Personality Tests
Are personality tests any use? What can they tell us if anything? Or is it like a star-sign?
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Transcript
Hello and welcome to the Cognitive Engineering podcast produced by me, Fraser McGruer for Aleph Insights. In this series of podcasts, we take a look at interesting topics and discuss what we think they tell us about analysis and decision making. I'm here with Chris Wragg, Peter Coghill and Nick Hare of Aleph Insights and this week we're discussing the Myers-Briggs type indicator. Peter, what is the Myers-Briggs type indicator? So the Myers-Briggs type indicator,
Speaker B:which Fraser seems to have enormous trouble saying for some reason, maybe we'll have some off cuts as a separate release, but it's a personality test, I have to put it in a crude term, developed by two academics, Myers and Briggs, which gives you a indication of the various different, four different parameters of your personality and as a result, these are all sort of, these are binary there, so you can be one side of a scale or another and hence there are 16 separate personality types which fit quite well intuitively with types of people that you might recognise or ways that you might categorise people that you know. So I won't go into what the scales are because there's tons of literature out there and Nick's going to go into a bit more detail about the science, but it's a nice easy test to implement, it just requires the participant to answer 50 or so questions, self-reporting on a little scale and your type is calculated from
Speaker A:them. Okay and I think this is about the most prevalent or successful or widely used test that's out there, is that about right and it has been for some time? Yeah, yes I think it is,
Speaker B:it's quite, it's been, I don't know when they, when it was first published but. So it was, it was first
Speaker C: f devised, its origins are in: Speaker B:or an offshoot of this test. And so before, before we go into the sort of hard science of whether it's valid or not, I think it's successful because it seems to chime with people's intuition and it's suitably detailed to be kind of, detailed enough to be useful but not so simple that it's, it's a bit sort of too hand-wavy and not very reasonable. Okay. Certainly, anecdotally people of certain types who I know have been tested, they have, the types are indicative of certain behaviour types or certain performance and certain tasks. So I can see why, from my
Speaker A:experience, why it's a useful test. Okay, in a moment I want Nick to continue but, or to pick up but just, the reason why we're talking about this is just by chance I did this test myself, on Okay, this is great, it kind of fits and actually I wish I'd done it years before because I could have saved myself a lot of heartbreak in my chosen career path. But the other part of it was it did seem to be a little bit self-selecting or it's, you got asked questions like, do you like being at parties and socialising with people? And then the answer at the end, you're the type of person who likes being at parties, so it seemed a bit sort of self-referential. Nick, is it useful?
Speaker D: ctable. Furnham and Crump, in: Speaker A:different direction, anything, I mean, on the question of validity of this test, do you two
Speaker C:want to jump in on anything, Chris? Well, I think it's interesting looking at the, you know, the origins of it that, you know, was devised by a mother and daughter team and based on, you know, their observations as well. I think it was Catherine Cook Briggs, who was the mother, who was particularly sort of enamored of Jungian theory and, but she and her daughter concocted this sort of approach based on their observations of, you know, particularly children early on. And I think that in itself is quite an interesting story that it's not a standard devised set of, you know, traditionally male academics having come up with something in a, you know, in a particular setting. So, that's quite interesting. I think the thing that I think is interesting is not necessarily the validity of the test itself, but the way it is used and the way it's being taken and used and the way that it is now presented and, you know, how organizations like the Myers Briggs Foundation act as custodians for it as an approach and how it's become an industry
Speaker B:and something that's rolled out. I think that's very interesting. Okay. Not making a comment about the validity of it, but I think the appeal is because it's so simple to administer as a test. You can, if you believe in it as an employer and you think you need a nice balance of types in your teams and you're going to factor that into recruitment, it's a five minute, 10 minute job for somebody to complete the questionnaire and score it. So, the appeal is partly that it's
Speaker D:really nice and easy to administer. Yeah. And I think even if it was a load of bollocks, which, as I said, I think it probably isn't, it fulfills a useful function, which is giving a structure for people to talk about differences. And I personally found that useful when I was managing people in the MOD, just to be made to sit down and think, well, you know, people aren't like you necessarily. Other people aren't motivated by the same things that you are and find things stressful that you don't. And that's really helpful. It's very helpful to think, okay, well, what's this guy like? Okay. Maybe he's a bit more of an introvert, which might just be summarizing a whole basket of things. It might not be particularly meaningful to say he scores less on this dimension, but it enables me to think, okay, well, in that case, he's going to be kind of much more stressed out about this event than I am. And he's probably going to need, you know, time afterwards to readjust. And it's just really, it's helpful to give you some structure for thinking about those things. So, yeah, I mean, I think it sort of fulfills a
Speaker A:useful role. Yeah. As an aside, is there a lower age limit for this? I don't know.
Speaker C:I can check it out. I think that's what, that does address one of the issues that is a criticism of Myers-Briggs though, is that it has an implicit assumption that personality is unfixed. And that's,
Speaker D:you know, that's one of the things that. I mean, I don't think, I mean, everyone who administers the MBTI is very keen to point out that it doesn't mean that and that you can change and that most people are a mix of both and so on. And, you know, finding out that you're an extrovert doesn't condemn you to being an extrovert for the rest of your life and maybe on Mondays, you're not. I've got one very powerful piece of anecdotal evidence. Go for it. Which is really what made me think this has got more to it than I've been told. You sound like you're about to
Speaker A:talk about astrology or crystal ball glazing. Glazing? Gazing. Go for it. I call it the board
Speaker D:game indicator. It's the SN axis, the sensing versus intuiting. I have to say intuiting is a terrible piece of terminology. It's the opposite of what it means really, as far as I understand it. This is the axis which describes the extent to which you prefer to sort of assimilate information by direct contact with things versus assimilate information through forming abstract models, if you like. And the classic example of that is if you had to sort of understand, get to know a forest, would you rather be down in the forest looking at it, touching it, or would you rather see it from an aeroplane or look at a map? And I'm very much on the map end of that scale. I'm very strong. That's why I'm not going to give anything away. But the thing is that I sort of thought, well, that sounds to me like something that would correlate with board gamers. Like, you'd think board gamers might be more inclined towards that abstract thinking because, you know, when you're playing a board game, it seems to be the people who get on well with board games are the ones who are very comfortable with the idea of saying, okay, so here's a counter and here's a map. Now I'm a German tank commander. Whereas people who are not, you know, people who are more S types would be more inclined to say, what's this got to do with being a German tank commander? This is nothing like being in a tank. Anyway, so I did a survey among my board gaming friends and found that something like 90% of them came out as Ns. And this is against the general population, which is, I think, for some figures, three quarters Ss. There you go. Right now, there's no questions on the MBTI about, do you like board games? And yet this feature, which they identify, is certainly in my sample, which was over 10 people, you know, was very strongly predictive of whether someone would like board games. So there we are. That's my anecdotal
Speaker A:evidence. I like it. Okay, so let's go on to the next part of this, which rather excitingly, we've all done the test ourselves and recorded what personalities might be. Well, we've done
Speaker D:a version of it on the internet. Yes. To be more specific. You're very much of that type, aren't
Speaker A:you? What? Attempting to be pedantic type. Attempting to be correct about things. Sorry, guys. And also what we've done is we've devoted a little bit of time, about 30 seconds each, probably, of trying to guess or, well, not guess, but work out what the other people amongst us here, which personality type the others are. So let's launch into it. And once we've sort of gone through that, I'm not sure how we'll finish it all off. But anyway, let's see where this leads. So I'd like to start off with Chris. If you could tell us, reasonably briefly, what you think, what your conclusions were regarding the personality types of us other three sitting
Speaker C:here. Go for it. Okay, well, I'm just going to read them out, what I thought. I thought Fraser was an ENFP. I thought Peter was an INTJ. And Nick, ENTJ. Okay. Interesting. So, very broadly,
Speaker A:what's the ENFP type meant to be like? Good question. I don't have it to hand,
Speaker D:but... Enthusiastic, creative, sociable, free spirits. Okay. What's the INTJ meant to be like?
Speaker A:They're the mastermind. Okay. Architect. And what's the ENTJ meant to be like? The commander.
Speaker B:Okay. Peter? Okay. So, I'll come to Nick last. Fraser, I think you're sometimes called the entertainer, an ESFP. The reason I think that is because I think you have a tendency for sensing rather than intuiting. I think you really care deeply about people more than about being right. So, a bit more feeling than thinking. And you're pretty open to challenging things. So, you're not so judging, I think. Chris, I think you're an INTJ. So... You both thought each other as an INTJ. I think you're an architect. So, I think you're probably more deep thinking than Nick, stronger. So, when we get onto the scores, if we do. I think you're probably extreme judger. So, you're probably on the higher end of judging. And Nick, I think he's me. I look in the mirror every time I see Nick, apart from body shape. I think he's an INTJ. Okay. Nick?
Speaker D:I have got Chris pegged, just like Peter, as an INTJ. And the way I did this, by the way, was I thought about the features, the actual scales. I wasn't looking at a kind of list of descriptions. I was trying to work out on each one. And not to be honest, the TNTJ whole bit, the TFJ. That doesn't mean much to me. I can't make that particularly intuitive to me. But with a possibility of ISFP, because I'm not sure about Fraser. He's very comfortable by himself. And I think, you know, wandering off by himself. I don't think he craves the company of others. I'm going to say he's fairly balanced on the AI axis. And Peter, I thought ENTP, actually. And I think that sort of P bit... Say that again, sorry? ENTP. I think he's more experimental in the way that he thinks than I am. I think he's more of a kind of likes to play around with things much more than I do. So I think very similar to me, but I've got him down as an E. And I wasn't sure about E or I either. But I think I came to the conclusion that although Chris, I think it's to do with sort of wanting... Peter's always got his his video, his hangout switched on. He's always ready to receive company. Whereas Chris is desperate to get away whenever there's a social event. So I've got him as an I and Peter as an E. Although I'd say I'm going with they're probably both quite balanced. Before I decide
Speaker B:whether or not I like your judgment, what's the kind of the character given to that?
Speaker D:ENTP is known as the debater. Smart and curious thinkers who cannot resist an intellectual challenge. These are all nice descriptions, by the way. Yeah, exactly. So Fraser,
Speaker A:what do you got us pegged as? First of all, look, I think you're all quite similar. I think you three over there are quite different to me over here. That's the first thing I want to say. And the second thing is each of these, there's actually four over types, aren't there? Okay. And one of them is analysts. And I barely even looked at all the others. And I was thinking, well, they're all quite geeky analysts, these three. But that was as much analysis as your SF brain could do. Exactly. Exactly. Anyway, I thought Nick was ENTP. Chris, I thought INTJ. And then, which is the architect. Yeah, we're all focusing on INTJ. Yeah. And Peter, I thought
Speaker D:INTP. Funny. But all of us have reckoned that all of us except Fraser are NT. And we all think Fraser is an SF, which is interesting. Yeah. And I think that could be where the big difference is
Speaker A:between us. But anyway, we don't know the answer. So what are the answers? Chris, can you reveal
Speaker C:what personality type you are? Well, according to the test I took online, I am an INTP. Okay,
Speaker D:so we were all three out of four. So I'm going to mark our accuracy as I'm going to call that 75%. So I got that right. Yeah. Well, we were 70. No, you said INTJ. Oh, did I? So we're 75%
Speaker B:accuracy. And I'm just scoring each letter as right or wrong. Yeah. Peter. According to the same test. So bear in mind, we all took the same test. So there's some degree of standardization
Speaker D:here. I'm an ENTJ. Okay, I've got the ENT bit right. So that's 0.75. Fraser had the just the ENT bit right, which is 0.5. Didn't I say P as well? Oh, God, mate, you're bloody mind up. And Chris had had him down as an INTJ. So he got 0.75. So the average is two thirds, 0.66 on that one, 67%. Okay, Nick, I am apparently a classic ENTJ. And that's what my test indicates. I'd say I am a bit wavery. I'm very, I'm not very E. I'm, you know, I'm fairly E, but not that E. And I'm very wavery on the JP bit. I'm pretty much stuck in the middle there. So. So I'm just going to score us there. Peter got 75%. Thought I was on going to be more I. Fraser got 75%. And Chris got 100%. So there we have 2.5. That will be five. No, wait a minute. 2.5 out of three. You're not very good at maths, are you? Five sixths. Five sixths. Okay, Fraser, spill the beans. ENFP. ENFP. So Chris was 100% correct. And Peter and I were both 75% correct. So that comes out again at five sixths. We are, in terms of our accuracy, and this is against a baseline of, well, yes, we should be 50%. So baseline guessing would give us a score here of 50% if we were 50-50 on each of these letters. We have all come out at least two thirds and as high as five sixths or three quarters. So don't tell me it's not meaningful, right? Because we haven't seen each other's test scores. All we know is each other's personalities. That is pretty impressive. Yeah. And also, interestingly,
Speaker A:I mean, by the way, ENFPs are really cool people. We're great fun to be around. That's all you need
Speaker D:to know. I'm surprised you're an N. I have to say I'm not buying it because you are not, you're not carried away and motivated by abstract thought. You think it's silly and you think people should just go and get on a surfboard and do something. Just do a thing. Just do it. You're one of these let's do it guys. No, I'm more intellectual than you realise. I know you are, but I'm saying your preference is to just look. We've done enough thinking. Let's just get stuck in. And that makes me think you're an S. And our experience playing Twilight Struggle, again, leads me to believe.
Speaker A:Yeah, but I don't much like Twilight Struggle either. There you go. And also, I'm right, I mean, you three, I don't know, you've gone way. I need to look more into these axes. Well,
Speaker D:let's just check our similarities. There's not much difference between you three. Yeah. Peter, did you say you're an ENTJ?
Speaker B:So yeah, I am an ENTJ, but I am only weakly extroverted. So I'm not far over 50% on the extroversion score. So quite close to being an introvert. So quite close to what Nick and Chris.
Speaker D:Yeah, we're both the same then, according to this test. So we're 100% similar. We share 50% of our personality genes with Chris and we share 50% of our personality genes with Fraser. Whereas Chris and Fraser only share 25%, no, they share 50% of their personality genes as well. They're N and P types. So upshot, we're all a bit too similar. I mean, to be honest, no, Peter and I are too similar. The similarity of everyone else with everyone else is exactly average, which is 50%. So look, we're not that different, you and I.
Speaker B:Anyway, how do we finish this off? Well, I'd encourage listeners to go and do the test and see if it conforms with their intuition about themselves and with other people's intuition about them.
Speaker C:I mean, it might be interesting to reflect on whether we felt our own scores were right. So having done the test, do we buy what our output was?
Speaker A:Yeah, I think that's a good direction to go. And yeah, I do agree with what mine says. And I do recognize certain strengths, which is I'm quite good with people. I'm quite sort of fun and like doing exciting stuff. Anything bad you can say about yourself? Well, that's the interesting thing. Oh, I can tell you all your bad things. No, absolutely. Possibly the major bad thing is that you can be a bit of a dilettante if you're an ENFP and you're always changing around and doing different stuff and get bored of something. And you end up having a crap career because you just keep changing all the time. Gadfly. Yeah. So that's definitely one of the many bad things about an ENFP, which I recognized in myself.
Speaker D:You're supposed to be slightly more likely to be mischievous and diligent. Oh, no, no, no. The P really works against diligence. So yes, you've got sort of negative diligence and high mischief factors.
Speaker A:Yeah. And by the way, one of the other things that Peter mentioned was, hey, everyone should go out and try this. And I agree. What I found actually was if I go on YouTube, there are millions of videos on there about ENFPs, about how you can be a better ENFP. And I just wondered if it was the same with other types or it's just ENFPs are just quite self-obsessed and sort of shallow and doing this. So I don't know because I couldn't be bothered looking at other types.
Speaker C:Well, I think part of the popularity of this thing is we're all self-obsessed, right? That's why it's been such a phenomenon.
Speaker D:Nick, do you agree with your type? He is because he's an INTP. No, I only care about other people. Sort of. I mean, I have to say I'm so very conscious of the astrology effect of just agreeing with anything vaguely positive that people say. I think the way that I approach problems is quite ENTJ like, which is, you know, I cannot stand having problems and tasks and things that are just sort of woolly. And, you know, I really want to break them down and organize things and, you know, get people to know what they're doing. And, you know, which I think is I'm sort of much more extremely like that than average people. So, yeah, I'm willing. Having said, you know, that I think this is scientifically credible. Yeah, I mean, I do think it's kind of right. Okay. Peter?
Speaker B:I mean, I was slightly surprised. I was surprised mainly by my extroversion because I don't feel that extroverted. So, through, you know, when I look at myself, I would imagine myself to be more of an introvert. But I'm not sure I like the idea of a dinner party of just ENTJs because we'd have me and Nick, we'd have Steve Jobs, Gordon Ramsey, Margaret Thatcher, Jim Carey, Rangman D Roosevelt, and David Petraeus. I think that'd be quite tedious. There'd be quite a lot of shouting.
Speaker D:I've got. Okay. Action point. Idea for new reality TV program. MBTI dinner party where you only have the same type all together. How cool would that be? I'd love to see a room full of INTJs all sitting there with their hands in a Mr. Burns formation, silently plotting how they can undermine other people.
Speaker C:Chris, did you talk about your own? No, I didn't. And I would say that I'm probably 60-40 on it. So, I agree with 60% of it. And I think 40% of it doesn't resonate with me. And I think that's my sort of two, my two fundamental problems with the whole process is one, they do do the classic horoscope thing of they tell you something positive about you at the front so that you swallow the rest of the pill and you go, yeah, of course, I'm that guy. Now I'll sign up to all the rest of the stuff mentally. And the other one is, is that it's really, it's used, the way it's used, or I've seen it used in an organisation is, is almost like non-ethnic eugenics, you know, it's like, right, I've now, we've now found those guys over there. It's like those, those social experiments where they made, you know, prisoners and prison guards, or, you know, came up with some kind of distinction. And it does. It does encourage people to either act out their own personality or treat others as new stereotypes
Speaker D:in some way. Yeah, well, and I think it has catalyzed, you know, it's the fact that it's really taken off over the last couple of decades has catalyzed a big discussion on the internet, less about I mean, well, I think, as I said, is really meaningful is NS, I think that's a really important distinction. But the I, the AI axis, you know, everyone, I mean, introverts just will not shut up about it. God, that's so annoying. You know, there are arts articles galore on the internet about how it's okay to be an introvert. And we're like, yeah, we get it. Okay, crying out loud. But yeah, introverts have become, it's like they're constantly defending themselves against an imaginary extrovert who's trying to undermine them the whole time.
Speaker A:Must be when I did the test. And I did think, oh, my, because I spent two and a half years as an analyst. God knows what I was doing in that job. Because anything, anything on the ENFP, ENFP personality type, the last thing you should probably do is be an analyst, be an economist,
Speaker D:something like that. But remember, you are not, you're not your Myers-Briggs type, you can break
Speaker B:out of it. Like, yeah, there we go. Well, I think that's worth bringing up, just mentioning that people will break out of it. And it would depend on mood, depend on fatigue, depend on mental health, etc. It will change depending on an age and everything. Sure. But I was desperately unhappy
Speaker A:and also desperately shit at that job as well. So yeah, anyway, right, let's stop there. So yeah, um, yeah, so I think our recommendation is, you know, if you haven't, go and go and try the test. If nothing else, it's quite fun. And, and, and it's best can tell you something quite insightful about yourself. Okay, so thank you, as always, for listening to the Cognitive Engineering podcast. I'm Fraser McGruer, ENFP, here with Chris Wragg, INTP, Peter Coghill, ENTJ, Nick Hare,
Speaker D:also in the ENTJ crew. Until next time, goodbye.
