# What is the scientific basis for cognitive functions?



## platorepublic (Dec 27, 2012)

Elegant system it might be and perhaps it might even have some practical uses, but sure sounds to me bogus. It almost reminds me of how we used to think the universe is made out of four (or is it five) elements? What... like fire, earth, water, air, and wind?

I mean if we treat it as non-scientific and choose to still use that system anyway, FINE, but we seem to all use it as if it were scientific.

*How is this system of cognitive functions (extending to MBTI theory) falsifiable, testable, and reproducible in order to be scientific?
*
Let's not get bogged down by what we read about MBTI and cognitive functions for the moment and start with basics. Are the cognitive functions created even close to truth?


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## Abraxas (May 28, 2011)

platorepublic said:


> Elegant system it might be and perhaps it might even have some practical uses, but sure sounds to me bogus. It almost reminds me of how we used to think the universe is made out of four (or is it five) elements? What... like fire, earth, water, air, and wind?


It might intrigue you to note that Jung himself was fascinated with alchemy and wrote extensively about it.

Just throwing that out there since you happened to mention the four "alchemical" elements (excluding quintessence). I've long been of the opinion that Jung more or less based his four functions on the four basic alchemical elements such that intuition = air, water = feeling, sensation = earth, and thinking = fire. Although, obviously he never did or I suspect would ever admit to this.

As far as his theory being scientific, I don't even know why people care about it being scientific or not. I think the only reason why people would even ask that question is if they are approaching the topic from a pedestrian point of view, outside of an academic setting in which you would be working towards a degree in depth psychology. Basically, you're not going to hear a professor giving a lecture on the principals of personality typology and giving Jung anything more than a few passing remarks with respect to his contribution of the idea of complexes mainly, and for the sake of historical completeness in the sense of giving an overview of the history of the field and how it developed. I would say Jung is about as "scientific" as Freudian psychoanalysis really. Maybe even far less so.

Honestly, outside of neurology and neuroscience in general, I can't say there's a whole lot about the entire discipline of psychology itself that is very scientific, although, I'm not at all trying to imply that there isn't a generous amount of scientific studies within the field. Just that psychology is rather young, and it doesn't have the kind of rigor and reliability one might find in other physical sciences like biology, chemistry, and physics. It is certainly a field of science, but its mostly subjective nature makes it a lot less falsifiable. Nevertheless, it still has tremendous practical value. The same holds true, in my opinion, for Jung's function theory. It may not be very scientific, or even scientific at all for that matter, but still has a definite practical value to a lot of people, even if other more practical systems might exist that are based in more empirical findings. In the same sense I might argue that there's obviously nothing scientific at all about astrology, but people still value astrology because it gives their lives a sense of meaning which they feel is important to them, and I don't see anything wrong in that.


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## platorepublic (Dec 27, 2012)

Abraxas said:


> It might intrigue you to note that Jung himself was fascinated with alchemy and wrote extensively about it.
> 
> Just throwing that out there since you happened to mention the four "alchemical" elements (excluding quintessence). I've long been of the opinion that Jung more or less based his four functions on the four basic alchemical elements such that intuition = air, water = feeling, sensation = earth, and thinking = fire. Although, obviously he never did or I suspect would ever admit to this.
> 
> As far as his theory being scientific, I don't even know why people care about it being scientific or not. I think the only reason why people would even ask that question is if they are approaching the topic from a pedestrian point of view, outside of an academic setting in which you would be working towards a degree in depth psychology. Basically, you're not going to hear a professor giving a lecture on the principals of personality typology and giving Jung anything more than a few passing remarks with respect to his contribution of the idea of complexes mainly, and for the sake of historical completeness in the sense of giving an overview of the history of the field and how it developed. I would say Jung is about as "scientific" as Freudian psychoanalysis really. Maybe even far less so.


Why do we care whether anything is scientific?

We care when we want to know the truth, and being scientific is as close as we can do to try and obtain it. The problem with non-scientific theories is we cannot gauge whether it is close to the truth or completely way off.

We care because we do not want to wander so far, just to find out we went to the wrong place.


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## Abraxas (May 28, 2011)

platorepublic said:


> Why do we care whether anything is scientific?
> 
> We care when we want to know the truth, and being scientific is as close as we can do to try and obtain it. The problem with non-scientific theories is we cannot gauge whether it is close to the truth or completely way off.
> 
> We care because we do not want to wander so far, just to find out we went to the wrong place.


I edited my post to address your reply while you were composing it. Seems I managed to anticipate it without even knowing it.

By the way, I won't ask who you are referring to when you say "we care, etc" because, first of all, I don't want to find out that you have a split personality, and second, I don't presume to believe you actually think you speak for all humanity as a collective category, and so I'll just ask, why do you think that everyone ought to emulate your values? The way you talk makes you sound condescending and egotistical.


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## platorepublic (Dec 27, 2012)

Abraxas said:


> I edited my post to address your reply while you were composing it. Seems I managed to anticipate it without even knowing it.


Yes, okay it has "practical" value. (What practical value, actually? On average, does it produce good or bad? How do you measure that exactly?)

Let's assume though it has practical value in the sense of being better at tolerating different types of people.

Having practical value doesn't mean that it is a good thing. In fact, all it shows is that one is lazy to be aware of the fact that it may be not good.

Some practical things can be good. But some practical things can be bad without us knowing so.

Being scientific can ensure or at least make us judge better whether something is practical and good at the same time.

I don't know what I am trying to get at. I just don't want people to become lazy and fall into the trap that if a theory is made beautifully and elegantly and neatly, it is true and we should follow it with full force. 

*With some thinking, we should be able to disregard any such elegant theories if it isn't closing in to truth. Just as we should disregard any efficient political systems if it isn't closing in on justice.*


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## Ballast (Jun 17, 2013)

platorepublic said:


> Yes, okay it has "practical" value. (What practical value, actually? On average, does it produce good or bad? How do you measure that exactly?)
> 
> Let's assume though it has practical value in the sense of being better at tolerating different types of people.
> 
> ...


What practical value does it have? I don't know, you're here and by the looks of it you've contributed quite a lot; you've got an offer to join a type specific Skype chat in your sig...so you tell me, how is it practical? 

I agree with you that neatness and elegance do not, in themselves, point to truth. And yes, people do take such theory to be gospel truth. It's wise to see the role of theory as leading us to greater understanding of the truth and not the truth itself. But what do you mean by "practical but not good"? If something is practical, it is useful. What do you mean by these value judgments of good and bad here?

I was under the impression that there were quite a lot of studies to show that MBTI had validity and produced stable, useful results, in any case.


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## Abraxas (May 28, 2011)

platorepublic said:


> Yes, okay it has "practical" value. (What practical value, actually? On average, does it produce good or bad? How do you measure that exactly?)
> 
> Let's assume though it has practical value in the sense of being better at tolerating different types of people.
> 
> ...


Well honestly, I just don't worry about it much. Nobody said I needed to look out for everyone. If you're worried about whether or not a theory is scientific that's fine, but my main response really was just to point out that not everyone necessarily has the same values you do and can get by just fine in life operating on a less accurate knowledge base. Like, for example, me.

My life is so short and insignificant anyway that it hardly matters what I do with it. And I promise that nothing I do is going to change anything about the destiny of mankind to struggle with its own ignorance and seek a reprieve by embracing systems that have absolutely no basis in reality. For example, people will be religious forever, and embrace every kind of new-aged spiritual mumbo-jumbo. Just look at the popularity of idiots like Depak Chopra and that zany asian quantum theorist on the Discovery channel whose name I can't recall (I'm sure you know the one) who is always talking about ridiculous fringe scientific speculation like modal realism and the many worlds interpretation during interviews as if it were matters of fact widely accepted by most physicists.

Maybe I'm projecting my own apathy a bit, and I probably am, but whenever I see threads like this, my knee-jerk reaction is to wonder why people even take the whole thing (functions, MBTI, etc) so damn seriously in the first place. If you just think of it as a time waster that people enjoy taking seriously and that that's really just the beginning and end of it, then I think that's the right attitude. I don't know why a thing has to be "proven" for it to be important and worth people's time. I mean, you don't "prove" that you really need to shoot everyone in a session of Call of Duty. Yet, people devote themselves to professional careers that consist of just playing that game. And for someone to come along and tell those people that they are just wasting their lives is, I think, the height of irony and stupidity, because it's a dumb waste of time to be telling them that in the first place if they already take it so seriously.

But to answer your questions again, it has practical value because people put it to practice and value it. It's that simple. Good and bad are not, and never will be, objective opinions about anything. Again, this boils down to your subjective values, and those who share them, and a kind of projection where your doctrine is essentially, "everyone ought to be like me," "stop liking the things that I don't like," "start liking the things I say are good, and start believing all these reasons I give for why they are good, because I think I am right and I want you to think I am right."


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## platorepublic (Dec 27, 2012)

Abraxas said:


> Well honestly, I just don't worry about it much. Nobody said I needed to look out for everyone. If you're worried about whether or not a theory is scientific that's fine, but my main response really was just to point out that not everyone necessarily has the same values you do and can get by just fine in life operating on a less accurate knowledge base. Like, for example, me.
> 
> My life is so short and insignificant anyway that it hardly matters what I do with it. And I promise that nothing I do is going to change anything about the destiny of mankind to struggle with its own ignorance and seek a reprieve by embracing systems that have absolutely no basis in reality. For example, people will be religious forever, and embrace every kind of new-aged spiritual mumbo-jumbo. Just look at the popularity of idiots like Depak Chopra and that zany asian quantum theorist on the Discovery channel whose name I can't recall (I'm sure you know the one) who is always talking about ridiculous fringe scientific speculation like modal realism and the many worlds interpretation during interviews as if it were matters of fact widely accepted by most physicists.
> 
> Maybe I'm projecting my own apathy a bit, and I probably am, but whenever I see threads like this, my knee-jerk reaction is to wonder why people even take the whole thing (functions, MBTI, etc) so damn seriously in the first place. If you just think of it as a time waster that people enjoy taking seriously and that that's really just the beginning and end of it, then I think that's the right attitude. I don't know why a thing has to be "proven" for it to be important and worth people's time. I mean, you don't "prove" that you really need to shoot everyone in a session of Call of Duty. Yet, people devote themselves to professional careers that consist of just playing that game.


Except all your arguments are without any rationale. For example, you cannot use your life as "insignificant or short" to give strength to a theory. A pitfall to use "just because". 

Also, I only seem serious because I love. 

"I don't know why a thing has to be "proven" for it to be important and worth people's time." *:/*


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## Abraxas (May 28, 2011)

platorepublic said:


> Except all your arguments are without any rationale.


Then stop talking to me.

You're contradicting yourself by continuing this conversation.


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## platorepublic (Dec 27, 2012)

Abraxas said:


> Then stop talking to me.
> 
> You're contradicting yourself by continuing this conversation.


I don't see how I am contradicting myself. And even if I am, I do it out of sympathy and compassion.


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## Praelatus (Jul 4, 2013)

platorepublic said:


> Yes, okay it has "practical" value. (What practical value, actually?)
> 
> Let's assume though it has practical value in the sense of being better at tolerating different types of people.
> 
> ...


What do you mean by it being practical but not good? By what standard are you judging it to be good or bad? You've already conceded that it may allow people to better tolerate others and/or get a gauge of how people dissimilar to themselves may think or make decisions. That is helpful. If you're judging it to be good or bad based on how helpful it is socially, it is most certainly a good thing.

As a method for discovering your strengths and weaknesses, it's also pretty useful. Simply by labeling yourself as a 4-digit type, people of the same type will know that they are similar to you and will likely enjoy your acquaintance. It works in that regard. You're typed based on information _you_ supply. Conclusions aren't being made from scratch like with horoscopes. You get a very rough idea of how someone will think given their type.

What exactly about MBTI are you questioning the validity of? Extensive scientific studies haven't been done on MBTI because we don't have any way of determining how people _really_ think. Neuroscience is relatively undeveloped.




platorepublic said:


> *With some thinking, we should be able to disregard any such elegant theories if it isn't closing in to truth. Just as we should disregard any efficient political systems if it isn't closing in on justice.*


If you're urging skepticism with MBTI then I agree, otherwise I don't see what you're getting at. You haven't explained why it would be 'bad' or in what way it isn't truthful.


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## Praelatus (Jul 4, 2013)

platorepublic said:


> Except all your arguments are without any rationale. For example, you cannot use your life as "insignificant or short" to give strength to a theory. A pitfall to use "just because".


That's not a proper rebuttal. If you would like to address how something can be objectively good or bad to pursue, or why it is good or bad to be scientific, then reply accordingly. Otherwise you may as well be saying "LOL UR RONG KID". He's not attempting to give strength to MBTI when he mentions the hopelessness of human ignorance. He enjoys learning about MBTI because he is interested in it and it may personally help him. Whether or not you can actually fit people into 16 types, or if Ti & Te and such are _actually_ complete opposites is largely irrelevant. People do not pursue MBTI because it is scientific and explains human psychology. There isn't anything scientific that objectively explains the whole of human behavior, and there won't be until neuroscience is *much more *developed.


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## platorepublic (Dec 27, 2012)

Praelatus said:


> What do you mean by it being practical but not good? By what standard are you judging it to be good or bad? You've already conceded that it may allow people to better tolerate others and/or get a gauge of how people dissimilar to themselves may think or make decisions. That is helpful. If you're judging it to be good or bad based on how helpful it is socially, it is most certainly a good thing.


For example, just as a rough example, something that can be practical and not good = someone uses an invisible veil to steal money from others.

Okay, so how did MBTI typing help you socially? Can you give me real life examples how MBTI actually did you any good? Would you have been worse off without MBTI?


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## Praelatus (Jul 4, 2013)

platorepublic said:


> For example, just as a rough example, something that can be practical and not good = someone uses an invisible veil to steal money from others.


We're talking about theories, not actions(even though I don't understand what you mean by using an invisible veil to steal being "practical"). Give an example of a theory that is practical but not good. You could say the information which lead to invisible veils being created is 'bad', but it's the application that is morally bad in your opinion, not the info. How 'morally good' MBTI is to you depends on how people apply it, so you really have to give examples of ways in which you think MBTI is often applied in a bad way.




platorepublic said:


> Okay, so how did MBTI typing help you socially? Can you give me real life examples how MBTI actually did you any good? Would you have been worse off without MBTI?


When I first meet someone I often type them to better predict how they will behave or react to things that I say. If I type them as F-dom then I'll be sure to be kinder and more complimenting than usual, whereas with a T-dom I'd be more to the point and less focused on how they take me emotionally. I can imagine you saying "And if you're wrong about which type you believe someone to be?", so I'll reply to it beforehand. I don't start behaving in any specific manner until I get a very good idea of how someone acts. For a lot of people MBTI is simply substituted with "feeling" how to behave with others, but it helps me out when I'm unsure of how to act on an emotional level.

I've met a lot of people that I regularly wouldn't have because I was able to sort them out and know that we would be compatible based on our types, *just as you're doing in your signature*. I can go on further, but I'm sure you get the point by now - MBTI has roughly the same benefits as any other psychological expertise. In many situations I would be worse off without MBTI and I can't imagine any where my knowledge of MBTI harmed me in some way. I don't feel inclined to dislike a certain type like some people on these forums do so I suppose I use MBTI more skeptically than some.


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## platorepublic (Dec 27, 2012)

Praelatus said:


> We're talking about theories, not actions(even though I don't understand what you mean by using an invisible veil to steal being "practical"). Give an example of a theory that is practical but not good. You could say the information which lead to invisible veils being created is 'bad', but it's the application that is morally bad in your opinion, not the info. How 'morally good' MBTI is to you depends on how people apply it, so you really have to give examples of ways in which you think MBTI is often applied in a bad way.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


My analogy was a poor one. 

Your example uses T/F. I won't ask you whether you are typing someone wrong. I will ask you what if _how _you stereotype T and F's are wrong. Why won't you be kind to the same degree to T's and F's? Does it drain your energy to be kind, so you keep it just for F's? Is this reason good enough to be kinder to F's than T's?


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## Praelatus (Jul 4, 2013)

platorepublic said:


> Your example uses T/F. I won't ask you whether you are typing someone wrong. I will ask you what if _how _you stereotype T and F's are wrong. Why won't you be kind to the same degree to T's and F's? Does it drain your energy to be kind, so you keep it just for F's? Is this reason good enough to be kinder to F's than T's?


Because the majority of T's I meet enjoy having a more to the point conversation and don't need positive reinforcement as much. The very criteria by which I judge who is T and who is F depends somewhat on how they respond to compliments and emotional stimuli. If they're generally apathetic and don't care much for talking about emotions or giving/receiving compliments, they're a bit more likely to be T. The contrary would usually be true of an F. Being kind is not natural for me. I'm not inclined to compliment or be emotional when speaking, but MBTI helps me realize when I should be, even if it somewhat taxes me to do so.

You should not be asking "what if" MBTI is wrong, you should be giving examples for how it actually is wrong. In that example I'm not saying that I never compliment people I have sufficient reason to believe are T, I only do it when I believe it would benefit them. It is a matter of how often I feel it is necessary to compliment. With Ts it is less often, but there are always those 50/50 T & Fs that I can't decide on. Some people just aren't as MBTI type black & white, and in those situations I usually rely on how I _feel_ that I should behave, and I'm admittedly not very good at feeling a situation out.


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## Inveniet (Aug 21, 2009)

Jung said that he made the functions out of *what he considered* empirical evidence.

Why don't you just read his book instead of having this long debate
*on how you react*
to how other people
present Jung's work.

Sure I can say that Jung is or isn't scientific because of this or that.
But that is just my opinion.
So we would be discussing my opinion.
From how you have gone about this so far, *I prefer not to do that.*

Everything you want to know is here.
Enjoy. 

Psychological Types, by C.G. Jung


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## LadyO.W.BernieBro (Sep 4, 2010)

lt's one of those things that you can consider valid to the actual extent that it applies to you, you know what l mean?

When l discovered MBTI, most of it really added up to my experience and what l see in other people, but if MBTI were proposing something utterly whacky to explain the system, l would abandon it.

lt doesn't make an appeal to something seemingly unrelated like astrology, for example. lt's theoretical but l take no issue with applying theory if the theory is consistent in and of itself.

And now there is some work being done to study the functions, but l don't really expect to see much out of that for years.

And yes, the practical value to me lies in the observations that were made. My only concern is that the work is outdated and there were some very different ideas in psychology at the time that went into developing the system, but it isn't like there's a strictly concrete scientific theory l'd be applying to my life in any case so what do l lose with MBTI?


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## reckful (Jun 19, 2012)

platorepublic said:


> Elegant system it might be and perhaps it might even have some practical uses, but sure sounds to me bogus. It almost reminds me of how we used to think the universe is made out of four (or is it five) elements? What... like fire, earth, water, air, and wind?
> 
> I mean if we treat it as non-scientific and choose to still use that system anyway, FINE, but we seem to all use it as if it were scientific.
> 
> ...


There's hard science, there's soft science and there's pseudoscience. The respectable districts of the personality field pretty much unavoidably fall in the soft science middle of the spectrum — which puts them in a different category than chemistry, but also in a substantially different category than astrology.

It's true that the cognitive functions are pretty much lacking when it comes to any kind of respectable body of empirical support and, in fact, studies attempting to validate them have tended to fail. But the same is emphatically _not_ true of the four MBTI dichotomies.

There's now over 50 years of data, from hundreds of studies in peer-reviewed journals and so on, that pretty strongly suggests that there are a handful of human temperament dimensions that (1) are multifaceted (i.e., that involve multiple characteristics that tend to co-vary in a statistically meaningful way), (2) tend to be relatively stable through life, and (3) are substantially genetic (e.g., identical twins _raised in separate households_ have matching temperaments to a substantially greater degree than fraternal twins, non-twins, etc.). The "Big Five" is an umbrella term for several somewhat independently-developed typologies with respect to which respectable amounts of data have been gathered and that seem to basically involve the same five underlying dimensions (notwithstanding some theoretical variations from typology to typology and from typologist to typologist), and the four MBTI dichotomies appear to be tapping into four of the Big Five factors — albeit, again, with various theoretical variations both between the MBTI and Big Five and among different MBTI theorists.

Your OP mentions "falsifiability" but, like psychology in general — and economics, and sociology, and many other so-called "soft" sciences — personality typologies don't claim to be able to make the kinds of 100%-of-the-time predictions that are more characteristic of the hard sciences. Personality typology is basically about correlations and _probabilities_ and, what's more, neither the MBTI nor the Big Five nor any other respectable personality typology has ever claimed that behavior isn't subject to multiple other influences.

Within those limitations, however — and subject to various sources of error — personality typologies can generate hypotheses about expected correlations that can be tested against experimental and other data and demonstrated to be true or false for that data source.


As one example: _Hypothesis_: NTs are more likely to become engineers than other types. _Experiment_: Administer the MBTI to a suitably large sample of engineers and compare the percentage of NTs to the percentage of NTs in the general population. (The MBTI Manual alone has a large amount of data showing significant correlations between various types and occupational choices.)
As another: _Hypothesis_: Introverts, on average, will produce higher levels of [_insert anxiety-related chemical here_] in response to personal questions from a stranger than extraverts. _Experiment_: ...
And so on.
Peer-reviewed journals with names like Journal of Personality, Journal of Personality Assessment, Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, Journal of Research in Personality and Personality & Individual Differences include the results of decades of studies that have been conducted, in accordance with generally accepted "soft science" standards, based on the MBTI, various Big Five variations, and other personality typologies.

McCrae and Costa are probably the most prominent Big Five scientists, and they long ago concluded (see this article) that the four MBTI dichotomies were essentially (albeit with some variation) tapping into four of the Big Five factors, and that there was a respectable body of scientific data in support of the MBTI dichotomies.

Over twenty years ago now, John B. Murray ("Review of Research on the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator," Perceptual & Motor Skills, 70, 1187, 1990) summed up the MBTI's status this way:



Murray said:


> The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator has become the most widely used personality instrument for nonpsychiatric populations. ... Approximately 300 studies of the MBTI are cited by Buros (1965, 1978) and over 1500 studies are included in the [1985] edition of the [MBTI Manual]. ... The research on the MBTI as a psychometric instrument and as an application of Jung's typology was reviewed and some of its modern applications considered. ...
> 
> The reliability of the M-B Indicator has been improved in recent years. ... Studies reviewed by Carlyn (1977) as well as later studies have shown generally satisfactory split-half and test-retest reliabilities. ...
> 
> ...


Again, though, it's important to keep in mind that the data support for the MBTI relates almost exclusively to the four MBTI _dichotomies_ — which, as I've said, correlate with four of the Big Five dimensions — rather than the eight cognitive functions. As I understand it, and as further discussed in the post linked below, the few attempts that have been made to test the functions have been pretty much unsuccessful.

For more on why I'm a "dichotomies guy" — including some background on the MBTI's relationship to the original Jungian functions — see this long INTJforum post.


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## platorepublic (Dec 27, 2012)

reckful said:


> There's hard science, there's soft science and there's pseudoscience. The respectable districts of the personality field pretty much unavoidably fall in the soft science middle of the spectrum — which puts them in a different category than chemistry, but also in a substantially different category than astrology.
> 
> It's true that the cognitive functions are pretty much lacking when it comes to any kind of respectable body of empirical support and, in fact, studies attempting to validate them have tended to fail. But the same is emphatically _not_ true of the four MBTI dichotomies.
> 
> ...


I like your post because it seems you seem to care about the subject matter at hand.

Ok, a few things I want to clarify to know more about your stance if you don't mind:

Do you think there is legitimately a spectrum from hard, to soft, to pseudoscience? Or is there just science or non-science?

How do you "administer the MBTI"?

You said cognitive functions and MBTI dichotomies are different in scientific validity. I thought they are quite similar in function and administration? I thought they were inseparable ideas (Socionics - the16types.info - MBTI: Descriptions of cognitive functions from various sources)

How does one determine whether someone is a Thinker and not a Feeler? Through a few simple questions?

The twins studies: how can you differentiate whether their temperaments are the same because of the accuracy of MBTI or because of something else?

P.S. I will read your long post now.


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## reckful (Jun 19, 2012)

platorepublic said:


> Do you think there is legitimately a spectrum from hard, to soft, to pseudoscience? Or is there just science or non-science?


I'd say there's a spectrum with respect to various kinds of scientific standards, and I discussed the _falsifiability_ issue in my first post. The phenomena under study in soft-scientific fields are typically ones where it isn't possible to make the kinds of 100%-of-the-time predictions that you often can in the hard sciences, and where setting up definitive experiments — with "control groups" and all that — is often not possible to the same degree as in the harder sciences because of the multiplicity of influences involved (with respect to, e.g., personality characteristics), among other complicating factors.



platorepublic said:


> How do you "administer the MBTI"?


I'm not sure what you're getting at. As I understand it, the official MBTI can be taken in various ways, some involving greater or lesser follow-up involvement by a certified administrator.



platorepublic said:


> You said cognitive functions and MBTI dichotomies are different in scientific validity. I thought they are quite similar in function and administration? I thought they were inseparable ideas (Socionics - the16types.info - MBTI: Descriptions of cognitive functions from various sources)


That last linked post of mine (that you indicated you'd be reading) — including the Reynierse article it links to — addresses this issue. And in case you're not an INTJforum member and so can't access the links in that post, you can find replacement links in this post.



platorepublic said:


> How does one determine whether someone is a Thinker and not a Feeler? Through a few simple questions?


That goes to the issue of the _accuracy_ of personality test results, and that's a problematic issue that afflicts the MBTI and Big Five both. It's undeniably a significant source of error that all the respectable psychologists using the typologies understand and take into account, but it doesn't render the typologies useless or invalid.



platorepublic said:


> The twins studies: how can you differentiate whether their temperaments are the same because of the accuracy of MBTI or because of something else?


The studies involve having twins — including those empirically invaluable twins who've been separated at birth and raised in different households — take the MBTI (or the applicable Big Five type test), and then comparing the similarity of their results with the results from less genetically-similar pairs.


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## Ballast (Jun 17, 2013)

platorepublic said:


> How do you "administer the MBTI"?


Just out of curiosity, what sources have you read on the subject? Have you done any research of MBTI and related theories on your own before raising these objections? Do you understand the basis of how it works?

I'm not saying you wouldn't, personally, subsequently have come to the conclusion that MBTI attempts to go far outside of its scope. But your questions seem to indicate that you don't even know what it _does_ or claims to do let alone how it might be useful. So, just so we're on the same page, what research on the topic have you done prior to raising these objections?


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## platorepublic (Dec 27, 2012)

Ballast said:


> Just out of curiosity, what sources have you read on the subject? Have you done any research of MBTI and related theories on your own before raising these objections? Do you understand the basis of how it works?
> 
> I'm not saying you wouldn't, personally, subsequently have come to the conclusion that MBTI attempts to go far outside of its scope. But your questions seem to indicate that you don't even know what it _does_ or claims to do let alone how it might be useful. So, just so we're on the same page, what research on the topic have you done prior to raising these objections?


Admittedly not a lot. I mean I wouldn't need to study or read a lot on tarot cards or astrology to raise objections to it, would I? (That's just an example, I am not drawing direct comparison between tarot and MBTI.)


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## Ballast (Jun 17, 2013)

platorepublic said:


> Admittedly not a lot. I mean I wouldn't need to study or read a lot on tarot cards or astrology to raise objections to it, would I? (That's just an example, I am not drawing direct comparison between tarot and MBTI.)


You're not? Because there's quite a lot of difference between the two, and the _kind_ of objections you are raising are similar to ones someone might raise in regards to mere pseudoscience such as tarot or astrology. But the difference is not only qualitative, it's quantitative as well. If you want to know how MBTI is applied and how it's been shown to be useful, valid, and consistent, there are many sources and studies on the matter to refer to first.

Also, I disagree that having a sound basis of knowledge on something is not a good starting place for raising objections to it. You can object to astrology or tarot, but if you are going to come into a forum full of people dedicated to those topics and who consider themselves experts, you'd better have a good argument for why they should agree they're wasting their time. It helps if you know _what_ you're arguing against, specifically.


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## platorepublic (Dec 27, 2012)

Ballast said:


> You're not? Because there's quite a lot of difference between the two, and the _kind_ of objections you are raising are similar to ones someone might raise in regards to mere pseudoscience such as tarot or astrology. But the difference is not only qualitative, it's quantitative as well. If you want to know how MBTI is applied and how it's been shown to be useful, valid, and consistent, there are many sources and studies on the matter to refer to first.
> 
> Also, I disagree that having a sound basis of knowledge on something is not a good starting place for raising objections to it. You can object to astrology or tarot, but if you are going to come into a forum full of people dedicated to those topics and who consider themselves experts, you'd better have a good argument for why they should agree they're wasting their time. It helps if you know _what_ you're arguing against, specifically.


Forum of which I am a member for quite some time. Of course I am not completely new to this.

It is just this idea I have just before I go to sleep (this sounds absurd, I know), and it tells me that there is something inherently wrong about MBTI. My intuition tells me something needs to be fixed, with normal distribution mixed in somehow. (Almost sounds like I need to be fixed, but I promise I am not crazy yet.)


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## reckful (Jun 19, 2012)

platorepublic said:


> My intuition tells me something needs to be fixed, with normal distribution mixed in somehow.


On the "normal distribution" front, you might want to check out this post.


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## NT the DC (May 31, 2012)

I classify it as a notch above astrology as at least you're looking at a trend associated with self reported characteristics. It's not scientific but I think it at least gives you concepts to consider. I've considered it and can appreciate that it's hit or miss. Nothing to get too involved in unless you want to be the Mrs Cleo of the MBTI world.


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## Abraxas (May 28, 2011)

I wouldn't say that MBTI is "not scientific" actually. It's definitely scientific, the question is simply, how much of the theory is supported by evidence? With MBTI, at least, there is a great deal of factual evidence to support the four dichotomy scales. Similarly, while Carl Jung's theory of cognitive functions is sketchy at best, it is still scientific. It just happens to be that it lacks strong evidence. If it is true, it hasn't been shown to be true to any degree that would warrant it being taken seriously. That doesn't mean it is pseudo-scientific, it just means that if we imagine a scale between 1% true and 100% true, it's pretty low on the scale, probably close to 1% or less, whereas the four scales of MBTI would be much more significant.

But then, people have their intuitions. I think there's something to Jung's functions, but I'm not really sure what it is exactly. There's just something about them. It could be that what I am really seeing _is_ the validity of the dichotomies, and at a future point in time, I may find myself arguing against everything I have so passionately clung to over the last year or so, and come to reject Jung's functions entirely. In light of the strong arguments made by @_reckful_, I'm almost on the verge of that transition already. I'm just doing research into some of the material he linked in order to confirm things for myself before I jump the boat. I'm willing to admit I have some pretty obvious biases that have prevented me from completely absorbing the good feedback he's given me during our debates, which in turn has led to some pretty immature reactions on my part. But always in retrospect, I tend to recognize that he's probably right, and while I don't really apologize, I admit that I'm probably wrong and ought to look into what he's saying.


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## Aidan (Dec 21, 2012)

It's just a way to organize and label people, so that you can have a better understanding of them. It doesn't need to be scientific.


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## NT the DC (May 31, 2012)

Scientific means different things to different people. I think calling it theory is incorrect it doesn't have the statistical evidence to back it up. I think aspects of it can be predictive like E vs I but things like S vs N and even T vs F are weakly predictive. So by my definition it follows a scientific method but lacks hard evidence with low reliability. Not as bad as a horoscope but hardly something on the level of actual scientific theories.


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## Abraxas (May 28, 2011)

NT the DC said:


> I think calling it theory is incorrect it doesn't have the statistical evidence to back it up.


By "it" are you referring to the four MBTI dimensions of personality, or are you referring to the Jungian functions?

There's over 50 years of good statistical evidence to prove the existence of the four MBTI dimensions, which correlates with the findings of the FFM as well, e.g., the NEO-PI-R is taken pretty seriously by the majority of the expert psychological community. I don't think there are too many psychologists who doubt the strong scientific validity of the Big 5.

As far as "scientific" meaning different things to different people, it really shouldn't.

The best definition of science I've ever heard is beautifully elegant in its simplicity.

Science is the observation of nature.


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## NT the DC (May 31, 2012)

Abraxas said:


> By "it" are you referring to the four MBTI dimensions of personality, or are you referring to the Jungian functions?
> 
> There's over 50 years of good statistical evidence to prove the existence of the four MBTI dimensions, which correlates with the findings of the FFM as well, e.g., the NEO-PI-R is taken pretty seriously by the majority of the expert psychological community. I don't think there are too many psychologists who doubt the strong scientific validity of the Big 5.
> 
> ...


The Big 5 is not the MBTI, so that seems a bit of a tangent.
What type of proof do you speak of and what journal was this proof published?
What kind of statistical scrutiny did it come under?
It's one thing to say "my study shows that these things exist" it's a whole other can of worms to conclude that you can show that these things which exist can be predictive in nature. That's really where my argument stems from.

Can I agree that things like being extroverted or introverted exist? Yes.
Can I agree that people can be more on a spectrum of characteristics associated with thinker than feeler, etc? Yes.
What I don't agree in is that this theory can tell me based on self-reported or even professionally generated characteristics a person has; that one can predict how said person will act with any statistical strength. 
It's my understanding that's the point of the MBTI: it's supposed to measure a person's preferences and things of that nature.

When I speak of scientific, I speak of the scientific method; not simply the observational phase of the scientific method.


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## reckful (Jun 19, 2012)

NT the DC said:


> The Big 5 is not the MBTI, so that seems a bit of a tangent.
> What type of proof do you speak of and what journal was this proof published?
> What kind of statistical scrutiny did it come under?
> It's one thing to say "my study shows that these things exist" it's a whole other can of worms to conclude that you can show that these things which exist can be predictive in nature. That's really where my argument stems from.


Did you look at this post? It cites sources, and talks about the MBTI/Big Five, and talks about the prediction/falsifiability issue.

Here are three more sources. Each of the last two includes a roundup of multiple studies.

Hierarchical Confirmatory Factor Analysis of the MBTI
MBTI Form M Manual Supplement
MBTI Step II Manual Supplement


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## Abraxas (May 28, 2011)

NT the DC said:


> The Big 5 is not the MBTI, so that seems a bit of a tangent.
> What type of proof do you speak of and what journal was this proof published?
> What kind of statistical scrutiny did it come under?
> It's one thing to say "my study shows that these things exist" it's a whole other can of worms to conclude that you can show that these things which exist can be predictive in nature. That's really where my argument stems from.
> ...


http://personalitycafe.com/cognitiv...-basis-cognitive-functions-2.html#post3926588


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## Bricolage (Jul 29, 2012)

Abraxas said:


> Science is the observation of nature.


That seems too broad because economics, sociology and even egyptology can penetrate the definition taking an expansive view of what constitutes nature. These fields are not generally considered synonymous with pure science.


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## Chaerephon (Apr 28, 2013)

Here you guys go...

Functions - Wikisocion

Just read the 2nd paragraph.


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## NT the DC (May 31, 2012)

Abraxas said:


> http://personalitycafe.com/cognitiv...-basis-cognitive-functions-2.html#post3926588


I can't really say I know what point you were trying to make.
This is what I get from the post.
1) The MBTI is kinda like the Big 5.. so the MBTI is ok
2) The MBTI can measure things like what type of jobs people like, retroactively.
3) Since the MBTI is a "soft science" it can't predict with 100% accuracy

There are review research studies that would disagree with the notion that the "data is strong"
MBTI and historical data. [Psychol Rep. 2011] - PubMed - NCBI which are reviews more recent than 1990 as was cited in that post.

And getting it back to the OP the MBTI is something I think has more use then the functions like Ti, Te, etc. That seems to be weakly associated with anything and there is a ridiculous amount of crossover.


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## Bricolage (Jul 29, 2012)

NameUser said:


> Here you guys go...
> 
> Functions - Wikisocion
> 
> Just read the 2nd paragraph.


That's Socionics, and the author isn't god. Is the author god?


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## reckful (Jun 19, 2012)

NT the DC said:


> There are review research studies that would disagree with the notion that the "data is strong"
> MBTI and historical data. [Psychol Rep. 2011] - PubMed - NCBI which are reviews more recent than 1990 as was cited in that post.
> 
> And getting it back to the OP the MBTI is something I think has more use then the functions like Ti, Te, etc. That seems to be weakly associated with anything and there is a ridiculous amount of crossover.


So... in response to all the studies cited in all the sources I've pointed you to (including a thumbs-up on the MBTI's overall respectability from Big Five biggies McCrae and Costa), you cite us a one-sentence abstract from 2011 that says, _in its entirety_, "The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator presents a model of personality which may be useful for understanding historical personalities, but empirical verification is necessary"—??

Well, OK, then. :tongue:


ADDED: Your post distinguishes the MBTI _dichotomies_ from the so-called "cognitive functions" — and both Abraxas and I stressed in our earlier posts that the scientific support for the MBTI relates pretty much entirely to the dichotomies, and not the functions. I don't defend the functions.


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## Abraxas (May 28, 2011)

unctuousbutler said:


> That seems too broad because economics, sociology and even egyptology can penetrate the definition taking an expansive view of what constitutes nature. These fields are not generally considered synonymous with pure science.


Well I leave it up to expert philosophers to decide what constitutes elements of the "natural" world. It's interesting (and I presume intentional) that you mention those three particular disciplines, because if I am not mistaken, one of the things many contemporary economists argue for is the definition of economics as a science. Whether it should be or not is beyond my level of education in economics or philosophy.

My definition was really meant to capture the essence of the scientific enterprise, i.e., knowledge of the natural world, obtained via the methodology of science.


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## Bricolage (Jul 29, 2012)

Abraxas said:


> Well I leave it up to expert philosophers to decide what constitutes elements of the "natural" world. It's interesting (and I presume intentional) that you mention those three particular disciplines, because if I am not mistaken, one of the things many contemporary economists argue for is the definition of economics as a science. Whether it should be or not is beyond my level of education in economics or philosophy.
> 
> My definition was really meant to capture the essence of the scientific enterprise, i.e., knowledge of the natural world, obtained via the methodology of science.


I would say science involves employing the scientific method, at least. It also differs from, say, philosophy by being data-based. There's a right and wrong. In economics, there isn't always a right and wrong, real and fake. People are still debating the recent round of quantitative easing.


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## Abraxas (May 28, 2011)

@_reckful_,

I'm not sure how much this pertains to the discussion at hand, but I just read through that article you posted on the INTJforum, and the subsequent argument you had with a certain user there which closely echoed a debate you and I had not that long ago here about behavior and dualism and such.

Not even more than a day ago, I finished listening to a series of lectures by the speaker John Searle of UC Berkeley on his philosophy of the mind, published by The Teaching Company. He actually gave a good refutation of the tradition of automatically accepting the "mind-body" false dichotomy of Descartes by an analogy between the way water is two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen, but it is also a liquid. I'm not sure of the exact vocabulary he used, but if I recall correctly, he is talking about "lower-order" processes that make up "higher-order" processes in a kind of "emergent" reductionism. I.e., when I bring my car into the shop, what I tell the mechanic (if I know the first thing about cars) is maybe I think the spark plugs are out and need to be replaced. What I don't do is start talking about hydrocarbons and thermodynamics and particle physics; it isn't that I'd be wrong if I did, but that I'm _actually_ talking about the same thing when I talk about the spark plugs and the rotors and the pistons, and the fuel injectors, etc.

The same can be said for so-called "mental" processes, like (relevant to your debate with both me and that other person) introversion, or even consciousness. We can say that the brain "works" a certain way, which is _in fact_ constitutive of consciousness, or introversion, or whatever else, in the same sense that we can talk about how a lower-order process like quantum mechanics produces higher-order processes in particles that combine into chemical reactions, which gives rise to biological reactions, and finally, minds and their behavior. The whole thing is just "levels of truth" - a kind of chain of causal inference that goes up and down both ways, and tells a self-consistent story as it does.

I'm not sure if you would endorse this idea, but it brought me to my senses about the dispute that I had with you about categorical differences between something like introversion and extraversion and actual biological processes. Thinking of introversion and extraversion as not merely conceptual but _physically real_ higher-order processes composed of lower-order biological processes helped me to see your side of the argument. So I just wanted to explain this in light of the link you posted a few pages ago, and to apologize for my indiscretion. Also, because it has come up again in this thread, only this time not by me. The more I read what you have to say (after I'm in the right frame of mind and not caught up in my passions) the more I start to recognize that I'm being quite foolish, and you've proven to be a tremendous source of good information that has helped me to reform some of my more immature points of contention.


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## NT the DC (May 31, 2012)

reckful said:


> So... in response to all the studies cited in all the sources I've pointed you to (including a thumbs-up on the MBTI's overall respectability from Big Five biggies McCrae and Costa), you cite us a one-sentence abstract from 2011 that says, _in its entirety_, "The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator presents a model of perasonality which may be useful for understanding historical personalities, but empirical verification is necessary"—??
> 
> Well, OK, then. :tongue:


You didn't really cite much, you said 50 years of studies and the data was strong for the MBTI but you only cited one talking about how strong the model was from what I saw, your other citation was about trying to relate the MBTI to the Big 5. And frankly I hope you'll forgive me but I tend to take the word of an actual review of the MBTI in a journal's opinion above a poster in a thread who would have me believe otherwise.

If you like I can link you to reviews and studies that don't agree the strength of the MBTI 
http://www.indiana.edu/~jobtalk/HRMWebsite/hrm/articles/develop/mbti.pdf
http://sxills.nl/lerenlerennu/bronnen/Learning styles by Coffield e.a..pdf


> The face validity of the MBTI is generally accepted as fairly sound by researchers from personality theory backgrounds, with the caveat (not accepted by MBTI researchers, see quote from Quenck 2003 above) that the omission of neuroticism is a theoretical weakness (Eysenck and Eysenck 1985). There has, however, been considerable debate about the construct validity of the MBTI, particularly in relation to the bimodality of the four dimensional scales. Researchers generally agree that bimodality has not been demonstrated in any of the dimensions (Hicks 1984; McCrae and Costa 1989); indeed, some argue that the bipolarity of all four scales is unsubstantiated. Girelli and Stake (1993) confirm that introversion-extraversion, sensing-intuition and thinking-feeling are not incontrovertibly bipolar, when tested in Lickert format on 165 undergraduateand postgraduate students, since more than a quarter of the subjects in their study scored highly on both pairs of a dimension. They argue (1993, 299) that as a result of these findings, ‘not only the format of the MBTI but the theoretical premise of bipolarity and type differentiation has (sic) been brought into question’. Bess and Harvey, in their analysis of 48,638 MBTI questionnaires completed by managers, found (2002, 185) that previous reports of bimodality on all four scales had been ‘artifacts caused by the particular number (and location) of the quadrature points used by default in BILOG’ – in effect, processing errors. They conclude that ‘the absence of empirical bimodality... does indeed remove a potentially powerful line of evidence that was previously available to ‘type’ advocates to cite in defence of their position’. One of the most telling criticisms is that the forced-choice format is inappropriate: ‘the ipsative scores that derive from forced-choice measures tend to yield negative intercorrelations that are difficult to interpret’ (Girelli and Stake 1993, 291). Moreover, if the dimensions are
> genuinely bipolar, then this will be evident even when subjects are not forced to choose(Loomis and Singer 1980). Furthermore, the MBTI has no lie scale, nor any measures designed to tap into respondents’ inclination to make socially acceptable responses (Boyle 1995), although the latter is dealt with statistically by the IRT selection and scoring methodused for Form M (Quenck 2003)
> 
> Myers and McCaulley (1985) report a test–retest reliability meta-analysis on a sample of 102,174 respondents (Table 13) which appears to be robust. Boyle’s review (1995) notes that the best results (for Form F) are reported stability coefficients of between 0.69 (T-F) and 0.78 (E-I), which, though lower than those in Table 13, are still acceptable. Advocates who have interpreted MBTI retest scores positively (eg Carlson 1980, De Vito 1985, Murray 1990) have, according to Pittenger (1993), used trait judgement criteria, implying a continuum, rather than type criteria, reflecting the (allegedly) dichotomous nature of the scales. This criticism is repeated in reviews of Form M where it is accepted that MBTI scales show ‘very high levels of internal consistency (mostly >0.90) and acceptable [actually very high] levels of test–retest reliability (0.83–0.97 for a 4-week interval). However, the authors clearly state that the MBTI is meant to identify a person’s whole type (eg ENTP)’ (Fleenor 2001; see also Mastrangelo 2001). The evidence of whole-type stability from the manual (Myers and McCaulley 1985) appears to be a little less impressive, with 65% of respondents maintaining their type and most of the remaining 35% showing consistency in three out of four scales (n=424). The stability of the MBTI type allocations are open to question in part because the middle scores are prone to misinterpretation, since they are forced one way or the other, despite small numerical differences. For example, Howes and Carskadon (1979) found that for scores within 15 points of neutral, between 25% and 32% of respondents had changed on the second test. A meta-analysis of reliability across 210 recent studies (Capraro and Capraro 2002) notes that most authors of studies using the MBTI do not engage with issues of reliability at all; however, when reliability data was available, ‘the MBTI tended to yield acceptable score reliabilities’ (2002, 596) of around 0.81(standard deviation 0.08). In addition, Capraro and Capraro (2002, 599) emphasise that the reliability of an instrument is context specific: ‘dependent onsample characteristics and testing conditions.’ Indeed, while Salter, Evans and Forney (1997, 595) report ‘some stability (ranging from 0.69 to 0.77)’ over 20 months, they warn that the impact of environmental factors on changes to individuals’ MBTI scores is under-researched


And you can read on from that point on that article.

Things like this:
http://seattletimes.com/html/businesstechnology/2020769531_myersbriggspersonalitytestxml.html



> Despite the far-reaching use of the assessment in organizations, the academic psychological community has been slow to embrace it. No major journal has published research on the MBTI, which academics consider a strong repudiation of the test’s authority. What makes this even more striking is that CPP has three prominent psychologists on its corporate board.
> Carl Thoresen, the CPP board’s chairman, is a longtime and highly regarded professor of psychology at Stanford. And yet of the roughly 150 papers he has published in his career, there isn’t one mention of Myers-Briggs.
> He said he didn’t use it “because it would be questioned by my academic colleagues. That was always a barrier.”


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## reckful (Jun 19, 2012)

NT the DC said:


> You didn't really cite much, you said 50 years of studies and the data was strong for the MBTI but you only cited one talking about how strong the model was from what I saw, your other citation was about trying to relate the MBTI to the Big 5. And frankly I hope you'll forgive me but I tend to take the word of an actual review of the MBTI in a journal's opinion above a poster in a thread who would have me believe otherwise.


I "didn't really cite much"? Am I dealing with a reading comprehension problem here or are you just lazy? Inquiring minds would like to know.

The McCrae and Costa article was not a single study, but rather an overall assessment of the then-existing studies. McCrae and Costa, as I noted, are not MBTI guys; they're probably the most prominent Big Five psychologists. And, based on their multiple-study review, they affirmed that the MBTI basically passed muster.

Similarly, the Murray article was not a study but an overall assessment of _hundreds_ of existing studies, and concluded that the MBTI's "indices of reliability and validity have been extensively investigated and have been judged acceptable." That was in 1990, and there have been many more studies since, and the MBTI Form G was replaced in 1998 by Form M, which has better reliability stats than Form G had.

The Bess/Harvey/Swartz article I linked you to was a study from 2003 that confirmed the factor structure of the MBTI in a large (11,000-subject) sample, while also citing numerous previous studies.

And the two MBTI Manual supplements I linked you to are both, as previously noted, summary assessments that discuss and cite multiple studies supporting the MBTI's reliability and validity.

Meanwhile, why I am not surprised to see you citing that Pittenger article from 1993? I've already discussed that pathetic article at some length (as much as I could stomach) here and here. I think the fact that MBTI "debunkers" so often find themselves scraping the bottom of the barrel with that article arguably tells you all you need to know about the strength of the case against the MBTI.

Is temperament psychology still a relatively young science? Yes. Does the MBTI still have plenty of room for improvement? Absolutely, as does the Big Five. Is either typology, in its present state, just "one notch above astrology" — as you put it? Not even close.


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## NT the DC (May 31, 2012)

reckful said:


> I "didn't really cite much"? Am I dealing with a reading comprehension problem here or are you just lazy? Inquiring minds would like to know.
> 
> The McCrae and Costa article was not a single study, but rather an overall assessment of the then-existing studies. McCrae and Costa, as I noted, are not MBTI guys; they're probably the most prominent Big Five psychologists. And, based on their multiple-study review, they affirmed that the MBTI basically passed muster.
> 
> ...


You mentioned it but you didn't really cite it bro.
I mean I can say: There are about 3000 studies showing astrology is valid. But that's not exactly a citation now is it?

And stepping back from that article and just approaching it from a simple concept standpoint. 
I think in general this concept of dichotomies where you're forced to choose is strange. 
I think that the predictive properties of the test are not very strong either.
And I think taking something like ENTJ and trying to predict characteristics based on that are even weaker. This is something that has been supported by evidence aside from the article you speak of. If you're hashing out the bugs for 50 years perhaps it's better to just scrap it and start anew.

Not to mention the absence of the MBTI in highly regarded journals. A lack of acceptance among the academic psychological community? Kinda sketchy to me, so pardon my skepticism.


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## reckful (Jun 19, 2012)

NT the DC said:


> You mentioned it but you didn't really cite it bro.
> I mean I can say: There are about 3000 studies showing astrology is valid. But that's not exactly a citation now is it?


I _linked you_ to the McCrae and Costa article (the full text, including its cites).

I _cited_ (and quoted) the Murray article.

I _linked you_ to the Bess/Harvey/Swartz article (the full text, including its cites).

And I _linked you_ to the Manual supplements (the full text of each, including all their cites).

Do you has a substantive objection? :tongue:

You say, "I think that the predictive properties of the test are not very strong either. And I think taking something like ENTJ and trying to predict characteristics based on that are even weaker. ... If you're hashing out the bugs for 50 years perhaps it's better to just scrap it and start anew."

But the relevant "predictive"-related standard in personality psychology is the _validity_ issue and, as Murray noted in his (cited!) assessment, there was lots of good validity evidence (hundreds of studies correlating preferences with lots of real-world stuff) way back in 1985, when the second edition of the Manual was published, and there have been many, many more since. Complaining that things like introversion don't lead to the ability to "predict" behavior the way chemical properties allow us to predict chemical results is, not to put too fine a point, just silly.

There's a wide gulf between astrology and chemistry and, again, viewing "he's an introvert" as one notch above "he's a Virgo" is a poor assessment of the level of scientific respectability that the Big Five and MBTI currently deserve, "buggy" though they still may be.


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## tangosthenes (Oct 29, 2011)

Here's how I see it:
Situation: Jung uses anecdotal evidence to create theory. Some people thought he was right. Didn't bother to take its lack of proof of accuracy seriously.

Problem: Some people want to take it seriously. How is this done?

Solution: Perform many rigorous and valid studies, peer-reviewed a thousand times over. Puzzle over results. Establish correlations. Throw out what doesn't work(even basic categories), establish a better theory. Rinse and repeat until Jung-based personality psychology is not bullshit.


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## Chaerephon (Apr 28, 2013)

unctuousbutler said:


> That's Socionics, and the author isn't god. Is the author god?


Yes they are.


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## Bricolage (Jul 29, 2012)

NameUser said:


> Yes they are.


I'm scared.


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## NT the DC (May 31, 2012)

reckful said:


> I _linked you_ to the McCrae and Costa article (the full text, including its cites).
> 
> I _cited_ (and quoted) the Murray article.
> 
> ...


So let me get this straight you're highly critical of a peer reviewed journal from 2011 I cited that had "one line" saying the MBTI's empirical evidence needed more work.
Then you criticize an article because it's from 1993.
I gave you another review which talked about the statistical problems with the MBTI which is clearly from 2000+ complete with tons of studies that are cited.

This is all shit information no doubt, and your rebuttle is your original post in which you _cited_ a murray article that was published in 1990 and you _linked _me to a McCrae and Costa article that was published in 1989 which is really talking about how to redefine the MBTI lol.
And of course your glorious opinion which has no actual merit in an academic journal - you're just a dude.

Yes I do have an issue with accepting that, bro.
My objection scale is pretty sky high with simply accepting that the evidence is strong in face of the evidence I provided which disagrees and happens to be more recent then the stuff you've provided.

And not to mention the fact that you still haven't really addressed the issue of why is that no major journals talk about the MBTI and why is it that academics don't use the system? If the evidence is so strong? Is there something I, and apparently the entire academic psychology world is missing?


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## Chaerephon (Apr 28, 2013)

unctuousbutler said:


> I'm scared.


I am too. Shouldn't God being doing something better than writing Socionics articles.


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## Bricolage (Jul 29, 2012)

NameUser said:


> I am too. Shouldn't God being doing something better than writing Socionics articles.


He's probably not capable of much better work if man is his magnum opus.


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## Abraxas (May 28, 2011)

unctuousbutler said:


> He's probably not capable of much better work if man is his magnum opus.


Makes sense.

Considering the only other thing he ever wrote was the Ten Commandments, then I guess it's no wonder so many people believe in Socionics.


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## reckful (Jun 19, 2012)

NT the DC said:


> So let me get this straight you're highly critical of a peer reviewed journal from 2011 I cited that had "one line" saying the MBTI's empirical evidence needed more work.


I wasn't "highly critical" of the _article_. I couldn't be, because I can't read the article. All you linked to is a _one sentence_ abstract that doesn't really tell us what the study was about or what they concluded. I agree that the MBTI (and Big Five) could use "more work." That's not the issue. The issue is, is the MBTI reasonably respectable or is it "one notch above astrology" (as you say)? Since the one-line abstract you linked to says that, despite needing "more work," the MBTI "presents a model of personality which may be useful for understanding historical personalities," I'm guessing the authors agree with _me_, not you, that "one notch above astrology" is not a fair characterization of the MBTI and that the fact that there's room for improvement is not a reason to "scrap it and start anew" (as you suggested) — but neither you nor I can tell that for sure from the one-line abstract, can we?

As far as "peer reviewed" goes, the majority of the relevant articles I've linked you to and cited (and the articles that they cite) are likewise from "peer reviewed" journals.



NT the DC said:


> Then you criticize an article because it's from 1993.


I most certainly did not criticize the Pittenger article because "it's from 1993." If you'd read the two posts I linked you to — where I criticize many of Pittenger's silly assertions — you'd know that the year it was published was not one of my objections.



NT the DC said:


> I gave you another review which talked about the statistical problems with the MBTI which is clearly from 2000+ complete with tons of studies that are cited.


For the umpteenth time, I don't disagree that there are things to criticize about the MBTI — and especially all the "cognitive function" (_aka_ "type dynamics") stuff — and plenty of room for improvement.

But the most important thing to keep in mind is that, as I've often noted (including here at PerC), personality typing involves _multiple_ sources of significant error, starting with the fact that they haven't even figured out exactly what the nature of the temperament dimensions they should be measuring are, and also including multiple forms of human error in any self-assessment test that can cause the taker to answer a question "incorrectly." What's more, the more you assume (as Jung did, and as various studies suggest) that a relatively large percentage of the population is in or near the middle on one or more of the dimensions, the more mistyped people you should expect as a result of relatively small testing errors.

Those are problems currently inherent in _all_ personality typologies, including the Big Five. Articles that tsk, tsk, tsk about less-than-terrific test/retest statistics, for example, are sometimes trying to apply too-strict standards (given the nature of the beast) and are sometimes pointing to reasonable improvements that could be made — but that's a far cry from claiming (as you do) that referring to a person as an introvert is just one notch above referring to them as a Pisces in the scientific-respectability department.



NT the DC said:


> And not to mention the fact that you still haven't really addressed the issue of why is that no major journals talk about the MBTI and why is it that academics don't use the system? If the evidence is so strong? Is there something I, and apparently the entire academic psychology world is missing?


"Academics don't use the system"? Who wrote those articles I linked you to, and the many more articles that they cite?

I don't disagree that the Big Five is used _more often_ (as I understand it) in the academic community but, as I've noted, it's generally believed (and leading Big Five psychologists have affirmed) that the MBTI and the Big Five are ultimately tapping into the same personality dimensions (with the MBTI not addressing neuroticism) — and McCrae and Costa (on the Big Five side) are of the view (and I agree) that each typology probably has some things to learn from the other.

So I personally don't discriminate between Big Five studies and MBTI studies. I read both with interest.


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## NT the DC (May 31, 2012)

reckful said:


> I wasn't "highly critical" of the _article_. I couldn't be, because I can't read the article. All you linked to is a _one sentence_ abstract that doesn't really tell us what the study was about or what they concluded. I agree that the MBTI (and Big Five) could use "more work." That's not the issue. The issue is, is the MBTI reasonably respectable or is it "one notch above astrology" (as you say)? Since the one-line abstract you linked to says that, despite needing "more work," the MBTI "presents a model of personality which may be useful for understanding historical personalities," I'm guessing the authors agree with _me_, not you, that "one notch above astrology" is not a fair characterization of the MBTI and that the fact that there's room for improvement is not a reason to "scrap it and start anew" (as you suggested) — but neither you nor I can tell that for sure from the one-line abstract, can we?
> 
> As far as "peer reviewed" goes, the majority of the relevant articles I've linked you to and cited (and the articles that they cite) are likewise from "peer reviewed" journals.
> 
> ...


Okay so here's the thing.
You've already conceded that this field is a soft science, so in essence it's already just skating above pseudoscience (some would even argue it's a pseudoscience based on the fact that it's not a hard science anyway).
Now you take a something in this field and the empirical evidence isn't great but it CAN have some value.
Meaning that this is not widely accepted amongst the soft science, so what do you have?

There are a couple things that are easy to discuss, citations and comparing dicks aside.
You make the statement that most people should fall between 1 or more of the dichotomies and that's your explanation for why the statistics aren't great. Fine, but then what is the point of the typing? One letter makes a huge difference in the predictive characteristics. It's the difference between an ISTP and an INTP and that's a huge difference in the way that they learn ie, more thought experiments vs hands on learning. You can have an ENTP vs an INTP and once again that's a large difference in characteristics it's someone who has too much information to analyze (Ne) vs someone who has a good analysis of what they know (Ti) but if anything would need more information to analyze. If it's two or more? ESTP vs INTJ ...... wtf? really hardly anything alike via their characteristics. 

You seem to be making the excuse that, "Well there is human error" fine of course there is human error but that doesn't mean that the test isn't considered at fault. You don't make instruction manuals with shitty instructions no one can follow, if you have have instructions for baking a cake and no one seems to be able to do it right then you don't throw your hands up in the air and say, "HUMAN ERROR!" you say shit man maybe we should fix this. Maybe we need to be clearer, the difference is they've been working on this system for quite a while and you still have the same same problems - the people simply aren't fitting into the categories. Maybe you can pin down two strong preferences like "NT" vs. "SF" but that's not what the MBTI is about, it's about INTP, INTJ and predicting preferences based on that. If you can't even do that then the whole system while not completely worthless isn't exactly "valuable" or "Well established".

So sorry but I don't agree, something on the low end of the totem pole of a soft science is still a notch above pseudoscience and astrology.


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## tangosthenes (Oct 29, 2011)

NT the DC said:


> Okay so here's the thing.
> You've already conceded that this field is a soft science, so in essence it's already just skating above pseudoscience (some would even argue it's a pseudoscience based on the fact that it's not a hard science anyway).
> Now you take a something in this field and the empirical evidence isn't great but it CAN have some value.
> Meaning that this is not widely accepted amongst the soft science, so what do you have?
> ...


Yep, pretty much my thoughts. Science, and especially social science, suffers from the fact that it uses inductive reasoning. How do we mitigate this fault? We better be damn sure what we are talking about, to as high as a correlation as we can make it. If the observations don't match the theory, sorry, one of them is wrong.

It isn't reasonable to accept something as definitive, or even moderately correct, until it has satisfied a high level of criteria. (Karl Popper this shit)

After all, what happens if we accidentally use the red dye for the blue pill? Makes me just not want to swallow the pill at all until I know which one I'm getting.

And just to add on a level of frustrating irony, keep in mind, Reckful and Abraxas, that Te users have the fault of once being bought into a system, being unable to criticize it.


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## reckful (Jun 19, 2012)

NT the DC said:


> Okay so here's the thing.
> You've already conceded that this field is a soft science, so in essence it's already just skating above pseudoscience (some would even argue it's a pseudoscience based on the fact that it's not a hard science anyway).
> Now you take a something in this field and the empirical evidence isn't great but it CAN have some value.
> Meaning that this is not widely accepted amongst the soft science, so what do you have?
> ...


The problem with your latest post is the same one in your previous posts, and it's epitomized by your opening assertion that the fact that something falls in the "soft science" category means it's "just skating above pseudoscience (some would even argue it's a pseudoscience based on the fact that it's not a hard science anyway)." That's not what "soft science" means. The soft sciences fall in a wide spectrum, and they're "soft" whether they're "just skating above pseudoscience" or "just skating below hard science."

And at this point, with decades of studies behind them, both the MBTI and Big Five are doing their "skating" well above the level of astrology.

And the rest of your latest post mostly caricatures things I said or the current state of the MBTI. If someone can be in or near the middle on one (or more) of the dimensions, "what is the point of the typing?" Please. Because, for example, an xNFP (if such creatures exist) will tend to have the personality characteristics associated with N's and F's and P's and NFs and so on.

If you want to say, jeez, if somebody can be in the middle on one of the dimensions, or they can't design a test that types almost everyone accurately, I'm inclined to pretty much just ignore the whole thing, because "what is the point?" — feel free, but I'd say the loss will be yours.


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## NT the DC (May 31, 2012)

reckful said:


> The problem with your latest post is the same one in your previous posts, and it's epitomized by your opening assertion that the fact that something falls in the "soft science" category means it's "just skating above pseudoscience (some would even argue it's a pseudoscience based on the fact that it's not a hard science anyway)." That's not what "soft science" means. The soft sciences fall in a wide spectrum, and they're "soft" whether they're "just skating above pseudoscience" or "just skating below hard science."
> 
> And at this point, with decades of studies behind them, both the MBTI and Big Five are doing their "skating" well above the level of astrology.
> 
> ...












Basically what you have is - You tell me what characteristics you identify with and I'll tell you what you prefer and your blind spots and shit like that. Then you go but hey man you might be kinda like this and kinda like this so I can't really say what your preferences are because there's a chance 1) You fucked up 2) I read the manual wrong 3) You don't fit the categories right 3) It's fuck this shit o'clock. 

However IF you happen to be one of those people who strongly fit into dichotomies then this system is MONEY.
Of course most people DON'T but still - system is MONEY.

You can tell me your characteristics and like if you identify with those same characteristics you just told me and happen to fall into one of my categories then that's valuable information. But like I said someone probably fucked up somewhere along the lines... not my systems fault.. Aliens.

Nevermind the fact that my system doesn't have characteristics for the people who fit into the middle ground of one or more categories built in and the purpose is to classify you based on 4 dichotomies.


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## Abraxas (May 28, 2011)

NT the DC said:


> You can tell me your characteristics and like if you identify with those same characteristics you just told me and happen to fall into one of my categories then that's valuable information. But like I said someone probably fucked up somewhere along the lines... not my systems fault.. Aliens.


These aren't arbitrary categories though. It's not like someone threw darts at a board and picked at random. Like @_reckful_ has been trying to say, and back up with citations, there's good reasons to suspect that they _actually_ exist, though, because our understanding of the brain is so limited, there's not currently an explanation for why. He's not even saying they are perfect. They obviously need refinement and are far from. But I think all he is trying to say is that they are not _worthless_ in the sense that astrological categorizations have _no basis in reality whatsoever._ That's actually an argument I myself have made in the past and came to realize (thanks to Reckful's citations) that I was wrong, and that it was a gross exaggeration.

The MBTI dichotomies have at least _some_ basis. It is widely accepted that the MBTI dichotomies are drawing off the same principals of the Big 5, and the Big 5 _is_ taught in an academic setting at universities and colleges and various institutions of psychology. And, as a matter of fact, so is MBTI. In an oral communication course I received during my attendance at the Santa Rosa Junior College, our professor spent one entire lecture discussing the benefits of the MBTI classifications for understanding the differences between people.

Furthermore, the MBTI dichotomies _are_ taken seriously by professionals, except, apparently, the ones you cited. So what? Your sources don't form the majority opinion as far as I know. MBTI isn't some fringe science. It's widely established and those who doubt it typically don't do it on the assumption that we ought to "scrap it." They do it on the assertion that it needs refinement and lots of work, and they're right about that. But it's still "the best we've got" besides the Big 5, and the Big 5 is more popular among professionals for that reason, but the MBTI is a close second.



NT the DC said:


> Nevermind the fact that my system doesn't have characteristics for the people who fit into the middle ground of one or more categories built in and the purpose is to classify you based on 4 dichotomies.


This is false as a point of fact. In the MBTI Manual Third Edition it addresses every possible combination of dimensions, e.g., IJ, SN, TF, EF, NJ, IP, etc, including the dimensions by themselves, and it addresses them in various contexts as well, e.g., at work, learning styles, social interaction, etc.


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## bearotter (Aug 10, 2012)

reckful said:


> relates pretty much entirely to the dichotomies, and not the functions. I don't defend the functions.




For my benefit, while I've read some of the links you posted, could you clarify what precisely you mean by "functions" as opposed to dichotomies? I imagine you've got a point you're making, but I want to try to ensure I really get what it is. Is there a philosophical distinction you make between what favoring a function as opposed to falling on that end of the dichotomy is? For pointedness, two questions:

- are you primarily objecting to the rigidities associated with a black box notion of such things as "Ne" which conceal that intuition is ultimately intuition?
- and/or, on a related note, would you say there is a difference between what you would call the intuition _function_ (independent of bringing attitudes into question) and the intuition _end of the N/S dichotomy_


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## NT the DC (May 31, 2012)

Abraxas said:


> These aren't arbitrary categories though. It's not like someone threw darts at a board and picked at random. Like @_reckful_ has been trying to say, and back up with citations, there's good reasons to suspect that they _actually_ exist, though, because our understanding of the brain is so limited, there's not currently an explanation for why. He's not even saying they are perfect. They obviously need refinement and are far from. But I think all he is trying to say is that they are not _worthless_ in the sense that astrological categorizations have _no basis in reality whatsoever._ That's actually an argument I myself have made in the past and came to realize (thanks to Reckful's citations) that I was wrong, and that it was a gross exaggeration.
> 
> The MBTI dichotomies have at least _some_ basis. It is widely accepted that the MBTI dichotomies are drawing off the same principals of the Big 5, and the Big 5 _is_ taught in an academic setting at universities and colleges and various institutions of psychology. And, as a matter of fact, so is MBTI. In an oral communication course I received during my attendance at the Santa Rosa Junior College, our professor spent one entire lecture discussing the benefits of the MBTI classifications for understanding the differences between people.
> 
> ...


Your language is one of speculation, which is fine however that's also the point.
You have to show something is what is, that you know what you know.
You do that via statistics and studies which are peer reviewed in the top journals and the reason such a theory would become widely accepted in academic circles is because the system has strong support.
A bunch of joe schmoes who get a certificate so they can make money giving career advice doesn't constitute widely accepted in academic circles the data should come under fire of people who publish papers on the subject and look at errors in the design of the study and methodology.
I am not saying the characteristics are as bad as "arbitrary" what I am saying is that the data is weak if you take great issue with that then I'd say "not strong", that's what the dispute is about and your buddy is in essence saying that the explanation seems to circle around the human error, things that need to be tweaked, and "Jung knew this though". I don't view excuses for weak statistical predictability as reason to conclude the research is sound and widely accepted. If you categorize me wrong and make erroneous conclusions after you administer a tool and that consistently happens it speaks to poor reproducibility of the tool.

You take issue with my saying it's a notch above horoscopes?
Why? I said it was a notch above lol. You seem to think I am saying it IS horoscopes, it IS arbitrary. 
I am saying it's speculative and while there are some relationships the process of categorizing people into 16 types has not had great predictive measures.
Not shown to be valid/data is not strong.
That's not an point anyone seems to be able to concede, hence the argument - Aliens.


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## Abraxas (May 28, 2011)

NT the DC said:


> Your language is one of speculation, which is fine however that's also the point.
> You have to show something is what is, that you know what you know.
> You do that via statistics and studies which are peer reviewed in the top journals and the reason such a theory would become widely accepted in academic circles is because the system has strong support.
> A bunch of joe schmoes who get a certificate so they can make money giving career advice doesn't constitute widely accepted in academic circles the data should come under fire of people who publish papers on the subject and look at errors in the design of the study and methodology.
> ...


Well, for one thing, I lack the kind of information reckful is batting with. Thus, I'm still on the fence for the most part. He's managed to draw me back in a bit with his dichotomies citations, and that's had the effect of getting me to relax a little bit and start to let go of my belief in the superiority of the functions over dimensions of personality. Truth be told, I've always espoused the Big 5 before I ever even heard of MBTI, and when he showed me that the MBTI had pretty much everything in common with the Big 5 save for a few technicalities, that did a lot to sway me even more.

Fair enough, perhaps I have no clue what (in your mind) the difference is between horoscopes and "one notch above." Maybe that's a big notch; what else falls into that notch between MBTI and astrology so we have some context for what you are trying to say? I don't know why you didn't just explain that from the start.

You say that it has not had "great predictive measures." What would be great? On the MBTI main website, if I recall, it states that about 75% of people test correctly their first time taking the test, and of the remainder about 50% fall into a different type after retaking the test a few years later. So that means that 1-in-4 initially have difficulty finding a comfortable fit, and of those 1-in-4 only half get a different result than the first result. That seems pretty solid to me. Not perfect, and obviously it needs work, but 75% of people plus some-odd-number aren't having any issues with it.

You say "not shown to be valid/data not strong." What would you consider to be a basis for validity? What do you mean by "strong" data? And please, don't be condescending and give us all a textbook definition of "validity" as if nobody here knows what it means. I'm asking you for an example which you think is a fair one, same with "strong" data. We all know what evidence is and how something is determined to be evidence. I've attended college, and while I can't speak for reckful because I don't really know him that well, he seems to know his stuff, so just get to the point, please.


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## reckful (Jun 19, 2012)

bearotter said:


> For my benefit, while I've read some of the links you posted, could you clarify what precisely you mean by "functions" as opposed to dichotomies? I imagine you've got a point you're making, but I want to try to ensure I really get what it is. Is there a philosophical distinction you make between what favoring a function as opposed to falling on that end of the dichotomy is? For pointedness, two questions:
> 
> - are you primarily objecting to the rigidities associated with a black box notion of such things as "Ne" which conceal that intuition is ultimately intuition?
> - and/or, on a related note, would you say there is a difference between what you would call the intuition _function_ (independent of bringing attitudes into question) and the intuition _end of the N/S dichotomy_[/COLOR]


When I talk about a dichotomy-centric view of the MBTI, I'm talking about a perspective that essentially views the MBTI dichotomies as four more or less independent dimensions of human temperament, and views them as tapping into the same real underlying dimensions as four of the Big Five.

It's a view that says that an INTJ is a person who favors N over S and T over F (and I over E and J over P) — rather than a person for whom the N is Ni (and not Ne) and the T is Te (and not Ti), and for whom (because of the J) the N is the _dominant_ function and the T is the _auxiliary_ function, and so on.

But it's also a view that understands (as Myers did, and Keirsey did, and all the most well-known MBTI theorists always have) that there are various personality characteristics that bring _two or more_ of the dichotomies into play in a meaningful way, and that the MBTI can have insightful things to say about various dichotomy combinations — stuff INs tend to have in common, and NFs tend to have in common, and TJs tend to have in common, and so on — but without treating the combinations that purportedly correspond to the "functions" as being particularly fundamental.


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## Peter (Feb 27, 2010)

platorepublic said:


> Elegant system it might be and perhaps it might even have some practical uses, but sure sounds to me bogus. It almost reminds me of how we used to think the universe is made out of four (or is it five) elements? What... like fire, earth, water, air, and wind?
> 
> I mean if we treat it as non-scientific and choose to still use that system anyway, FINE, but we seem to all use it as if it were scientific.
> 
> ...


In your opinion, is psychology a science?

To help you out a bit, this is what wikipedia says:


> Psychology is an academic and applied discipline that involves the scientific study of mental functions and behaviors.


The study of mental functions and behaviors is scientific. Jung did scientific studies of mental functions and behaviors and as a result came up with a theory of cognitive functions, which then were ordered into a system called the MBTI.

So what do you think?


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## reckful (Jun 19, 2012)

Abraxas said:


> You say that it has not had "great predictive measures." What would be great? On the MBTI main website, if I recall, it states that about 75% of people test correctly their first time taking the test, and of the remainder about 50% fall into a different type after retaking the test a few years later. So that means that 1-in-4 initially have difficulty finding a comfortable fit, and of those 1-in-4 only half get a different result than the first result. That seems pretty solid to me. Not perfect, and obviously it needs work, but 75% of people plus some-odd-number aren't having any issues with it.


As a point of (possible) clarification on the test/retest issue, it's not uncommon to encounter internet forumites who fail to distinguish between retest discrepancies on a _single dimension_ and retest discrepancies on the MBTI _four-letter type_, and who are under the impression that the Big Five is substantially superior in the test/retest department. For example, in explaining why he thought the Big Five had much better stats than the MBTI, Tainted Streetlight noted:



Tainted Streetlight said:


> MBTI has a test-retest rate of some 60%, meaning two out of every five people get different results when retaking the test.
> 
> The most commonly used test in personality studies is the *NEO PI-R*, the levels of consistency are incredibly high (N= .92, E= .89, O= .87, A= .86, C= .90; between .75-.9). Surprisingly, this test does NOT attempt to create "types". It just shows things as they are and does not try to predict hidden traits or create a hierarchy of cognitive functions.


In my reply, I explained:



reckful said:


> That 60% MBTI statistic relates to a retest standard that says you got a different result if _any one_ of the four dimensions is different. That corresponds to an average test-retest rate of 88% for the individual dimensions.
> 
> If you apply the same test-retest standard to those Big 5 statistics you gave us, you get .92 * .89 * .87 * .86 * .90 = a 55% test-retest rate (or 60% if you leave out Neuroticism).


I've previously noted that there's a fair amount of data that suggests that most or all of the MBTI dimensions exhibit something like a normal distribution. Assuming that's the case — and assuming, accordingly, that a large portion of the population is in or near the middle on at least one dimension — and given all the possible sources of testing error (from the fact that it's a young science and they're still working out precisely what the temperament dimensions consist of, to flaws in particular tests, to multiple kinds of human error in any self-assessment personality test), it would strain credibility if the test-retest statistics didn't indicate a significant percentage of cases where _at least one_ of the dimensions came out with a different preference on retesting (and _one_ letter change is all it takes to constitute an MBTI retest "failure").

So I'd be skeptical if, at this point, any personality typology claimed test-retest rates much better than 88% per dimension.

As a final note, it should always be kept in mind that a typical MBTI test-taker is someone with little or no familiarity with the typology who simply takes the MBTI test along with a group of fellow employees or students. It's reasonable to assume that, to the extent that a person actually has four reasonably-well-defined preferences, they're likely to come up with a result that's considerably more accurate if they spend some time reading about the preferences and the types — which is something the official MBTI Manual (among other sources) has always encouraged people to do.


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## jkim4007 (Apr 16, 2013)

platorepublic said:


> Yes, okay it has "practical" value. (What practical value, actually? On average, does it produce good or bad? How do you measure that exactly?)
> 
> Let's assume though it has practical value in the sense of being better at tolerating different types of people.
> 
> ...


I'll give you an example. The DSM has practical value, but has no basis in science. It is an arbitrary classification based on symptoms, not causes, and the only reason that literature exists on it is because a DSM diagnosis is, by necessity, one of the independent variables. Likewise, the Big Five has a basis in science (well, it's like they fumbled around with various personality traits until they found five with little to no correlation between them) but it has very little practical value. A classification system is not a theory, it's a tool. It exists to be used, and can only be falsified if it is rendered useless. My hypothesis is that those cognitive functions map onto various parts of the brain (Te in the frontal lobe, Se in the visual cortex, etc.) and it's all about which areas we use most dominantly.


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## bearotter (Aug 10, 2012)

reckful said:


> It's a view that says that an INTJ is a person who favors N over S and T over F (and I over E and J over P) — rather than a person for whom the N is Ni (and not Ne) and the T is Te (and not Ti), and for whom (because of the J) the N is the _dominant function and the T is the auxiliary function, and so on.
> 
> 
> _


Yeah then I don't see how one can argue that there's likely to be more support for what you believe in than a rigid posited theory of "type dynamics" as you call it. Errr, rephrased, what I'm saying is your position is almost obviously likely to carry more support because what it is positing is less rigid.

What is the argument of the theorists who posit that those who fit the INTJ based on dichotomies _do _in fact fit an Ni-Te-Fi-Se model based on, then? Or is there no such argument? I think I have seen you pose that a proper INTJ is more likely correlated to a "dominant thinking type" (although what you are posing seems to involve rejecting that such a thing as a dominant type consistently exists in an objectively measurable way, which I would not be far from supporting either).

I always thought the likely explanation would be that the J v P dichotomy questions, if centered around what is generally described as extroverted judging v extroverted perceiving, would then lead to a preferred TJ adopting Te, with the introverted functions as an afterthought. Whereas if the J vs P dichotomy were built to include trait distinctions associated with supposed Ti (again, not positing existence of such a function, but taking into account what it conceptually entails) then I could imagine an introverted, P, S type being closer to what one sees as the Si type, for instance (but again, loosely, not wanting to bring in a hard and fast notion of dominant/auxiliary type).

If anything, I think a good thing would be to take the arguments posed by those who call the IXXJ types and IXXP types introverted perceiving dominants and introverted judging dominants respectively, and see if there is _some _vague philosophical truth to this, and if so, if this reflects a potential for improving the dichotomies to include more dimensions of judging and perceiving. Because I think, for instance, a question like "do you prefer planning X or Y" or "would you like to explore more options" can have a lot of different answers when you consider what X or Y really is, and including this level of dimension could probably only improve the dichotomy itself.


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## reckful (Jun 19, 2012)

bearotter said:


> What is the argument of the theorists who posit that those who fit the INTJ based on dichotomies _do _in fact fit an Ni-Te-Fi-Se model based on, then? Or is there no such argument? I think I have seen you pose that a proper INTJ is more likely correlated to a "dominant thinking type" (although what you are posing seems to involve rejecting that such a thing as a dominant type consistently exists in an objectively measurable way, which I would not be far from supporting either).


The Ni-Te-Fi-Se model comes from a group of theorists who, after Myers largely abandoned the functions in favor of the dichotomies (rightly, IMHO), decided the MBTI had strayed too far from its Jungian roots and came up with a revised functions model that was non-Jungian in many respects (but more Jungian than the dichotomy-centric MBTI perspective). And most of what was non-Jungian about the new functions model reflected adjustments designed to make the model match up better with the corresponding MBTI types. So, for example, the version of Si that you find in modern cognitive functions theorists bears little resemblance to Jung's conception of Si and Si-doms, but matches up reasonably well with Myers' IS_Js.

But the academic psychologists doing MBTI-related studies had always been dichotomy-focused and remained dichotomy-focused. As discussed in more detail in my posts in this thread (and in this 2009 assessment by James Reynierse), there have been _very few_ studies done based on that functions model, and those that have been done have mostly not led to promising results.

When you say you've seen me post about INTJs "more likely correlated to a dominant thinking type," that's not my perspective. I don't subscribe to the idea of a "dominant function." The point I've made is that one of the ways in which the modern functions model departs from Jung is that, if you look at the way Jung described the "rational types" (J-doms) and "irrational types" (P-doms) in Psychological Types, I think it's pretty clear that he would have tended to view anyone who typed as a J on the official MBTI test (whether extraverted or introverted) as a J-dom — and would therefore have said that an introvert with N and T preferences who had J-like characteristics was a Ti-dom with an N-aux, rather than an Ni-dom with a T-aux.


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## fiik (Jul 4, 2013)

Let's follow the 'K.I.S.S.' way of doing things and keep it simple. I do, I think and I live the same way as everyone else. You do not. That means I'm normal and you're not. Comparing me to you will determine that your cognitive functions are deficient because you do not do what I do, you do not think like I think and you do not live the same way as everyone else - like I do. That is how cognitive functions and its deficiencies are noted, tested and formulated. If I see what others see and you do not - your cognitive functioning is deemed deficient. With the exception of brain damage - there are many tests that do exactly that. Such is the pity.


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## bearotter (Aug 10, 2012)

reckful said:


> When you say you've seen me post about INTJs "more likely correlated to a dominant thinking type," *that's not my perspective. I don't subscribe to the idea of a "dominant function."* The point I've made is that one of the ways in which the modern functions model departs from Jung is that, if you look at the way Jung described the "rational types" (J-doms) and "irrational types" (P-doms) in Psychological Types, I think it's pretty clear that he would have tended to view anyone who typed as a J on the official MBTI test (whether extraverted or introverted) as a J-dom — and would therefore have said that an introvert with N and T preferences who had J-like characteristics was a Ti-dom with an N-aux, rather than an Ni-dom with a T-aux.




Yes hence my parenthetical aside -- that you don't subscribe to the concept of a dominant function, but rather that if it were supposed to exist, irrational/rational dominance would correlate to J/P, in the sense that the founding father who _did_ write about the notion of dominant types. You certainly didn't pose any correlation that you yourself subscribe to as meaningful, but rather what would likely be subscribed to by the original functions perspective {else the point becomes moot, as you can't claim something about something which doesn't validly exist in your eyes!}

I think then in a strange way, even as someone who finds the functions perspective illuminating, I'm not far from you in what I think can be reliably claimed in a consistently objectively measurable manner with the tools that seem to go into measurement for the most part. 
That said, naturally I find attempts to add more structure intriguing (even if I don't necessarily buy that they work exactly and precisely as stated). Good example is socionics.




> I think it's pretty clear that he would have tended to view anyone who typed as a J on the official MBTI test (whether extraverted or introverted) as a J-dom — and would therefore have said that an introvert with N and T preferences who had J-like characteristics was a Ti-dom with an N-aux, rather than an Ni-dom with a T-aux.




I'm curious, though, why then the semi-Jungian MBTI functions perspective theorists you wrote of built the idea that an introverted J type would be a P-dominant. Seems like _their_ version of Te, Fe, vs Ti, Fi, you seem to believe, differs from that of Jung sufficiently enough that they view an MBTI J preference as correlating more with Te and Fe preference and decidedly not with Ti and Fi preference, regardless of scoring I or E.

I have an answer for this too, a possible one, but certainly know less than you do about MBTI's J vs P dichotomy.


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## Tainted Streetlight (Jun 13, 2011)

@reckful

because you quoted my ancient post..

If the MBTI was set up to test each dichotomy as a spectrum, I think quite obviously we'd see much less error. As is, the more people close to center of any given preference, the more likely there will be retest error.

That's the only reason that the Big Five is "more accurate".


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## PaladinX (Feb 20, 2013)

bearotter said:


> I'm curious, though, why then the semi-Jungian MBTI functions perspective theorists you wrote of built the idea that an introverted J type would be a P-dominant. Seems like _their_ version of Te, Fe, vs Ti, Fi, you seem to believe, differs from that of Jung sufficiently enough that they view an MBTI J preference as correlating more with Te and Fe preference and decidedly not with Ti and Fi preference, regardless of scoring I or E.
> 
> I have an answer for this too, a possible one, but certainly know less than you do about MBTI's J vs P dichotomy.


The idea was based on observable behaviour. Isabel Myers, initially, was trying to make it easy to type people by observing their behaviours. So for example, you are more likely to observe J-like behaviour in an INFJ or INTJ, even though they are perceiving dominants, because Fe and Te present more observable actions in the outside world than Ni. The same goes for observing P-like behaviours in an ISTP or INTP.


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## reckful (Jun 19, 2012)

Tainted Streetlight said:


> @reckful
> 
> because you quoted my ancient post..
> 
> ...


I don't know what you mean by "more accurate." Let's assume that there really is such a thing as a 4% N and, if we only knew how to measure some kind of genetic or neurobiological marker of some kind, we could actually quantify that. If you're suggesting that a typical current Big Five test somehow indicates that kind of spectrum location more accurately than the current official MBTI, that's not my understanding. And Big Five tests can either be "forced choice" or give you an ability to answer each item along some kind of spectrum from "neither side" to "mildly" to "strongly," just like MBTI tests.

Why do you think Big Five tests are somehow inherently "more accurate"?


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## reckful (Jun 19, 2012)

bearotter said:


> I'm curious, though, why then the semi-Jungian MBTI functions perspective theorists you wrote of built the idea that an introverted J type would be a P-dominant. Seems like _their_ version of Te, Fe, vs Ti, Fi, you seem to believe, differs from that of Jung sufficiently enough that they view an MBTI J preference as correlating more with Te and Fe preference and decidedly not with Ti and Fi preference, regardless of scoring I or E.
> 
> I have an answer for this too, a possible one, but certainly know less than you do about MBTI's J vs P dichotomy.


Myers was the one who said the J/P would point to your dominant function if you were an extravert and to your auxiliary function if you were an introvert, and that somewhat went hand-in-hand with her non-Jungian notion that the auxiliary would have the opposite attitude to the dominant. And the 90s cognitive functions gang followed Myers in that regard.

When it came to the tertiary function, though, Myers agreed with Jung that it would have the opposite attitude to the dominant, but the 90s cognitive functions gang (following Harold Grant's lead, I believe) decided that the tertiary function should have the _same_ attitude as the dominant.


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## Red_Setting_Sun (Jun 20, 2013)

To answer the original question of this thread, and I'm sure somebody has already pointed it out: The basis for MBTI and functions is observable behavorial patterns in people.

MBTI is a _model represantation_, and not a truth, of nature. A model helps us understand reality in a way that is consistent with what we observe.

Newton's mechanics is a good example: it's a functioning model of how the universe works within certain frames of reference, but is still just a human-made framework - even so, it delivers consistent results that have practical value.

This goes for MBTI too. I'd say it's a bit far-fetched to say that there are inherent personality types in the people of this universe, but that doesn't change the fact that this model of reality has immense practical value: It helps people become aware of themselves, how they work, how they communicate and might explain quite a few things about their lives that they have always wondered about.

MBTI is a _tool_ that helps people express their differences in such a way that they can understand eachother, even though they have wildly different lifeworlds, and _it works._


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