Do Personality Tests Work?

makes you anxious. It is, I mean, to me, there's something so palpable about his anxiety and that sorting hat scene, like this dumb, fidgety hat determines your fate in front of your whole school, and Harry is so nervous about it, like he's sitting there, sweating, desperately trying to outthink this test and trying to convince a dumb hat that he

should be sorted into Griffin Door instead of Slytherin. And it's not like you're gonna apply for a transfer from one house to another, like once you're in your sorted for life. But what's terrifying to me is that your destiny is all wrapped up in that single moment, which I mean, I love to organize people using the sorting hat system, Like my dad is very clearly a raven claw, my mom's a huffle poff, my sister is obviously a Slytherin,

totally a sin. But as I started to think about it more, I realized why I feel that anxiety, and it's from taking aptitude tests as a kid. Like in sixth grade, my whole class was forced to take a test that was supposed to give us a better sense of what careers we should pursue. But as I was taking it, I actually remember thinking, well, if I answered this question this way, does that mean I can't be a mechanical engineer or would this answer stop me from

being a teacher? Like I wanted options. I didn't want to be boxed in by an exam, But revisiting that experience through the Harry Potter sorting hat made me wonder how accurate our personality tests then, how much stock should we put in them? And is my sister really a Slytherin? Because she sure seems Slytherin to me. So that's what this episode is all about. Right, Welcome to Part Time Genius.

I'm Will Pearson, and as always I'm joined by my good friend Man Gueshot Ticketer, and today we're going to talk about personality tests and whether they really work. But before we do that, I'm just gonna place this marshmallow right here, Mango, right here in the middle of the table. Come. You know you're trolling me, And if you don't eat it for fifteen minutes, there might just be another marshmallow for you. Here it is. You know how much I

hate the marshmallow self control experiment? I do, but I don't really understand. Why. Is it because you hate marshmallows? No, it's it's because I don't understand how it can be a good test. Like people always talk about how a kid who has self control is going to be successful, And I get how if someone tells a kid to sit and behave and not eat the marshmallow and they wait and delay their gratification, that it may be an indicator of a successful future for a certain type of kids.

But what if that kid comes from a rough background, what if there isn't food security in his or her home, or what if they come from a home where the adults lie to you. Isn't a hungry kid from that background going to rely on their experience and be more successful by eating the marshmallow in hand instead of waiting for two in the bush. Just for the record, no one's hiding marshmallows and bushes. But I do agree with you, and more importantly, the test creator, Walter Michelle himself agrees

with you. How's that? Well, you know that wonderful podcast in Visibilia. So they had Walter Michelle on recently where he was voicing his frustration with the study. He was saying that it was totally misinterpreted. His feeling was that a kid's destiny and success can't be predicted by a single marshmallow. I mean, he thought that was just as ridiculous as we do. So I've gotten this wrong for a long time. What's the study actually about. Well, it's

really about how personality is actually this flexible thing. Like if you take a kid who can't wait to eat a chocolate chip cookie. And to be clear, these children

were basically cookie moms with zero self control. But if you sit a cookie monster down and you encourage them to ignore the treat in front of them and pretend it isn't there, suddenly they can increase their willpower from a few seconds to up to fifteen minutes, So that actually feels like a totally different study, or at least very different from how I've always heard it talked about,

which is kind of amazing. Also, I I just hearing about marshmallows makes me wanted to take this on a tangent about peets and how marshmallow birds used to have wings like, But since we're talking about self control, I'm gonna get this back on track, and Press is the king of tangents, I'm gona pressed with that self control. So well, we're gonna talk today about personality tests and

whether they really work. And we've got an incredible guest on today is Jonathan Cats from the cult comedy show You and I love so much, Doctor Cats, and we've got two other very special guests on as well. That's right, we'll be talking to our sisters, who are both super smart, and oddly, they both have PhDs in psychology, so we'll get them to analyze us a little later. How weird is that that both of our sisters or PhDs in psychology brought up? But that'll be a lot of fun. Now.

One of the reasons I like the story of Michelle's marshmallow tests and how it's been extrapolated over the years. Is that historically speaking, there seems to be this innate desire to predict our futures through tests and different experiments, like, if we only know this one thing about ourselves, we can figure out how to be a success. And it's

kind of incredible how big the field is. So in two thousand twelve, personality testing was a five hundred million dollar industry with well over tests on the market, and it's only grown since then. Yeah, business is clearly booming. For decades, workplaces have used personality tests to groom management, colleges have used them to pair roommates. You know, dating sites use them. I mean, there are Myers Briggs variations

all over the internet. But before we get into those, why don't we talk a little about the first personality tests that really took America by storm and inspired one of America's greatest poets along the way, and that's Phrenology. I'm all for it. But back, before we do that, I do want to let our listeners know that we really started thinking about this topic and reading the book by Annie Murphy Paul called Cult of Personality. But anyway

you were saying, yeah, I was talking about phrenology. So I don't know if this happens to you, but I feel like periodically I'll be in like a thrift store, a vintage shop, and I'll see one of those skulls that it is all mapped out with a particular ridge on the noggin, like something that shows like this is where courage comes from, or anger or whatever. And I've always been curious how this skull mapping got its start,

and it turns out it's all rooted in jealousy. Jealousy how so it goes back to this guy, Franz Joseph gall who was studying medicine in Vienna in the seventeen eighties and he wasn't measuring up to his classmates. Basically, Gall knew he was smarter than his peers, or thought he was, but he found himself scoring lower on tests. So we tried to puzzle out how these inferior minds were beating him on exams, and then he noticed a pattern. They all had beady bulging eye was yeah, well, that's

what he thought. So he took note and theorized that their aptitude for cramming verbal information was causing their eyes to protrude, like, yeah, their mind was supposedly pushing on their brains and making certain features more prominent on their heads. And once he got a degree, he started collecting data to support his theory, Like he started with beggars and criminals, trying to figure out where the telltale signs of pickpockets are.

Then he moved to studying lower class working folk, like he lured them into chatting with some good wine and get them to spill their secrets, and then he tried to map their heads against those traits. And he gradually moved up to high society, and along the way he started charting various bumpy areas that could determine cowardice or quarrelsomeness. And along with things like mechanical aptitude, it all seems

like a very weird recipe for stereotyping people. I mean, he actually, you know what it reminds me of just a little. And I know this isn't quite the same, but I remember seeing this story on society pages about Jews and how they used to dominate basketball in the early nineteen thirties. So in trying to explain why Jews were so good at basketball, the new York Daily News said this the game places a premium on an alert scheming mind, flashy trickiness, artful dodging, and general smart alecness.

It's explaining away their wins on the court with these horrible stereotypes. But it's almost like when you don't understand how someone could be better than you. In Gall's case, it was exams, and in this case it was basketball. You just find a stereotype and explain the whole thing away. That's so weird, but you know, this idea that you could divine someone's full nature by examining their skulls, bumps.

It was really captivating to the public. So it moved from Europe to America, where it really took off, partially because practitioners moved from just identifying criminals and keeping the working class in their place to really flattering people. They needed to believe in it, and it was bolstered by the fact that it all truly felt rooted in science, like phrenologists had painstakingly mapped over thirty areas of personality.

But the real genius of selling it to the public was perfected by these two brothers, Orson and Lorenzo Fowler, and their partner Samuel Wells, like together they promised this mental photograph of your strengths and your weaknesses, which is basically what personality tests still do. I mean, as the author Annie Murphy Paul points out future presidents James Garfield and John Tyler, they were thoroughly impressed and convinced by

their readings, and Claire Bardon took courses in it. I mean, businesses were putting stock in it for assessing their hires, and this trend from the eighteen hundreds it continued well into the nineteen thirties. But the person it seems to have the most impact on, and this is the part

I love about personality tests. Is it truly affected Walt Whitman Like as a wandering soul, he couldn't quite figure out what his career paths should be, and his readings basically gave him the confidence to believe in his genius and actually push the boundaries of poetry and oddly some of the vocabulary and his poems that comes straight from phrenology.

Jur Well, you know, I was reading up on the Foulers and they were such pop personalities at the time that they also have the ability to launch some interesting trends like orson Fowler and his quote. Scientific research determined that circles were the most efficient design in nature, so he proposed that circular houses would make more efficient homes. But since circles are hard to recreate, he suggested people build octagonal homes made of concrete, and the trend kind

of took off. I mean, he advocated for some other modern ideas to like central heating and door plumbing, big glass windows, all of which he claimed would make for healthier living. But it's still kind of amazing that he was so respected that he could just say the words octagonal houses and snap people would be all in. Speaking of all in, I'm gonna take these marshmallows and put them onto my mouth while we break for a quick That's a great idea. So who do we have on

the line today, a mango? Well, we've got two very special us, your sister and mine, Doctor Bama Hagar and Dr Shant Way. To emphasize that, doctor, that's right. A fun fact about them is that they're both way smarter than us, which not only have they told us repeatedly over the years, but they both have PhDs in psychology to prove it. How weird is that? So welcome Bama

and Shanta. Thank you now, Mango, I have to say my childhood, as you know, I've talked about this before and gone to therapy for this as well, was not always easy. Having an older sister that um was so interested in psychology that I kind of became a guinea pick.

And she uh figured out that I had O c D pretty early on and would set up these little experiments around the house and would wait for me to walk into a room when she'd moved the salt and pepper shaker a little off center from the kitchen table, and I would walk in and correct them, and of course she would jump out and be like, ah, I knew it, You're weird. So Um, So that's that's what

life was like for me as a kid. But Bama, so I have to ask you here this part of your inspiration for going on to become a psychologist, no question. I really didn't think about clinical child psychology until I got to watch you develop will, which was a lot of fun. Um. The O c D thing definitely did not try to pick on you, but that is kind

of current. So I still sort of move things around if I visit your house to you know, just put something a jar in the kitchen, or you know, maybe something that just shouldn't be there, like a potholder on the counter. That's that's just not right. And I just kind of try to leave those things after I visit, and that's much appreciated. Now, currently you're working with the Autism Society of Alabama. Do you want to talk a little bit about the work you guys have been involved

in very recently? Oh? Sure, I'm an autism advocate, so I have clinical child psychology, but my son, who is now seventeen, has bought in spectrum disorder, So I'm an autism advocate and I don't currently practice. But just recently in the state of Alabama, we passed a autism insurance law so that UM private insurance will cover autism therapy.

And that law has been passed or similar law has been passed in forty five days and we were the forty six so we were thrilled to get that done and we're hoping that it will help thousands of Alabama families as they pay for autism therapies and you know, try to help their child to let developed to their potential, which is amazing. Just watching that from a distance was incredible. So this is I wanted to say something about my sister.

One of the things that's popular in our family law is just how bossy and what a know it all she was when she was a kid. And there's a story about how we just moved into our neighborhood and Delaware and our mom looked out the window and there was a circle of neighbors just gossiping in front of our driveway, and when she went to inquire what was going on, she found Shanta in the center explaining all

the day's gossip to everyone. And so Shanta, I wanted to ask you, like, why do you think you're so interested in psychology? Do you think any of that's rooted in wanting to know what's going on with other people? Oh? Absolutely, Yeah. I always wanted to know everyone's business, know what was going on. In fact, I think there's another story when we went to the zoo and instead of looking at the animals, I was turned around looking at the people. Yeah.

I've always been interested in in people and getting to know, you know, what makes them tick. You currently teach Shanta the Temple in Philadelphia. But I heard you actually did your master's thesis on the equal sign. Now it feels like the equal sign has been around for a while, so what sort of new discoveries are there to be made about it? Uh? Yeah, the equals SIGNE has been around for a little while, um, But it turns out

that kids still don't really understand it very well. UM. So yeah, back when I was doing my masters, we were looking at UM what kids thought of the equal sign. And in fact, when you ask kids what the equal sign means, oftentimes they'll tell you what we call an operational definition that really thinks about what you do with equal sign. So they'll say things like you put the answer after, or you total up all of the numbers,

or you know, you put whatever. Um. Uh, some you get in the blank after because kids are used to seeing um equal sign and then a blank sign right after. But it turns out that those kids who actually do their homework more often UM, and who get more practice with equal sign UM followed by a blank, they actually have a little bit more difficulty when they get to algebra UM and can't really understand the idea that it's a relational definition they need, which is really the idea

that you have um the same quantity on both sides. Uh. Yeah, she is part of it, kind of figure out how to really help kids learn that they have the wrong understanding of equal plign Well, let's get to the quiz here, Mango, what's the name of the game we're playing with our sisters today. It's a little game called Oh brother where every answer pays tribute to the wonderful set of brothers. All Right, so if we were to say Groucho, Harpo and Zeppo, you'd say Mark's brothers. Right, this is going

to be pretty rapid fire. So we're going to put sixty seconds on the clock and see how many you can get. And you're playing as a team, so we'll take whatever answer gets blurted out first. So let's get that clock ready, all right, you guys ready, I'm ready. Okay, here we go, Question number one. Pioneers in Flight, Wilbur and Orville were known as Yes h G TV show where twins Jonathan Now, wait, wait, wait wait? Should we stop? Should we stop? What? Because we got that one? Right?

Should we stop? We just say we won? No, that's not how this works. Yeah, they did they way, good job, guys. All right, has the clock on their Okay, here we go, alright. Question number two h G t V brothers were twins Jonathan and Drew people transform fixer Uppers. I'm not going to know that. This is where I don't property brothers. You got it all right? Question number three, I like to celebrate over everyone, all right. Filmmakers. Filmmakers behind Fargo

and The Big Lebowski. Yes, nineteen eighty movie featuring SNL stars John Belushi and dan Ackroyd. Alright you question number five. Comedic brothers that include Sean, Marlon, Damon and Keenan Ivory, Wayne's brother You got it all right? Production company that made Batman and Wonder Woman also used to be a TV network called w B. Yes, you got it all right? The bonus question the last one American. Yes we didn't. We didn't celebrate that one. All right, Here we go.

The bonus question American pop psychologist and talk show personality who wrote a daily newspaper advice column from nineteen sixty to two thousand thirteen. And these are brothers. No, it's a trick question. Dr joy Yes, Dr Joyce brothers. Well, they flew through this and amazing John so Chanton Vema you did incredibly well, and for that you win our grand prize, which is a note to your mother from us singing your praises, which is especially poignant because it's

our mother too. That's right. Congratulations you two, and thanks so much for joining us. Thank goods. Welcome back to Part Time Genius. Today, we're talking about personality tests. Now, my ago, I know you and I both took an online Myers Briggs knockoff tests. So how do you do? I aced it nice now. I got an I N t J, which means I'm introverted, intuitive, thinking and judging, which actually kind of makes sense to me. I mean Myers Briggs. As you know, charts for binaries, like you

could be introverted or extroverted. You could be intuitive or sensing, just thinking or feeling and perceiving or judging, and those combinations yield sixteen different personality types. But as an I N t J, I just want to let you know I'm in really good company like Arnold Schwarzenegger's there, Jane Austen, Isaac Newton, also Jay z and Angela Lansbury Landsbury. Now that now it makes sense, you're totally a Landsbury. I mean we're all pretty much the same person, like wrapping

bars and solving murders every week. Yep, that sounds about right. Okay, Well I'm an e n f J. Okay, so that means you're extroverted and intuitive and feeling and judging, which is great because we're both judgy. But that puts you in good company too. You get Oprah Winfrey, Barack Obama, Nelson Mendel, okay, Martin Luther King. All right, I think every important black figure is in the n f J. Yeah, that's that's pretty much always been my goal. Oh and

also bono, yep, that's all. That's all important black figures. Well done. So I'm always in two minds about this stuff, like I feel the same way about astrology. I'm happy to be a tourist when it means I'm just like Wes Anderson, who you know shares my birthday, or William Shakespeare because we're all talented and born in spring. But when it suggests I'm a Hitler or like a Genghis Khan, who are also apparently born in spring, I get a

little more suspicious. Yeah yeah, well, I mean I tend to put a little more stock and personality tests than astrology, and one of the geniuses of Myers Briggs is that there aren't any bad types. Of course, it's also one of the criticisms. But part of the reason it really took off is because it was one of the first personality tests truly designed to understand health. The end of

it jewels. But before we get into that, let's go back a little and chat about one of its predecessors, the m m p I, the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory. That's right, It is a little bit of a mouthful, but as you can guess, the test was developed in Minnesota. It was the work of a neuroscientist, J. Charlie McKinley and the psychologist Stark Hathaway, and the test was designed

to understand and diagnose patients. And it's interesting because the questions are so drastically different from the test before it. So in prior data sheets, the questions were ridiculously transparent, and they would ask things like are you happy most of the time, which it was obviously easy to gain. So the pair did something completely different. Instead of assuming they knew how patients would answer the questions, they surveyed

a massive number of what they called Minnesota normals. But they also surveyed a number of patients, and if the majority of the normals answered a true false question one way, while say, schizophrenics patients answered another, they use that as a question that could indicate schizophrenia. You know, I kind of want to support the Minnesota normal sports team, that's right. Yeah. So was this all like revolutionary for the time? Oh? Absolutely,

and it was surprisingly effective. But that's not the best part. I mean, what's truly fascinating is the strange mix of questions that came out of trying to understand and split up these populations. Let me just read you a few of the five four questions on the list. So these are all things you can either agree with or disagree

with in this in this survey. So the first one is I think Lincoln was greater than Washington, or women should not be allowed in cocktail bars, or so good if the money were right, I would like to work for a circus or a carnival. I don't know how to answer that, partially because they've lumped circus and carnival together. I feel like I'd be so in my head about what's the right thing to say. Yeah, and there were gross bodily ones too, Like I've never had any black,

tarry looking bowel movement. It's so gross. But the test took off with psychologists and psychiatrists across the country partially because it was pretty scientific. I mean a number of the other exams of the time, like the roor shock ink blot test, which we've all seen samples of, they either overpathologized so called normal patients, assigning them conditions they didn't have, or the test needed too much fuzzy interpretation.

But with the m m p I there were numbers to back up every conclusion, and half away included all sorts of really smart trick questions that would raise red flags if a patient, you know, try to outsmart the test or something. So by the mid nineteen fifties it was the most widely used test of its kind, used to diagnosed illness in prisons, doctor's offices, and mental wards even which is interesting, but how did it transition into

a personality test? I mean, it seems like it was being used to identify pathological extremes for the most part. Yeah it was, but it's more and more quote normal people took the test, and more and more data was gathered. Grad students started seeing these patterns and individual profiles, and so they started sorting these by strengths and weaknesses. So it became more of a personality test over time. But it wasn't an easy road for the m m p I.

According to the Cult of Personality. After the era of McCarthy, m had passed, the test was on the ropes because senators were wary of any exam that forced people to answer really prying questions. You know the fact that it was used by government organizations and employers that really bothered some representatives. But it squeaked past the congressional hearing on life support and then remained in pretty wide use. Then

in the nineteen nineties it took another serious blow. What happened then, it was and Renaissenter told its employees that if they didn't pass the test, they couldn't be promoted into management roles. And when employees were forced to spend five hours answering what they felt were pretty irrelevant through false questions like I would like to be a florist or I guess I know some pretty undesirable life, they

filed a class action. I mean, who doesn't know some pretty undesirable type an you're really apparently one of them. Read I'm a special agent of God, which sounds maybe appropriate for psychiatric evaluation, but kind of troubling in the context of determining whether someone could sell furniture, although I'm guessing a special agent of God could sell furniture, probably, so probably. What's crazy to me is just how popular

the exam is around the globe. Like, I know, it's been translated into a monk and Urdu and Norwegian, which honestly feels so strange when you consider some of the questions that are getting asked, like I'm curious how the monk feel about whether Lincoln is a greater president than Washington and what that could possibly indicate other than the

love of like small change. Well, it's interesting to see that while the m mp I had a second life as a personality test, Hathaway, who co created it, was disillusioned by the end of his life about its value. He even said, I often have serious doubts about whether it is meaningful to expect that we can develop tests

to measure or analyze personality. Of course, Isabel Myers and Katherine Briggs felt a little differently, but why don't we talk about that after a little break, So, Mango, as you know, pretty much every day during college, right around lunchtime, we'd get together and watch our favorite show, Doctor Cats Professional Therapist. It was on Comedy Central. It was a show where he'd get comedians to come on and play themselves as they would be his patients for him as

he was playing this role of Doctor Cats. And this was around the time that we were starting Mental Flaws. Now, do you think this may have had some inspiration or have been some influence on us starting Mental Flaws? Probably not, Probably not, But it was a good show. It made us laugh and it was a lot of fun. Well. Audible actually is releasing a new season. It's been over a decade since Dr Cats was on TV, and the first several episodes are out in audio form on Audible.

You'll hear guests such as Ray Romano, Sarah Silverman, dom Irrera, weird Al, and several others. And we are so happy to have him on the line with us today. Jonathan Kat's welcome to Part Time Genius. Thank you, Jonathan. How much do you rewatch the original show and did you rewatch any of it? For the new Audible series I did, but it wasn't really the helpful because we're creating new episodes and um, it took me down the long, wonderful path. I mean, I do love to watch the show, but

this was not the education. You know, speaking of watching or rewatching the show, It's hard to remember how novel the squiggle vision was when it first came on, and I'm curious to hear why the decision was made to go with that style of animation. Well, two reasons. One is that the motion of the characters represents their emotional turmoil and it's cheap, right. Yeah, maybe one of those

is to prior Actually these were those things are true. Actually, anibitions and my patients were not internal when this showed up. So one of the things I love when I, you know, either read interviews or have heard interviews with you, is that you're always so generous and crediting others, Like I feel like you talk about learning from Tom Snyder, how John Benjamin helped you break out of a rot and what fun it was to work together. Um, and I think that's such a rare thing, but it also comes

up in your comedy. I feel like your position as a comedian on the show is is kind of a generous one. Do you talk about how hard it is to maybe be funny and facilitate a conversation like that? You know, in the early days of the show, was made my actual interest in their lives and how they felt, because I do care about people, oddly enough, and that's interfered with the comedy. Mum, it's just like, because there's

nothing funny but the way they feel. No. I mean, I happened to care, but people in general inculdn't comedians. But we discovered pretty early on that that wasn't working comedically, and it wasn't certainly wasn't making anybody feel better, right right,

So I'm curious about that format. Then the the idea for having you know, guests come on and be your patients, it seems like it would be a way, even though you're acting, it seems like it would be a way of maybe getting them to open up a little bit more. Did you did you find that to be the case? They did, and it actually made one woman cry and one guy feel better. And this is this is after

eighty one episodes. It's not not a great record, right right throw Now, did you find yourself pulling anything from actual therapy sessions, maybe your visits to a therapist and to the show in any way, Yeah, I did. But but more importantly is that I haven't spend hundreds of dollars trying to make my own therapists laugh. Whis just a total waste of money. Yeah, it seems like, I mean, she would have a good time and then I and then I give her a check and I leave. Yeah,

I can see how that might be problematic. But did you did you feel any better? I actually benefited from therapy. A couple comes in my life, and I'm a believer. We loved Carry Shandling so much, and and the fact that he was on your show. I was curious if if you went back and watched that episode after she passed away. I did. I did because I was hoping that they would show some of that footage at his memorial service. Um so I was kind of put together a fair will using footage of from the show and

just my own. When last conversations with the guy was so uh so much the character characterization of who he was, because I reminded him that every time had laughed at one of his jokes, he said it sounds like I've been shot. And then I when I told her, when I reminded Garry that he said, I think I said wounded so much like him, just to fine tune my memory.

That's pretty terrific. All these incredible comedians I feel like I got to see more of through your show, and that's part of the reason I love the In addition to liking the storylines, I think when you guys were in college, most stand up shows had to do with the brick wall, yeah, and somebody sitting in front of a tone jokes. M hmm. It's a really nice departure Doctor Cans from that format. And and like mangoing, some

things didn't work unless unless they were animated. Look, a friend of my, Lucien Iighter, who is a comedian and worked for Raymond, talks about how when he came to Massachusetts to do the show, he discovers it to things that would could never tell on stage, but would we work in animation And if I could think of one of those, would be very waiting to hear what that was. Well, Jonathan, thank you so much for joining us today. Aren't you going to ask me any questions that might reveal my

personality type. That's actually have we done the route have you? Yeah? Well we'll assess that after this. Have you heard any of the just out of curiosity? Um, not really part of this interview. Have you heard any of Paula pound Stones new show? Oh? Just a minute of it. I'm so happy she's doing a new show. She's one of my heroes, Paula Poundson. Yeah, but they do that on

on her show. She's one of that. She's one of three people, three comedians who have made me lie down on the floor because I can't walk anywhere because I'm laughing. So who were the other two? Well, John Benjamin actually has maybe faint twice, it's the whole other time. And then the combination of Laura and Sarah Silverman made me lie down on in traffic in Los Angeles. Didn't just hard? Jonathan,

thanks so much for being on part time Genius. Hope everyone will check out the newest season of Dr Kat's Professional Therapist on Audible. Thanks so much, Jonathan, Thank you. So it's time to talk about the big one, the

mother daughter of all personality tests Myers Briggs, Myers Briggs. Right, So most people know at least a little of the origin story Myers Briggs was developed by this very close mother daughter pair, Katherine Briggs and Isabel Briggs Myers and Catherine was fascinated with people and understanding them, and she craved time in her study like she put her kids to bed, then she'd be reading and scrawling notes through the night. And for birthdays or anniversaries, all she wanted

was more filing cabinets to store her papers. She sounds pretty organized. Yeah, she was super passionate about it, but she really dug in when she met her future son in law and couldn't quite understand him. Like she'd been reading Young and realized Young's rough observances on personalities could be useful in sorting people, and together with her daughter, she added the judging perception letter to the personality scheme and it just took off. I mean that's the very

abridged version. Well, and she was so good about making her ideas appealing from the start, Like in the mid nineteen twenties, Briggs wrote on an article for the New Republic called Meets Yourself using the Personality paint Box, which doesn't really sound that much different from What Color is Your Parachute? Or other books that would come out in later years. Exactly she was like this born Marketer and Isabelle too, like she managed to build off of the scheme.

She used these distinct personality types as characters in a detective novel and want a big deal publishing contests, like partially based on the idea that different personality types working together would be really more efficient and together. They really developed this test not just to understand others, but to help women find the best and most efficient jobs during

wartime when men were away. It's pretty amazing, actually, like these two educated women were forced into life as housewives, and they were determined to do important work and have a larger impact on society. But what's interesting is that Young didn't love the test. For instance, while he was happy for the fangirl attention they gave him, he warned Briggs from the get go that it was dangerous to use his untested ideas and to apply them to things

like child rearing or sorting personalities. And he even wrote every individual is an exception to the rule. Wow, which seems kind of odd, right, Like he wasn't flattered by the fact that they were built on his ideas. He really wasn't you know, he didn't believe in a pure binary of things, like a pure extrovert or a pure introvert, even said such a man would be in the lunatic asylum.

But that didn't stop the Myers Briggs ascendency. By the mid twentieth century, the test was so popular it was being licensed by the Educational Testing Service Well and today it's a behemous so Vox reported that over two million people still take the official test annually and that company nets over twenty million dollars a year plus. It's basically spawned this cottage industry of knockoffs, right like some of the which Sex and the City character are you? Or

which Game of Thrones character are you? There basically reporting that you're a Miranda because you're an I N T J, or you're a Tyrian Lanister because you're an E N T P. But by the way, you're a total Miranda. Jay Z and I both take that as a compliment. So you're right. The company is extremely healthy, but there is petition, and over the years, Myers Briggs has come under some criticism for being too sunny like because there are no bad types, it might not be accurately reflecting

your weaknesses or sorting for those Slytherin qualities. As Young points out, it gets criticism for being all black and white with little gray. If introversion and extra version are actually a bell curve, which is what psychiatrists seemed to think it is, there's a lot of space in there for people to share both qualities, and none of that's

actually reflected in the results. Well. Also, Myers Briggs is frequently cited for inspiring the Barnum effect, which is basically, if you say anything vague and complimentary enough, kind of like horoscopes, people will think it applies to them. Well, not to like pile on them. But one more criticism

is that it's been called classist in the past. And you know, the site the Conversation pointed to some of the questions in the test, like do you like to chat with clerks, hairdressers, porters, et cetera, which is, and I'm quoting the site, a test of introversion extra vision, but it rather presumes that the people taking the test will not be the one serving, carrying bags or cutting hair. Yeah. Yeah, Now we've spent a good bit of time on this

episode pointing out the flaws of personality test. Phrenology is obviously quackery and something like the mmp I was initially created as this mental diagnostic test for specific conditions, which made sense, but then it was applied to understand full personalities and Myers Briggs is too optimistic and horoscopy at times. But back to the original question, why do we use personality test and what's the real worth of them? You know, we did so much reading on the topic and I

had the same question. It's funny. Malcolm Gladwell had this old great piece where he was talking about the ineptness of personality tests and he came up with his own binary test to analyze people. Oh yeah, I know, I saw this. So he made up his own version of the Myers Briggs with categories like are you a gobbler or a nibbler of information? Are you more of a canine or a feline in a relationship? Which I love because like do you meet your partner at the door

with a wagging tail? Or do you fly hard to get in? Are you all moody? So I get Gladwell's point about the ridiculousness is of this, but think about that Walt Whitman example. I mean his personality test, however fraudulent, it might have been convinced one of America's greatest poets

to follow his passion. And if you're getting a sunny diagnosis that encourages you to believe you're great and that you can do great things and that there's a place for you in this big, confusing world, there's worth in that, right, I mean, it's like the original it gets better campaign. Well, definitely. I mean, on the other hand, you wouldn't want someone boxed into a professional or emotional corner, right, Like your

friend you were talking about that went to an Indian astrologer. Yeah, he sent his chart off and he's this brilliant PhD computer scientist, and the astrologer studied his times and came back and told him his only viable option in life was to be a farmer. But speaking of these tests, I called up a PhD Bindu methic column whose assistant director of Clinical Training at Chestnut Hill College, and I asked her about the worth of personality tests in the

studies personality, and specifically she studies perfectionism. But when I asked her about the popularity of the tests and the potential for misuse. I was just kind of expecting her to validate what we're saying and say they're all hocum. But here's been the talking on the subject. Looking at personality and psychology, you're looking at the individual differences of

a person UM. So if you think about even the origins of what personality means, you know comes from persona, which in Latin means masks, right, and so you're not just looking at what the person where the individuals showing other people, but what's underneath, right? What what doesn't get shown? UM? And so it's more complex and it's influenced by a variety of different factors. So you know, for example, childhood experiences, family system, culture, socio political climate, UM. All these factors

can influence one's personality. And personality tests are used UM to get more information about the individual to help with maybe treatment goals, maybe to clarify a particular question or an issue so you can see what will be helpful for the person in treatment. UM. It is a part of what is used to get more thorough holistic look at the person UM and it's you know used, Uh, these tests have been normed and validated. You don't want to just take it and think that that is the

end result. Right. You want to use it in conjunction with therapy, or you want to use it in conjunction with maybe other tasks to give you a broader sense of what's happening. Right, And if you take it, you know, during one point in your life, you might have different experiences the versus you know, another time in your life. I know personally, you know my training and my experience. UM I've used uh the Myers Briggs and m M p I um you know, for for example, I think

the Myers Briggs has used a lot in career counseling. Um. If so it's used to as as one way to think about what might be a good career fit for an individual. And UM, I know it's used a lot now in schools to help of you know, students decide on majors and what, you know, what might be a good fit for them in terms of uh course of

study for them. Well that's really interesting. So we've been talking about it like personality tests are comprehensive, but really they're just one tool and an arsenal exactly like we as humans in this golden age of convenience, Like we want a quick, one test life hack for complete understanding of ourselves. And it would be great if there was a marshmallow that could tell us if and how we

were going to be successful. But I think part of the danger is trying to take these things too seriously on your own, Like it's almost like self diagnosing yourself on web m D. You might have some success rate, but it's better to visit someone who looks at this

for a profession. And obviously these tests are also evolving and have evolved over the years, right I mean, And there are newer tests to like the ones that measure for the five personality types, which supposedly give you more of an honest analysis of your traits and may even evolve to a test on a sixth trade, which, according to new scientists, will shed light on how much of a schemer you are and how machiavellian your personality is

a Slytherin scale, And of course, like Walter Michelle was saying, your personality has room to change. According to New scientists, one US study showed that divorce can make women more extroverted and open to new experiences, and big life changes aren't the only thing. Like exposure to just four to eight weeks of psychotherapy has been shown to decrease neuroticism

and increase extra version. That said, I know now we shouldn't be reading too much into these personality tests without the help of a professional, but I do think there's one thing we can manage safely on our own, the part time genius fact off. Yeah yeah, all right, Well here's one to kick this off. One of the most curious psychology tests, the rorschak, actually has a surprisingly strange origin. Before it was used as a psychiatric evaluation tool, it

was a parlor game used for people's amusement. In fact, it predates the roar shock by about a hundred years. And get this, the ink blots were used for fortune telling and to inspire menacing poetry. So, speaking of rorshok, did you know that after World War two, two American psychologists got access to prominent Nazis like Rudolf Hess and Hermann Goring actually in their cells in Nuremberg, and when they showed ink blots to them, the Nazis obliged with

these incredibly vivid responses. In one in plot, Hess saw quote two men talking about a crime with blood on their mind. God Another prisoner claimed that he saw a bear with teeth and legs and shadows, which represents Bullshevism overrunning Europe. Like, that's so specific. And of course these answers probably gave the roor Shock more credence than it

deserved in deciphering people's traits and their tendencies. And some psychologists actually refer to the test as Dracula because no one's been able to drive a stake through the curse thing's heart. That's pretty crazy. So all right, so here's one you might remember from the mental Flaws days, but

I'd completely forgotten about it. Did you know that from the forties to the sixties, at most ivy League schools and top tier colleges, freshmen were required to pose naked their nude portraits somewhere of people like George Bush and Diane Sawyer because the psychologist named William Herbert Sheldon believed you could decipher a person's intelligence and potential success based on their body types. The Nine Life did a cover story on the project, and the tobacco industry use the

pictures to study men and masculinity. Okay, so one last Roar Shock fact, because I can't help myself. As Annie Murphy Paul points out, when psychologists asked what might this be, the only truly logical answer is an ink plot, But according to her, generally only severely mentally ill people give it.

All right, here's what I think you'll like. While classical music and heavy metals seem completely dissimilar, according to Adrian North, the professor in Edinburgh, the psychological profiles of people who listen to classical or heavy metal are almost identical. Obviously they tend to be for different age groups, but partially it's about the music itself. Both are very grand and emotionally dramatic, and also take a certain amount of mental

openness to embrace and appreciate. That's crazy and so good. So I'm gonna give you this round. And I really hope no one's analyzing my personality based on my Spotify playlist because my kids have run wild with that thing. So you know, we haven't given anyone a part time genius award this episode. All right. Well, I've actually been thinking about this one, and I think we should give it to Walter the marshmallow Man. Michelle, Oh, I actually

love that. I've been talking badly about his marshmallow experiment forever and to realize that his test actually embraces the idea that people can learn and change like that totally made my day wonderful. All right, well, Walter, you'll be added to our official Hall of Genius and we'll be sending you a certificate in the mail, and if you wait two weeks to open it, maybe we'll send you another one. That's it for today's show. Thanks so much for listening. You know what's amazing to look at is

how people analyze handwriting for personality. Apparently, if you place the dot on your eyes too high, you're too Optimus one to watch out for that. Thanks again for listening. Part Time Genius is a production of how stuff works and wouldn't be possible without several brilliant people who do the important things we couldn't even again to understand. Christa McNeil does the editing thing. Noel Brown made the theme song and does the mixy mixy sound thing. Gary Rowland

does the exact producer thing. Gay Bluesier is our lead researcher, with support from the Research Army including Austin Thompson, Nolan Brown and Lucas Adams and he's Jeff Coo gets the show to your ears. Good job, Eves. If you like what you heard, we hope you'll subscribe. And if you really really like what you've heard, maybe you could leave a good review for us. Do we do we forget Jason? Jason who