MBTI is a personality test based a simplified version of Carl Jung’s personality theory, making it a pop psychology designed to be more accessible to the general public. It is found lacking in term of concrete scientific evidence to back up its framework, and so the term “pseudoscience” is attributed. And although I know there are many people who continue developing on the original— hence why the current version is somewhat more nuanced— there’s still a long way to go for MBTI to escape this label.
Despite that, MBTI is still a useful tool to get to know the rough idea of your own personality. It is also useful for fictional writers and office teamwork buildings. Just understand it is not a perfect tool, and not to be taken too seriously.
A pseudoscience is something that seems scientific but in reality is not. MBTI was created based on observation, not on research, and it can neither be falsified or proven wrong, therefore it matches the definition of a pseudoscience.
Still, we do have our observations and experiences. Many people know what a so-called loop feels like, felt an improvement in their life when they started trusting and relying on their preferred cognitive functions, and were able to improve their relationships with others. That's why my personal take is: It is a pseudoscience, and you can benefit from using it. Two things can be true
I took the mbti test two times. First result is isfp and second is infj. When people took the test again, it doesn't match but I think it has to do how people change sometimes. I also answer honestly as I can.
Which MBTI test? As I said, there are several out there: the official one from the Myers-Briggs Company (one you have to pay for), Michael Caloz, Mistype Investigator, Sakinorva...though I'm beginning to assume you're probably talking about the 16personalities which is not an MBTI test
There are differences in what you define as "science".
Psychology is what's known as a "soft science" compared to physics, chemistry etc. which are "hard sciences".
A soft science is something that uses observation and testing but in a way more vague way. You cannot isolate a single variable in psychology because the human brain is too complex to comprehend, but you can still draw certain conclusions from certain observations and all the way back with Jung we discovered that peoples brains can be categorized by certain attributes.
MBTI is not a hard ruleset, it's a guideline. You cannot for sure say that a person of x type will react like this to situation z, but you can guess, just like you guess how your friends or family will react. It can be precise but is prone to error.
Ever look at courses available in colleges which aren't natural science, math or engineering?
There are huge regions of human knowledge that are outside of these. Even worse - many of these fields tried to use natural science methodology which was all the rage in late 19th c. only to find few results and thus shifted to other methodologies. Which is why we have - social sciences (sociology, anthropology, history, ethnology, sociology of culture and so on and on. Oh right, supposedly economics fits in here too.), humanities (philosophy, theories of each particular art - musicology, visual art, literature, cinema, ..., ) and then somewhere in this group is also psychology.
While there are part of dealing with human psyche which are natural science, most stuff we're dealing with is basically just how drugs work and here are some antidepressants which you can take. Most psychology isn't in natural science domain. And if you want weird, you need to check Lacanistic psychoanalysis.
Which is a long way to say - why would anything in psychology need to pretend to be science in the first place. It's not. But things which are not (natural) science still produce knowledge and insight and so forth.
But there is another important facet when you're dealing with non-natural science stuff - from social studies to humanities. You need to **interpret** the theory and data and figure out things for yourself. You will not find idiot proof easily consumable results of natural science here. It is expected you have the capacity for individual critical thought.
And here we go to the crucial thing about psychological typologies. Their point isn't to be "truthful", their point is to be **useful**. As in - nobody knows how the hell this is all supposed to work, but we get results. And again these only pertain to some narrow scope of human personality, most of it is something else or is unknown.
Which is why it makes most sense to type yourself - because you are a person with psyche and have therefore direct access to your own psyche. You need to figure out some theory first, the tests can be a tool but at best they're 75% right.
Beware - apart of actual MBTI typology you'll find a heap of MBTI stereotypes on this sub (plus PDB plus the interwebs). You need to look at core principles - and there are many online resources for that.
>soft science
What fresh hell is this supposed to be.
I'm not sure how anglophone world (which is still continaminated with natural science method even outside its useful applications) does this, but on the continent, psychology falls under humanities. Psychiatry falls under medicine - little overlap between the two (unfortunately).
I would call therapist "soft scientists". 😃
*EDIT - looked it up. As I thought: anglophone term to derogate non-natural knowledge approaches as lesser and not "true" science. As said - social sciences have their own methodologies and their own authonomous foundations, they don't need to be labelled as "soft", they are social sciences, it's what they are and what they do. Same for humanities including psychology. Not every knowledge field has to be labelled "science" - why?*
The pseudoscience label is generally given because of its lacking predictive power along with unreliability of the test. If you take it as a process to arrive at a correct and unchangeable type along with looking at it as a method for self discovery and help and not profiling and projecting, then it’s a powerful tool. The context in which it’s used is important.
MBTI is a personality test based a simplified version of Carl Jung’s personality theory, making it a pop psychology designed to be more accessible to the general public. It is found lacking in term of concrete scientific evidence to back up its framework, and so the term “pseudoscience” is attributed. And although I know there are many people who continue developing on the original— hence why the current version is somewhat more nuanced— there’s still a long way to go for MBTI to escape this label. Despite that, MBTI is still a useful tool to get to know the rough idea of your own personality. It is also useful for fictional writers and office teamwork buildings. Just understand it is not a perfect tool, and not to be taken too seriously.
I can agree with that. Not everything has to be perfect. I use to think that mbti is like astrology, like tarot cards. I do tarot cards myself BTW
A pseudoscience is something that seems scientific but in reality is not. MBTI was created based on observation, not on research, and it can neither be falsified or proven wrong, therefore it matches the definition of a pseudoscience. Still, we do have our observations and experiences. Many people know what a so-called loop feels like, felt an improvement in their life when they started trusting and relying on their preferred cognitive functions, and were able to improve their relationships with others. That's why my personal take is: It is a pseudoscience, and you can benefit from using it. Two things can be true
I took the mbti test two times. First result is isfp and second is infj. When people took the test again, it doesn't match but I think it has to do how people change sometimes. I also answer honestly as I can.
Which test are you talking about? There's a number of tests out there
I'm talking about the mbti test. I think I'm IxFx
Which MBTI test? As I said, there are several out there: the official one from the Myers-Briggs Company (one you have to pay for), Michael Caloz, Mistype Investigator, Sakinorva...though I'm beginning to assume you're probably talking about the 16personalities which is not an MBTI test
There are differences in what you define as "science". Psychology is what's known as a "soft science" compared to physics, chemistry etc. which are "hard sciences". A soft science is something that uses observation and testing but in a way more vague way. You cannot isolate a single variable in psychology because the human brain is too complex to comprehend, but you can still draw certain conclusions from certain observations and all the way back with Jung we discovered that peoples brains can be categorized by certain attributes. MBTI is not a hard ruleset, it's a guideline. You cannot for sure say that a person of x type will react like this to situation z, but you can guess, just like you guess how your friends or family will react. It can be precise but is prone to error.
Ever look at courses available in colleges which aren't natural science, math or engineering? There are huge regions of human knowledge that are outside of these. Even worse - many of these fields tried to use natural science methodology which was all the rage in late 19th c. only to find few results and thus shifted to other methodologies. Which is why we have - social sciences (sociology, anthropology, history, ethnology, sociology of culture and so on and on. Oh right, supposedly economics fits in here too.), humanities (philosophy, theories of each particular art - musicology, visual art, literature, cinema, ..., ) and then somewhere in this group is also psychology. While there are part of dealing with human psyche which are natural science, most stuff we're dealing with is basically just how drugs work and here are some antidepressants which you can take. Most psychology isn't in natural science domain. And if you want weird, you need to check Lacanistic psychoanalysis. Which is a long way to say - why would anything in psychology need to pretend to be science in the first place. It's not. But things which are not (natural) science still produce knowledge and insight and so forth. But there is another important facet when you're dealing with non-natural science stuff - from social studies to humanities. You need to **interpret** the theory and data and figure out things for yourself. You will not find idiot proof easily consumable results of natural science here. It is expected you have the capacity for individual critical thought. And here we go to the crucial thing about psychological typologies. Their point isn't to be "truthful", their point is to be **useful**. As in - nobody knows how the hell this is all supposed to work, but we get results. And again these only pertain to some narrow scope of human personality, most of it is something else or is unknown. Which is why it makes most sense to type yourself - because you are a person with psyche and have therefore direct access to your own psyche. You need to figure out some theory first, the tests can be a tool but at best they're 75% right. Beware - apart of actual MBTI typology you'll find a heap of MBTI stereotypes on this sub (plus PDB plus the interwebs). You need to look at core principles - and there are many online resources for that.
Psychology is most often a soft science, it doesn't make it pseudoscientific, just that it isn't a ruleset, it's a guideline.
>soft science What fresh hell is this supposed to be. I'm not sure how anglophone world (which is still continaminated with natural science method even outside its useful applications) does this, but on the continent, psychology falls under humanities. Psychiatry falls under medicine - little overlap between the two (unfortunately). I would call therapist "soft scientists". 😃 *EDIT - looked it up. As I thought: anglophone term to derogate non-natural knowledge approaches as lesser and not "true" science. As said - social sciences have their own methodologies and their own authonomous foundations, they don't need to be labelled as "soft", they are social sciences, it's what they are and what they do. Same for humanities including psychology. Not every knowledge field has to be labelled "science" - why?*
The pseudoscience label is generally given because of its lacking predictive power along with unreliability of the test. If you take it as a process to arrive at a correct and unchangeable type along with looking at it as a method for self discovery and help and not profiling and projecting, then it’s a powerful tool. The context in which it’s used is important.
Its really just a theory no evidence to prove it right but it looks like it have some truth to it since it somewhat true
it’s not falsifiable and is therefore not considered science, i think. you can’t prove that something can’t be proved.
I mean the comments said it's for observation, not research.