Original sources of MBTI profile details?

[ApostateAbe]

There are many pages that give details of the INTP profile.

http://www.personalitypage.com/INTP.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INTP#INTP_characteristics
http://www.intp.org/intprofile.html
http://typelogic.com/intp.html

Similar information exists for all other MBTI types.

I can not deny that that information contained in the various profiles describes me very strikingly. At the same time, I have some doubts, because people who read their own astrology profiles have maybe a comparative level of agreement with them. There is a psychic technique known as "cold reading," where details that apply to almost everyone may be mistaken for details that apply to a narrow set of people including one's self (i.e. "you were picked on as a child," but so was almost everyone).

Not that the MBTI profile information is no more than cold reading. There is another psychic technique known as "hot reading," where information is gathered about a person beforehand, and that information is fed back to him or her.

I am a little concerned that the information that one gets from the profile pages is no better than the information that one feeds to the test. It could be just a mixture of cold reading and hot reading.

None of those profile pages explicitly state how the details are inferred or where the information originally comes from.

For example, "INTPs value knowledge above all else" (PersonalityPage.com). Oh yeah? Says who? Were there a bunch of interviews of INTPs? Was it inferred from the four categories?

 

[Fallenman]

:P well.... you have people on both sides of the fence... but on a forum dedicated to the personality type as described by these tests... by people who "value knowledge above all else".... it has been discussed and quite frequently. You should search the forums for it. I'd suggest this section, MBTI & Typology.

 

[Fallenman]

also just for the sake of speculation, even if it were completely hot reading, wouldn't it still be pretty accurate? Isn't it almost exactly what the test is meant to do.. based on the way you've answered these questions you are probably this way?

 

[ApostateAbe]

:P well.... you have people on both sides of the fence... but on a forum dedicated to the personality type as described by these tests... by people who "value knowledge above all else".... it has been discussed and quite frequently. You should search the forums for it. I'd suggest this section, MBTI & Typology.

also just for the sake of speculation, even if it were completely hot reading, wouldn't it still be pretty accurate? Isn't it almost exactly what the test is meant to do.. based on the way you've answered these questions you are probably this way?

Hot reading is entirely accurate, but also somewhat useless to most people. If I am fed back the same information that I feed into the test, then I don't need any of the nonsense about the various personality types. But, somewhere, presumably in some scientific analysis or study or survey, somebody made the conclusion, "INTPs value knowledge above all else." That isn't a point that is directly asked in the tests. So, exactly where did it come from? What is the evidence or what is the logic? None of the INTP profile pages contain any primary sources, and that makes me extra suspicious, because it could be just a few people's anecdotal opinions, or they could be just a set of myths!

 

[KazeCraven]

Great question! Carl Jung was the one who came up with the types, though he only specified the dominant functions. Isabel Briggs Myers (and I think her mother?) came up with the idea that each person has a functional hierarchy, and I think she basically adapted the work of Jung to fit into 16 types so specified.

Jung, I think, came up with these descriptions through an insight after working with many people and studying them.

The whole point of the theory is that people have different preferences. Does the test ask whether understanding concepts is important to you? No, it doesn't. But if you answer a certain pattern of questions, it will tell you that your dominant (preferred) mode of thought is introverted thinking, which has at its core the goal of understanding and making sense of things. In other words, it is focusing on categorizing you into a box that will be true for your entire lifetime and isn't true for most other types.

I see you've cited http://www.intp.org/intprofile.html. If you'll notice, it's referring to the specific cognitive functions to descripe the INTP type. The type description might be flawed, but those functions have proved very useful for distinguishing amongst people. That's the part that doesn't change.

Furthermore, you might be interested in this woman's research, as it claims to have found a neural basis for the functions.

The fact that the test itself is only accurate 50% of the time is probably the main thing that keeps it in the realm of 'pseudoscience.' It's just way too hard to falsify, but it's generally regarded as useful.

 

[ApostateAbe]

Great question! Carl Jung was the one who came up with the types, though he only specified the dominant functions. Isabel Briggs Myers (and I think her mother?) came up with the idea that each person has a functional hierarchy, and I think she basically adapted the work of Jung to fit into 16 types so specified.

Jung, I think, came up with these descriptions through an insight after working with many people and studying them.

The whole point of the theory is that people have different preferences. Does the test ask whether understanding concepts is important to you? No, it doesn't. But if you answer a certain pattern of questions, it will tell you that your dominant (preferred) mode of thought is introverted thinking, which has at its core the goal of understanding and making sense of things. In other words, it is focusing on categorizing you into a box that will be true for your entire lifetime and isn't true for most other types.

I see you've cited http://www.intp.org/intprofile.html. If you'll notice, it's referring to the specific cognitive functions to descripe the INTP type. The type description might be flawed, but those functions have proved very useful for distinguishing amongst people. That's the part that doesn't change.

Furthermore, you might be interested in this woman's research, as it claims to have found a neural basis for the functions.

The fact that the test itself is only accurate 50% of the time is probably the main thing that keeps it in the realm of 'pseudoscience.' It's just way too hard to falsify, but it's generally regarded as useful.

Thank you. It is starting to look more and more like this sort of thing is driven by myth, which isn't to say false, but it seems like it is little more than a few people who use their own personal experiences and intuitions to draw conclusions about what characterizes this personality type or that one, and they draw from the material written by previous people who did basically the same thing and sold plenty of books in the process. I think that is what would make it a pseudoscience more than anything--little or no controlled testing nor critical peer review. I can easily forgive the 50% accuracy of the tests, which can presumably be controlled and corrected, and 50% accuracy is far better than 6% accuracy, which would be what we expect if the results are completely disconnected from reality.

 

[KazeCraven]

I wouldn't use the word myth to describe something which has proved so useful and practical as the MBTI, but yeah, I'd agree.

 

[Fallenman]

Ya, the scientific explanations seem to be shrouded, but I wouldn't go so far as to claim that it is a myth.

 

[Fukyo]

Oh yeah? Says who? Were there a bunch of interviews of INTPs? Was it inferred from the four categories?

Jung had many patients which he examined to derive the information to support his theories about psychological types, other Jungian analysts have also presumably conducted research with real subjects. The creators of MBTI test have also interviewed many individuals.

See, the problem here is that typology lacks a real, universally agreed upon foundation which can be verified empirically to be called a science. Jung was too esoteric, general and focused on mysticism. Isabel Myers-Briggs and her mother tried to condense his theory into a "scientific" testing instrument that could be widely available and useful, but they omitted so much crucial information in the process.

Every other Jungian analyst and theorist that came after Jung had their own interpretation, their own adjuncts to his theory - it gave birth to many other typological theories, like Socionics, Keirsey's temperaments, even the Benziger Assesment linked above which is based on some quite valuable empirical research that correlates with type, but even though this is valuable data it still fails to make a direct causal connection.

--which is the problem.

So many theories give rise to much confusion, many assume they are interchangeable, but they aren't. They may have connections, but they are still a whole different branch of approaches, and they need to be regarded differently, even if they all come from Jung.

Once a solid link is established between theory and it's exact causes in an observable, truly verifiable way, this mess will be cleared up - but that is still a work in progress. This final step of innovation is upon the researches of today, not Jung or Myers-Briggs.

 

[Jedi]

KazeCraven, the Benziger post was an interesting read, but differs somewhat from other findings.

“Jung’s four Functions are rooted in four distinct areas of the cortex. Thinking is housed in the Left Frontal Lobe. Intuition is housed in the Right Frontal Lobe. Sensation is housed in the Left Posterior Convexity. Feeling is housed in the Right Posterior Convexity”
-Ti is right-rear, Ni is left-rear, Se is front-right, and Fe is left-front.

“the communication between the right and left hemispheres via the bridge formed by the corpus collosum is massive and easy when compared with the communication between each frontal lobe with the posterior cortical convexity, immediately behind it”
-I was under the impression that Ti worked with Ne and Si worked with Fe (for INTPs).

“The tonals which some people use to clarify or emphasize meaning (e.g. especially when humor such as sarcasm is involved) are managed by the posterior right”
-This is widely thought to be a weakness for Dominant Ti users.

"The frontal lobes functioning together are seen by many to be the abstract problem solving regions of the cortex. And, indeed, this statement is generally true—especially when one is contrasting the functional capabilities of these two regions with those of the posterior regions. Nonetheless, when looked at in detail and compared with each other, it is also clear that while both actively solve problems, they excel at solving quite different problems. Moreover, this difference in “what they do well” is directly linked to key differences in how they function"
- Again, is problem solving not a Ti-Ne thing? I don't know about Ne-Fe...

Oy, who should I believe? This whole personality thing is getting fuzzier and fuzzier everyday.

 

[KazeCraven]

Where is the evidence you use to claim that these cognitive processes are in said quarters of the brain?

The solution is easy: contact both, and ask them for how they located these processes within the brain. By evaluating the tests they ran, you should be able to figure it out.

Also, @Fukyo: interesting analysis. I'd be hard pressed to disagree.

 

[Jedi]

Where is the evidence you use to claim that these cognitive processes are in said quarters of the brain?

The solution is easy: contact both, and ask them for how they located these processes within the brain. By evaluating the tests they ran, you should be able to figure it out.

Lenore Thomson claims to have located the functions, but she won't return my calls. These theories are supposedly backed up by PET scans but I haven't seen any evidence. I don't claim to know myself, just pointing out a difference in their findings.

 

[KazeCraven]

I suppose the alternative solution is to use the one with the most explanatory power.

Fortunately we have an active thread for that here

 

[Anthile]

Basically what Fukyo said. No typology system is as fleshed out and scientific as they want you to believe. In the academic world, typology is mostly ignored and actual studies are rare and hard to find. Naturally, this wouldn't stop people from making money out of it and there are a lot of books out there on this topic that have not been written by people who are qualified enough and often are quite New Age-y. In fact, every work on typology that makes any claim and does not cite Jung, is most likely completely made up and has no foundation whatsoever. I would even go so far and say that anybody who hasn't Jung's writings on archetypes and typology shouldn't discuss this at all. It would be like discussing Christianity without having read the Bible. Not to mention that typology itself was one of the more outlandish ideas of Jung (though not as outlandish as synchronicity) and should be taken with a grain of salt.

 

[Jedi]

I'd have to say Lenore Thomson > Benziger. But I'm still waiting on concrete evidence.

 

[Fukyo]

I'd have to say Lenore Thomson > Benziger. But I'm still waiting on concrete evidence.

I remain skeptical of the division of function into separate quadrants, but Benziger has nailed a big one. The power usage of different parts of the brain and falsification of type.

We can see it independently from type, and dismiss all typological terms; lets just call them preferences for different kinds of information processing.

It is obvious different people have different preferences in terms of how they cogitate, we don't need to attach any labels to them yet.

Bezinger has data that supports that we use less energy when using different parts of the brain, and the energy usage increases tremendously when we use other areas. Given that we know different parts of brain correlate with different manners of information processing, and that the amount of energy and the brain parts used differs between people, we can notice that in fact different people favor to use different parts of the brain naturally, hence spend less energy, all of which supports the notion that we do have distinct preferences.

Regardless of whether or not we want to associate it with Jung's cognitive functions, this is an important biological foundation that affirms that different people have different preferences when it comes to mental processing.

She has data, citations of bibliography for technical details and the names of researchers that have contributed with their own data, however she applies them somewhat...liberally, being in my opinion to quick to make some inferences.

The concept of type preference falsification carries a great deal of plausibility, and while being based on brain power usage, she makes some possible overestimation of the impact this has on an individual, without offering hard data in that regard. While it's conceivable to think that a higher amount of energy being used taxes the psyche and body while an individual falsifies their natural preferences, her claims of it being a "life threatening condition" and not being able to replenish the lost energy are not supported by much than what seems as her own observations.

While both Thompson and Benziger have their own theories about the location of functions in the brain, I find the above mentioned affirmation for the existence of preference more valuable that ambiguous theories about function location, because this is precisely the foundation that is going to enable a more accurate location of the preferences.

I've read a great deal of Lenore's material available online, but I haven't seen good data that supports her function location theory(aside from the unavailable pet scans) and I'd be very eager to.

 

[KazeCraven]

Have you been able to access the cited articles, Fukyo? I guess I'd expect someone to have called her on it if they were false, but I can't seem to find them anywhere (and I have access to databases since I'm on a university internet network).

edit: I was searching primarily to see what tests she used to classify the four brain sections. My theory was that she was seeing Extraverted Thinking, Extraverted Intuition, Introverted Sensation, and Introverted Feeling. If that was the case, there would be no conflict at all. Easy way to test this is to see what she asked participants to do when monitoring brain patterns.

Also interesting to note is that the above four functions, Te, Ne, Si, and Fi, would show up in one particular type of participant. Therefore, she could have tested mostly people of the following types:
xSTJ
xNFP

edit2: I should add that I think this is an interesting idea because Dr. Benziger, for all intents and purposes, appears to be ignorant of the functions being individually either introverted or extraverted (she probably purposely ignored them). Thus Ti, Ni, Se, and Fe were either all mis-categorized or never taken into account in the first place.

 

[snafupants]

apostateabe: you talk about no controlled testing or critical peer review, but do you realize carl jung was born in 1875. to put that in perspective, the first psychology experimental laboratory came about in 1879 by Wundt and behaviorism - a rudimentary species of modern day psychology - hit full bloom before the second world war. so, i think what jung did was pretty darn good, given his unenlightened times, and anything that came after his laying the framework is incidental and should not be stapled to his name, for good or bad.

 

[ApostateAbe]

apostateabe: you talk about no controlled testing or critical peer review, but do you realize carl jung was born in 1875. to put that in perspective, the first psychology experimental laboratory came about in 1879 by Wundt and behaviorism - a rudimentary species of modern day psychology - hit full bloom before the second world war. so, i think what jung did was pretty darn good, given his unenlightened times, and anything that came after his laying the framework is incidental and should not be stapled to his name, for good or bad.

I certainly wouldn't call Carl Jung a moron or a pseudoscientist or anything like that. It is not about Carl Jung. If Carl Jung was the best psychologist of his time, it does not follow that his science is what we should accept today. The whole science of psychology was in its infancy at the time of Jung. The theories and methods of the main pioneer, Sigmund Freud, are today regarded as somewhat fringe.