Why are people suckers for the Myers-Briggs, Zodiac signs?

https://powerofus.medium.com/why-are-people-suckers-for-the-meyers-briggs-zodiac-signs-and-other-phony-personality-tests-b6efa310a2ff

by Anon84 • 5 years ago

25 33 5 years ago

powerofus.medium.com

meowster2• 5 years ago

The article is just a bunch of fluff, this is the extent of its answer:

We often crave self-definition and are attracted to group memberships that balance a sense of differentiation from the many with a sense of connection to people just like us.

My answer:

Most people don't have the wherewithall to give their own lives meaning. They need someone else to give them purpose. Being given a label and expectations, fills that hole in their psyche that they can't fill themselves.

madflame991• 5 years ago

Yes - for whatever reason we really like to get our own label and wear it with pride. I would be very curious to find out if we actually try to fit into this newfound label if we knew about it from an early age. When I was young members of my family told me what sun/zodiac sign I am and kept explaining my behavior from that perspective - I actually enjoyed it and believed in it and (annoyingly enough) I now fit the description; wish I knew if this is pure coincidence or something I managed to embed within myself - there must be some studies out there on this issue

seph-reed• 5 years ago

These things give us a "free from judgement" way of talking about our prides and failures.

If you say: "I do x thing great and x thing bad, because I'm a Taurus," the conversation can move on.

If you say: "I do x thing great and x thing bad because I'm just that way," you'll be simultaneously bragging and then having a conversation about how to fix "x thing bad."

MB and Zodiac signs are a very pragmatic way of talking about personality.

TenToedTony7• 5 years ago

Oh you're such an ISFJ for saying that.

oconnore• 5 years ago

I think the distinctions built into Myers-Briggs are a useful substrate for understanding your own tendencies better.

As an example: some situations call for being very detail oriented (J), where some situations call for being big picture (P). If you know you are prone to one or the other, you can either let others handle those situations, or realize that you are outside your comfort zone and be extra intentional.

DoingIsLearning2• 5 years ago

If you know you are prone to one or the other

The issue is you might do the test today without a morning coffe and 5 years from now after a good night sleep and get a large results disparity.

So either we accept that we as people keep changing the personality, that this tests for, thus making the test meaningless. Or we accept that inter test reliability is not great, which also makes the test meaningless.

asymptosis4• 5 years ago

If you are only interested in testing, then yes, I agree it's bullshit. But there is more going on with MBTI than just testing. There is a broad family of personality models based on Myers-Briggs and Jung, and they all loosely get called MBTI despite not being formally affiliated.

Most of the people using these models in practice aren't claiming that you can find your type after just taking a test. Most who are being honest about it (instead of trying to make a quick buck) will warn you that it can take years of introspection to figure out what are the biases that consistently lead you to shoot yourself in the foot in life.

Eg, have a look at some of the early stuff by Objective Personality (not the last year or two when they started getting more commercial.) Constant warnings about people mistyping themselves and the need to consider feedback from a wide variety of people and situations before making any conclusions about yourself.

satisfice2• 5 years ago

If you stop thinking about Myers-Briggs as an indicator and start thinking about it as a preference label, it stops being pseudoscience and starts being just a way to talk about yourself.

TenToedTony7• 5 years ago

A very limited and borderline useless labelling system.

rlili• 5 years ago

What are the alternatives?

satisfice2• 5 years ago

Objectively speaking, that is not so. I am part of an engineering community that has used it productively for many years. Thus apparently it is possible for some of your fellow humans to find it more than borderline useless. I suspect you haven’t really given it a good try.

When I took the test, it classified me as an introvert. Since I prefer to be thought of as an extrovert, I changed my type accordingly. Because the test is not very helpful.

Additionally, I reliably find that when I am in the company of other declared NF’s we understand each other easily.

Perhaps you think there is a better preference indication heuristic. I have seen several, but MBTI is my favorite so far.

Anyway my point is: criticizing it as being a poor instrument to categorize people is thinking about it all wrong. We categorize ourselves.

vanusa• 5 years ago

Myers-Briggs, just a way to talk about yourself.

That's fine for self-exploration and games at the family table and such. When employers start using as a "tool" for discriminating against people, however...

dr_dshiv2• 5 years ago

Myers-Briggs isn't pseudoscience. It correlates highly with OCEAN [1]. Perhaps the scandal isn't the adoption of MBTI but the reluctance of psychologists to use it in more studies.

[1] Jones, C. S., & Hartley, N. T. (2013). Comparing correlations between four-quadrant and five-factor personality assessments. American Journal of Business Education, 6(4), 459-470.

dr_dshiv2• 5 years ago

I never liked Astrology because I have "Cancer". But then I found out that in the Netherlands, the word used for the sign ("kreeft") means "Lobster". That's like, WAY, better.

asymptosis4• 5 years ago

I feel pretty torn about Myers-Briggs, because while I recognise its shortcomings as a "scientific hot mess", it still provides a useful heuristic model for personality types. At its core, it is a model about binary preferences, and people can often be understood by their sharpest preferences, the places where they are most imbalanced.

I don't think it's fair to compare this to astrology, which as far as I know isn't accompanied by any kind of reasonable or observable mechanism.

An example which comes to mind from recent media is John McAfee. Anyone who has put much thought into MBTI will no doubt all agree that he was an ENTP, who exemplified the charming chaos of extraverted intuition, while becoming paranoid about the parts of life that he repressed: the down-to-earth organisation of introverted sensing.

Knowing his Big Five percentages wouldn't give you the same quick insight into how exactly he was always his own worst enemy.

TenToedTony7• 5 years ago

What's useful about "knowing" McAfee was an ENTP?

asymptosis4• 5 years ago

It gives you more insight into why he acted the way he did.

iroh2727• 5 years ago

Myers-Briggs is the single most useful mental model for personality types in existence, or that I know of at least (especially the modern versions like 16personalities.com).

I've heard a common complaint that "traits are a spectrum, not discrete categories." But often in biology, this is not exactly true, just like there are light brown leopards and black leopards but no dark brown leopards.

Don't "listen to the scientists" who say otherwise, those hopeless reductionists who obsess over what is true but useless rather than what is faulty but useful. Pareto said it right: "Give me the fruitful error any time, full of seeds, bursting with its own corrections. You can keep your sterile truth for yourself."

Of course it doesn't cover everyone well or every aspect; it's just one model of many, but it's useful and predictive.

As for zodiac signs...I can see some correlations popping out based on whether you're young for your grade or old for your grade (like Malcolm Gladwell talks about in Outliers), or perhaps when your parents decided to "mate" says something about them which says something about you, but yeah idk how deep it goes.

TenToedTony7• 5 years ago

What can it predict?

meowster2• 5 years ago

Nothing. Just like Astrological signs cannot predict anything.

It can give a vague discription to some obvious traits, and many people need validation or direction, so that's why it "works".

dragonwriter• 5 years ago

Myers-Briggs is the single most useful mental model for personality types in existence

No, its not. Its not the worst pseudoscience because parts of it map tolerably well to a some of the axes of the Big-5 model which has some apparent empirical validity, but it in is still pseudoscience with a huge marketing push behind it.

I've heard a common complaint that "traits are a spectrum, not discrete categories." But often in biology, this is not exactly true, just like there are light brown leopards and black leopards but no dark brown leopards.

Yeah, sure there are traits that, within a properly selected domain, really are binary, but in terms of personality traits of the type M-B addresses, as well as knowing that M-B doesn't quite have the axes right, we known that position on those axes where M-B has the axis right still aren’t binary or even bimodal, because we have extensive personality research that isn’t a just-so story with a marketing push to sell proprietary BS products and consulting services.

karmakaze• 5 years ago

I've found the Enneagram's 9 personalities to me more useful. It is easier to apply when communicating with someone it you know their type you can rearrange your conversation flow to be more effective.

Myers-Briggs hasn't really been useful for me. I fall very close to the middle on 2 of the axes.

hellisothers• 5 years ago

In a similar vein I’ve found DiSC to be more useful than Enneagram because 4 categories is even easier to slot than 9 for the same reasons :D

smitty1e• 5 years ago

The MBTI has some value as a coversation starter.

At USNA we joked, when asked, that our MBTI was IHTFP.

reportgunner• 5 years ago

I thought this was already explained by the Barnum effect.

emerged• 5 years ago

You can pick any N dimensions of personal preferences and tendencies and form a type system off of it. That isn’t useless, you’ll find interesting patterns which tie together those in the same category. It’s clearly limited but it’s not the same as the literally meaningless Zodiac sign.

Why are people suckers for the Myers-Briggs, Zodiac signs?

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