Personality Tests Revised in Taking the Myers-Briggs Essay

Personality Tests REVISED

In taking the Myers-Briggs personality test, my results indicated ENFJ, or Extraverted Intuitive Feeling Judging. One interpretation calls this type "The Teacher" for shorthand (presumably because Extraversion is required for a teacher or professor to willingly stand in front of a classroom and "perform," while the Judging component helps with grading papers). Another weblink offered to show me a list of famous people with the ENFJ type: after scanning the various names (some of whom I identified with, some of whom I didn't) I began to consider what these tests were actually measuring, if anything. I was reading a list of "famous ENFJ personalities" but I wondered if they had lists of famous Introverts. With the possible exception of certain creative artists or eccentrics -- e.g., Marcel Proust, Greta Garbo, Nikola Tesla -- there are not many professions which offer wide fame to those who lack Extraversion altogether. Is there a famous historical figure who could truly be considered an "Introvert"? Surely the definition of historical significance means that you have an effect upon the lives of other people, and even a historical figure who might seem more introspective like the melancholy Abraham Lincoln was also clearly extraverted enough to deliver the Gettysburg Address without hyperventilating. The oxymoron of a list of "Famous Introverts" told me that these tests had now become a kind of cultural shorthand precisely like the "signs of the zodiac" which are still featured in some media venues in the form of a "daily horoscope." These will routinely include a list of "famous personalities" by whom you are invited to measure yourself. Famous Scorpios include Hillary Clinton, Charles Manson, and Nick Lachey; famous ENFJs apparently include Leon Trotsky, Oprah, Pope John Paul II, and Ralph Nader. I do not know how these designations were achieved. I'm fairly sure that Trotsky died of an icepick to the skull in Mexico City long before a match was made in pop-psych heaven and Myers met Briggs, and so therefore could not have actually taken the Myers-Briggs Personality Inventory. So who decides that Leon Trotsky was an ENFJ?

In fact, the Myers-Briggs or any "Pseudo Personality Test" has no greater claim to credibility than the daily horoscope. There are three logical fallacies at play, which may prevent the Myers-Briggs test from achieving anything resembling a scientific assessment of the human personality. Listed on page 486 of the course text, these are the "Barnum Effect," the "Fallacy of Positive Instances," and the "Self-Serving Bias." The Barnum effect offers….....