Asker, I know a lot about this test, and as I am a bit flooded with thoughts here, the short and best answer to your q is: it is highly accurate. Without going into my whole bkgd and life history I'll just say that psychology and personality tests have been a huge part of it all my life, and this is THE ONE test I stand by and find extremely informative and useful, both for people to understand themselves, and for the knowledge you gain about others, and how to communicate the most effectively with them. And that should be a goal for everyone, right? Some people are so selfish, self-absorbed, that they couldn't care less what anyone else is feeling or thinking. They focus on their own inner world, and outer life, and anything that they feel doesn't directly benefit that, they ignore.
Anyway, whether you use this as a tool for self-understanding, or to apply more broadly to the world, I highly recommend delving into it. The origins go back to Carl Jung (originally a protege of Freud's, but he outgrew him, and is the far more respect one today. Some years later, it was a mother-daughter team of scientists who expanded on the original theories. Decades later still, it has been adapted even more and now there are offshoots that are not the original. But regardless of where and how you take the tests, they are all basically credible enough. Just take the time to do the longer ones; they'll be more accurate.
I don't believe in OCEAN and Big5. Forget those. They personally bug the crap out of me, their concepts and structure. The MBTI (aka The Myers-Briggs) is excellent.
Note that some will feel torn between the categories, and it is true that some people do fall close to the 50% mark, in which case I believe these people to conclude the test is inconsequential. That's one reason I say to take a long-enough test, because no one is truly 50%. You will tip to one side or another. Even a 60% in one category is felt in the person. I can sometimes detect that 10%, it is enough.
These traits are said to be innate (not changing.) However over the 25+ years I've known about and taken the tests, I have changed sometimes. It depends on where you are in your life, the specifics. Work circumstances (not to mention love, all kind of relationships, etc.) do factor in a great deal. When I was at my most frustrated, working with someone who operated very counter to my natural tendencies and preferences, I went hard to the other side (of the categories in the test). Whether subconscious or not, I compensated.
But generally speaking, there are mostly consistencies to our nature. As HighlyVolatile said, he's also learned best practices that serve him well in his work. That's adaptation, that's logic and intelligence. No living creatures are static. This is perhaps the greatest comfort to me about the world, and the one thing that can give me hope in times of utmost despair - people can change. I have seen it personally, many times. (Not in my family, but often in friends.) And if people can change, the world can change. Pessimism that denies this makes me angry, fed up, depressed. They are often the same people who deride and dismiss personality tests. But having curiosity about this is a good sign, a hopeful sign.
Accurate if answers to questions are correct. It's not difficult to trick this test. I'm ENTJ but I always aimed for ENTP and lied by judging and perceiving questions.
I consider MBTI quite accurate, at recognizing your overall personality traits, that is.
I think it's really good at measuring what it claims to measure- I always get predictable results (either ISTJ or INTJ, with S and N being my most conflicting traits) from different tests that make use of different wording.
I do find other INTJs and ISTJs to be exceptionally similar to myself, so I think there is a lot of validity in the way the test tries to categorize its personality types.
This is in contrast with other models of character traits such as the Big Five, which I think doesn't do nearly as good of a job.
My biggest gripe with Big Five is that it correlates openness to experience with artistry and aesthetics, which is clearly not the case, since I'm an artist with a vivid imagination who ALSO happens to be a hardcore, near OCD, logistician who likes his order and routines and avoids wacky new approaches like the plague.
This completely throws off my Big Five score because it treats the two as conflicting traits, while the MBTI doesn't make the same mistake.
As far as predictive validity of MBTI results goes, that's a different matter.
That seems to be mostly an educated guess of the people who have came up with the online tests in order to give them more of a purpose and draw more people to their website.
I wouldn't pay too much attention to it, and I definitely wouldn't base my life choices around their assumptions.
I'm ENFP-A like so. I've taken the test various times over the years and the numbers fluctuate a little bit but always ENFP-A:
I find the description strikingly accurate about my ultimate desires and innate weaknesses. I've looked at various other profiles to make sure that wasn't just a cold reading and ENFP strikes me as most accurate.
However, I should put emphasis on "innate" weaknesses. For example, I've developed a reputation of being the most practical person in my workplace. However, it's because I'm fundamentally wired to be the most impractical person, so I understand from firsthand experiences how counter-productive it is to be impractical. So I've overcome some of the weaknesses described but they are still fundamentally innate to my character.
Above all else, this quote strikes true with me on the deepest level about the ENFP type:
>> It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for – and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing.
I'm "soul-hungry". I want to share my soul with others and I want them to reciprocate. I don't always succeed in getting them to reciprocate. A lot of people seem so closed off to me like they don't want to share and bare their souls the way I do.
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INFP I think, pretty accurate. I haven’t redone the test in a year though.
What is MBTI? Can you add an update for those of us that don't know?
It seems very accurate
It's extremely accurate.
? what?
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