The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI): Uses and Criticisms

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, usually just called the MBTI, is probably the best-known personality questionnaire in the world of work. Plenty of people can tell you their four letters (“I’m an INTJ”) years after they did the test on a training day.

But how good is it? In this article we’ll explain where the MBTI came from and how it works, and then check it against the research. If you’re new to the topic, our overview of personality in organisations is a useful starting point.

Where Did the MBTI Come From?

The MBTI was developed by a mother and daughter, Katharine Cook Briggs and Isabel Briggs Myers. Neither was a trained psychologist. Briggs had been interested in personality differences for years, and when she came across Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung’s book Psychological Types (first published in German in 1921, with an English translation in 1923), she adopted his ideas and studied them closely.

During World War II, Myers set out to turn Jung’s theory into a practical questionnaire. The idea was to help people understand each other and find work that suited them. The first version was developed in 1943.

The Educational Testing Service (ETS) in Princeton then published an updated form in 1962. Later, the commercial rights moved to Consulting Psychologists Press (CPP), which released Form G in 1977. CPP is now called The Myers-Briggs Company, and it still publishes the assessment today.

So the MBTI has a long history. And that history matters, because it was built from a theory (Jung’s types) rather than from statistical analysis of how people actually describe themselves. We’ll come back to that.

How Does the MBTI Work?

The questionnaire asks people about their preferences and sorts them on four pairs:

  • Extraversion (E) or Introversion (I): where you get your energy and focus your attention, from the outside world of people and activity or from your inner world of thoughts and reflection.
  • Sensing (S) or Intuition (N): whether you prefer concrete, practical information or patterns, possibilities and ideas.
  • Thinking (T) or Feeling (F): whether you prefer to make decisions using objective logic or by considering the effect on people and your values.
  • Judging (J) or Perceiving (P): whether you like an ordered, planned approach or prefer to keep your options open.

Take one letter from each pair and you get a four-letter type, such as ESTJ or INFP. That gives 16 possible types.

Two points here are often misunderstood. First, the MBTI talks about preferences, not abilities. An introvert can still give a great presentation; it may just take more energy. Second, there are no “good” or “bad” types. Each type is described in a fairly positive way, with its own strengths and blind spots.

A Running Example: The Team-Building Day

Let’s use a hypothetical example to see how this plays out at work.

Imagine Sam has just been promoted to manage a claims processing team of 12 people at an insurance company. The team has a few tensions. Some people want detailed plans before they start anything, while others want to jump in and work it out as they go. Meetings tend to be dominated by the same three or four people.

HR suggests a half-day MBTI workshop. Everyone completes the questionnaire, a certified facilitator explains the results, and people discuss their types in small groups.

By lunchtime, the team has a new shared language. The planners discover they’re mostly “J” types, and the jump-in-and-go people are mostly “P” types. The quieter team members say it helped to hear that preferring Introversion is normal and not a weakness. Sam leaves feeling the day went well.

So far, so good. But what can Sam actually do with these results? That’s where we need to look at the evidence.

Why Is the MBTI So Popular?

Before we look at the problems, why do organizations like it so much?

It’s easy to understand. Four pairs and 16 types are simple to remember, much easier than a page of percentile scores. It’s positive, as no one is told they have a bad type, so people don’t get defensive. And it gives teams a non-threatening way to talk about differences. In Sam’s team, “you’re a P and I’m a J” is a gentler way to discuss a work style clash than “you never plan anything.”

Those are real benefits for a discussion-based workshop. The question then becomes whether the MBTI measures personality accurately enough to support decisions about people.

What Does the Research Say?

Psychologists have studied the MBTI for decades, and the academic view is much more cautious than the popular one. There are three main criticisms.

1. People Don’t Really Fall into Two Neat Boxes

The MBTI treats each pair as an either/or. You’re an E or an I. But when researchers look at people’s actual scores, most people cluster around the middle of each scale, rather than falling into two separate groups at either end.

In 1989, Robert McCrae and Paul Costa compared MBTI results with the five-factor model of personality in a sample of 468 adults. They found no support for the idea that the MBTI measures truly separate types. Instead, it measures four fairly independent dimensions that run along a continuum.

Why does that matter? Think back to Sam’s team. Suppose one team member scores just on the “E” side of the line and another scores just on the “I” side. The MBTI gives them opposite letters, even though they’re almost identical on that scale. Meanwhile, two people both labelled “E” might be very different, one only slightly extraverted and the other extremely so. The label hides the most useful information.

2. Your Type Can Change When You Retake It

Because many people sit close to the dividing line on at least one scale, a small change in how they answer can flip a letter. This is the classic reliability criticism, and David Pittenger set it out in detail in a 2005 review in the Consulting Psychology Journal.

The publisher’s own figures are useful here, because they show both sides. The Myers-Briggs Company reports that the individual scales are consistent, with test-retest correlations above .80 over periods of up to 15 weeks. But it also acknowledges that only around half of people get exactly the same four-letter type when they retake it. Its argument is that this is still far better than chance, and that most people match on at least three of the four letters.

Both points are fair. Still, for Sam, it means there’s roughly a coin-toss chance that a team member’s four letters would be different if they did the questionnaire again a few weeks later. That’s a weak foundation for anything more than a conversation.

3. It Overlaps with the Big Five, but Leaves Something Out

Most academic researchers today use the Big Five model of personality, which was built by analyzing how people describe themselves and others, rather than from a single theory.

McCrae and Costa’s study found that the four MBTI scales do line up with four of the Big Five traits:

  • Extraversion-Introversion with Extraversion
  • Sensing-Intuition with Openness to Experience
  • Thinking-Feeling with Agreeableness
  • Judging-Perceiving with Conscientiousness

That’s actually a point in the MBTI’s favor. It’s measuring something real. But it has no equivalent of the fifth trait, neuroticism (emotional stability), which is one of the more useful traits for understanding how people cope with stress and pressure at work. McCrae and Costa’s conclusion was that the Big Five gives a better framework for interpreting what the MBTI measures.

Other trait-based tools take a similar approach to the Big Five. For example, Cattell’s 16 personality factors also measures traits on a scale rather than sorting people into types.

Should the MBTI Be Used for Hiring?

No. And interestingly, the critics and the publisher agree on this.

The Myers-Briggs Company states clearly that the MBTI is not intended for selecting job candidates, or for decisions about job placement or who goes onto which team. Its reasons include that the questions are easy to see through (so an applicant could answer the way they think the employer wants), and that there’s no check for dishonest answering.

Pittenger reaches a similar conclusion from the research side. The MBTI may have intuitive appeal, but the evidence doesn’t support using its four-letter type to make important decisions about people.

Let’s go back to Sam. A few months after the workshop, Sam needs to choose someone to lead a new process improvement project. It’s tempting to think, “I need an organized planner, so I’ll pick one of the J types.” But that would be a misuse of the tool. The type could change on retest, it says nothing about skill or ability, and it was never designed to predict performance. Sam would be far better off looking at each person’s track record, skills and interest in the project.

What Could Go Wrong When a Team Uses the MBTI?

Even in a development workshop, there are some risks a manager should watch for.

Labelling and stereotyping. Once people know their letters, it’s easy to start using them as excuses (“I’m a P, so deadlines aren’t really my thing”) or to pigeonhole colleagues (“don’t put her on that, she’s an introvert”).

Treating types as fixed. Even the publisher describes type as a preference, not a limit. People can and do adjust their behavior to suit the situation.

Ignoring the situation. In Sam’s team, the meeting problem may have less to do with personality and more to do with how meetings are run. A clear agenda and a habit of asking quieter people for their views could fix more than any personality workshop.

Mistaking a good feeling for a result. People usually enjoy the MBTI day. But enjoying a workshop isn’t the same as the team performing better. If Sam wants to know whether it made a difference, Sam would need to look for actual changes in how the team works.

Personality frameworks in general have this weakness. For example, the Type A and Type B personality idea is also a simple two-box model that can be useful for discussion but is easy to over-apply.

So How Should Managers and Students Use the MBTI?

The fair answer is somewhere in between the fans and the critics.

As a conversation starter, the MBTI can work well. It gives a team simple words to talk about differences in how they like to work, and that can make people more patient with each other. That’s how Sam’s team used it, and that’s a reasonable use.

As a measurement tool for decisions about people (hiring, promotion, team selection or performance), it’s not appropriate. For those decisions, trait-based measures such as the Big Five have much stronger research behind them, and even they only explain part of job performance.

For students, you need to know the MBTI well, because you’ll meet it in workplaces and possibly in exams. But you should also be able to explain why most psychologists prefer trait models, and what the main criticisms are.

In a Nutshell: Key Points to Take Away

  • The MBTI was developed by Katharine Cook Briggs and Isabel Briggs Myers, based on Carl Jung’s theory of psychological types. The first version was developed in 1943, and ETS published an updated form in 1962.
  • It sorts people on four preference pairs (E-I, S-N, T-F, J-P) into 16 types.
  • It’s popular because it’s simple, positive and gives teams an easy way to talk about differences.
  • Research shows people don’t fall into neat either/or categories. Most score near the middle, so the four-letter label can hide useful information.
  • Only around half of people get the same four-letter type when they retake it, even though the individual scales are fairly consistent.
  • Its four scales overlap with four of the Big Five traits, but it has nothing equivalent to neuroticism (emotional stability).
  • Both the publisher and its critics agree it shouldn’t be used for hiring or assigning people to roles.
  • Use it, if at all, as a discussion tool for self-awareness, not as a basis for decisions about people.
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