I've always had mixed feelings regarding the Myres-Briggs test. On the one hand I was surprised by its consistency - in my case, every time I take it (regardle

I've always had mixed feelings regarding the Myres-Briggs test. On the one hand I was surprised by its consistency - in my case, every time I take it (regardless of the implementation), I get the same result. This probably comes down to a combination of me sort of being able to anticipate what a question is about and the test's genuine descriptive power. On the other hand, like pretty much everything psychology-related, this test feels like it's trying to impose a relatively simplistic order onto an area that we don't understand properly. I have a similar impression of the big five personality traits, as well as of the descriptions of pathologies in the DSM. I think at the end of the day the Myers-Briggs and the Big Five probably have quite a bit of overlap. At their core they seem to describe personalities via a number of principal components or latent variables that differ a bit between the two models, but capture about the same amount of information. > The great advantage of the the MBTI is exactly that it makes everyone feel like a beautiful special snowflake. The axes are chosen and named ingeniously so as to make them easy to reveal. Considering that both models are hand-wavey borderline pseudo-science, I agree that the Myers-Briggs is the more palatable of the two.