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Note the correlations between MBTI types and Big Five personality dimensions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers%E2%80%93Briggs_Type_Indicator#Big_Five https:

Note the correlations between MBTI types and Big Five personality dimensions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers%E2%80%93Briggs_Type_Indicator#Big_Five https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers%E2%80%93Briggs_Type_Indi... These are not insignificant, particularly in the social sciences. 0.45 would be a large effect size in most psychology papers; 0.72 is huge. I think a large part of whether people think MBTI is bunk or a useful tool depends on their willingness to overlook small details to get a general gist that's helpful but perhaps not totally accurate. Which is perhaps why another comment down-thread remarks that N's are much more likely to view MBTI as valid than S's (and sure enough, the indicator was developed by an INFJ and INFP, based on the ideas of an INTJ). "Personality" itself is an abstraction, and personality types are an abstraction on top of an abstraction. All generalizations are wrong, but some of them are useful.

smeagull 4y ago
One bit of psuedoscience correlates to another. Okay. One test measuring extroversion only manages 0.74 correlation with another. I'm not impressed.
- hbrn 4y ago
  Big Five is based on factor analysis, it's hard to call it pseudoscience. They didn't invent traits and then came up with fake data to prove their model. It's the opposite: they used statistical methods to discover those traits. It might be an imperfect model, but it's still scientific.
laserlight 4y ago
Does MBTI have scores for dimensions? For instance, does it report that one is 45% introvert and 55% extrovert? I've never heard of MBTI scores. To my understanding, it just reports one is more extrovert than introvert. In such a case, I don't think it would be meaningful to measure correlation to Big Five, which reports its results on a continuous scale.
- yCombLinks 4y ago
  Some tests will return the scaled dimension, yes. But the biggest reason it's so popular is it's so easy to communicate with binary letters, because if you're at the 45% mark on the introvert/extrovert scale your type will be I type. This is also the reason a lot of people get different retest results. If you're near the middle of the scale it's easy to lean on either side.

smeagull 4y ago

One bit of psuedoscience correlates to another. Okay. One test measuring extroversion only manages 0.74 correlation with another. I'm not impressed.

hbrn 4y ago
Big Five is based on factor analysis, it's hard to call it pseudoscience. They didn't invent traits and then came up with fake data to prove their model. It's the opposite: they used statistical methods to discover those traits. It might be an imperfect model, but it's still scientific.

laserlight 4y ago

Does MBTI have scores for dimensions? For instance, does it report that one is 45% introvert and 55% extrovert? I've never heard of MBTI scores. To my understanding, it just reports one is more extrovert than introvert. In such a case, I don't think it would be meaningful to measure correlation to Big Five, which reports its results on a continuous scale.

yCombLinks 4y ago
Some tests will return the scaled dimension, yes. But the biggest reason it's so popular is it's so easy to communicate with binary letters, because if you're at the 45% mark on the introvert/extrovert scale your type will be I type. This is also the reason a lot of people get different retest results. If you're near the middle of the scale it's easy to lean on either side.