Myers-Briggs Type Indicator

If the 'personality types' of two people match then there is a better chance of a relationship between the two succeeding.  It is that simple. The ‘compatibility’ issues that partners refer to are usually a clash of personality types.  The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is a greatly respected method of determining the personality types of people.

Based on the studies of Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961), the founder of analytical psychology, the MBTI was devised by Katharine Cook Briggs and her daughter Isabel Briggs Myers.  Although it was originally intended to help women during the World War II to determine the best types of war-time roles that they would play, it is now widely used for a wider array of uses – amongst which is personality type matches for viable relationships.

According to the Myers and Briggs method, the human psyche is divided into 4 opposite pairs of attributes known as ‘dichotomies’, which are as follows:

Extraversion and Introversion

Sensation and Intuition

Thinking and Feeling

Judging and Perceiving

By means of a series of 93 forced-choice questions the psychological makeup of the subject person is categorized as either Extraverted  (E) or Introverted (I), Sensation (S) or Intuition (N) based, Thinking (T) or Feeling (F) and Judging (J) or Perceing (P).  Forced-choice in this instance means that there are only 2 possible choices of answers to each question.  At the end of this exercise, which is ideally administered by a person trained and authorized to carry out MBTI assessment,  it is possible to categorize a person into one of sixteen possible ‘personality types’ as follows:

Using the ‘MBTI Instrument’ is always voluntary and the results extremely confidential.  The dichotomies and the indicator were first described in a book titled ‘Gifts Differing’ by the founders.  It is emphasized that the indicators are just an indication of ‘preference’ of the individual concerned and there is no ‘better’ or ‘worse’ trait.  Further the assessment classifies the subject into either of the two diametrically opposite traits – e.g. either introverted or extraverted, without any grey area between the two. 

There are several sites in the internet, some of them free, where ones personality can be ascertained on-line, albeit using the MBTI instrument.  Whether all of them are offering the real thing is debatable!  Answering the questions truthfully and taking the test multiple times from different sources and comparing results, we can hope, would render some degree of authenticity to the results.  A free such test available on the internet is the Jung Typology Test at http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/JTypes1.htm.

(please let us know by using the Contacts link, in case there  are problems with this link or the test ceases to be free.  Thanks, Management, figWire)