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It's instructive to read the prose about all of the types this test partitions people into. Do it before you see your results. Can you pick the one that descr
by sah 18y ago
It's instructive to read the prose about all of the types this test partitions people into. Do it before you see your results. Can you pick the one that describes you ahead of time?
They're all flattering and describe experiences that I think most humans have at some point. The sense that something written for a very broad audience applies specifically to you can be deceiving. That's part of why horoscopes are popular.
I came out as an ENTP this time (I've scored as an INTP and INFP in the past) but the profile for ISFP also describes characteristics I'd like to think I have.
I'm suspicious of things like personality sorters. This one takes the more continuous and multifaceted range of human personality and quantizes it into four binary dimensions. Even assuming those categories represent some kind of tendency for human personalities to cluster around certain traits, are sorters like this helpful? Do they provide some genuine insight you didn't have before? Or are they just a more sophisticated variety of horoscope?
You answer a bunch of vague and general questions, and get a vague and general answer. Your input is 72 bits, and the output is only 4 bits. Were those 4 bits really such a mystery to begin with? Would the results be different if the test just briefly described both categories for each dimension, and had you pick the one that sounded more like you?
If you can pick your personality out beforehand by reading short descriptions of the personality types, what was the point of answering 72 questions? If you can't, are you still willing to accept that your type really describes you?
- tricky 18y agoWho's to say studying the personality types before taking the test won't influence your answers? For many there is quite a disconnect between who you are and who you _think_ you are. The difference is even greater between who you are and who you want to be. I'd bet people who read the prose before taking the test would alter their answers (even if subconsciously) to conform to who they want to be. Tests like these can help you gain valuable insight into your personality and may help you get a handle on others with whom you don't click. If you game the test, you totally miss out on any knowledge it may provide.
- sah 18y agoI'm not sure it really can help you gain valuable insight into your personality. Has anyone measured that value? Do people who have seen their Meyers-Briggs results do better in some measurable way from people who haven't?
- hugh 18y agoI think the benefit is less in helping you understand your own personality, and more in helping you understand how others' personalities differ from your own.
- prakash 18y agoHere's the funny thing! I have been reading Erik Benson(Buster McLeod)'s blog from '04. I do't know what he started off as, but now he is a "ENTP" MEANING shit happens people change.
- dkokelley 18y agoI once took a similar, but much simpler test consisting of choleric, melancholic, sanguine and phlegmatic, and scored near evenly in each category. I was told that it was because I was a super-rare type of person, who was essentially capable of exhibiting whichever type of personality suited me at the time. I think it was because I gamed the test. While I can see the value in attempting to define the traits of certain people, I don't think that a set 4, 16, or even 200 categories will help you understand someone as well as spending a week with them will.
- JesseAldridge 18y agoWell the questions can help you reflect on yourself as well as people in general. Also, the fact that the responses to this poll skew massively toward INTP/INTJ tells you something doesn't it?
- sah 18y ago"Also, the fact that the responses to this poll skew massively toward INTP/INTJ tells you something doesn't it?" It does. I voted this up, because finding out about personality traits that correlate with voting in polls on news.YC is at least a little bit interesting. But it's still not terribly surprising, if you expand the letters: people here tend more than the average person to describe themselves as introverted, interested in theories and abstractions, and reliant on thought for decision making rather than feelings.
- Hexstream 18y agoI scored INTJ in high school and I just took the web test and scored INTJ again. So the test at least seems to have some kind of consistency.
- sah 18y agoSure it does. It sorts people into bins based on what they say. So if you would answer these questions the same way now as you did then, it will produce the same answer. The aspects of your personality that it quantizes haven't changed enough to flip the answer on any axis since last time you took the test. A test like "which Harry Potter character are you?" probably has the same kind of consistency.