"Are you an ENTJ, or are you an ENTP?"

"Are you ENTJ, or are you ENTP?"

Nowadays, in the social circle of young people, to "break the ice" in making friends, you need to match the "code" first. These mysterious codes consisting of 4 letters have become the social tags of many young people, and it is the MBTI test that is currently exploding in social networks.

If you search for MBTI test software on the Internet, the number of testers exceeds ten million. On Weibo, the number of MBTI-related topics read is as high as 800 million. Many groups named after MBTI personality types have emerged on various online social networking platforms, and expression packs and various "stalker pictures" based on MBTI are even played by young people to perfection. Young people also add MBTI codes to their self-introduction when making friends or going on blind dates.

While the MBTI test has become popular, it has also attracted a lot of controversies, and many people call it "superstition" and "pseudo-science".

1

4 letters "unlock" 16 personality types

The MBTI test, known as the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), was developed by American author Myers and her mother Briggs in the 1940s as a self-reporting It is a self-report personality assessment tool that describes the patterns of mental activity and personality type performance in the way people obtain information, make decisions, and approach life.

"The MBTI test involves a psychological theoretical foundation derived from the writings of Jung, the famous founder of analytical psychology." Chen Zhiyan, a professor at the Institute of Psychology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, introduced in an interview that Jung published a book called Psychological Types in the 1920s to 1930s, in which he first classified personality types, such as the concepts of introversion and extroversion that we know so well came from this book.

Along with the concepts of introversion and extroversion, Jung also proposed the four major functions of personality (thinking, emotion, intuition, and feeling). He believed that everyone may have these four functions, but they are manifested in different degrees in each person. Therefore, based on the dominant functions in each person, plus the introvert and extrovert variables, he further divided people into eight types, namely, extroverted thinking, introverted thinking, extroverted emotion, introverted emotion, extroverted intuition, introverted intuition, extroverted feeling, and introverted feeling.

The MBTI test is an assessment tool developed based on Jung's psychological type theory, which measures individual behavioral differences in four dimensions, including mental energy direction, information access, decision-making style, and life attitude orientation.

Each dimension consists of two directions representing different preferential tendencies, namely E (Extroversion) and I (Introversion), N (Intuition) and S (Sensing), F (Feeling) and T (Thinking), and P ( Perceiving) and J (Judging).

The different preferences of the four dimensions are arranged and combined to form 16 personality types, and the four letters are combined to form a category of personality traits, such as ENTP for the curious debater and INTP for the uncontested idealist ......

2

The scientific validity of the MBTI is disputed by academics

"There are many measurement tools developed based on Jung's personality theory, and the MBTI is considered the most well-known among them." Chen Ziyan said that the more well-known ones are also the Kelsey Temperament Type Test, while the MBTI has been able to "come out of the circle" mainly because it has been more successful in the commercial promotion, so it is more influential in the international arena.

Unlike other personality tests, the MBTI is easy to use and the test results are more intuitive, often requiring no further interpretation or reflection, and what you see is what you get.

At the same time, MBTI cleverly combines test results with romantic texts. For example, INFP personalities with personality traits such as shyness, sensitivity, perfectionism, and low self-esteem are described as "healers," "idealists" or "philosophers. Such expressions are more acceptable to people, and the MBTI test has thus gained a wider dissemination effect.

"The MBTI test is based on Jung's personality theory and is a very widely used tool in personality testing, but researchers in personality psychology have always been controversy about the MBTI. For example, some scholars think such a classification is very simple and crude, such as whether personality can be divided into 16 types.

In addition, the degree of the science of a test is influenced by many other factors. "For example, the Chinese version of the MBTI test is commonly used in China. When a psychological test is introduced from abroad, research work needs to be conducted in many aspects to ensure its accuracy and application value. But specifically, whether the MBTI test used by a certain person is the Chinese version that has been verified by research, the user is likely to be unaware of it." Chen Ziyan said.

Although the scientific validity of the test has been questioned, many people cannot help but exclaim that they "hit every single one of them" when forwarding their MBTI type descriptions, and they believe the test results are very accurate.

"Such feedback is caused by many reasons, one of which is that only people who think the test results are accurate will share them, and those who think they are not will not share them." Chen Zhiyan analyzed, "In addition, whether a person feels the test is accurate or not is more the result of subjective judgment, which is psychological feedback. Maybe only a certain part of the test result hits the test taker's heart, and he will feel that the test result is accurate."

3

Test results are for reference only and should not be trusted blindly

Since its introduction, the MBTI test has often been used for employee recruitment and dating to choose a spouse, so is it reliable to do so?

"Not only MBTI tests, but also many personality assessment tools are used in recruitment or other fields." Chen Zhiyan said.

"If the MBTI test results are obtained under professional guidance, employers can use them as a reference." From a professional psychology perspective, the results of any single test cannot be used as the sole criterion for hiring or not hiring, Chen Zhiyan pointed out. To examine whether a person is competent for a job, test data and past data must be combined and analyzed, and only then can a relatively reliable result be obtained for the final judgment.

According to Chen, dating is a more complex issue than recruiting. "Most of the issues involved in recruitment are at the conscious level, whereas in matchmaking there are many more issues at the unconscious level, which are difficult to test." She said.

"I also found that some online MBTI tests, to allow the test-taker to get the results in a short time, will drastically reduce the number of assessment questions, which may increase the error of the assessment results." Chen Zhiyan reminded me that after the error is increased, the test results will be more inaccurate, and at this time, it will be riskier to find the other half or recruit employees according to the chart.

"Therefore, whether you use the MBTI test for dating to choose a spouse or recruiting employees, the first thing you need to make clear is that any test has limitations." Chen Ziyan said, "MBTI tests can help us better understand people's personality traits, but we cannot infer a person's psychological characteristics just by using a single test result. To truly examine a person, one must use multiple methods and multiple perspectives, and then use the psychological test results to supplement the analysis, so that a more reliable and objective result may be obtained."