Yourself In 4 Letters: The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator

Guest: Merve Emre, PhD, MPhil, Associate Professor of English, Oxford University, Fellow, Worcester College, Author, “The Personality Brokers” The most famous personality test in the world – the one that inspired all those crazy quizzes we take on social media – has a really surprising backstory. It was not developed by psychologists. The creators of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator were a mother-daughter team with no formal scientific training of any sort. But somehow their multiple choice test for sorting people into categories with four-letter codes like INTP or ESFJ has become the tool for companies, colleges, counselors - and even government agencies. The Myers-Briggs test has become a huge moneymaker – despite loads of criticism from the scientific community that it’s not really an accurate gauge of personality.