Cautionary comments regarding the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator.

Abstract

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI;K. C. Briggs & I. B. Myers, 1998) is a popular measure of normal personality that its promoters claim has many applications. M. H. McCaulley (2000) offered an optimistic and enthusiastic account of how counselors can use this instrument in corporate settings. The present article evaluates several of the psychometric limitations and criticisms of the MBTI that warrant considerable caution when making inferences from its 4-letter type formula. The author concludes that the MBTI, while offering much intuitive appeal, may not yet be able to support the claims its promoters make.

Personality Profiling of Fictional Characters using Sense-Level Links between Lexical Resources

“…Perceiving. While the MBTI validity has been questioned by the research community (Pittenger, 2005), the Extraversion scale is showing rather strong validity and correlation to similar trait in the Five-Factor Model (McCrae and Costa, 1989;MacDonald et al, 1994). Our study hence focuses on the Extraversion scale.…”

Categories and Dimensions

“…The MBTI remains extremely popular despite the poor reliability and validity of its typological classifications (Pittenger, 2005). One ongoing controversy concerns the premise that personality should be divided into 16 types by dichotomizing each of the four dimensional scores calculated from the MBTI (extraversion-introversion, sensing-intuiting, thinking-feeling, judging-perceiving).…”

The contribution of Reinforcement Sensitivity Theory to personality theory

“…As they point out, this partly reflects the general lack of connection between mainstream personality researchers and organizational theorists, but also reflects the lack of an emphasis upon measurement of the RST constructs. Although personality trait approaches are making inroads into Industrial/Organizational psychology, this is either through poorly defined (but popular) measures such as the Myers-Briggs type inventory (see Pittenger, 2005 for a strong critique of this practice) or much better defined but still non-RST related inventories such as the NEO-PI-R (Costa and McCrae, 1992) or Hogan Personality Inventory (Hogan and Hogan, 1995). What is missing is a theory based set of predictions of what leads to effective performance in the work place.…”