[troutman]

Intj - Are INTJ's skeptical? My first thought is to question the validity of these tests:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers-B...ator#Criticism

Validity

The scientific basis of the MBTI has been questioned.[citation needed] Neither Katharine Cook Briggs nor Isabel Briggs Myers had any scientific qualifications in the field of psychometric testing.[citation needed] Furthermore, Carl Jung's theory of psychological type, which the MBTI attempts to operationalize[citation needed], is not based on any scientific studies[citation needed]. Jung's methods primarily included introspection and anecdote, methods largely rejected by the modern field of psychology.[17] However, extensive subsequent studies using the MBTI assessment have shown increasing reliability and validity over the last 50 years of use and research.[citation needed]

The statistical validity of the MBTI as a psychometric instrument has also been subject to criticism, in particular, the dichotomous scoring of dimensions.[citation needed]bimodal distribution with peaks near the ends of the scales. However, scores on the individual subscales are actually distributed in a centrally peaked manner similar to a normal distribution. A cut-off exists at the center of the subscale such that a score on one side is classified as one type, and a score on the other side as the opposite type.[citation needed] This fails to support the concept of For example, it was expected that scores would show a type--the norm is for people to lie near the middle of the subscale.[4][5][18][19][20]

It has been estimated that between a third and a half of the published material on the MBTI has been produced for conferences of the Center for the Application of Psychological Type (which provides training in the MBTI) or as papers in the Journal of Psychological Type (which is edited by Myers-Briggs advocates)[21] and it has been argued that this reflects a lack of critical scrutiny.[18][21] Estimations on the research related to the most utilized tool published in fifty years (e.g. 40 million administrations) is affected by the popularity of the instrument.

Reliability

The reliability of the test has been interpreted as being low[citation needed], with test takers who retake the test often being assigned a different type[citation needed]. According to surveys performed by the proponents of Myers-Briggs[citation needed], the highest percentage of people who fell into the same category on the second test is only 47%.[citation needed] Furthermore, a wide range of 39% - 76% of those tested fall into different types upon retesting weeks or years later, and many people's types were also found to vary according to the time of the day.[18][20] Skeptics[citation needed] argue that the MBTI lacks falsifiability, which can cause confirmation bias in the interpretation of results. They[who?] criticize the terminology of the MBTI as being so vague as to allow any kind of behavior to fit any personality type, resulting in the Forer effect, where an individual gives a high rating to a positive description that supposedly applies specifically to them[18][17]. As a result, when people are asked to compare their preferred type to that assigned by the MBTI, only half of people pick the same profile.[22]

Utility

Although the proportion of different personality types varies between different careers[6] the relevance of the MBTI for career planning has been questioned, with reservations about the relevance of type to job performance or satisfaction, and concerns about the potential misuse of the instrument in labelling individuals.[18][23]