Adam Ruins Everything - Why the Myers-Briggs Test is Total B.S. | truTV

Despite its mainstream popularity, the Myers-Brigg personality types are as scientific as a childish parlor game.

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Adam Ruins Everything - Why the Myers-Briggs Test is Total B.S. | truTV

[notthefbi]

Carl Jung even said himself that people were way more complicated and that his eight chosen archetypes were simply a basis for begining to understand a person as a whole. Also the only reason why we love myers-briggs is because it uses tribalism to explain away people. It is the same reason why sports teams from rivalries, wars happen, and bullying occurs.

[isaac]

In defense of the MBT, it can be used as an effective tool to create fictional characters.

[danielwinchester]

"I bet us two, unqualified nobodies, can do a better jobs."
Me: I see that nothing changed in the last century.

[icechan]

Ugh I remember getting the Myers-Briggs test as a "career guidance" test in school. I wanted to study engineering, but the test said I shouldn't be an engineer because I'm F. I took another test on a different website, got T at like 52%, and now it said I would make an amazing engineer. Really solid career advice there.

[emmilytheengineer]

I think this video would have been far more effective if you actually explained why it doesn't work, rather than its origins being ridiculous.

[redvice]

Everyone else is having fun in the war

[mewingkitty]

Most important problem with personality tests: You do them yourself. People are answering what kind of person THEY think THEY are. Not what they actually are.

[Vatis]

Having messed around with Myers Briggs quite a bit, I can say it's very interesting - but not scientific. The issue with the video however, is that it uses the Genetic Fallacy to dismiss the test from its origins, as opposed to its merits. I just hoped they would be more thorough, listing statistics or blind tests.

[siobhancassidy]

me, watches the video:

...anyway, i'm an infp.

[Hedning]

I wasn't aware people thought Myers-Briggs was anything more than a fun internet quiz

[bookfisher]

Honestly, I don't see MBTI as a way of determining personality, but more of a way of trying to figure out how people think. Two people of the same type can be totally different personality-wise, but they have a similar, if not identical, thinking process.
There's a lot more to it, but I personally don't have the energy to explain it right now lmao, but that's just my personal opinion ^^

[vegetarianzombie]

For me, the Meyers Briggs test is like those Facebook surveys: I don't care how scientifically accurate they are, I just take them for the fun of it. Besides, I like the idea of being a logician with traits similar to Spock.

[Theblueipod]

He's right, in fact when hiring employees for a job you can't use this test because it is against the law in some states and it is inaccurate with results when using other tests

[vanadium]

Time to send this to every teacher I can think of that has made me do this test.

Edit: People are saying things like "It's just used as a reference, " but during school I've had it used to determine a group for a major assignment related to it (early high school). People do actually think it's scientifically accurate.

[AlmightyArceus]

Meyers - Briggs has always been more about fun than science, and social perceptions more than true fact. We just have fun guessing other's personality types and analyzing how we would identify.

[PteradactylKat]

Can you imagine how completely un-fun Adam is in any social situation.

[Paradox-dyve]

You all could stand to learn something from Carl Jung. He's so brilliant.

[ashliebelle]

It may not be scientific, but I don't think that many people really believe that it's a scientific method of categorizing people. It's all about finding trends in personalities traits and figuring out the nuanced ways that people react to the world differently. Even if it's not technically scientific, it has been extremely helpful for me at work to know how people classify themselves so that I can divide work appropriately to play to the strengths of each person. Detail-oriented work would kill my ENFP coworker, but is perfect for my ISTJ coworker, so having Myers Briggs as a teambuilding activity really has been useful.

Edit to clarify: The Myers Briggs exercise we did at work was part of a day of team building and communication. I don't just assume my ENFP hates detailed work because of her type: the personality exercise helped us communicate to each other, and she told me the things about ENFP that were true about her (hatred of detail-oriented, monotonous tasks) and also told me things that weren't true (she is very organized even though many ENFPs don't value that). I don't condone assuming things about people based on their MB type. I do think the personality profiles are an excellent starting point for communicating with your team about strengths and opportunities for growth.

[Kmpodonico]

Just little correction there: Psychology has scientific relevance since the end of the 19th century, regarded as experimental psychology, it took part on social studies and the beginning of behavior research with controled procedures.

Jung is a surrogate of the psychoanalytic school of thought from Freud, which methodology was only phenomenological. But Jung approach to the human personality had remarked skews due to constant positive view of human interaction (athwart to his colleagues on such theory) and his contact with the spiritual.

[GREATGAIWAIN]

There's only one problem with this video. The Myers-Briggs test has never been considered to be hard science. It points out similarities between a large cross section of possible human reactions to their environment as well as inborne traits and even says it's a mere starting point and not a purely objective fact that "THIS IS YOU NOW AND FOREVER". So you didn't prove it to be BS so much as prove that you didn't read up on it besides assuming that people take it as gospel (and for those that do... don't, but there I go, being a typical INTJ and questioning authority because I don't recognize it as such without rigorous testing and evaluation).



If I have to trust someone on this, I'll trust the guy who devoted his life to studying Psych over the TV/Youtube host who's stated goal is to ruin things whether the research entirely bares him out or not.