Isabel Myers, Ph.D., an M.B.T.I. Types of Human Perception and Perception: A Psychologist’s Perspective
But the Myers-Briggs test had an intrinsic thematic quality that the others lacked. A good or bad personality was determined by the tests, and the categories had a positive or a negative rating. But Myers felt that each personality type had strengths and weaknesses. Her test was judgment-free, rather than favoring one over the other. She and her mother described their personality types in terms of strengths and “gifts” and how those could clarify whether a person was the right “fit” for a job, a career or even a social affair. It felt simultaneously analytic and supportive, giving people a language to describe their best selves.
“We sometimes say that Isabel was the first positive psychologist,” Elizabeth Styron, chairwoman of the nonprofit Center for Applications of Psychological Types, an M.B.T.I. research center, said in a phone interview, referring to a branch of psychology that took off in the 1980s. It is about what is right with a person, not what is wrong with a person.
The mother-daughter team became a creative sales force as well. Myers tweaked and promoted her product while searching for guinea pigs. Her son’s high school class took the test, as did incoming students to the George Washington University medical school. Soon dozens of medical schools around the country were added to her list. She wrote all the questions and scored them on all the tests by hand.
Myers kept going nonetheless, and in 1956 she started working with Henry Chauncey, the president of the Educational Testing Service in Princeton, to publish the M.B.T.I. The tool posited that the four dimensions of personality produced a total of 16 possible types, all noted with initials.
The first question is if a person is an introvert or an E. The second is how a person perceives the world, either through “sensing” (S) or through “intuition” (N). A third focused on how an individual makes decisions, either in a “thinking” (T) manner or a “feeling” (F) manner. J or P determine the final dimension, based on how a person deals with the outside world. The difference between judging and perceiving is the way in which someone has a flexible relationship with the outside world.
Personality tests for diversity and inclusion at a bank: An overview of the bank’s case for the new campus hire program, published in the journal Business Letters, April 28-29, 2020
She described a person who did not pass judgment on other people as being a proud I.N.F.P. She was a descendant of the I.N.F.J.
Executives at the bank decided in late 2020 to stop looking for résumés for anyone coming out of school. The campus hiring program is now focused partly on Plum results, and the new approach is bringing in more diverse candidates, the bank said, because hiring managers are looking beyond familiar credentials. Half of its new hires are women and the proportion of new employees who are black has risen.
But personality testing has also gotten more rigorous in recent years. Assessments developed by organizational psychologists are grounded in research. Some of these tests use the “Big Five” personality traits, which psychologists have found to be consistent across populations: openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness and neuroticism.
Studying people in all their complexity is helpful for career development, noted Ben Dattner, an organizational psychologist and executive coach. Psychometrics can be used to identify areas where a person might need feedback or coaching, and where a person might have blind spots.
The tests are an opportunity for people to talk about softer aspects of their office life: their relationships. Identifying as a Blue, through the Color Code, might not feel all that relevant to quarterly sales quotas — but at least, among teammates, it can be a conversation starter.