How Personality Tests Work

office and administer the Myers Briggs personality tests at gunpoint. Yeah, I don't remember, but I'm pretty sure I was in E n F P. I. I don't remember what I was. I'll probably say like three different things as we go through this one, like just looking at it again, pretty sure I was an E n F B. Can he stands for pisces right? Or pooper? Yeah, let's see extroverted intuitive? Okay, what is the F stand for feeling? Is a spoiler? Yeah,

feeling pooper? So we're what we're talking about where it sounds like we're saying strings of letters, They actually do make sense if you're familiar with what Chuck just said, the Myers Briggs type inventory, which if you are in corporate America and have been a part of corporate America for more than probably three years, there's probably a pretty good likelihood that you've taken the Myers Briggs type inventory

for sure. Like it's really widespread. I love it. I saw something like percent of companies in America use it. It's a lot. Yeah, it was eighty nine of the Fortune one use it, right, And then I saw another status It was from two thousand one though, so I'm not sure how current it is, right, but they said that, um, the the I think British companies somewhere between ten and of British companies use them. So I mean it's who knows. It's pretty wild. Guess that sounds like. But once they

have their own. No, the Myers Briggs test, they don't call it a test, as we'll see, but the the test um is, it's worldwide, it's translated into tons of different languages. They and no, it's it's the Myers Briggs test. And there's tons of knockoffs. There's tons of personality tests in general, which really is the larger umbrella the Myers Briggs test falls under, but it's probably the most famous

of all time, at least as far as pop culture goes. Yeah, we're gonna hit on everything from ror Shack to the Myers Briggs, but we're gonna hit on them. But the m B T I definitely UM is more of the focus of this one because of its ubiquity, right, because most people know it, and because it's uh one of the overlooked past times in the United States to take pot shots at the Myers Briggs type inventory. Sure, it's fun. Uh So categorizing one's personality is nothing new. Uh, and

that's what these tests aim to do. Um for various reasons which will go over later. But um, going back, and this was a Grabster article, correct, that's right, so you know it's good. Yeah, and Grabster was just our show in Toronto. Yeah he was for the second time he stood up and like did that victory shake? Did he do that? No, he did. I'm a big fan of that. That's old school. Oh it is. It's a

good way to go. It looks like you should be wearing those dolphins shorts and just having crossed the finish line and then you're doing that. Um. So Yeah, it's nothing new trying to categorize personalities. Um, way back in the day, Uh, I know, on our Grave Robbing Live Grave Robbing episode, we talked about the four humors, and we've talked about them before, um, before medical science was kind of a real thing. Um, it was an early attempt.

They talked about the four fluids, the four humors black bio, yellow bile, phlegm, and blood. Uh and and imbalance in those will cause disease. But they were also this is something I didn't know, These are also linked to uh, corresponding personality types. Yeah. So like the word melancholy in English, it's an adaptation of the Greek words I believe for black bile. There it is and and melancholy personalities were

associated with an overabundance of black bile. And Um, basically you're alancholi, you're you're a depressed person, or you're very reserved or quiet. And for thousands of years people thought guy's got a lot of black bile. Yeah, that explains his personality. The other ones are pretty pretty um interesting too, like flag matic, uh flegmatic, I've seen flag I've heard flag magic. I've seen it too. So like when you

cough something up, you call it flag him. Sometimes it depends if it had like a lot of extra chunks in it. It's flags But flam plegmatic, I say, flegmatic. That's very laid back. Did you know that? Well, yeah, because I looked all these up, um, because sanguine is one of my favorite words. Um. And that's this is Hippocrates, by the way. He kind of further refined these concepts of the temperament. So melancholic, flegmatic, sanguine, and what is

it caleric? Yeah, choleric, yeah, caleric. Caleric is like irritable and short and terse and curt Yeah. But the thing is, there's something weird here, right if you are a thinking human being who is not in a vegetative state right now, and for all we know at this point in medical science, maybe even if you are in a vegetative state, you're probably thinking, Uh, it doesn't seem like anyone I've ever met is just flagmatic or just choleric, or just sanguine

or just melancholy. Sometimes I'm all four of those things. Sometimes I go through those things all four in a day, depending on how weird the day is. Sometimes I go through all four of those within the course of one

happy hour. Sure, okay, right, And and that's kind of the point here, and it's also the basis of any criticism from this moment in the podcast here on out, is that this whole thing that started back with the four Humors and continues on to this in the guise of personality tests, is an attempt to take a human personality and say you're this, you're this one type, You're this type, this is your type, this is what you're like, right, And the human personality just too complex, too squishy, too

jelly like to be boxed into one thing like that. Yeah, And we'll get into all the criticisms. So that definitely is the leading criticism that is, Ah, well, we'll say that, Um, that was a tease. It was good tease, because a flagmatic one. All these classifications though, um, that we talked about now are or most of them at least or drive late at the feet of one man when called young Yeah, who wrote a book called psychological types. How do you say it? Though? In in German? I don't know.

It's um, oh, where is it? Let me see there it is. I I can't even begin to do it. Uh, psycho psycho sorry, psychologic is yes, psychological type. That's not fair. It's so tiny. That was the problem because you, oh yeah, I do ten point well you know me, you do like sixteen point times new Roman paper, and I don't want to waste it, but I also have to do my job. Maybe I should go double sided, but then my highlighter gets in the way. Oh yeah, it would

be a problem. Everything would be highlighted. You might as well just dip the whole page and yellow ink or something exactly. Um. So, anyway, Young wrote this book, that book uh German, and had it translated to English a couple of years later, and he created these four categories uh sensation, intuition, thinking, and feeling. So those were his four that kind of most of these modern tests are

based on in somewhere or another. Yeah, and um, it's really almost impossible that I guess we could just save all the criticisms for the end and just pile them on. But it's it's really tough to talk about the stuff and not like, as you present one fact, talk about the problem with that fact as it relates to modern incarnation.

What do you think we should do? Should we just save them like you say, because I can buy my time, let's save the okay, and then you can just like I'm not even trying, like I'm not I'm not going crop circle here. I'm just saying like there's just there's

just a lot wrong with this. But um, even before Young who created these the concept of the modern concept, i should say, of personality types, and he created the idea of introvert and extrovert, which say what you will about you And and a lot of psychologists have a lot to say about him, not necessarily the nicest things to say, but introversion and extra extra version is so widely accepted inside and out of the field of psychology that I mean, if that were his only contribution to

the field, that's that's enough to to engrave it on your tombstone for sure. Yeah. And each of those um for psychological types he was talking about or modified by whether or not you're introverted or extroverted, they all kind of work together too. That was like the right, that was the main thing is how you how you approach life is introverted extrovert, and everything else is like a

sub it's kind of a sub section of that or something. Yeah, And and one of the issues with this, and I don't think this is part of the criticism, but I was gonna say I thought we were saving he was. This was based on his ideas. It wasn't like he had all this research and all this data. He was a deep thinker and he sat around and and thoughts of these things, right exactly, and then he wrote entire

books based on him. Yeah. But he's a very well respected psychoanalysts, and he was part of the early movement for psycho and elysis with Freud, they were they were colleagues or young was much younger, um. But they eventually said I don't like you anymore. Were parting ways. Um. But as as all as psychoanalysis was really kind of establishing itself, And if you want to know more about that background in the origins psychoanalysis, go listen to her how pr works the live show. We talked a lot

about that. Um. But as this was going on and it was starting to kind of dominate the field of psychology, there was a whole other movement, a parallel movement that said, you know what, we think all that's a little mushy. We like the idea of being able to quantify psychology.

And so even before Young there were guys like Alfred Bennet, who was one of the indirect fathers of the Intelligence test i Q test UM, a pair of researchers named Gray and wheel right um, and plenty of others who wanted to say no, no, no, no, you can study psychology. You can study things like the human personality, and you can type of fire, and you can add numbers. You can quantify this stuff, and in doing so, we will

prove psychology as a science as well. So this, this whole movement to typify people and put them into convenient, um, almost numerical categories, came out of this urgent need to science to establish a scientific basis for psychology. Yeah, and Young Uh, he's kind of laid the table for this. And many years later, although not that many, um, there was a woman named Katherine Cook Briggs uh and she was working on this with her daughter, one Isabelle Briggs Myers.

Think you see where this is going. Uh. This is post World War two when they women were kind of for the first time really going into the workforce in full uh and on mass and so they thought, well, maybe we can put together some personality types to find out, um, what kind of jobs these women might be suited for,

what types of jobs they might enjoy. Um. So they started working together on this and um, as legend has it, the mom Catherine Briggs Cook Briggs, she was doing her thing and then saw Young's works and said, I gotta start over. This is this is the stuff. She had already been working on a personality test, but apparently, according to the legend, through her work into the fire I said,

I'm starting from scratch because she's dramatic. She was a voracious reader, especially of um the psychology, the new psychology books that were coming out of Europe. She didn't read Young. She did well eventually, but yeah, and then it seems like it kind of came along later. Well, so, yeah, there's a there's kind of a weird discrepancy in the history. And I don't know if it's just it hasn't been

covered right or if there is a weird discrepancy. But supposedly she initiated it, and so it would have been contemporary or shortly after Young's Psychology or Personality Types was translated into English in n So. But it was her daughter Isabelle who really took it and ran with it because of World War Two in the need for women in the workplace. Uh So they you know, kind of kept some of young stuff built on that kind of stripped some of it away, most notably a lot of

the unconscious stuff. They might have thought that was a little too weird for you know, the modern American workforce. Uh So, what they ended up coming up with was the the m B t I Myers Briggs Type Indicator, right,

very famously. Yeah, and they had they had a publishing arrangement with one group, I can't remember what they were called, but they thought it didn't do very well, and then in they went with another publishers C P P. And they're the current publishers of the Myers Briggs Type Indicator. And since then, that's when it's ubiquity, like just really spread, was starting in the seventies and and now it's just it's basically married to corporate America. Should we take a break, Sure,

go get married to corporate America. As if we aren't already. All right, we'll come back and we'll talk a little bit about personality tests in general, and then focus in a little more on the m B T I S K a good shouldn't all right, So UM personality tests is just there are many many ways you can get evaluated psychologically by a professional. This is just one way, and you get your head measured with calipers and back in the day they didn't give you a bunch of

jugs and see what you do. There's a lot of ways. But these tests generally, UM, as grabs her points out, falls into a couple of types, projective and objective. Projective tests or things like the roar check test where you're shown something some kind of stimulus and it's open to interpretation and you tell them what you think about it, and someone sits back very quietly and taps on a

pad of paper and makes an evaluation. And then objective are more like these personality tests, their standardized assessments that people use UM and while it's subjective what you put down, they are then evaluated again by a professional. Right. But ultimately that objective name is a bit of misnomer because on the end of it it's still interpreted by a person, which is therefore makes it subjective, right, and which, depending on who you ask, is the fatal flaw of all

personality tests. It should be the like a good songs from the seventies had a little parenthetical at the end of the title. Should just say subjective also in parentheses? Baby. Um So the Big five are and and this is the Big five. I get the feeling or the psychological tests that that legit psychologists are more in favor of over something like the m b t I that right. Yeah, it's not just there's tests to suss out the Big five, the Big five or the personality types of the field

as psychology has come up with that. Yeah, but the tests that that you utilize, that right, they kind of think are more legit than the m b t I. Yeah, there's not a psychologist alive who uses the m b t I and their regular practice. There are not not not that not that are speaking up. I guarantee there's someone out there. Sure it's a freewheel and type. Where's she? Uh So? The Big five are extra version, agreeableness, openness

to experience, conscientiousness, and neuroticism. Right. It sounds like it could be like a dating site thing that you fill out. It's funny every time I see or hear the word neuroticism, a bell goes off in my head, like thing just a silent bell. Yeah, I don't know what that means. I don't either, but it draws my attention to UM. So some of these tests, uh, I mean it depends on what it is that. They might not all call them by those exact words, but they're generally using they

call them, you know, like I said, the Big Five. Yeah, and I was, I was looking into that Big five and um, this this site, I can't remember what it was called, but they were basically they're going over it like extra version is again just part of the scientific literature at this point. Um. Agreeableness is like whether you're how sympathetic or kind or affectionate you are? Concientiousness is are your organized? Are your thorough? You're the type who

shows up on time? That kind of thing. Um neuroticism, which is some kind of sometimes called emotional stability. Um, how tense are you? How moody? How anxious? Uh? And then like openness to experience? Right, they sometimes call that intellect slash imagination? Do you have wide interests? Are you an imaginative person? Are you insightful? And this this site really went to a lot of pains to point out

that what you would call these things. The big five personality traits are, as far as the psychologist is concerned, just one dimension of you, the human being, and that to get a clearer picture of you, they would also need to study your motivations, your emotions, your attitudes, your abilities, your self concepts, your social roles, autobiographical memories, your life stories, and if you're starting to put all these things together,

then you can start to kind of approximate the person's personality. But it would just it takes a lot of study of an individual and these different components that make up their personality to get a clear picture. So I don't think there are any psychologists walking around saying the big five personality types are like the beginning and end of a personality. It's just if you put them together, you have, uh, just a sketch of somebody's personality, and you you should

go much deeper if you're analyzing someone. Yeah, I think I used to think this stuff was a lot neater when I was younger, and now it kind of gives

me a little anxiety. Oh yeah, yeah, Like I just I don't know as far as doing this to myself, and I still enjoy therapy, Like that's different, But I don't know, because every single one of these, Like my answer would be, well, it depends well, I think, I think also though um, and I don't mean to speak for you, but one of the issues that's that comes up for me is if somebody goes to you and says, you know you you you rate pretty high on the

spectrum of neuroticism, Like that's obviously you're gonna obsess about that kind of stuff, especially if they're right. It can make you neurotic. But yeah, it's it's it's a boundary that somebody has just established for you that you may need feel the need to stay in because that's the boundary that you're bound by, whether you are or not, like this is my box, live in it. That would be the reason it raises anxiety for me. Yeah. My whole thing, like I said, though, is just depends every

single question that I would get asked. Well, not everyone. Sometimes I'm pretty like set on something, but usually it's say, I don't know. It depends on the scenario. Am I more prone in a crowd to do X or Y? Maybe maybe not? Depends on my mood. So one one with these other personality tests and in the whole field in psychology of um studying traits personality traits in a

quantitative way is called psychometrics. So with these tests, the more sophisticated ones, if they had a test taker like you, they're designed to get around that. So they're gonna ask a bunch of different questions about the same thing, but in different ways, coming from different directions, so that eventually, if you put all of them together and run them through statistical analysis, they're actually going to come up with your genuine answer, which is kind of one way or another.

The other way they get around this um, that kind of hemming and hawing, I guess is um. By placing it on a spectrum, you're not being lumped into one category or another. It's here's one end of the spectrum, here's the other end of the spectrum, and based on your answers, you fall somewhere around the middle, like almost

everybody does. If you look at psychometric tests, a legitimate psychometric test is going to basically look like a bell curve where most people are going to be distributed toward the middle. I think, what, that's why gives me anxiety? It's like, what's the point? Don't box me in it's a great question. UM. Well, I think the second half of this is a lot of what's the point, you know, Uh, so looking speaking on these tests to see if it's actually if there is a point, if it's a valid

thing to do. Uh. There are a couple of measures that one must look at and that psychologists do look at. UM is it valid and is it reliable? Valid in the sense that it really is a pretty good reflection of Josh or Chuck or whoever. And is it reliable? So if we take this test tomorrow or a different test that's UM just you know, maybe different questions, will it reprove reproduce the same result? And that's a big deal. Like you're talking science and you're trying to have a

foundation that says, no, this is science. It's not just a bunch of questions and hippie dippy questions that we're asking. If you really want real data and science behind it, you have to be able to reproduce it. Um. One of the other things too, that these tests are designed to do is to weed out fakers. We'll talk a lot more about the Minnesota Multi Phasic Personality Inventory UM, which is one of the big ones, probably the most

taken personality test in the world. Um, and it has a lot of built in mechanisms, and apparently it's really good at detecting people who are faking they're faking a mental illness or who are trying to pretend that they aren't suffering from a mental illness. It's really good at detecting that because it's so exhaustive and um using statistical analysis. If somebody skewed really far one way or skewed really far the other, they're just immediately exposed as as gaming

the tests as best they can. Yeah. And one way they do that, which is in its own way, its own little psychology experiment at least, is by telling you we have ways like you will be rooted rooted out and we will know. So they tell people that beforehand, so you're more inclined to just be like, all right, we'll screw it. I'll tell the truth, especially when they're sitting there like clearing the air out of a syringe.

That's creepy. All right, So let's get back to uh CPP and the n b t I, the consulting psychological Psychologists PRESS, and the Myers Briggs. We'll just keep calling it a test even though they say it's not a test, it's a it's a type inventory. Yeah. Uh, so we'll just go ahead and break down the deal here there are The object is to sort you into one of sixteen different types personality types, uh, based on which side of four pairs or dichotomy is that you're gonna fall on.

And those are UM at the very base, you're either introverted or extroverted, Like we said, your eye, sensing or intuition s and n um and these words they sound little confusing, like what the heck does a sensing person mean? It means you like the big data and empirical data and a lot of information, right, whereas intuition is like you just go with your gut. That's how you prefer to be correct. Right. The next we have thinking and feeling. Thinking being more focused on logic. Uh, that's a logic

with a t sure and objectivity. And then if you're feeling, you're gonna be um more interested in in relationships and harmony among your group. Plus two are pretty straightforward. And then lastly there's judging and perceiving. Those are that's a dichotomy. Judging is where you UM, you prefer schedules. You prefer um decisiveness. That's how you kind of approach life and perceiving is where you're just kind of like whatever. Yeah,

I'm not too worried about it. Um. That's almost kind of like the difference between the type A and Type B personalities, which, by the way, was made up by a pair of cardiologists whose work was later secretly funded by the tobacco industry who were looking for anything to explain heart attacks besides smoking, so they funded type A and type B personality research for years. Interesting, Yeah, it really is. There's a UM just as an aside. There's

a really interesting price I think. Yeah, Prison nomics UM article on type and type Yeah, just look it up. I don't remember the name, right. UM. So, when you sit down to take one of these uh not tests with a series of questions that you answer, I think they call them instruments, by the way, psychometric instruments, which are basically a series of questions on a piece of paper. It sounds like a test. Um. They will say things

like uh ed has some good examples here. When you go on a trip, do you want everything planned out in advance or would you rather just take each day as it comes and do whatever you feel like. Pretty straightforward kind of stuff. Uh. And then they also have things like a word pairs just to see literally what word you like better, like compassion foresight, Like which word do you like better? Carrots or fruit? Uh? Fruit? Fruit?

That's just prettier, it is. So I'm looking back here, I just want to say, so, I think trying to figure out what you were. Yeah, I think e n FP. Maybe I think that's what I was. We weren't the same thing. I don't remember you. Me and I got the same thing. She found an old email, but she forgot to tell me what we were. Really, I really, I don't know. The problem is would we still be the same today? Yeah? And I think, if I'm not mistaken, didn't we have this up on a big board in

the office for a while. So yeah, it seems like a Jerry's nothing. That seems like a breach of protocol sure like privacy? Yeah, well again, being forced to gunpoint to do it was just from the start. Remember it was kind of fun night, a fun day. We'll talk about that as well. Um. So it's gonna cost you if you just do this as a single individual. Um. Not meaning not married but just a person about fifty bucks um, although they should charge more if you're married.

More complex tests about fifty bucks. If you want our feedback, it'll cost you an extra hundred and if you want a career report all typed up, that'll be six And if you um, this is fifteen hundred dollars for a on site training classes at like what we had. So this is a this is not very well explained. If you want to administer the Myers Briggs personality or type inventory, you can get certified. It's four day training course and

you pay fifteen hundred and sixteen hundred dollars. Cannot legally administer this test or you're infringing on their copyrights unless you're certified by CPP to do this. We should do it with one another on the air and risk a lawsuit. Well yeah, well you probably got a stude already with that one question you asked out loud? Which one? Just the one? Yeah? When you go on a trip, do you want everything planned out in advance? I just made

that up. Oh good, I got that from Travelocity. Nice. Okay, yeah, that little gnome whispered it in your ear. But so you you would go and get certified, and then now you can go around to businesses and say, hey, uh, do you want to know more about your employees? You want to know who's good at what? Let me come give the Myers Briggs type inventory to your your employees and it will be wonderful. Right, So that's how the

whole process goes. You pay to become certified, and then you go become something of an evangelist for the Myers Briggs tests, and you sell the test. You basically become a salesman as well. It's a it's very interesting UM dynamic that they have going that is, it's a good word dynamic. Um. They want to point out that um, the person taking the test is the expert um. And they also use this metaphor of handedness, which I didn't

fully understand. They say things like, it feels more comfortable to sign your name with your dominant hand, but technically you can sign with your non dominant and if you need to write, And I'm not sure what they're trying to prove that. They're trying to say that despite the m B T I pigeonholing you fully in one category or another rather than on a spectrum they're saying that category that it's pigeonholing you into is actually just your preference.

It's not you specifically, it's just ca Yeah, you can to be an extrovert, but of course everybody likes their own personal alone time, so yeah, you're going to be an introvert once in a while, but you're an extrovert more than than other times. Yeah, because I can't sign my name with my left hand that I didn't like that analogy because it literally I can barely hold a

pin with my left hand. I'm seeing you're doing it right. Wow, If I tried to do it, it would look like a three year old with arthritis has tried to like scribble it out. Mine mine looks like um you d mum, it's my signature with my left hand, And they do they do try and point out like you said that it's interesting because they box you in. But at the same time they're saying, but you know, like you said,

it's just predisposition. Don't don't really think of it about you being this type of person, even though you are a E N F B. Like you said, it was earlier, it was almost numbered. I mean, it is, it's lettered this is a different way of quantify buying it. Yeah, but without numbers. All right, you want to take a break and then come back and and maybe do a little criticism. Yeah, okay, that's sky. Shouldn't chuck, all right, chuck Like I said, it's kind of a pastime in

the United States too. Two tee off on the Myers Briggs type inventory. Yeah, this is not us here, this is now. This is us talking about other people teeing off on it. Yeah. It's widely been criticized over the years from UM psychologists and well amateur no nothings like us. One of the big criticisms is that companies use this stuff UM and hiring and firing and promoting UM. But even the Myers Briggs people CPP say like, don't do that.

Well I know, but they say that, but then don't go to an office and get hired by a corporation to administer it or go sell your services you know. Yeah, yeah, I agreed, And that's part of the problem to me. That is more UM the corporation's fault. Well, sure, like if you have an HR person who's like die hard believer in the m b t I and will hire or fire somebody based on their m b t I type, fire that person because you have a real dumb dumb on your hands, and they should not be responsible for

people's livelihoods. Even I don't think they would put it quite in those terms, but even the Myers Briggs people say like, you shouldn't use this for hiring or firing, and yet yes, some people do. Some people swear by this. The impression that I have is that the Myers Briggs people tend to think of this as more like a team building exercise or where like a certified and b t I administrator can come to your place, get all your employees together, and they find out like all their

personality types. And by the way, there's not a single negative personality type, and all personality types are equal, so everybody gets a participant ribbon in the form of their personality type and um. But at the same time, and this seems to be the crux, at the same time, everybody's finding out like, oh, you're a little different than me, and I'm a little different than you, and we all have differences in different perspectives, so let's celebrate that and

let's respect one another's differences. And there is the actual point from what I underst stand up the Myers Briggs type inventory and taking it in a corporate setting, that's what stands out to me as what happened with us was I remember it kind of being a fun day. Yeah, we held goofed off and had a good time. And the person leading it, if they're good at what they do, which this person was, is always you know, it's always kind of a fun person and cracking jokes and they

don't take it too seriously. None of us took it too seriously. Uh, And we all had a good time and it did. It was very much like a team building thing, right. So as long as there's like a wink wink, nudge nudge kind of thing, and that the people who take it actually take it seriously or taken off to the side by their hr rep to say like, no, this is a little less serious thing, then you're taking it.

Then it's fine. But yes, once you start deciding people's fate based on this, then you have real problems because it's just about anybody will tell you the Myers Briggs type inventory is based at best on some shaky science, if at all, If you go back to the very beginning it's based on the theories of Carl Young, which have never been based on science. There are basically personal observations by Young, and the psychology community has disavowed Young

in large part. So therefore anything based on his teachings and theories is by proxy disavowed as well. But if that weren't enough, psychology as a field loves going after the Myers Briggs type inventory just loves it as as totally baseless scientifically all right, so we've got UM. Shouldn't use it to hire and fire and corporations or or gift promotions we have not based on real science and

science and scientific data. Um. These four dichotomies are problematic in and of themselves because everyone is on a spectrum. You can't say, like, you know, you answered these ten questions, you're either this or you're that. UM. And when one of the rebuttals because I think ED interviewed someone from CPP, right, UM. One of the rebuttals about being a non repeatable UM experiment of sorts is like, hey, yesterday I was an

n f P and today I'm this. They'll say, well, you know what, if you have different answers, that means you were sort of on the cusp right there in that center line on some of these questions, and you might have just leapt over to that other side, which means you're basically kind of down the center. Yet they

don't have a categorization for down the center. Yeah, because depending on as Ed puts it, you could answer all twenty four questions on the feeling side and you're gonna get the same result as somebody who answered eleven questions for thinking and thirteen questions for feeling. Right, same thing, You're still both in an f in that respect. And I saw elsewhere it put like if the Myers Briggs

test um measured height, you would either be taller short. Yeah, you can say, well, actually I'm right there in the middle, and they'd be like, well that's short, right, or for you, it's short. For the guy who who is the same anxect tight, they're tall right. And trust me, nobody that's five tin likes to be considered short, right. I can say that from experience, because you're not you're in your

average I'm average average. The fact that there isn't a spectrum is one thing that really makes it in stark contrast of of other much more widely accepted psychometric instruments. UM. It also points out to the Grabster that they're The construction of the UM instrument itself is problematic because one, like we talked about, it's self reporting. Anytime you're self reporting, there's going to be some weird bias in there, just

almost impossible to avoid. The other one is that UM he says a couple of these dicademies are entangled, which I never really thought about that, but that's a pretty good point. So UM judging perceiving scale or correlated with answers on the sensing intuition scale, and if you like, this should be separated out for sure. I don't know why they don't. I don't either, you know, because they've really put a lot of work into this. Yeah. Um, it's not baked in stone from the nineteen forties and

fifties and sixties, is it. No, it's not. And even while they were creating it was an ongoing, exhaustive process that UM, Mrs Briggs and Mrs Myers UM engaged in. Yeah, we don't want to give they spent decades on this. Yes, it wasn't like something they threw together. No, The problem is is they they did it backwards. They came up with the personality types and then set about creating the

test that would detect these personality types. Rather than going out and testing people, seeing what personalities types emerged and then figuring out a test to find and other people, they did it backwards. It was based on young but

it was not for lack of trying. Like as a matter of fact, one of the first things they did after they started to really establish the tests was they managed to administer it to like five thousand George Washington University medical students, and they took those results and tracked the students to see what fields of medicine they went in.

They like really worked on this. I read an article in the Washington Post where um this I think Isabelle Myers' son Um remembers their vacations were basically like fact finding um missions all around the country, Like they would go administered tested, like everything was about this test and they worked on it for decades. So yeah, the problem is it was just it's just not based on science. They

didn't follow the scientific method. So science, so science kind of poo poos the m b T I. But wait, wait, wait, get back here, because a lot of the criticisms fall just as easily on every other psychometric test around. Well, yeah, and that's one of the things that UM. I can't remember who was interviewed in here, but UM and one of those other articles you sent one of the um

myers are I don't know if it was. Maybe it was a roor Shack defender, UM said, you know, like everyone, Yeah, it was Rorshak, Like everyone's always picking on ror Shack. When all of these psychological tests are, you know, subject to criticism, they are, you know, I think it's really easy for to tee off on Rorshak as well, because I mean we're talking ink plots. Man. It is the epitome of subjective self reporting. You're saying, I, uh, let's

see in this one, I see mom's boobs. Yeah, Mom's boobs in that one, right, exactly so, and then from that it was strictly up to uh. Initially, Rorschack, I think came up with this test in nineteen I think, so he's a Swiss psychiatrist. It was. It was initially up to him and then later on his followers to interpret this, which is basically like interpreting dreams and UM,

so subjective. It totally subjective from beginning end. And then and I think a guy at Bowling Green State University, which is right outside of Toledo, UM, came up with this a really exhaustive interpretive test that sought to quantify rorshack answers. Yeah, John Exner, Uh. And it was a test called the comprehensive system a hundred and forty components. And in this article you sent, they said that rorshack was probably going away, UM had it not been for

Exner's accompaniment UM with this other process. Right, And even today he's got an institute in Asheville that's dedicated to the Rorschach test. Right. So, one thing I've noticed from researching this is each of these personality inventories has like its adherents and its detractors, And just judging from the outside, it looks a lot like colts gathered around their various idols. Right.

There's like the original figurehead who came up with it, and everybody worships them, and he's attacked by these other followers who have a very similar figurehead. It came up with something very similar, but it's just different enough that that there's a huge chasm between the two. And there's a lot of dogma surrounding it, but the Rorschach test in particular is apparently well known to give wildly inaccurate results.

How did you do? I got two out of tin, which means, um, I was only two to away whatever that means from being labeled like a psychotic. So yeah, there was to get four out of ten. I think there's this. Oh really, I think that's what it said. Yeah, that's close. And this is an online uh test. I don't know if it's like how true it was to the original or maybe the original it could be, and then they have an algorithm that runs the analysis. I

keep seeing all kinds of things. When I looked at it, and I've never done an ink blot test, I would say, oh, that looks like a bat, and then I was like, no, it's like two bunnies. And then now it looks like a cool Mardi Gras mask. Did they did they move to you? Did you see colors? Well, some of them were colored, most of them were black, and they had a the one I took at a at a one and a two, like, um, what do you see? And

what's like a secondary thing that you see? So you know, supposedly people who are supporters of the Rorshach tests say no, man, there's we don't know how it's working. But if you see movement in the Rorschach ink blots, it's suggestive of depression or something like that. And they say, statistically it's correlated. But like I was saying, it's also notorious for giving

incorrect results. Yeah, like saying you're you have a mental illness, right, Okay, So there was this study in two thousand that was given to like one mentally sound elementary school kids and some like high percentage of them came back as borderline psychotic because of the ror check test, right, And it's hilarious to hear stories like that, Like I'm laughing inside

right now. But um, the problem is is you were at the very least being labeled as psychotic, not a label you want in society, and it was because of this ink blot test that's a hundred years old. And then secondly, these tests are also being submitted and accepted as evidence in criminal trials. That's the biggest part. Child custody cases and sile case still given real weight and lives are changed and ruined based on looking at a hundred year old ink blots and a person subjective analysis

of that that's not okay? Know this, Um, Howard Garb in this one article you sent and he's a co author of What's Wrong with the rorscheck? And he is head of cycle, or at least at the time of this article, he may still be head of psychological testing for the Air Force. Uh. He said that even with Exner's comprehensive system, he said, only ten percent of his

system even meets the most basic scientific standards. And um, they did examine data of over thirty different ror Scheck studies, and he said they all have a tendency to label healthy people mentally ill. And if you're trying to get custody of your kid, or if you are on trial as a criminal, like it's just that's the last thing you need is somebody subjective opinion of is it a bunny or is it a bat? Oh? He said, a bat? Take that kid? You know quick? Kids like I like bunnies.

The another one that that we have to talk about is the mm P I. Now the mm P I dash too. I think as of two thousand and twelve they revised it dramatic. Is this one? Is that right? It has over questions. Yeah, some of them originally were about like your bowel movements, um, really not so questions that supposedly really got to the heart of whether you

were mentally disturbed or not right. And it was created at the University of Minnesota in the forties by a psychiatrist and a neurologist, I believe, and they hit upon a pretty clever idea. They said, we're not going to interpret the results right and say, you know, oh, this person said that they do feel like smashing something sometimes

and that means this. Instead, we're gonna come up with this test of like five hundred and four questions, and we're going to give it to the patient or the family and staff of a mental hospital who were sure are sane, and we're gonna take their answers and they're going to become our control group, our baseline. So then anybody who takes this test, we're going to compare the test takers answers to the same control groups answers, and you know, depending on how it relates to the same

control group, they're either mentally ill or not. You better have gotten that control group right. Well, that's the thing to begin with. So a group of like family and friends in Minnesota. Is the picture of sanity throughout the world is the basis of this test. That's a huge problem with it to begin with, but apparently a lot of people say, like, no, it really has It does a pretty good job of sustening sussing out mental illness. UM. It's also really good at detecting faker faking one way

or the other. UM. But it's it's too invasive and when companies use it for hiring and firing, it's way too invasive. And apparently lawsuits have been filed against companies for using it. Well, I think that UM, most people are far more UM troubled than they ever let on in life. And UM part of success in life comes down to how good you are at UM covering that up or hiding it, or dealing with it and processing it, terms with it. UM, it's just to find a core

group that are quote unquote saying normal people. UM, it's just you're starting off with a problem, he asked me. A faulty premise, right, Yeah, It's just there's no way like everyone has their issues. They're deep dark, uh, things that their brain that they don't want anyone to know. Sometimes even the people closest to them don't even know.

And actually you you're in agreement with this. A sociologist named William White who criticized the mm p I as a tool that helped to create and perpetuate the oppressive group think of mid century organization man, where it's basically like, here's what we think is normal. Anything outside of that is abnormal, and we're not going to hire you because you don't fit into this picture of normalcy, which is basically white crew cut Minnesota from the forties, right, that's

the picture of normalcy. That's highly debatable. The other thing I thought was interesting is a lot of skeptics and critics point to things like the m b t I and saying, this is just like astrology. There is really no different than reading your horoscope because it's all positive psychology. UM. At the end of a of a Myers Briggs um non test, no one walks away feeling bad. Usually it's all sort of positive wording and like like this is

what you are. You're just this, so kind of don't worry about it the same way you read your horoscope in an in a given day. I mean, how many horoscopes say like UM today you're you will be prone to depression and wonder what it's all about. Right, maybe you should work on your core character because people don't like being around you that much. You don't hear that kind of stuff but taps into what's called the Horror effect f r r UM. There was a psychiatrist named

Bertram Horror. This is so interesting. He will take it. It's pretty interesting stuff. Well, I mean, basically didn't he give the same He had people take these tests and then gave all of the people the exact same assessment, but telling everyone it was tailored for them their own personality assessment. And I think the people who just thought it was favorable, we're like, this is great. Well it was favorable. He actually called it from daily horoscopes. Well yeah,

but what were they responding positively too? Well? They it was whether or not they wanted to feel that way about it, so they were it was a positive assessment. There was nothing negative in there, so it was all positive stuff like you have a lot of unused potential. That kind of stuff people stuff people wanted to identify with. Right, So the more uttering it was, the more likely the people were to say, this is an accurate assessment of me.

So just despite the fact that it was the same one given to the entire class, he took their answers and threw them out and said, here's your assessment, the same one for everybody. It got like an accuracy from the class as a whole. Well, that's what I wondered. It was about, where those people just super honest maybe and like, no, this is really no. People actually don't like being around me. I'm using all of my potential and they still don't like me. Yeah, that's what I

couldn't figure out. But I guess that makes sense. There are people out there that are I think I would be one of those that would be like, this isn't right. I'm not like that sure anything else I think not. This is a good one. We've been we've been wanting to do this for a while. Yeah, this is a special request by me and others. Uh. If you want to know more about personality tests, well you can go take them online. They're kind of huge right now. Uh, find out what kind of um hobbit you are. I

don't know what box do you live in? Yeah? Uh, And in the meantime, you can type personality test in the search bar how stuff works dot com. And since I said that it's time for listener mail. The only thing that should live in a box is uh, temporary housing for a pet frog that's not bad, or the stuff you find in a tree hole that Boo Radley left for you. Yeah, back a month in the box. Uh. Hey, guys, feel compelled to write you today to tell you how grateful I am for your show uh and praise your

good work. Um. Recently became a listener and I'm working my way through the entire archive. I think a lot of folks might be able to relate to this. Until recently I found out I found it really hard to relax and suffer with anxiety. Two months ago, I read an article basically pointing out how our obsession with being productive an associated guilt is a modern phenomenon. Um. I think that for sure. You know, although I had heard

this before, something really clicked in my head. So I decided to abandon to an embrace relaxation, taking control of my own stress levels. You guys have been a big part of this. I have taken the time to slowly hotter around my flat, go for walks while listening and learning to your fascinating podcast, and they've lived in my mood.

I feel mentally healthier than I ever have before. Although the content of what you discussed might not always be positive, the way in which you explain them in your own views personally revived my hope and humanity. That is ridiculously flatter and that nice. Yeah, I guess I should also mention that a big part of my tackling anxiety UH levels has been to abandon watching television and the psychotropic drugs.

I would be really interested to know if there has been any research conductivity to affect TV has upon our lives. I'm sure there has been. I haven't owned a TV for many years, but my partner has since subscribed to an online provider and I realized how watching TV is not helped my anxiety. Also remember reading that after TVs came mainstream and Bhutan their crime rate went up something like seve my to prove an interesting topic for a

future show. Yeah, anyway, sincerely grateful, keep it up. I am now recommending your shows to as many people as I can. Big love from the UK, MAC, Thanks a lot, Mac. That was great. We hear from a lot of people actually say that we help them with their anxiety. No idea how, but it doesn't matter, so thank you. Yeah. If you want to get in touch of this, like mac did, you can tweet to us at s Y s K podcast or josh um Clark. You can hang out with us on Facebook at Stuff you Should Know

or Charles W. Chuck Bryant. You can send us an email the Stuff podcast how stuff works dot com and has always joined us at home on the web Stuff you Should Know dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff Works dot com