Do Myers-Briggs tests actually work?
The personality profiles are widely used by HR departments the world over, but psychologists aren’t convinced.
by Maria Collinge
It’s easy to see why personality tests are popular in corporate settings - people are easier to manage if you understand them better.
The most famous example, still widely-used, is the Myers-Briggs type indicator (MBTI). Devised a century ago by mother and daughter Katharine Cook Briggs and Isabel Briggs Myers from earlier research by Carl Jung, the test predicts how individuals respond to their environment and make decisions.
MBTI scores people based on their answers across four dichotomies: introversion (I) or extraversion (E); sensing (S) or intuition (N); thinking (T) or feeling (F); judging (J) or perceiving (P).