As I have always felt like a bit of a weirdo and outcast, discovering MBTI in my early 20’s was a bit of a revelation. I discovered it though a thread on the old, long dead, Blake’s 7 fan forum Lysator, in which someone had tried to assign MBTI temperament types to the main characters in the series. I had not heard of such a thing before and as they had linked to a test, intrigued, I decided to try it.
This first test assigned me the type INTP, which I found pretty flattering, not least that it was the same type as B7’s Kerr Avon, who was my favourite character, and Red Dwarf’s Arnold J Rimmer, another of my favourite characters, (go figure!) it was also considered extremely rare, maybe only 1% of the population, and most likely to be male.
MBTI or in full, the Myers / Briggs Temperament Indicator has received something of a bad press recently, being called pseudo science and “a newspaper horoscope for people who don’t believe in newspaper horoscopes” but I’m not entirely convinced this is the case. If this was the case, it would certainly not be taken as seriously as it is by human resource managers and data mining / customer research operations such as Cambridge Analytica.
Cambridge Analytica, co-founded by alt-right businessman, former Breitbart editor and Trump right-hand man Steve Bannon, used the legitimate government funded academic research of Michel Kosinski and the University of Cambridge’s Psychometric department to target users with fake news and propaganda pushing a right-wing agenda. This led to questions being asked about whether this influenced the election of Donald Trump and even the Brexit campaign. This data was used without the users permission, and was a misuse of government funded psychometric research.
Although this story hit the main-stream press, it was never really explained how exactly taking part in an online ‘personality test’ allowed users to be targeted with tailored propaganda. These novelty personality tests in themselves are unrelated to MBTI, but in allowing the test access to their Facebook profiles, Cambridge Analytica’s algorithms were able to analyse everything from Facebook ‘likes’, comments posted, and status updates and make a very good, informed guess on the users political affiliations. The irony is that this was based on many years of government funded research carried out by Cambridge University’s psychometrics department and should not have been misused like this.
Until recently, you could check out what your profile says about you by logging into Cambridge University’s “Apply Magic Sauce” website. The Facebook link is disabled now, but you can still use your Twitter or plain text (200 words minimum) and let yourself be analysed. One of the things it will try to guess, as well as your Big 5 personality type and your psychological gender, is your MBTI (Jungian) personality type. It consistently types me as INTP, so it seems fairly reliable. I think that this is proof in itself that MBTI is not a triviality. When the Facebook link was active, it was able to discern everything from your religion, political affiliation, and even your IQ and gender just by things you had “liked” on Facebook, and the kinds of words and language you use in your everyday interactions. Even tho in my case I found a few of these guesses well off the mark, (it seems to think I’m a Mormon, tho this might have something to do with my Peeb background and the language I use, plus it’s never sure of my gender, but then, neither am I!) it must be reliable enough to invest in. In the wrong hands, that could be a very dangerous tool.
This has led to to wonder if the people who are trying to debunk MBTI as mumbo-jumbo are trying to misdirect people into downplaying it’s power to influence public opinion and manipulate election results. For example, the SJ or “Guardian” type are security seeking individuals who are the most common MBTI group. As they are by nature hard-working traditionalists who dislike change, they are easily coaxed into supporting conservative agendas. The SP type, the second most common group is more easily influenced by fashion fads, and as well as being more artistic and expressive, is more likely to be influenced by progressive politics, but are also more likely to act irresponsibly. These may look like wild generalisations, and maybe they are. There is no room for nuance. When you realise that groups can be manipulated that easily, just like herds of sheep, you realise that MBTI can be weaponised, and I think that it clearly what has been happening lately.
So is MBTI really a ‘pseudoscience’ and no more reliable than horoscopes? It certainly doesn’t look that way to me, otherwise Cambridge University would not have put so much time and public money in studying it. I have certainly found it useful myself in understanding both myself and my interactions with other people, and why I find it hard to fit in sometimes because of my interests and introverted personality type. But as a tool, like any other tool, it can be both used and abused.
You can have a play around with Apply Magic Sauce, to find out what your e-mails say about you right here..
Have fun!!
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