Benevolent pedagogue is me

[jere7my]

For funsies, I finally took one of the Meyers-Briggs tests; my result is ENFJ. They say I'm strongly iNtuitive (versus Sensing), moderately Feeling (vs. Thinking) and Judging (vs. Perceiving), and right on the border of Extroverted/Introverted. I have faith in that last result—my gregarious nature is constantly warring with my need to be alone, so I can see a balance there—and less in the others. But, hey, if they want to say I have "tremendous charisma," who am I to argue? (No word on my DEX, CON, INT, etc.)

Then again, there are passages in the ISTP description (ostensibly my polar opposite) that suit me, so *shrug*.

Comments

[uncleamos]

Am I the only person who thinks that the Meyers-Briggs test is a waste of time?

[arctangent.livejournal.com]

I think it's a waste of time, but it's a fun waste of time. I give it as much credence as "What Classical Element Are You?" and "What Would Be Your Signature Weapon?"

[jere7my.livejournal.com]

I think it's as much a waste of time as any number of other memes and quizzes I've filled out. *shrug*

[tirerim.livejournal.com]

No. And apparently there are a bunch of psychologists who do, too.

[tirerim.livejournal.com]

But also, of course, no worse than other memes -- just not useful as an actual personality indicator.

[arctangent.livejournal.com]

Basically *all* actual psychologists was my impression. The self-help gurus, office-management profs at business schools, and so on do not count as "psychologists". Briggs and Myers weren't trained psychologists, and the creation of the MBTI vaguely based on Jungian psychological type was made based on a lot of arbitrary decisions with no research backing them up.

For the vast mainstream of academic psychologists the MBTI is nothing, and it kind of sucks that the ad campaigns surrounding it can be so big that they obscure this fact.

[tirerim.livejournal.com]

Yup. There's actually a very interesting article about its creation in the June Swarthmore Bulletin -- Isabel Briggs Myers was class of 1915.

[arctangent.livejournal.com]

I do remember thinking that this is the sort of thing a Swarthmore student would do.

I even remember that Isabel Myers divorced her husband because she found out they were incompatible types (well, not *because* of that, but that was how she explained it), and thinking what a Swattie thing to do that was.

[uncleamos]

I should elaborate - I find it longer and much less entertaining than the sillier memes you see on livejournal, as well as equally useless is real terms.

[fiddledragon.livejournal.com]

I find quizzes like that mildly useful as sort of something to contemplate. It tells you what it thinks of you, and it can be interesting to look at whether or not it's right, and why. But I'm entirely too introspective, so that may just be me.