The Dark Side of Personality Classification Systems

People classification systems based on some set of pyschological traits are wildly popular with the general public and mainstream psychologists alike. The reasons for their popularity are, ironically enough, rooted in psychology and the desire or need in humans for systemization/classification as a way to understand the world we live in. This is all well known, heavily studied, and much commented upon and I have nothing of value to add to that discussion. However, in those discussions, one question that is almost never asked is what is the value of such classifications. Are they on balance a net negative or net positive for humanity? It seems obvious, that for some classifications, particularly those based on scientific principles that are useful for understanding the natural world, the desire to classify has been a huge net positive. To take just one example, without the phylogenetic classification system of Linnaeus, it would have been nearly impossible to have recognized the relationships that exist between all living beings on our planet. Darwin's theory of evolution may have never come to pass. However, the value of classifications of people based on psychological traits is much less clear. Certainly, it can be fun to determine what Myers-Briggs personality type you are, and even more fun to compare it with the types of your friends and family. And, perhaps there are some relationships that have been saved when the partners both read the five love languages and finally learned the secret ways they had never known before to make their lover happy. I must say I am more than a bit skeptical about that second one but I myself have had a lot of fun with Myers-Briggs and its many offshoots. Beyond just fun, some have claimed improved employee-employer relationships have resulted when all parties in a given business took the time to assess each others personality types and then attempted to adjust behaviors and expectations to accommodate. I did search the scientific literature for a published paper actually showing this, but was unsuccessful. Most likely this is because designing a set of controlled experiments to measure something as fuzzy as "improved employee-employer relationships" is about as easy as designing a set of experiments to show that ghosts can fall in love. Essentially, it is impossible though scads of papers are still published which purportedly measure this very thing.

I am not prepared to say there can be no upsides to any given psychological classification system, though I do believe they have been wildly exaggerated. However, their significant downsides are almost never talked about. I argue that putting people into boxes is always counter productive for all involved. The lone exception being the box makers who stand to profit handsomely from it. This is one reason whey there are so many of these systems and more are published each and every year. The main reason it is so problematic is that it strips away a part of each persons individuality and uniqueness as people. It says to a person, see you really are not all that unique, in fact, here are a billion other people that are just like you. It may not intend to do this, but it does. For many people this might be a comfort, for myself it is not, and I believe that those who are comforted by it are misguided and have been fooled by society to believe that being unique is somehow a bad thing, and that conformity to some unattainable standard is the goal we should all strive for. Another related problem with these sorts of classifications is that it puts us into a box from which there is no escape, ever. Once you are classified as X, you are X forever, no matter how much you may not want to be X or believe you are not X. According to Myers-Briggs you are X. Sorry kid, what are you gonna do? Moreover, once you believe you are X, you will see things that reinforce this belief everywhere you look, and they may or may not be real.

These systems also reflect very poorly on the entire field of Pyschology. It suggests that psychologists believe that in order to be understood they must spoon feed people psychology simplified down to a pop culture acceptable level. For the life of me I cannot see how they believe this is to their advantage. Their field is already on such shaky ground and publishing these hypotheticals which so oversimplify the complex subject matter they purport to want to understand does them no favors. At least not with me, not if they want any credibility in my eyes.

As I briefly mentioned above, I believe that part of the reason people like these classification schemes is because at heart they do not want to be unique or different. They want to be part of a group, have something automatically in common with others and therefore a pre-existing peer group. This is however, a grave mistake, a terrible error. Being like others should not be desired for its own sake, yet our entire system, our entire Western society is built upon that very notion. The notion that you should be more like X. Why exactly that is the case is never explicitly stated, but typically it boils down to because X is 'successful' aka rich and/or famous, or because X is (supposedly) happy. And it is not just the west that feels this way, if you come from an Asian culture you don't need a reason to be like X. That is simply the way you need to be and to question that is to face severe sanction and risk being totally ostracized from society. Both western and eastern cultures force conformity. They (the East) just does it in a different way than we do in the West. And there you have it, from love languages to cultural conformity in five easy steps. In the end people classification schemes based on psychological traits become nothing more than additional tools of control for those in power to enforce certain standards. A way to suggest to those without power that they are not unique, even if they think they are. They reinforce the notion that uniqueness is a non desirable trait and that it is better to be in a group with others that are just like yourself. I refuse to believe that is the case, refuse to give up on my own uniqueness, and refuse to be put into any box, despite what Myers-Briggs or the five love languages might have to say about it.