The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator^® and mainstream psychology: analysis and evaluation of an unresolved hostility

Abstract

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI^®) is widely used as a staff-development tool in the business and voluntary sectors. Its Psychological Type approach is found to be a valuable aid to understanding self and others and thus to enhancing effective team-working. This continuing and growing popularity is surprising in view of the disdain with which MBTI^® has long been regarded by the professional psychology community. The grounds of this hostility are here examined, revealing a remarkable convergence between the conceptual frameworks of MBTI^® and its more orthodox counterparts in personality psychology, as well as several significant differences. The Type and Trait approaches both conclude that there are just four principal and independent components of the normal personality, and are in close agreement in identifying these four components. The differences are principally in the different theoretical frameworks of the Type and Trait approaches. An evaluation of these differences suggests that a harmonization would be achieved if each side of the argument could relinquish one of its cherished theoretical underpinnings. Specifically the Psychological Type community should abandon its insistence that every individual is constitutionally either, for example, an Extravert or an Introvert; and advocates of the Trait approach should abandon the morally evaluative stance that, for example, Extraversion is a desirable quality which introverts sadly lack in adequate measure. The Psychological Type view of Introversion, for example, as an equally positive intrinsic quality as Extraversion is urged as less crude and more authentic.

Keywords:

• Myers-Briggs Type Indicator
• MBTI
• psychological type
• five-factor model
• personality trait

Acknowledgements

Colleagues and correspondents too numerous to mention have been a source of insight, knowledge and criticism over the many months this article has been in gestation. I particularly thank Professor Leslie Francis for the hospitality of his research team and for his constant encouraging of a neophyte in his area of expertise and study.