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Image of Why the Myers-Briggs test is totally meaningless

It's no more scientifically valid than a BuzzFeed quiz. I've taken the MB test two times. It was clear to me from the questions that they could be answered so many different ways depending on context. I consider it an almost useless tool to understand or classify someone's personality. This is a great article that discusses the shortcomings and why the most value you can get from it is entertainment.

Myers-Briggs - What's your personality type?


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Trying out the new user tagging...

/u/c_prompt: the image on this article is huge and goes under the right column where the search bar is.

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Thanks for finding this /u/digdug. And, yes, the new functionality does work :)

Different browsers are a constant nightmare for developers. This problem looks specific to Firefox. It should be fixed now.

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HA! It did work! I got a message!

Yes, the image looks good now.

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The guy in this article might be right... but my personal experience with this test tells me differently. Not that that proves much, of course. A handful of my friends and some family members have taken this test, as well as my husband and I, and each one of us got a different result. When reading each other's results and discussing them among my friends, I could see how each result were very similar to their personalities - and would not just fit anybody else in the group. I believe the friends/family who took the test with us are people who I know pretty well... so, I am still not fully convinced that such test is completely "meaningless". The guy in the article would have to do more specific testing.... 

And, by the way, you don't need to be a psychology major to do great findings... 

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Did everyone take the full, official, paid Myers-Brigg test, or just a free test version (that link is just one example - there are many free versions around the web)?

The "meaningless" refers to the scientific validity - people who take it multiple times can very easily get a completely different result (and research shows “that as many as three-quarters of test takers achieve a different personality type when tested again”). Granted, pretty much any testing in the "social sciences" is questionable and based on opinions (e.g., What's scientific about political science? Nothing). But if you can't use it for predictive value and you get different results from the same tests, it's unreliable and, thus, meaningless.

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I have taken the test at least 4 times (if not more) for the last couple of years and I've always gotten the same result. My husband has taken it twice and he also got the same result. I have a female friend who took it twice and got the same result as well... and I have another male friend who took it 3 times getting, again, the same result. The other folks just took it once that I know of....? having said that, we are only a small portion of the test takers... 

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With all that said, I would imagine that some people may change over time... so how much time has it gone through between the takes of the test would be another fact to analyze

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