Critique of MBTI: Unreliability and Limitations

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is a personality assessment tool that categorizes individuals into one of 16 personality types based on four dimensions: extraversion/introversion, sensing/intuition, thinking/feeling, and judging/perceiving. The MBTI was developed by Isabel Briggs and her mother Katherine Briggs in the 1940s and has gained popularity among business organizations and consultants. However, experts have criticized the tool's psychometric properties and its tendency to produce overlapping results that can be misinterpreted. Additionally, the two-letter category system has been deemed inefficient for providing accurate results. As a result, the MBTI's reliability is questionable, and other tools like Big Five are preferred by academics.

Running head: REPORT
MBTI Type Test
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author’s Note

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Abstract
The report is based on the MBTI test that was invented in the middle of 2oth century. Detailed
study of the MBTI type testing tool has been presented with support of a case study. The study
highlights different criticisms and limitations of the tool. It is seen teat educational institutions
rejected this tool due to its unreliability. Business organization found it applicable hence
integrated it.

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Contents
Abstract............................................................................................................................................1
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Summary of the Result....................................................................................................................3
Advantages...................................................................................................................................4
Curious.....................................................................................................................................4
Observant..................................................................................................................................4
Energetic and Enthusiastic.......................................................................................................4
Popular and Friendly................................................................................................................4
Disadvantages..............................................................................................................................4
Poor Practical Skills.................................................................................................................4
Focusing Issue..........................................................................................................................5
Overthinking.............................................................................................................................5
Stress........................................................................................................................................5
Emotional.................................................................................................................................5
MBTI test and reliability.................................................................................................................5
Use of the tool..................................................................................................................................6
Experts Comment............................................................................................................................6
Similar Testing tools........................................................................................................................6
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................7
References........................................................................................................................................8

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Introduction
Myers-Briggs Type Indicator is a popular name among the personality type testers that
are used for determining a person’s personality. MBTI received criticism from various scholar
over time due to their limitations. Still, it is used by the different organizations fro analyzing
their employees’ personality in prior of hiring to build an understanding about them with
expectation of better handling them (Tananchai, 2017). This report presents a case study of an
individual with a proper description of the test result. The final part of the report is contributed to
the discussion of its origin, use and limitations.
Summary of the Result
Individual case study is represented in the following where 93 questions were placed in
front of the subject. Based of the answer acquired from the subject, personality is represented by
four dichotomies of the MBTI too that is given below.
The ENFP people are those who considers everyone and everything as a part of a galactic
whole. They simultaneously like to help people and wants to be admired and appreciated by
everyone for the work, on both singular and humanitarian level. There are various advantages

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and disadvantages being an ENFP that are discussed in the following (humanmetrics.com.,
2017).
Advantages
Curious – The people who fall under this category are both open-minded and imaginative people
and consider everything as a part of a big and mysterious puzzle. They enjoys stepping out of
their comfort zone to go out and experience new things.
Observant – They are keen observers as they seek to quench their thirst of curiosity. According
to ENFPs, no action is irrelevant and everything have a place in the bigger picture.
Energetic and Enthusiastic – These people are extreme social beings and seek to make new
friends. It is due to their curiosity and the observation they do as they seek to find out new
things. This helps them to become socialized and make more connection, which in turn enriches
them with new information and ideas that they merge with their own and come up with
something more interesting.
Popular and Friendly – This approach makes them friendly and popular among their friends.
Their friend circle keeps on stretching due to their interesting, exciting, and approachable nature
(Sanders, 2014).
Disadvantages
Despite of having these advantages in their personality, their personality do have some
disadvantages.
Poor Practical Skills – Regardless of having wonderful ideas, ENFPs fails in administrations
and follow through on the projects that they form in their minds.
Focusing Issue – These people have real focus issue where the find it difficult to fall into a
routine structure and administrative tasks. Hence, they fail to keep up with the task.

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Overthinking – Thinking a thing from different approaches is the key skill of an ENFP. They
hardly considers the face value and tries to find all the aspects and motives even for a simplest
matter in hand.
Stress - By performing the above mentioned activity, these people easily dries up them selves
by taking too much of stress.
Emotional – Being highly emotional is a considerable disadvantage for the people with this
personality. They can likely to face emotional burst under criticism, conflict, and stressful
situation, which result in counter productivity.
Single result may seems to be accurate now, but can vary if the testis taken on the same
subject repeatedly. Moreover, the criteria for placing one personality in these four overlapping
factors can prove to be false as there are chances of misinterpreted (Jankowski, 2016).
MBTI test and reliability
The test was developed by Isabel Briggs and her mother Katherine Briggs. Katherine’s
interest in the book Psychological Type written by Carl Jung was the prime reason as she was
influenced by the idea. It resulted in creation of MBTI in the year 1940 with a joint venture with
her daughter. The responsibility of the distribution of the tool was given to Education Testing
Service in early 1957. They soon adopted this service in their library and used it as the
personality of the students and the faculty. Soon after some negative responses received from the
internal members of the institution, use of the tool was discontinued by ETS. Later on in 1975
Psychologist, press brought the right to sell the product (Prasad, 2016). The personality of every
individual was categorized under 16 different types and they put them into four damnations. The
tool categorizes the people under these 16 categories with the combination of these four
dimensions (Furnham & Crump, 2015).

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The two-letter category is the major limitation of the tool that is not efficient to provide
accurate results. MBTI often shows similar results for individual with different personality,
which makes unreliable.
Use of the tool
The tool certainly enjoys a global popularity. It is popular among the large business
organizations and corporations. Many certified consultants find the tool profitable for their work
Experts Comment
A number of experts in various domains criticized the merits of MBTI. Mattare noticed high
level of skepticism. McCrae and Costa criticized the psychometric properties of the tool in 1989
and highlighted the shortcomings of the tests. He blamed the overuse and misuse are the primary
reason behind this problem (Pearson & DeFrank-Cole, 2017).
Similar Testing tools
There are various other tools present in the market among which Big Five is a popular
name. The original name of the testing tool is NEO-PI, which is a five-factor model. The
academicians prefer Big Five to MBTI. On the other hand, the MBTI tool is more common
among the business organization. In spite of their popularity in different sectors, both of them are
mostly unreliable due to their overlapping results (indiana.edu., 2017).
Conclusion
The MBTI program is more of less reliable for one time use. However, multiple result
might show variation in the result. Moreover, he criterions of placing one into a categories
overlapping and can be misinterpreted multiple times. The result shows that the people with
ENFP personality type are curious and observant. They have some disadvantages that needs to

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be overcome to progress in their live. However, personality is deeply embedded in a person that
can hardly be modified under any circumstances.

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References
Furnham, A., & Crump, J. (2015). The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) and Promotion at
Work. Psychology, 6(12), 1510.
humanmetrics.com., 2017. ENFP personality. [online] Available at:
http://www.humanmetrics.com/personality/enfp [Accessed 12 Sep. 2017].
Jankowski, J. (2016). The Enthusiast: Your Guide to the ENFP Personality Type. LOGOS
MEDIA.
indiana.edu. 2017. Measuring the MBTI. [online] Available at:
http://www.indiana.edu/~jobtalk/Articles/develop/mbti.pdf [Accessed 10 Aug. 2017].
Pearson, N. G., & DeFrank-Cole, L. (2017). Who is Taking our Classes? A Single-Institution
Study of Leadership Student Personality Types. Journal of Leadership Education, 16(3).
Prasad, M. (2016). A test of Myers-Briggs type indicator in health professions: A literature
review. Asian Journal of Management, 7(4), 296-306.
Sanders, D., 2014. Personality type, leadership, collaborative decision making and collective
efficacy (Doctoral dissertation, Oakland University).
Tananchai, A. 2017. The Personality of Students Studying the Social Etiquette and Personality
Development Course by Myers Briggs Type Indicators (MBTI) Theory. AJE, 3(2).