the fortune 100 use it right and then i saw another stat it was from 2001 though so i'm not sure how current it is well 16 years old right But they said that the, I think, British companies, somewhere between 10 and 40 percent of British companies use them. All right.

So, I mean, it's, who knows, it's a pretty wild guess, it sounds like. I wonder if they have their own. No. The Myers-Briggs test. They don't call it a test, as we'll see. Sure. But the test is, it's worldwide. It's translated.

into tons of different languages. No, it's the Myers-Briggs test. And there's tons of knock-offs. Oh, sure. There's tons of personality tests in general, which really is the larger umbrella that the Myers-Briggs test falls under, but it's probably the most famous of all time,

at least as far as pop culture goes. Yeah, and we're going to hit on everything from Roershack to the Myers-Briggs. Sure. But the MBTI definitely is more of the focus of this one because of its ubiquity. Right. Right. And because most people know it. And because it's one of the overlooked pastimes in the United States to take pot shots at the Myers-Briggs type inventory.

Sure. It's fun. So categorizing one's personality is nothing new. And that's what these tests aim to do for various reasons, which we'll go over later. But going back, and this was a Grabster article, correct? That's right. So you know it's good. Yeah. And Grabster was just at our show in Toronto.

Yeah, he was. For the second time. He stood up and, like, did that victory shake? Oh, did he do that? No, he did. Oh, I'm a big fan of that. That's old school. Oh, it is.

It's a good way to go. It looks like you should be wearing those dolphin shorts and just having crossed the finish line and you're doing that. So, yeah, it's nothing new trying to categorize personalities. Way back in the day, I know on our, um grave robbing live grave robbing episode we talked about the four humors right and we talked about him before um before medical science was kind of a real thing um there was an early attempt yeah they talked about the four fluids or the four humors black bile yellow bile phleg and blood

uh and an imbalance in those will cause disease but they were also this is something i didn't know These are also linked to corresponding personality types too. Right, yeah. So like the word melancholy in English, it's an adaptation of the Greek words, I believe, for black bile. There it is. And melancholy personalities were associated with an overabundance of black bile. And basically, you're melancholy. You're a depressed person or you're very reserved or quiet.

And for thousands of years, people thought, guys got a lot of black bile. Yeah. That explains his personality. The other ones are pretty, pretty interesting, too. Like, phlegmatic? Flammatic? I've seen flagmatic.

I've heard flagmatic. Oh, really? I've seen it, too. So, like, when you cough something up, do you call it flag them? Sometimes. Depends. If it had, like, a lot of extra chunks in it, it's flagged.

Oh, gosh. But flammatic, I say flagmatic. I say flagmatic. That's very laid back. Did you know that? Well, yeah, because I looked all these up. Oh, okay. Because sanguine is one of my favorite words.

Yeah. And this is Hippocrates, by the way. He kind of further refined these concepts of the temperament. So, melancholic, phlegmatic, sanguine, and what is it? Caleric. Yeah. Chalric. Yeah.

Caleric. Caleric is like irritable and short and terse and curts. Yeah. But the thing is, there's something weird here, right? If you are a thinking human being who is not in a vegetative state right now. Correct. And for all we know, at this point in medical science, maybe even if you are in a vegetative state, you're probably thinking it doesn't seem like anyone I've ever met is just flagmatic or just choleric or just sanguine or just melancholy. sometimes I'm all four of those things. Sometimes I go through those things all four in a day,

depending on how weird the day is. Sometimes I go through all four of those within the course of one happy hour. Sure, okay, right. And that's kind of the point here, and it's also the basis of any criticism from this moment in the podcast here on out, is that this whole thing that started back

with the four humors and continues on to this day in the guise of personality tests Yeah. Is an attempt to take a human personality and say, you're this. Yeah. You're this one type. You're this type.

This is your type. This is what you're like, right? Yeah. And the human personality is just too complex, too squishy, too jelly-like to be boxed into one thing like that. Yeah. And we'll get into all the criticisms, but that definitely is the leading criticism that is, well, we'll save that. Okay. That was a tease.

It was a good tease. It was a phlegmatic one. All these classifications, though, that we talk about now are, or most of them at least, are derived, laid the feet of one man, one Carl Jung, who wrote a book called Psychological Types. How do you say it, though, in German? I don't know. It's, oh, where is it? Let me see.

Oh, there it is. I can't even begin to do it. uh psycho sorry psychologic is psychologic typin it's not bad it's so tiny that was the problem because you oh yeah i do 10 point i don't like to waste paper well you know me i'm i've you do like 16 point times new roman i love paper and i don't want to waste it but i also have to do my job sure maybe i should go double-sided, but then my highlighter gets in the way. Oh, yeah. It'd be a problem.

Oh, man. Everything would be highlighted. You might as well just dip the whole page in yellow ink or something. Yeah, exactly. So anyway, Jung wrote this book, that book, in 1921 and German and had it translated to English a couple of years later. Mm-hmm. And he created these

four categories, sensation, intuition, thinking, and feeling. Right. so those were his four that kind of most of these modern tests are based on in some way or another yeah and um it's really almost impossible that i guess we could just save all the criticisms for the end and just pile them on but it's it's really tough to talk about this stuff and not like as you present one fact talk about the problem with that fact as it relates to modern incarnation

what do you think we should do should we just save them like you say because i like you can bite my tongue. Yeah, let's say them. Okay. And then you can just like... I'm not even trying, like, I'm not going crop circle here. I'm just saying like there's just a lot wrong with this. But even before Jung, who created these, the concept of, the modern concept, I should say, personality types. And he created the idea of introvert and extrovert, which say what you will about Jung, and a lot of psychologists have a lot to say about him. Yeah. Not necessarily the nicest things to say. But introversion and extroversion is so widely accepted inside and out of the field of psychology that, I mean, if that were his only contribution to the field, that's enough

to engrave it on your tombstone for sure. Yeah, and each of those four psychological types he was talking about are modified by whether or not you were introverted or extroverted. They all kind of work together to box you in that was like the right that was the main thing is how you how you approach life is introvert or extrovert and everything else was like a sub it's kind of a subsection of that or something yeah and one of the issues with this and i don't think this is part of the criticism but i was going to say i thought we were saving him he was uh this was based on his ideas it wasn't like he had all this research and all this data he he was a deep thinker and he sat around and thought of these things.

Right, exactly. And then he wrote entire books based on him. Yeah. But he was a very well-respected psychoanalysts, and he was part of the early movement for psychoanalysis with Freud. They were colleagues, although Jung was much younger. But they eventually said, I don't like you anymore. We're parting ways.

But as psychoanalysis was really kind of establishing itself, And if you want to know more about that background and the origin of psychoanalysis, go listen to her how PR works, the live show. Yeah. We talked a lot about that. But as this was going on and it was starting to kind of dominate the field of psychology, there was a whole other movement, a parallel movement, that said, you know what, we think all that's a little mushy. We like the idea of being able to quantify psychology. Yeah. And so even before Jung, there were guys like Alfred Benet, who was one of the indirect fathers of the intelligence test, the IQ test, a pair of researchers named Gray and Wheelwright, and plenty of others who wanted to say, no, no, no, no, you can study psychology. You can study things like the human personality, and you can typify them. You can add numbers. You can quantify this stuff. And in doing so, we will prove psychological.

as a science as well. So this whole movement to typify people and put them into convenient, almost numerical categories came out of this urgent need to establish a scientific basis for psychology. Yeah, and Jung, he kind of laid the table for this. And many years later, although not that many, there was a woman named Catherine Cook Briggs. Yeah.

And she was working on this with her daughter, one, Isabel Briggs-Myers. I think you see where this is going. And this is post-World War II, and women were kind of for the first time really going into the workforce in full and en masse. And so they thought, well, maybe we can put together some personality types to find out what kind of jobs these women might be suited for, what types of jobs they might enjoy. Right. So they started working together on this. And as legend has it, the mom, Catherine, Briggs, Cook Briggs, she was doing her thing. And then saw Jung's works and said, I got to start over.

This is the stuff. She had already been working on a personality test. Yeah. But apparently, according to the legend, threw her work into the fire. Yeah. Said, I'm starting from scratch. It's all dramatic. She was a voracious reader.

especially of the psychology, the new psychology books that were coming out of Europe, right? She didn't read Jung? She did. Well, eventually, but it seems like it kind of came along later. Well, so, yeah, there's kind of a weird discrepancy in the history, and I don't know if it's just it hasn't been covered right or if there is a weird discrepancy,

but supposedly she initiated it, and so it would have been contemporary or shortly after Jung's psychology or person personality types, was translated in English in 1923. But it was her daughter, Isabel, who really took it and ran with it because of World War II and the need for women in the workplace. Correct. So they, you know, kind of kept some of young stuff built on that. It kind of stripped some of it away, most notably a lot of the unconscious stuff.

They might have thought that was a little too weird for, you know, the modern American workforce. So what they ended up coming up with was the MBTI, Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, very famously. Yeah, and they had a publishing arrangement with one group. I can't remember what they were called, but they thought it didn't do very well. And then in 1975, they went with another publisher, CPP, and they're the current publishers of the Myers-Briggs type indicator. And since then, that's when its ubiquity, like, just really spread, was starting in the 70s. And now it's just, it's basically married to corporate America. Should we take a break?

Sure. Go get married to corporate America? Yeah. As if we aren't already. All right, we'll come back and we'll talk a little bit about personality tests in general and then focus in a little more on the MBTI. I'm E-B-L-L-K-S-K-K-H-E-H-F you should know. I'm I Belongoria.

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You can get your head measured with calipers. Back in the day, they did that, right? They didn't give you a bunch of jugs and see what you do. There's a lot of ways. But these tests generally, as Grabster points out, falls into a couple of types, projective and objective. Projective tests are things like the Roershack test

where you're shown something, some kind of stimulus, and it's open to interpretation, and you tell them what you think about it, and someone sits back very quietly and taps on a pad of paper and makes an evaluation. Very interesting. And then objective are more like these personality tests. They're standardized assessments that people use.

And while it's subjective what you put down, they are then evaluated again by a professional. Right. But ultimately, that objective name is a bit of a misnomer because on the end of it, it's still interpreted by a person. Yeah. Which, therefore, makes it subjective. Right. And which, depending on who you ask, is the fatal flaw of all personality tests.

It should be, like, a good song from the 70s had a little parenthetical at the end of the title. Right. It should just say subjective also. Right. In parentheses. Baby. So the big five are, and this is, the big five I get the feeling are the psychological test that, that legit, psychologists are more in favor of over something like the MBTI.

Is that right? Yeah, it's not just, there's tests to suss out the big five. The big five are the personality types of the field of psychology has come up with. Well, yeah, but the tests that utilize that, they kind of think are more legit than the MBTI. Yeah, there's not a psychologist alive who uses the MBTI in their regular practice. Oh, I bet there are. Not that are speaking up. I guarantee you there's someone out there.

Sure. It's a freewheeling type. Where's she? So the big five are extroversion, agreeableness, openness to experience, conscientiousness, and neuroticism. Right. Sounds like it could be like a dating site thing that you fill out. It's funny. Every time I see or hear the word neuroticism, a bell goes off in my head.

Like, ding. Just a silent bell? Yeah. I don't know what that means. I don't either, but it draws my attention to it. So some of these tests, I mean, it depends on what it is. They might not all call them by those exact words, but they're generally using, they call them, you know, like I said, the big five.

Yeah, and I was looking into that big five, and this site, I can't remember what it was called, but they were basically, they were going over it. Like, extroversion is, again, just part of the scientific literature at this point. agreeableness is like whether you're how sympathetic or kind or affectionate you are conscientiousness is are you organized are you thorough or you're the type who shows up on time that kind of thing yeah um neuroticism which is some kind sometimes called emotional stability um how tense are you how moody how anxious ding uh and then like openness to experience right

yeah they sometimes call that intellect slash imagination do you have wide interests yeah are you an imaginative person are you insightful and this this site really went to a lot of pains to point out that what you would call these things the big five personality traits are as far as a psychologist is concerned just one dimension of you the human being yeah and that to get a clearer picture of you they would also need to study your motivations your emotions your emotions your attitudes your abilities your self-concepts your social roles autobiographical memories your life stories and if you start to put all these things together, then you can start to kind of approximate

the person's personality. But it would just, it takes a lot of study of an individual and these different components that make up their personality to get a clear picture. So I don't think there are any psychologists walking around saying the big five personality types or like the beginning and end of a personality. It's just if you put them together,

you have just a sketch of somebody's personality and you should go much deeper if you're analyzing someone. Yeah, I used to think this stuff was a lot neater when I was younger, and now it kind of gives me a little anxiety. Oh, yeah? Yeah, like, I just, I don't know, as far as doing this to myself, and I still enjoy therapy, like, that's different, but I don't know, because every single one of these, like, my answer would be, well, it depends.

Well, I think also, though, and I don't mean to speak for you, but one of the issues that comes up for me is, If somebody goes to you and says, you know, you rate pretty high on the spectrum of neuroticism. Like, that's, obviously, you're going to obsess about that kind of stuff, especially if they're right. It can make you neurotic. But, yeah, it's a boundary that somebody has just established for you that you may feel the need to stay in because that's the boundary that you're bound by, whether you are or not. Like, this is my box. Right.

I'll live in it. That would be the reason it raises anxiety for me. Yeah, well, my whole thing, like I said, though, is just depends. Every single question that I would get asked, well, not everyone. Sometimes I'm pretty, like, set on something. But usually I'd say, I don't know, depends on the scenario. Right. Am I more prone in a crowd to do X or Y?

Maybe. Right. Maybe not. Depends on my mood. So one with these other personality tests, and the whole field in psychology of studying traits, personality traits in a quantitative

ways called psychometrics. So with these tests, the more sophisticated ones, if they had a test taker like you, they're designed

to get around that. So they're going to ask a bunch of different questions about the same thing but in different ways coming from different directions so that

eventually if you put all of them together and run them through a statistical analysis, they're actually going to come up with your genuine answer, which is kind of one way or another.

Right. The other way that they get around this, that kind of hemming and hawing, I guess, is by placing it on a spectrum, you're not being lumped into one category or another, it's here's one end of the spectrum, here's the other end of the spectrum, and based on your answers, you fall somewhere around the middle, like almost everybody does. Right. If you look at psychometric tests, a legitimate psychometric test is going to, basically, you look like a bell curve where most people are going to be distributed toward the middle yeah

i think what that's why it gives me anxiety it's like what's the point don't don't box me in it's a great question um well i think the second half of this is a lot of what's the point yeah you know uh so looking speaking uh on these tests to see if it's actually if there is a point if it's a valid thing to do uh there are a couple of measures that one must look at and that some psychologists do look at. Is it valid and is it reliable, valid in the sense that it really is a pretty good reflection of Josh or Chuck or whoever? And is it reliable? So if we take this test tomorrow or a different test that's just, you know, maybe different questions, will it reproduce the same result? Right. And that's a big deal. Like if you're talking science and you're trying to have a

foundation that says no, this is science. It's not just a bunch of questions and hippie-dippy questions that we're asking. If you really want real data and science behind it, you have to be able to reproduce it. Right. One of the other things, too, that these tests are designed to do is to weed out fakers. Right. We'll talk a lot more about the Minnesota multi-phazic personality inventory, which is one of the big ones. Yes. Probably the most take personality test in the world. Yeah. And it has a lot of built-in mechanisms, and apparently is really good at detecting people

who are faking, they're faking a mental illness, or who are trying to pretend that they aren't suffering from a mental illness. Yeah. It's really good at detecting that because it's so exhaustive. And using statistical analysis, if somebody's skewed really far one way or skewed really far the other, they're just immediately exposed as gaming the test as best they can. Yeah, in one way they do that, which is in its own way, its own little psychology experiment, at least, is by telling you, if you have ways.

Right. Like, you will be rooted out and we will know. Exactly. So they tell people that beforehand, so you're more inclined to just be like, all right, well, screw it, I'll tell the truth. Right. Especially when they're sitting there, like, clearing the air out of a syringe. that's creepy it is all right so let's get back to uh CPP and the MBTI the consulting psychologists press right and the Myers Briggs uh we'll just keep calling it a test even though

they say it's not a test it's a type inventory yeah uh so we'll just go ahead and break down the deal here there are the object is to sort you into one of 16 different types personality types based on which side of four pairs or dichotomies that you're going to fall on. And those are at the very base. You're either introverted or extroverted, like we said, E or I. Sensing or intuition, S and N. And these words, they sound a little confusing, like what the heck does a sensing person mean? Yeah.

It means you like the big data and empirical data and a lot of information. Right, whereas intuition is like you just go with your guess. That's how you prefer to be. Correct. Right? The next, we have thinking and feeling, thinking being more focused on logic. Did I say logic with a T? Sure.

And objectivity. And then if you're feeling, you're going to be more interested in relationships and harmony among your group. Those two are pretty straightforward. Yeah, I think so. And then lastly, there's judging and perceiving. Those are, that's a dichotomy. Judging is where you, you prefer schedules, you prefer decisiveness. That's how you kind of approach life.

Yeah. And perceiving is where you're just kind of like, whatever, yeah, I'm not too worried about it. Yeah. That's almost kind of like the difference between the type A and type B personalities, which, by the way, was made up by a pair of cardiologists. Oh, really? Whose work was later secretly funded by the tobacco industry who were looking for anything to explain heart attacks besides smoking. Uh-huh. So they funded type A and type B personality research for years.

Interesting. Yeah, it really is. There's a, just as an aside, there's a really interesting price, I think, yeah, priceonomics article. On type A and type B? Yeah, just look it up. I don't remember the name. All right. So when you sit down to take one of these, not tests, with a series of questions that you answer.

I think they call them instruments, by the way. Psychometric instruments. Which are basically a series of questions on a piece of paper. Sounds like a test. They will say things like Ed has some good examples here. When you go on a trip, do you want everything planned out in advance, or would you rather just take each day as it comes and do whatever you feel like? Pretty straightforward kind of stuff.

Right. And then they also have things like word pairs just to see literally what word you like better. Like compassion, foresight. Like, which word do you like better? Carrots or fruit? Fruit. Yeah. It's just prettier. It is.

So I'm looking back here. I just want to say so. I think. You're trying to figure out what you were? Yeah, I think E-N-F-P maybe. I think... That's what I was. We weren't the same thing.

I don't remember. Umi and I got the same thing. She found an old email, but she forgot to tell me what we were. Oh, really? I really... I don't know. Problem is, would we still be the same today?

Yeah, and I think, if I'm not mistaken, didn't we have this up on a big board in the office for a while? I think so, yeah. That seems like a... Jerry's nodding. That seems like a breach of protocol. Sure. Like privacy.

Yeah. Well, again, being forced a gunpoint to do it, It was just from the start. I remember it was kind of fun. I had a fun day. We'll talk about that as well. So it's going to cost you if you just do this as a single individual, not meaning not married, but just a person, about 50 bucks, although they should charge more if you're married.

It's more complex test. About 50 bucks, if you want an hour of feedback, it'll cost you an extra 100. And if you want a career report all typed up, that'll be 1695. Yeah. And if you, this is $1,500 for an on-site training class. Is that, like, what we had? So this is not very well explained. If you want to administer the Myers-Briggs personality or type inventory, you can get certified.

It's four-day training course. Oh, okay. And you pay $1,500 to $1,600. Oh, that's what that is. You cannot legally administer this test or you're infringing on their copyrights, unless you are certified by CPP to do this. We should do it with one another on the air and risk a lawsuit. Yeah. Well, you probably got a suit already with that one question you asked out loud.

Which one? Oh, just the one? Yeah, when you go on a trip, do you want everything planned out in advance? I just made that up. Oh, good job. Good job. I got that from Travelocity. Nice, okay.

Yeah, that little gnome whispered it in your ear. That's right. But so you would go and get certified, and then now you can go around to businesses and say, hey, do you want to know more about your employees? You want to know who's good at what? Let me come give the Myers-Briggs type inventory to your employees. And it'll be wonderful, right? So that's how the whole process goes. You pay to become certified, and then you go become something of an evangelist for the Myers-Briggs test, and you sell the test.

You basically become a salesman as well. It's a very interesting dynamic that they have going. That is. It's a good word. They want to point out that the person taking the test is the expert, and they also use this metaphor of handedness, which I didn't fully understand. They say things like it feels more comfortable to sign your name with your dominant hand,

but technically you can sign with your non-dominate hand if you need to. Right. I'm not sure what they're trying to prove there. They're trying to say that despite the MBTI, pigeonholing you fully in one category or another rather than on a spectrum, they're saying that category that it's pigeonholing you into is actually just your preference. It's not you specifically. It's just your inkling predisposition. Yeah, you tend to be an extrovert. But of course, everybody likes their own personal alone time. So yeah, you're going to be an introvert once in

Well, but you're an extrovert more than other times. Yeah, because I can't sign my name with my left hand. I didn't like that analogy because it literally, I can barely hold a pen with my left hand. I'm seeing you're doing it right now. Wow, that was pretty bad. If I try to do it, it would look like a three-year-old with arthritis has tried to, like, scribble it out.

Mine looks like Unum. U-D-M. Udom? Yeah, Udum. It's my signature with my left hand. And they do try and point out, like you said, that it's interesting because they box you in, but at the same time, they're saying, but, you know, like you said, it's just predisposition. Don't really think of it about you being this type of person, even though you are an ENFB.

Right. Like you said it was earlier, it was almost numbered. I mean, it is. It's lettered. Mark, it's just a different way of quantifying it. Yeah. But without numbers. All right, you want to take a break? And then come back and maybe do a little criticism?

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And let's get weird together in a good way. Listen to what are we even doing on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Chuck, Chuck, Chuck, Chuck, Chuck. Chuck. All right, Chuck, like I said, it's kind of a past time in the United States to tee off on the Myers-Briggs type inventory. Yeah, this is not us here.

This is... No, this is us talking about other people teeing off on it. Yeah, it's widely been criticized over the years from psychologists and, well, amateur know-nothings like us. Sure. One of the big criticisms is that companies use this stuff

and hiring and firing and promoting. But even the Myers-Briggs people, CPP say, like, don't do that. Well, I know, but they say, say that, but then don't go to an office and get hired by a corporation to administer it. Right. Or go sell your services, you know. Yeah.

Yeah. Agreed. And that's part of the problem. To me, that is more the corporation's fault. Well, sure. Like, if you have an HR person who's, like, die-hard believer in the MBTI and will hire or fire somebody based on their MBTI type, fire that person.

Yeah. Because you have a real dumb, dumb on your hands. They're a DD. And they should not be responsible for people's livelihoods. Yeah. Even, I don't think they would put it quite in those terms, but even the Myers-Briggs people say, like, you shouldn't use this for hiring or firing.

And yet, yes, some people do. Some people swear by this. The impression that I have is that the Myers-Briggs people, people tend to think of this as more like a team-building exercise. Right. Or where like a certified MBTI administrator can come to your place, get all your employees together, and they find out like all their personality types. And by the way, there's not a single negative personality type, and all personality types

are equal. Sure. So everybody gets a participant ribbon in the form of their personality type. Yeah. And, but at the same time, and this seems to be the crux, at the same time, everybody's finding out like, oh, you're a little different than me, and I'm a little different than you. And we all have differences in different perspectives. So let's celebrate that and let's respect one another's differences. And there is the actual point from what I understand of the Myers-Briggs type inventory and taking it in a corporate setting.

That's what stands out to me as what happened with us was, I remember it kind of being a fun day. They were like Tutsi rolls. Yeah, we all goofed off and had a good time. And the person leading it, if they're good at what they do, which this person was, is always, you know, it's always kind of a fun person and cracking jokes and they don't take it too seriously. Right. None of us took it too seriously. And we all had a good time.

And it did, it was very much like a team building thing. Right. So as long as there's like a wink, wink, nudge, kind of thing. Yeah. And the people who take it actually take it seriously are taken off to the side by their HR rep to say like, no, this is a little less serious than you're taking it. Then it's fine. But yes, once you start deciding people's fate based on this, then you have real problems because, as just about anybody will tell you, the Myers-Briggs type inventory is based at best on some shaky science, if at all. If you go back to the very beginning, it's based on the theories of Carl Jung, which have never been based on science.

There are basically personal observations by Jung. And the psychology community has disavowed Jung in large part. So therefore, anything based on his teachings and theories is by proxy disavowed as well. But if that weren't enough, psychology as a field loves going after the Myers-Briggs-type inventory. just loves it as totally baseless scientifically. All right. So we've got shouldn't use it to hire and fire in corporations or give promotions. Right.

We have not based on real science and scientific data. These four dichotomies are problematic in and of themselves because everyone is on a spectrum. You can't say like, you know, you answered these 10. questions so you're either this or you're that right um and when one of the rebuttals uh because i think ed interviewed someone from cp right yeah um one of the rebuttals about being a non-repeatable um experiment of sorts is like hey yesterday i was an enfp and today i'm this they'll say well you know what if you have different answers that means you were sort of on the cusp right there in that center line on some of these questions and you might have just left you

over to that other side, which means you're basically kind of down the center. Yet they don't have a categorization for down the center. Yeah, because depending on, as Ed puts it, you could answer all 24 questions on the feeling side. Yeah. And you're going to get the same result as somebody who answered 11 questions for thinking and 13 questions for feeling. Right. Same thing. You're still both an F in that respect. And I saw elsewhere it put like if the Myers-Briggs test, measured height, you would either be tall or short. Yeah. You could say, well, actually, I'm right there in the middle, and they'd be like, well, that's short.

Right. Or for you, it's short. For the guy who is the same exact height, they're tall. Right. And trust me, nobody, this 510 likes to be considered short. Right. I can say that from experience. Because you're not.

You're average. I'm average. Right. I like being average. The fact that there isn't a spectrum is one thing that really makes it in stark contrast of other much more widely accepted psychometric instruments. For sure. Ed also points out, too, the Grabster

that the construction of the instrument itself is problematic because one, like we talked about, it's self-reporting. Anytime you're self-reporting, there's going to be some weird bias in there. Sure. Just almost impossible to avoid 100%.

That's right. And the other one is that he says, couple of these dichotomies are entangled, which I never really thought about that, but that's a pretty good point. Yeah. So judging perceiving scale are correlated with answers on the sensing intuition scale. And if you, like, those should be separated out for sure. For sure. I don't know why they don't. I don't either, you know, because they've really put a lot of work into this. Yeah. I mean, it's not baked in stone from the,

the 1940s and 50s and 60s, is it? No, it's not. And even while they were creating, it was an ongoing, exhaustive process that Mrs. Briggs and Mrs. Myers engaged in. Yeah, we don't want to give, they spent decades on this. Yes.

It wasn't like something they threw together. No. The problem is, is they did it backwards. They came up with the personality types and then said about creating the test that would detect these personality types rather than going out and testing people, seeing what personality types emerged

and then figuring out a test to find that in other people. They did it backwards. That's a good point. It was based on Jung, but it was not for lack of trying. Like, as a matter of fact, one of the first things they did

after they started to really establish the test was they managed to administer it to like 5,000 George Washington University medical students and they took those results and tracked the students to see what fields of medicine they went in. They really worked on this. I wrote an article in the Washington,

in post where this I think Isabelle Myers' son remembers their vacations were basically

like fact-finding missions all around the country like they would go administer a test like everything was about this test

and I worked on it for decades so yeah the problem is it was just it's just not based on science they didn't follow

the scientific method yeah so so science kind of poo-poo's the MBTI but wait wait wait get back here because a lot of these criticisms fall just as easily on every other psychometric test around well yeah and that's one of the things that um i can't

remember who was interviewed in here but um and one of those other articles you sent one of the um myers or i don't know if it was or maybe it was a rorschach defender right um said you know like everyone, yeah, it was Rorschach, like everyone's always picking on Rorschach when all of these psychological tests are, you know, subject to criticism. They are. You know? I think it's really easy for Rort to tee off on Rorschach as well because, I mean, we're talking ink plots, man.

It is the epitome of subjective self-reporting. You're saying I, let's see, in this one, I see mom's boobs. Yeah, mom's boobs in that one, too. This one is a dad's boobs. Right. Exactly. So, and then from that, it was strictly up to, initially, Rorschach, who I think came up with this test in 1915, 1917. What's the name Herman? I think so. He's a Swiss psychiatrist. Herman Rorschach.

It was initially up to him and then later on his followers to interpret this, which is basically like interpreting dreams. Yeah. So subjective. Totally subjective. From beginning to end. And then in, I think, 1975, a guy at Bowling Green State University, which is right outside of Toledo, came up with this a really exhaustive, interpretive test that sought to quantify Rorschach answers. Yeah, John Exner. Yeah.

And it was a test called the Comprehensive System, 140 components. And in this article, they said that Rorschach was brought. probably going away had it not been for Exner's accompaniment with this other process. Right, and even today, he's got an institute in Asheville that's dedicated to the Roershack test, right? So one thing I've noticed from researching this is each of these personality inventories has, like, its adherence and its detractors. Yeah. And just judging from the outside, it looks a lot like cults gathered around their various idols, right? Yeah, it's interesting.

There's like the original figurehead who came up with it and everybody worships them and he's attacked by these other followers who have a very similar figurehead who came up with something very similar, but it's just different enough that there's a huge chasm between the two and there's a lot of dogma surrounding it. But the Rorschach test in particular is apparently well known to give wildly inaccurate results. I took one today. Did you? How did you do? I got two out of ten, which means. I was only two away, whatever that means, from being labeled like a psychotic.

So, yeah, there's a... You get four out of ten, I think. There's a... Oh, really? I think that's what it said, yeah. Wow, that's close. I mean, this is an online test. I don't know if it's like how true it was to the original.

I got you. Or maybe the original. Yeah, it could be. And then they have an algorithm that runs the analysis for you. I kept seeing all kinds of things when I looked at it. And I've never done an inkplot test. I would say, oh, that looks like a bat. And then they was like, no, it's like two bunnies.

And then, no, it looks like a cool Mardi Gras mask. Did they move to you? Did you see colors? Well, some of them were colored. Oh, okay. Most of them were black. And they had a, the one I took had a one and a two, like, what do you see and what's like a secondary thing that you see?

Right. So, you know. Supposedly, people who are supporters of the Rorschach test say, no, man, there's, we don't know how it's working. But if you see movement in the Rorschach ink, blots, it's suggestive of depression or something like that. And they say statistically it's correlated. But like I was saying, it's also notorious for giving incorrect results. Yeah, like saying you have a mental illness. Right. Okay. So there was a study in 2000 that was given to like 100

mentally sound elementary school kids. Yeah. And some like high percentage of them came back as borderline psychotic because of the Rorschach test, right? And it's hilarious to hear stories like that. Like, I'm laughing inside right now. But the problem is, is you're at the very least being labeled as psychotic. Sure. Not a label you want in society. No. And it was because of this inkblot test that's 100 years old. Yeah. And then secondly, these tests are also being submitted and accepted as evidence in criminal trials. That's the biggest part. Child custody cases. Yeah. I mean, they're still given real weight and, like, lives are changed and ruined based on looking at a hundred-year-old inkblots. Yes.

And a person's subjective analysis of that. That's not okay. No, this Howard Garb in this one article you sent, he's a co-author of What's Wrong with the Rorschach, and he is head of cycle, or at least at the time of this article, he may still be, head of psychological testing for the Air Force. He said that even with Exner's comprehensive system, he said only 10% of his. system even meets the most basic scientific standards and um they did uh examine data of over 30 different rorschach studies and he said they all have a tendency to label healthy people mentally ill right and if you're trying to get custody of your kid or if you are on trial as a criminal like it's just that's the last thing you need yeah is somebody's subjective opinion of is it a bunny or is

it a bat oh he said a bat take that kid you know quick And kids like, I like bunnies. The, another one that we have to talk about is the MMPI, now the MMPI-Dash-2, I think as of 2012. They revised it dramatically. Yeah, is this one, is that right? It has over 500 questions. Yeah. Wow.

Some of them originally were about like your bowel movements. Okay. Really nutso questions that supposedly really got to the heart of whether you. you were mentally disturbed or not, right? Yeah. And it was created at the University of Minnesota in the 40s by a psychiatrist and a neurologist, I believe. And they hit upon a pretty clever idea.

They said, we're not going to interpret the results, right? And say, you know, oh, this person said that they do feel like smashing something sometimes. Yeah. And that means this. Instead, we're going to come up with this test of like 504 questions, and we're going to give it to the patient or the family and staff of a mental hospital who we're sure are sane and we're going to take their answers and they're going to become our control group, our baseline.

Yeah. So then anybody who takes this test, we're going to compare the test takers answers to the sane control group's answers and, you know, depending on how it relates to the same control group, they're either mentally ill or not. You better have gotten that control group right. Well, that's the thing. To begin with. So a group of, like, family and friends in Minnesota is the picture of sanity throughout the world is the basis of this test.

That's a huge problem with it to begin with. Yeah. But apparently, a lot of people say, like, no, it really has, it does a pretty good job of sussing out mental illness. Yeah. It's also really good at detecting faking one way or the other. Yeah. but it's it's too invasive and when companies use it for hiring and firing it's way too invasive and apparently lawsuits have been filed against companies for using it well i think that um most people

are far more um troubled than they ever let on in life sure and um part of success in life comes down to how good you are at covering that up or hiding it or dealing with it and processing it. Yeah, that's optimal. Coming to terms with it, it's just to find a core group that are quote, unquote, sane, normal people. It's just you're starting off with a problem if you ask me. A faulty premise, right?

Yeah, it just, there's no way. Like, everyone has their issues. deep, dark things at their brain that they don't want anyone to know. Sometimes even the people closest to them don't even know. Yeah. And actually, you're in agreement with this, a sociologist named William White, who criticized the MMPI as a tool that helped to create and perpetuate the oppressive group think of mid-century organization man.

Yeah. Where it's basically like, here is what we think is normal. Anything outside of that is abnormal. And we're not going to hire you because you don't fit into this picture of normalcy, which is basically white crew cut Minnesota from the 40s. Right. That's the picture of normalcy. That's highly debatable.

The other thing I thought was interesting is a lot of skeptics and critics point to things like the MBTI and saying, this is just like astrology. It is really no different than reading your horoscope because it's all positive psychology. at the end of a Myers-Briggs non-test. No one walks away feeling bad, usually. It's all sort of positive wording. And like, this is what you are. You're just this.

So kind of don't worry about it. The same way you read your horoscope in a given day. I mean, how many horoscopes say, like, today you will be prone to depression and wonder what it's all about. Right. Maybe you should work on your core character because people don't like being around you that much. You don't hear that kind of stuff.

No. But they taps into what's called the Forer Effect, F-O-R-E-R. There was a psychiatrist named Bertram Forer, I think. I thought this is so interesting. He will take it. It's pretty interesting stuff. Well, I mean, basically, didn't he give the same? He had people take these tests and then gave all of the people the exact same assessment.

Right. But telling everyone it was tailored for them, their own personality assessment. And I think the people who just thought it was favorable were like, this is great. Well, it was favorable. He actually called it from daily horoscopes. Well, yeah, but what were they responding positively to? Well, it was... Whether or not they wanted to feel that way about themselves? No, it was a positive assessment. There was nothing negative in there. So it was all positive stuff. Like, you have a lot of unused potential, that kind of stuff. Stuff people wanted to

identify with. Right. So the more flattering it was, the more likely the people were to say, this is an accurate assessment of me. Oh, okay. So despite the fact that it was the same one given to the entire class, he took their answers and threw them out and said, here's your assessment. It's the same one for everybody. That's about right. It got like an 85% accuracy from the class as a whole. Well, that's what I wondered.

It was about the 15% were those people just super honest. Maybe. And like, no, this really. No, people actually don't like being around me. I'm using all of my potential and they still don't like me. Yeah, that's what I couldn't figure out. But I guess that makes sense. There are people out there that are, I think I would be one of those that would be like,

this isn't right. Yeah. I'm not like that. Sure. you got anything else i think not this is a good one we've been we've been wanting to do this for a while yeah this is a special request by me and others uh if you want to know more about personality tests well you can go take them online they're kind of huge right now uh find out what kind of um hobbit you are i don't know what box do you live in yeah uh and in the meantime you can type

personality tests in the search bar at house to works dot And since I said that, it's time for listener mail. The only thing that should live in a box is a temporary housing for a pet frog. That's not bad. Or the stuff you find in a tree hole that Boo Radley left for you? Yeah, that can live in a box. Hey guys, feel compelled to write you today to tell you how grateful I am for your show and praise your good work. Recently became a listener and I'm working my way through the entire archive.

I think a lot of folks might be able to relate to this. Until recently, I found out, I found it really hard to relax and suffer with anxiety. Two months ago, I read an article basically pointing out how our obsession with being productive and associated guilt is a modern phenomenon. I think that for sure, you know? Yep. Although I had heard this before, something really clicked in my head. So I decided to abandon guilt and embrace relaxation, taking control of my own stress levels.

You guys have been a big part of this. I have taken the time to slowly potter around my flat, go for walks while listening and learning to your fascinating podcast, and they've lifted my mood, I feel mentally healthier than I ever have before. Nice. Although the content of what you discuss might not always be positive, the way in which you explain them

and your own views personally revive my hope in humanity. That is ridiculously flatter. Isn't that nice? Yeah. I guess this should also mention that a big part of my tackling anxiety levels has been to abandon watching television. And fistfuls of psychotropic drugs. I would be really interested to know if there's been any research conducted into the effect TV has upon our lives.

Oh, I'm sure there has been. Sure. I haven't owned a TV for many years, but my partner has since subscribed to an online provider. And I realize how watching TV has not helped my anxiety. I also remember reading that after TVs became mainstream in Bhutan, their crime rate went up something like 700%. Might prove an interesting topic for a future show. Yeah. Anyway, sincerely grateful, keep it up.

I am now recommending your shows to as many people as I can. Big love from the UK, Mac. Thanks a lot, Mac. That was great. We hear from a lot of people, actually, who say that we help them with their anxiety. No idea how, but it doesn't matter. So thank you. Yep.

Yeah. If you want to get in touch of this like Mac did, you can send us an email to Stuff Podcast at iHeartRadio.com. Stuff you should know is a production of IHeartRartRadio. Radio. For more podcasts, My Heart Radio, visit the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Jenna World. Jenna Jamison, Vivid Video, and the Valley is a new podcast about the history of the adult film industry. I'm Molly Lambert, and I'll be your tour guide on a wild trip through adult films. We get paid more than the men. we call the shots.

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On the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. I'm Ibel Angoria. And I'm Maite Gomes Gron. And this week on our podcast, Hungry for History, we talk oysters, plus the Mianbi Chief stops by. If you're not an oyster lover,

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