What does the MBTI (Myers-Briggs) Test really say about your personality?
Accurate description of your character or a pseudoscientific Horoskop for nerds?
When I was 8, I stared at my classmates and thought:
“Wow, Michael is definitely the clown here, Lisa the serious one, Paul the guy you don’t want to upset, and Stefan… well, the nerd.”
Everyone was unique. And yes, back then I was a bit puzzled as to why we were all so damn different.
Flash-forward to a random afternoon, nearly two decades later, when I took an MBTI test out of boredom. Suddenly, a whole new world opened up before me.
I finally had the feeling of understanding myself for the first time in my life, and of course, I urged everybody in my surroundings to do the test as well.
What makes the MBTI (Myers-Briggs Type Indicator) test so fascinating?
It’s like a BuzzFeed quiz, but on steroids. It categorizes you into one of 16 types based on four main categories:
Are you introverted (I) or extroverted (E)? Sensing (S) or intuitive (N)? Thinking (T) or feeling (F)? Judging (J) or perceiving (P)?
Sounds simple, right?
The whole fun started with Carl Jung, a psychologist who was something like the rockstar of psychology, just without groupies. He believed that our dominant personality function and attitude define who we are at our core, while the exact opposite represents our shadow or unconscious.
Based on Jung’s theories, two American women — mother and daughter, by the way — developed the MBTI test.
And although many today refer to it as “astrology for nerds,” I can assure you that it’s at least a bit cooler to know your MBTI type than just knowing whether you’re an Aquarius or a Sagittarius.
MBTI in practice
As mentioned earlier, the various combinations result in 16 unique personality types. I’ve tried to briefly and succinctly summarize them in this list:
- INTP: Thinks too much, parties too little. Ask: “Is there a manual for this?“
- ENTP: Why take the conventional path when you can go cross-country?
- INTJ: Has a plan for everything. Yes, even for you.
- ENTJ: Boss in the building. Who’s in charge here? That’s right, me.
- INFJ: Saves the world, one deep conversation at a time.
- ENFJ: The coach of your life. You didn’t even know you needed one, did you?
- INFP: Torn between dreaming of utopias and the next Netflix series.
- ENFP: Already on the next big idea while you’re still contemplating the last.
- ISTJ: Because traditions aren’t just there to be broken.
- ESTJ: Organizes things. People. Universes. Everything.
- ISFJ: The memory that never forgets, especially not your birthday.
- ESFJ: Plans the party, makes sure you attend, and ensures you have fun.
- ISTP: If it’s broken, I can fix it. If not, it was probably useless anyway.
- ESTP: Why talk about it when you can do it now?
- ISFP: Lives louder than words. Mostly through art, sometimes through attire.
- ESFP: Life is short. Dance on the tables.
But let’s be honest! Apart from INTPs, no one can remember all these letter sequences!
That’s why some smart folks from 16personalities.com decided to give these types memorable names.
- INTP? The introverted and intuitive thinker with a bit too much spontaneity? That’s the Logician — yes, the same type as Einstein.
- ENTJ? The extroverted and intuitive thinker with a plan? That’s the type who walks into a room and you instantly identify as the Commander. The same type as Julius Caesar.
- ISFJ? The introverted and sensing feeler with a plan? That’s the Defender. Always ready to stand up for the people he loves. A real pillar in tough times. The same type as Beyoné.
These flashy names are like a sexy dress for your MBTI type — they make everything look a bit more sparkly and appealing and help you truly identify with this type.
And who doesn’t want to find out if they’re the same type as Einstein or Shakespeare?
It’s like discovering you share a birthday with Kanye West — meaningless, but still tempting enough to tell everybody you talk to.
As for the types, there’s no better or worse. Each of these types has its place in our wild party called society.
Some of these partygoers, like the ESFJs and ISFJs, are seen everywhere, while the INFJs and INTPs are the mysterious, rare birds in the corner if they even dare to attend a party at all.
How do you recognize the MBTI personality of others?
As previously mentioned, MBTI is based on Carl Jung’s theory of psychological types.
This theory proposes that people use four main psychological functions to interact with the world: Thinking, Feeling, Sensing, and Intuition.
Each of these functions can be expressed in an extraverted (outward-facing) or introverted (inward-facing) form, resulting in a total of 8 cognitive functions.
Sounds complicated? It is, but I’ll try to break it down simply here:
- Extraverted Thinking (Te): These are the people who follow IKEA assembly instructions and say, “Look how easy this is!”
- Introverted Thinking (Ti): These types dismantle the IKEA instruction just to reassemble it in their own way.
- Extraverted Feeling (Fe): You know that person who always knows when you’re feeling down, even if you say you’re okay? That’s them.
- Introverted Feeling (Fi): They organize their Spotify playlists based on their moods. And yes, they have one for every day of the year.
- Extraverted Sensing (Se): These people? They live in the moment. Instagram? They were the first there.
- Introverted Sensing (Si): They remember the first time they used Instagram… and every other moment afterward.
- Extraverted Intuition (Ne): These are the dreamers, the people who say, “What if…?”
- Introverted Intuition (Ni): They think about thinking. Sounds crazy? For them, it’s just another Tuesday.
Each of the 16 MBTI types uses a combination of these cognitive functions in their preferred and less preferred ways.
For instance, the dominant function of an INTJ is Ni (Introverted Intuition) while their auxiliary function is Te (Extraverted Thinking).
So, to recognize the MBTI type of your best buddy, your lazy boss, or your new Tinder date, you can just simply send them the test.
But maybe you’re thinking, “I don’t want to be that creep sending personality tests to others!” or “My friend Mark will definitely lie and say he’s an ENTJ when he’s totally an ENFP!”
Then follow these steps:
Step 1: The First Impression
People love to chat about what interests them most. And what interests them most reveals their strongest extraverted function.
- Te: These people talk about goals and how to achieve them. Efficiency is their priority.
- Fe: They ask you how you are and genuinely mean it. They truly care.
- Ne: They jump from idea to idea. A walking brainstorm.
- Se: They talk about the present. Experiences and adventures.
Step 2: Extraverted or Introverted?
It’s the difference between those who enliven the party and those who watch from a corner or don’t show up at all.
If you have an introvert in front of you, the function identified in the first step is the auxiliary function. For an extrovert, it’s naturally the dominant.
Example:
Suppose you detect Te. If you then suspect that your evening’s Tinder match is introverted, then you know Te is their secondary function.
This means you only have 2 possible types left: INTJ or ISTJ.
This narrows it down considerably!
Step 3: The Introverted Function
After you’ve identified the extraverted function, try to determine what the introverted function is.
Si: They share stories from the past and rely on what they know.
Ni: The future? Yes, they already made plans for it years ago.
Fi: Deep-seated values? They wear them on their sleeve. They act according to their inner compass and what feels “right” to them.
Ti: Problem solvers par excellence. They break down ideas to understand how everything works.
If the person is Si dominant and Te secondary, congratulations, you have an ISTJ in front of you!
If it’s Ni dominant and Te secondary, then they are an INTJ.
Ask yourself now: Does this make sense compared to other ISTJs or INTJs you know?
If not, could you have made a mistake somewhere?
If yes, it seems you’ve hit the nail on the head.
But remember: People aren’t an open book, especially if you’re just getting to know them, and it’s always good to critically review your initial impressions!
Critique of MBTI — Between Self-Discovery and Self-Deception
You might be super excited about the concept of the MBTI test right now and can’t wait to analyze everyone around you, from your friends to your mom and her dog Waldi.
Probably you’ll soon type “MBTI” into Google and bam! — there’s that nasty word:
“Pseudoscience”
Quite a harsh allegation, right?
Is MBTI a pseudoscience?
Well, Katharine Cook Briggs and Isabel Briggs Myers, the founders of MBTI, didn’t have degrees in psychology.
In fact, they were nowhere near it. Katharine was an agricultural scientist, and Isabel studied political science.
No wonder real psychologists kind of scoff at them and their test.
And then there’s Carl Jung. Although he was ultimately responsible for the MBTI, Jung also believed it wasn’t a good idea to categorize people.
He compared the whole thing to stones: You can take hundreds of stones from a river and try to define the “average stone” or put them into categories. But in the end, every stone is unique. Just like us humans.
Over-identification with the label. MBTI can also lead to problems when people start to identify too strongly with their “label”.
Like those guys who always whine, “Oh, I’m a P, I just can’t plan!”
Instead of complaining, how about trying to improve yourself and make a plan?
That’s probably the main problem with the test: it puts you too much into a box.
It tells you you’re either this or that, either J or P, F or T, S or N, I or E.
However, human personality is not a category but a spectrum.
If you had to classify all the people in the world on a spectrum measuring introversion and extraversion, the majority would be in the middle.
Extremely introverted people would be found on the fringe or in Mum’s basement.
Extremely extroverted people, on the other hand, would stand on the other side of the spectrum, but one thing’s for sure, you would hear them loud and clearly!
If we graphically represent the distribution of people, it would look like a bell. That’s why we call this thing the bell curve.
Divide the bell in the middle, and on one side, we have the introverts, and on the other, the extroverts.
But the introvert in the middle probably has much more in common with an extrovert in the middle than with his extremely introverted colleague who saw daylight exactly 3.5 times last month.
The Big 5 Personality Test does this better. Here, personality is fluid; you’re not either introverted or extroverted, but more or less introverted. We’ll delve deeper into that some other time.
MBTI as a horoscope for nerds.
To say MBTI is a horoscope for nerds, I think is misguided.
With horoscopes, you’re told:
You were born on this day, so you’ll be like this and this will happen to you.
With MBTI, it’s more like:
Tell me how you tick, and I’ll tell you which pattern you fit into.
Horoscopes are prescriptive and force you into a category. MBTI, on the other hand, is descriptive and determines a category based on an observation.
To really say they’re both equally nonsensical? I think that’s nonsensical.
Conclusion:
Is MBTI just pseudoscientific nonsense?
No, not necessarily. But you should view it with a healthy dose of skepticism.
Especially: Don’t identify too much with your category, because at the end of the day, you’re unique, even if you’d rather be an ENTJ.
MBTI Personality Type Test for Notion
I’m a big fan of Notion, the Swiss Army knife among productivity tools. Recently, I created a free MBTI test as a Notion template.
Get the template, duplicate it into your workspace, and find out your type within the next 5 minutes:
