Personality Tests: Why Are We Obsessed with Labeling Ourselves?
Many a year ago (actually just three), I, along with the rest of my high school class, was instructed to take the Myers-Briggs (MBTI) personality test as part of college guidance programming so that my college advisor could get a better “feel” for me as a person. If you’re not familiar with the test, it’s based on Carl Jung’s observations and has been around since the 1940s. The test has 16 possible personality types and determines one’s personality in terms of four binary categories: Introverted vs. Extroverted, Intuitive vs. Sensing, Feeling vs. Thinking, and Perceiving vs. Judging; it then assigns a four-letter personality type based on these categories. I’m an INTJ, apparently. And other times I’m an INTP.
I didn’t think much of the test during high school, but recently I’ve realized how scary it is that we try to label ourselves a four-letter identifier and neatly pack ourselves into a category.
MBTI has come under a barrage of criticism over the years, namely for being extremely binary and an outdated measure of personality. Despite this, many well-known companies continue to use it as a method of measuring their employees; the CIA being one of these.
“Several analyses have shown the test is totally ineffective at predicting people’s success in various jobs, and that about half of the people who take it twice get different results each time,” Joseph Stromberg of Vox writes. In fact, I do get a different type every time I take the test; I sway back and forth between INTP and INTJ, so there’s some merit to this claim.
If you’ve taken the Myers-Briggs test, you’ll concur with the fact that almost every descriptor or trait of the personality is exactly you, making it almost frightening. I’ve looked to MBTI for personality and personal growth tips, but my most common use of it is rather ridiculous: to find out which celebrities share my type. Apparently I’m the same as Hillary Clinton. I don’t see it, but that’s beside the point. The point is that the test seems to be more for entertainment purposes than anything else.
Maybe to say entertainment purposes is pushing it, but it doesn’t seem there’s any scientific basis for the MBTI. I’ve yet to find any reliable scientific backing for the Myers-Briggs classifications, and that is probably because humans aren’t exclusively binaries.
Ninety-five percent of the time I’m an introvert, and I could sit in my room all day reading and not talking to anybody, but I’m sometimes an extrovert, which makes the MBTI null. My main issue with the test is that it doesn’t take change or growth into account. It’s grounded on the basis that an individual remains a certain classification or type for the rest of her life, which is problematic because it doesn’t allow for personal growth. During the period when I was really intrigued by the MBTI and researched it, none of the personality descriptions seemed to offer advice for personal growth — this is a problem.
This is where another personality test, my personal favorite, comes in––the Enneagram. The Enneagram, which I’m assuming not many of you have heard of unless you’ve delved into the realm of obscure personality tests, won’t classify you as an introvert or extrovert; instead, you’re one of nine types that are part of an interconnected circle. The Enneagram is grounded in personal development and lets you know what healthy and unhealthy types each look like.
Though the Enneagram’s origins are up for debate, it’s agreed upon that G. I. Gurdjieff, the founder of a spiritual school near Paris in the 1930s, was the first to bring the Enneagram symbol into the world. The final form of the test is thought to be based on the teachings of Oscar Ichazo in the 1960s, and later in the ’70s by Claudio Naranjo.
I thought the MBTI would be the closest I’d ever get to an accurate depiction of my personality until I took the Enneagram, which was terrifyingly spot on. I’m a Type Five, wing Four, which means that I’m a Five but that my personality occasionally falls into that of a Four. Fives are apparently intellectual, self-sufficient, inconspicuous, and need their alone time. I’ve had a difficult time meeting any other Fives, mainly because nobody I know has taken this test, but also because it’s a rare type and Fives tend to be private and withdrawn.
To this day I find the Enneagram so intriguing — I even bought the book by the late Don Riso and Russ Hudson, founders of the Enneagram Institute and the most prominent researchers of the test, so that I could research the fascinating system even more. I’m now proudly at the point in my Enneagram studies where I can tell a friend, “you’re definitely a Type Three.” If you’re a personality test skeptic, I triple-dog-dare you to take the Enneagram test. If the type you get doesn’t sound at all like you, then you can come back and punch me in the face — virtually, of course.
Are any of you guys Type Fives or INTJs? Know anything about these personality tests that I didn’t talk about? Let me know.
Sara Barry lives in NYC and likes to call herself a writer. She has written for Huffington Post and PEN America, and is editor of the publication The Reflector. She also loves songwriting and screenwriting. She doesn’t know where the road will take her, but hopes to one day be a published novelist or screenwriter.
