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How come dividing personality into introverted and extroverted (1 dimension) is generally accepted, but dividing personality into more dimensions (disc has 2, m

How come dividing personality into introverted and extroverted (1 dimension) is generally accepted, but dividing personality into more dimensions (disc has 2, mbti has 4, big five has 5, etc), people tend to feel uneasy (e. g. "I am more than just this")? All traps aside (confirmation bias, overdoing it), I do believe these categorizations do make sense as a way to learn about behavior, especially for the general public. That people misinterpret the meaning of the results is obviously bad, but it doesn't invalidate the theory.

INTPenis 7y ago
MBTI actually has 12 archetypes, hard to compare that with introvert and extrovert. I often reference being introverted but it's important to understand that it's a scale and everyone is somewhere on that scale. It's not binary. But it does help explain why I get tired from over exposure to strangers, but can go for hours in the company of family and close friends. And yeah I agree these things should only be used as guides or aides. I still feel my life changed when I first read my MBTI description. It was spooky, like someone had read my mind. But how does that help me? It mostly doesn't. What has helped me the most daily is knowing my limits, that I have a social battery and letting myself recharge that. And completely irrelevant to this topic my biggest aide was to understand how my stomach controlled my temper. It sounds so cliché but regular complete meals and sleep has helped me more than any psychologist.
- lemagedurage 7y ago
  MBTI has 16 archetypes, but they're all combinations of 4 letters / scales / dimensions, where 16personalities added one to that (assertive <-> turbulent). I do believe it helped me find out about the differences of other people's internal worlds, but the journey did involve avoiding a lot of pitfalls and taking everything with a healthy dose of skepticism.
  - myhf 7y ago
    The 4th dimension is not orthogonal to the others, so maybe the true cardinality is closer to 12 than 16.
username90 7y ago
Big5 is the only one of them with any scientific backing, the others are just pseudo science.
- ncmncm 7y ago
  Much of current psychology is also pseudo-science. We should be equally skeptical of credentialed psychobabble.
  - anthonypasq 7y ago
    yikes
abnry 7y ago
Categorizations in general are fine, but most people assume too much of them. The best way to think of personality is as the average class of behaviors across most circumstances. Suppose I show you a video of someone quite talkative, monopolizing the conversation for an hour, gesturing a lot with their hands. Sounds like an extroverted person? What if I told you this was a video of an introvert giving a polished presentation? The circumstances make a big difference in how people act. The problem is many people misapply a categorization as this behavior all the time, not this class of behaviors most of the time. So skeptical people obviously bristle at this suggestion. Furthermore, the generalizations often don't stop there, and many people usually extrapolate far more ridiculous ideas: "You're an X, so that means you aren't good at Y." I also agree that these categorizations make sense and that something like Meyers Briggs is a 0th order approximation to something that really exists. The fact that many people declare it pseudoscience annoys me because it at least tries to be useful (although something like the Big 5 linguistic approach is a better model). Personally, I think the most fruitful way to engage people on the topic of personality is to discuss very specific and narrow traits (like talkativeness or gesticulation). I think you are more likely to get a meaningful conversation. People of course want to know correlations, but those are tricky and you need to be slow to generalize.
FranOntanaya 7y ago
I look at MBTI as a hash function. Rather than having someone ask a few dozen questions about myself and me answering them and them putting them together, it's simpler to hash those answers into a 4 letter string. People with some big differences do get the same hash value, but the loss of accuracy seems an acceptable trade-off in casual situations.
- Miraste 7y ago
  Hash functions are repeatable. MBTI types are not--people often receive different results when retaking the test, even in short time periods. It categories are not based on research about significant aspects of personality, and often go against it. The Big Five personality test is a scientifically grounded one that actually works as you describe, and with less loss of accuracy.
- watwut 7y ago
  MBTI does not end with same result over multiple attempts. And some of the variants that are available online produce quite odd results.

INTPenis 7y ago

MBTI actually has 12 archetypes, hard to compare that with introvert and extrovert. I often reference being introverted but it's important to understand that it's a scale and everyone is somewhere on that scale. It's not binary. But it does help explain why I get tired from over exposure to strangers, but can go for hours in the company of family and close friends. And yeah I agree these things should only be used as guides or aides. I still feel my life changed when I first read my MBTI description. It was spooky, like someone had read my mind. But how does that help me? It mostly doesn't. What has helped me the most daily is knowing my limits, that I have a social battery and letting myself recharge that. And completely irrelevant to this topic my biggest aide was to understand how my stomach controlled my temper. It sounds so cliché but regular complete meals and sleep has helped me more than any psychologist.

lemagedurage 7y ago
MBTI has 16 archetypes, but they're all combinations of 4 letters / scales / dimensions, where 16personalities added one to that (assertive <-> turbulent). I do believe it helped me find out about the differences of other people's internal worlds, but the journey did involve avoiding a lot of pitfalls and taking everything with a healthy dose of skepticism.
- myhf 7y ago
  The 4th dimension is not orthogonal to the others, so maybe the true cardinality is closer to 12 than 16.

username90 7y ago

Big5 is the only one of them with any scientific backing, the others are just pseudo science.

ncmncm 7y ago
Much of current psychology is also pseudo-science. We should be equally skeptical of credentialed psychobabble.
- anthonypasq 7y ago
  yikes

abnry 7y ago

Categorizations in general are fine, but most people assume too much of them. The best way to think of personality is as the average class of behaviors across most circumstances. Suppose I show you a video of someone quite talkative, monopolizing the conversation for an hour, gesturing a lot with their hands. Sounds like an extroverted person? What if I told you this was a video of an introvert giving a polished presentation? The circumstances make a big difference in how people act. The problem is many people misapply a categorization as this behavior all the time, not this class of behaviors most of the time. So skeptical people obviously bristle at this suggestion. Furthermore, the generalizations often don't stop there, and many people usually extrapolate far more ridiculous ideas: "You're an X, so that means you aren't good at Y." I also agree that these categorizations make sense and that something like Meyers Briggs is a 0th order approximation to something that really exists. The fact that many people declare it pseudoscience annoys me because it at least tries to be useful (although something like the Big 5 linguistic approach is a better model). Personally, I think the most fruitful way to engage people on the topic of personality is to discuss very specific and narrow traits (like talkativeness or gesticulation). I think you are more likely to get a meaningful conversation. People of course want to know correlations, but those are tricky and you need to be slow to generalize.

FranOntanaya 7y ago

I look at MBTI as a hash function. Rather than having someone ask a few dozen questions about myself and me answering them and them putting them together, it's simpler to hash those answers into a 4 letter string. People with some big differences do get the same hash value, but the loss of accuracy seems an acceptable trade-off in casual situations.

Miraste 7y ago
Hash functions are repeatable. MBTI types are not--people often receive different results when retaking the test, even in short time periods. It categories are not based on research about significant aspects of personality, and often go against it. The Big Five personality test is a scientifically grounded one that actually works as you describe, and with less loss of accuracy.
watwut 7y ago
MBTI does not end with same result over multiple attempts. And some of the variants that are available online produce quite odd results.