The MBTI in Research — How Type Influences Learning Styles and More

By Rich Thompson

The Myers Briggs Type Indicator® instrument (MBTI®) is regularly used in research in a variety of fields, ranging from machine learning to sleep research. Of particular interest for researchers across the globe has been the role of MBTI personality type in learning styles — a topic that has been explored for many different educational subjects.

In this series (MBTI in Research), we’ll look at the use of the MBTI framework in the research field, and how personality type — first explored by psychologist Carl Jung more than a century ago — has been found to correlate to all kinds of aspects of the human experience.

Below is a closer look at several papers that explore the role of MBTI personality type in learning styles in mathematics and medical school, and also how MBTI personality type may affect communication style, including speech features and written communication on Twitter.

The Big Five vs. the MBTI in Machine Learning-based Personality Prediction

Researchers from FBK-MobS and Profilio Company in Trento, Italy used natural language processing (NLP) to compare the effectiveness of the Big Five and the MBTI approaches to the field of ‘personality computing’, which seeks to predict personality type based on Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques. The study aimed to discover whether it is easier to predict Big Five or MBTI personality classifications based on an NLP-based machine learning approach.

The researchers used two multilingual Twitter datasets, one annotated with Big Five classes and one with MBTI classes. The study, according to the authors, provides evidence that algorithms trained on the MBTI model could have better performance than those trained on the Big Five.

On average, Support Vector Machines (SVMs) — a predictive machine learning model — have higher performance in the prediction of MBTI classes with respect to Big Five. Furthermore, the study showed that predictions based on the MBTI appeared to be more stable than those of the Big Five.

MBTI Type May Affect Preferences for Study Resources for Medical School Students

Researchers from Cooper Medical School of Rowan University and the Department of Internal Medicine at Cooper University Hospital recently investigated the role MBTI personality type may play in the preference for certain types of study resources used by students preparing for the United States Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE).

As the authors note, the MBTI assessment has been used extensively in the past to help CMSRU medical students gain awareness of their learning preferences. This study sought to fill a gap in understanding regarding how students can maximize their learning of medical information to best prepare them for the USMLE Step 1 exam. The researchers confirmed their hypothesis that there is a correlation between MBTI personality types of medical students and the USMLE Step 1 study resources that they find most useful in test preparation.

Based on the results of a survey researchers showed a statistically significant difference between those with Thinking and Feeling preferences for the U-World QBank resource, with Feeling-preferring individuals finding it more useful than those with Thinking preferences.

Speech Characteristics and Personality Type

This study from researchers at Texas A&M examined the relationship between speech characteristics and personality. The speech of 30 participants was analyzed for features such as pitch, loudness, response time (i.e., how fast one responds to a prompt), speech rate, and discourse markers based on the MBTI personality type model.

Results show that several speech features correspond to MBTI personality dimensions:

• Speech rates (measured by words per minute) were significantly different for individuals with Judging (J) and Perceiving (P) personality preferences
• Significant differences in the volume or loudness of people who preferred Judging (J) vs. those who preferred Perceiving (P) were also observed
• Response time was significantly different for those preferring Introversion (I) and those preferring Extraversion (E)

About the Author

Rich Thompson is the Director of Research at The Myers-Briggs and manages the research team there. He earned his Masters and Ph.D. in Psychology, with a minor in management, from Texas Tech University.