The Merits of Jungian Psychology?

[Auburn]

[Auburn]

[HarryStottle]

That's a useful introduction to the relevant cognitive psychology.

I probably gave the wrong impression by comparing it to astrology. My real objection is not to the hypothesis of personality types. That's almost "self evident" once you develop any kind of empathy with more than a handful of fellow humans. Or even other species - most cat/horse/dog owners and most farmers are entirely familiar with the notion that most individuals behave in ways consistent with "personality types".

My beef is always with the shoehorn questionaires they design to assign you to the types. I picked purely because it came up first when I googled "mbti test". It asks you to complete 72 Yes or No questions. About 50 are pretty straightforward, but some of the remaining 22 are impossible (for me at least) to answer "Yes or No". The correct answer would have to be "It Depends" (usually on the circumstances).

Ferinstance: "You feel at ease in a crowd"

If the crowd is at the Glastonbury or Womad festivals, yes I do. If the crowd is at the Leeds or Reading festivals, no I don't.

or "When considering a situation you pay more attention to the current situation and less to a possible sequence of events"

If "the current situation" is me being stuck in a traffic jam, yes I do. If "the current situation" is me negotiating a support contract with a new customer, no I don't

or "You get bored if you have to read theoretical books"

If it's theory about something I'm not interested in, yes I do. If I am interested, no I don't

and so on

And the problem is that, given the shoehorning, (i.e. the deliberate restriction to Yes No answers) you are forced (if you wish to complete the test) to comply by answering (in my case) about a third of the questions virtually at random and essentially dishonestly. ANY subsequent analysis of my answers is thus bound to be flawed.

And what really irritates me when I encounter these imagination-free questionaires is that there is no excuse for it. Better methodology exists and would provide much more meaningful results.

If the response options were, for example, listed as numerical values (eg 1="Strongly Disagree", 5="Strongly Agree") then I'd have no problem answering the "awkward" questions (generally with an answer in the 2-4 range) in such a way as to indicate my ambivalence and the dependence on circumstance.

I can only urge you, if you're about to get academically involved in this area, to bang that message into the survey-monkeys' heads!

[Auburn]

LOL =D

Exactly..
I have the same frustrations toward those tests. There actually are with a gradient grading scale as you mentioned, which are just a bit better but still flawed. More reliable still would be to just, as you said, become familiar with humans in general. Via exposure you learn the different themes that govern people's minds/feelings and start to see patterns. Still, even personal experience isn't a 100% measure of what's truly happening in a person's synapses.

Personally, I wouldn't be absolutely satisfied with the accuracy of any personality-gauging system unless it via a neural scan of some sort - which can distinguish what brain-processing pattern I am utilizing. (there actually is toward that direction, but i digress)

Thank you for reading and considering it. =)
If I do ever venture academically deeper into neuroscience of psychology, I'd be sure to try and unearth the causality of human diversity (as I'm pretty sure there *is* some empirically grounded pattern/law to it, be it MBTI or otherwise. it just has to be recognized). Then perhaps we can decide ways to structure our society, education systems, etc - in a way that is most optimal and functions with a realistic understanding of who we are..