Maintenance Phase

The Myers-Briggs Personality Test

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[Maintenance Phase theme] 


Michael: All I can think of is Corny Myers-Briggs humor. We took a personality test, and this podcast is a S-U-C-K-S. 


Aubrey: Okay, okay. [laughs] 


Michael: Terrible, terrible. 


Aubrey: That’s one letter too many.


[laughter]


Michael: I know the literal first thing, and I've already fucked it up-- [Aubrey laughs] Okay. Welcome to Maintenance Phase, the podcast that is one of only 16 kinds of podcasts. 


Aubrey: [laughs] Oh, I like it. 


Michael: There's a finite number of types of things. 


Aubrey: Definitively, and the type of podcast never changes for your whole life. 


Michael: We're coming for you people with MBTI in their dating profile. 


Aubrey: I'm Aubrey Gordon. 


Michael: I'm Michael Hobbs. 


Aubrey: If you would like to support the show, you can do that at patreon.com/maintenancephase. And Michael, today--


Michael: Wait, hang on, Aubrey. I like to say Aubrey after you say Michael. 


Aubrey: I know. I didn't expect it to be pause for Aubrey. Today we're talking about the most popular personality test in the world, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. This was a Michael Hobbes special request. 


Michael: Well, a sort of a --this was a “I want Aubrey to do this so I don't have to do this request. Because it was inevitable that we would do it, and I have a pre-existing feeling, which we will get to. 


Aubrey: Right. So that's my question for you, is just to kick us off, how do you come to the MBTI? What's your background with the Myers-Briggs?


Michael: So, my mom was really into the MBTI when I was growing up and was involved with the organization in a tangential way. 


Aubrey: Oh, no. I wish I had done all of this differently Mrs. Mike's mom. 


Michael: Basically, there was a movement to bring the Myers-Briggs Type Indicators into churches, and my mom was involved in that movement. 


Aubrey: What?


Michael: So, she was a licensed MBTI giver and she was using it for couples counseling. She was using it with various congregational things that she was doing in her church. So, as a child, my mom talked about Myers-Briggs a lot, and I remember taking it a couple of times. 


Aubrey: Oh, do you know what your type is? 


Michael: I think I'm an INFP, but it changed. This is kind of my beef with the Myers-Briggs, is that it changed over time. And I was talking to my mom about this recently, and she said, “Everything changed except for the introvert extrovert thing, that I was the most introverted little child imaginable.”


Aubrey: Listen, Michael, I've been in deep enough on this to say, you are not an INFP. 


[laughter]


Aubrey: No INFP of mine acts the way that you act. No, I don't know, INFP is one that a lot of people get. 


Michael: Okay.


Aubrey: It's sort of the like sensitive, idealistic, too tender for this world kind of person. 


Michael: How is that not me? 


Aubrey: Too tender for this world? The guy who only starts fights on the internet. [laughs] 


Michael: “Aubrey, how dare you?” [Aubrey laughs] I am such a sensitive little baby. I am so nice. Just not to other people or just not in my interactions with others. 


Aubrey: Well, listen, my background with the Myers-Briggs is different. I encountered it for the first time at a nonprofit leadership retreat that I went to in my 20s.


Michael: Okay? 


Aubrey: So, we took the quiz. We broke out into small groups based on our type, and I loved everything about it. I loved how it gave me this sort of sense of connectedness to other people that I wouldn't have expected to feel connected to. I loved that it positioned each of us as problem solvers whose job it was to figure out how to navigate different personality types and work styles rather than just grousing and writing somebody off, right. 


Michael: Yeah. 


Aubrey: I loved that it said that every type has something to contribute and something to offer. 


Michael: I actually had this conversation with my mom recently because we were talking about sort of circling back because she's not really as into it now as she used to be. And the way that she put it was that it's a constructive way to talk about differences between people. 


Aubrey: Yeah. 


Michael: It's not like, you suck and I'm cool. It's like, “Oh, well, this is what you need from an interaction. Or this is what you're bringing to it.” And I think of it very similarly to the love languages, where the specific five love languages are kind of made up and arbitrary and not really based on anything. But on the other hand, it's very constructive to have a conversation with somebody of like, “How do you receive compliments? How do you receive gifts? How do you like to be loved and show love?”


Aubrey: Yeah. 


Michael: And I don't know where we're going with this episode, but I think people feel this kind of declenchement when they see us talking about something that maybe they like, and they're like, “Oh, no. Mike and Aubrey are going to say that I'm problematic for enjoying this thing.” And, like, I don't think that's the project of this episode at all. I really like taking personality tests, and I think it's really important to have frameworks for talking about conflict and relationships between people that don't make either person feel like shit.


Aubrey: Yeah.


Michael: And I think 99% of cases, that's like what the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator is doing on an interpersonal level, I mostly think it's a force for good. 


Aubrey: Absolutely. 


Michael: I need all the people who thought we were going to cancel Pilates [Aubrey chuckles] to help their MBTI friends through it. 


Aubrey: So, I'll say the flipside of the Myers-Briggs and part of what started to sour me on it was I would start to administer it in advance of our staff retreats, and then we'd have a whole staff retreat session about like, “How do we work better together?” And that kind of thing. We kept that up for a few years, but over time it started to kind of devolve into this weird cliquishness-


Michael: Oh. 


Aubrey: -and pre-judgment about other types. So, we'd be going through a hiring process with a hiring committee, and somebody would be like, “We are not hiring another persuader.” 


Michael: Oh, interesting. Okay.


Aubrey: People would be like, “Our team is out of balance or I've decided I don't like this type.”


Michael: Right, right.


Aubrey: So, it was sort of this shortcut to get people to connect more, and then over time, it started becoming another reason that people would disregard each other. It felt like it sort of backfired over time. 


Michael: You can't sit with us. This is the INFP table. 


Aubrey: 100% [chuckles] [crosstalk] Also Mike, once again, you are not at the INFP table. 


Michael: Dude, I just looked at my text from my mom, and that's what she says. 


Aubrey: Look up INFP right now.


Michael: Wait. Okay, this is what my mom wrote. [chuckles] [Aubrey laughs] I'm reading texts from my mom on my podcast. It says, introvert, which of course she doesn't need to define because it's so obvious that I'm an introvert. Intuition, which means big picture thinking rather than details. Feeling, which means values rather than linear logic, as a way to make decisions. Perceiving, which means you meet the outer world with a stance of taking in info rather than making decisions about it.


Aubrey: Listen, here's the opening segment on 16personalities.com, which is a very widely used sort of Myers-Briggs adjacent website. The first clause of the first sentence is, “Although they may seem quiet or unassuming,--"


Michael: Well, okay, all right. 


[laughter] 


Michael: Fair point, fair point. We are doing a bonus episode where Aubrey and I take the MBTI and diagnose each other or classify each other, whatever it's called. So, we will answer this question. 


Aubrey: The name of the INFP type is the mediator. Mediators are poetic, kind, and altruistic people, always eager to help a good cause. 


Michael: Aubrey. 


Aubrey: Parts of that are true of you.


Michael: Aubrey, this podcast is completely dedicated to the good cause of yelling at transphobes on social media. [Aubrey laughs] One of the great joys of my life and one of the most essential functions in our society.


Aubrey: So, if the headline here was instigator, I'd be like, “Yes.”


[laughter] 


Michael: The thing is, instead of doing the bonus episode where we take the test, we should have a debate between you and my mom. [Aubrey laughs] Just a long Chatham House Rules or whatever. Like okay, opening statement, two minutes. [laughs] 


Aubrey: Oh, my God. Well, thank you for that because that also gets us the overview of the four different letters. 


Michael: Oh, yeah.


Aubrey: Thanks for doing that. 


Michael: I didn't mean to. Okay. 


Aubrey: The number one source for this episode is a book called The Personality Brokers, written by Merve Emre. This is a great read. 


Michael: Oh, fabulous.


Aubrey: So, if people want to know more about this story, there are infinity times more layers to it. There's a ton more texture to it. You should absolutely read this book. It whips. 


Michael: I forgot that there are good books in the world. 


Aubrey: Me too. Honestly.


Michael: This is something that has escaped me in the last two years of my life. 


Aubrey: So, Michael, should we talk a little Myers-Briggs 101? 


Michael: Wait, do you want me to do it? Because I'm such an expert due to my mother, due to osmosis in my home. 


Aubrey: Yes, tell me. Give me your 101. On the Myers-Briggs. 


Michael: There's four different categories, and each of the category is a binary. So, introvert, extrovert. Okay, I'm done. 


[laughter]


Michael: I don't know what the other three are. We've reached the limits of the osmosis. 


Aubrey: So just to back it up one step, the Myers Briggs Type Indicator is a personality test. As a test taker, you answer a self-report questionnaire. Then you get results that slot you into 1 of 16 personality types that are a combination of four letters. Those four letters are, as you noted, binaries, right. The current website for the Myers-Briggs calls them preference pairs. Those are extraversion and introversion, which the website describes as opposite ways to direct and receive energy. “Do you prefer to focus on the outer world or your own inner world?”


Michael: That's a bad description of introvert/extrovert honestly.


Aubrey: All of these are wild descriptions. Sensing and intuition, which the website says are opposite ways to take in information. “Do you prefer to focus on the facts or the big picture?” Thinking and feeling opposite ways to decide and come to conclusion. “Do you prefer to take an objective or an empathetic approach for deciding?” The last so-called preference pair is judging and perceiving opposite ways to approach the outside world. “Do you prefer to seek closure or stay open to outside information?”


Michael: I think anyone who's into the Myers-Briggs would admit that, of course, all of these are on a spectrum. 


Aubrey: Yep.


Michael: People can be situational. It can change over time. No one is, like, 100% one or the other. So, each of these sounds really simplistic and terrible when you read them off. “Do you like thinking or do you like feeling?” It's like, “We obviously all do both.” [laughs]  


Aubrey: One of the consistent critiques has been, “Well, you've got these raw numbers of what percentages people sort of responded with. What percentage introverted versus what percentage extroverted? Why wouldn't you just say you're 57% extraverted? Versus going, no, you are an extrovert and you are that thing for the rest of your life, right.” 


Michael: Yeah, yeah. 


Aubrey: Which is also a core pillar of the Myers-Briggs, is that your type is innate, you were born with it, and it does not change for your whole life. 


Michael: Wait, they actually say this the test people.


Aubrey: 100%. 


Michael: Oh, that's dumb. That's bad. 


Aubrey: Yeah. 


Michael: I feel like the only way to approach these things is to not take them so seriously that you think that the map is the territory. Obviously, people do not fit into really any binary. 


Aubrey: Yes. Coming off of our trans episodes. Yes. 


Michael: Yeah, yeah.


Aubrey: So, the Myers Briggs is frequently described as being the most popular personality test in the world. According to the New Yorker, more than 2 million people take it each year, and that is presumably just through the Myers-Briggs company. Part of the appeal of the Myers-Briggs is attributed to something called the Forer effect. Okay, so the horror effect is defined as the tendency of people to hear general, sort of broadly applicable descriptions of their life or personality and to identify with those as deep and specific to them. 


Michael: Oh, this is like when I used to write horoscope. 


Aubrey: 100%


Michael: Totally. Yeah, it's actually really easy to come up with stuff that sounds specific, but is actually very general to everyone. Yeah. 


Aubrey: Forer also described an inverse inability to recognize those descriptions as being applicable to others. That people would be like, “No, no. It's just me.” 


Michael: Oh, interesting. Okay. 


Aubrey: It's named for Bertram Forer, who's a psychologist who documented the effect in 1949. [laughs] He did an experiment that is so mean and so funny.


Michael: That's every psychological experiment before 1985. [laughs]


Aubrey: Totally, this is 1949, so you can imagine.


Michael: He's just like, we're going to push them down the stairs [chuckles] and see what happens. 


Aubrey: Forer administered a personality test to his students, and then a week. So, he had them fill out a questionnaire and then a week later he presented them with their personality profiles. 


Michael: Okay. 


Aubrey: He has everyone rate the accuracy of the test on a scale of 0 to 5, the average accuracy rating was 4.3. 


Michael: And he gave all of them the same one. 


Aubrey: He gave them all the same one. And he had lifted it from an astrology magazine that he picked up at a newsstand. 


Michael: Love it. 


Aubrey: Can I tell you what the actual profile was that Forer handed out to his students? 


Michael: Yeah, gimme, gimme, gimme. I was going to ask. This is yeah,--


Aubrey: It's a 13-point numbered list. 


Michael: Okay. 


Aubrey: One, you have a great need for other people to like and admire you. 


Michael: True. 


Aubrey: Two, you have a tendency to be critical of yourself.


Michael: Eh, only when I'm bad. 


Aubrey: [laughs] Three, you have a great deal of unused capacity which you have not turned to your advantage. 


Michael: I definitely think that about myself, but it's probably not true. 


[laughter]


Michael: I'm using 100% of my brain. 


Aubrey: Four, while you have some personality weaknesses, you are generally able to compensate for them. 


Michael: Or start a podcast highlighting them or [crosstalk] a podcast highlighting them.


Aubrey: Six, disciplined and self-controlled outside, you tend to be worrisome and insecure inside.


Michael: Never heard that from everyone I know. 


Aubrey: Eight, you prefer a certain amount of change and variety and become dissatisfied when hemmed in by restrictions and limitations. 


Michael: I like how all of these are like, “You like change but also constancy.” 


Aubrey: Yeah. Sometimes you're extroverted, but sometimes you want to be alone.


Michael: [laughs] This is like those dating profiles that are like, “I can laugh 1 minute and be serious the next.” [Aubrey laughs] And you're like, “Oh, so you're a person, aha okay.”


Aubrey: A human being with changeable emotions, imagine. [Michael laughs] Nine, you pride yourself as an independent thinker and do not accept other statements without satisfactory proof. 


Michael: Oh, yeah, everyone wants to think that they're like, I don't just follow the crowd, yeah.

 

Aubrey: 13, security is one of your major goals in life.


Michael: Oh, well, that's like a Maslow's hierarchy thing. You just want to eat food. 


Aubrey: Sex makes you nervous sometimes, and you don't always feel super confident about it. 


Michael: It's wild the kids didn't clock this. It's like just a totally generic description of everyone you've ever met.


Aubrey: I like that you're like, “I'm team professor. These kids are not smart.”


Michael: [laughs] I'm actually a super independent thinker, Aubrey, who doesn't follow the crowd. I need proofs.


Aubrey: So, the reason that matters is that when people identify with the descriptions, they're given in a personality test, research shows that they are more likely to see the test itself as more valid because, of course they are. 


Michael: Right.


Aubrey: And research also finds that people identify with those descriptions more when they are favorable, because again, of course they do. 


Michael: INFP, smoking hot, thoughtful, [Aubrey laughs] like,” Wow, this test is good.” I rescind my previous comments. 


Aubrey: So here is the issue. The Myers-Briggs is just not very good at reliably assessing people's personalities.


Michael: Okay? 


Aubrey: When we talk about personality, we're talking about a mixture of observable behaviors and subjective judgments. In the case of the Myers-Briggs, what they're measuring is our own subjective view of ourselves. That you're filling out a self-report. The only data that's going in is coming from you, and the only result is coming back to you, right? 


Michael: Right.


Aubrey: It is self-report. But that's also pretty much every personality test. So, if it's so subjective, how can we know it's wrong? There are a few ways. One, they haven't proven that these are static, unchanging core features of a person's personality. The Myers-Briggs has just sort of never really done that. There are other personality tests, all still kind of questionable, but they at least have gone through a scientific process, right. 


Michael: Right. 


Aubrey: The Myers-Briggs biggest competitor is called the Big Five, the Five-Factor Model. 


Michael: Oh, yeah. 


Aubrey: And the reason that one is such a staunch sort of competitor for them is that it was developed and independently validated by multiple teams of researchers over the course of decades.


Michael: Right. 


Aubrey: Right. So that's like people winnowing down this massive list of human attributes, down to what they believe are sort of the core, the five core aspects that drive the rest of it. The Myers-Briggs didn't do that. The Myers-Briggs is designed to be an expression and a popularization of one of Jung's theories. 


Michael: Oh, no. Oh, it's archetypes. 


Aubrey: Ah-aha.


Michael: Oh, no. [Aubrey laughs] We're Jordan Peterson adjacent now.


Aubrey: Kind of but also, Jordan Peterson does not like the Myers-Briggs surprise. 


Michael: Oh, really? 


Aubrey: Yeah. He came up in some of my little YouTube searches, and he was like, “People just like it because it makes them feel good.” And I was like, “Huh.” 


Michael: Stop, stop clock. Stop clock.


[laughter]


Aubrey: Totally, we end here. So there have been some meta-analyses of different personality tests including the Myers-Briggs, and they've essentially found that only the introversion extraversion scale findings track with any other personality tests or other research into personality, right.


Michael: Oh, right.


Aubrey: The rest of the letters don't tend to scan with other instruments that folks have developed, which isn't like a death knell to it or whatever, but it's not great. A bigger issue is test-retest reliability. So, if something is measuring something stable in our innate core personalities, if you took the test multiple times, you would get the same result, right? 


Michael: Right. 


Aubrey: Depending on the study that you look at, between 39% and 76% of people get different results the second time they take-


Michael: Oh, wow.


Aubrey: -the Myers-Briggs, and that's just after five weeks. 


Michael: This is like me taking it when I was a kid, yeah. Yeah.


Aubrey: Totally maybe kid, you did test as an INFP. [chuckles] 


Michael: Maybe I was beautiful once. Maybe I was decent- 


Aubrey: [laughs] Okay.


Michael: -before the podcast.


Aubrey: Part of the appeal, also of the Myers-Briggs, is that it doesn't give you feedback about sort of culturally undesirable traits. Traits that are coded as being undesirable. The Big Five, for example, measures neuroticism. 


Michael: Yeah, we're absolutely not taking that test on the show. 


Aubrey: Oh, no. 


Michael: [laughs] There's no fucking way. 


Aubrey: Oh, we're not. 


Michael: There's no fucking way. 


Aubrey: We're only taking the one that's designed not to hurt your feelings.


Michael: I just want the one that tells me that I'm--


Aubrey: I'm poetic and gentle, [laughs] 


Michael: Strong and handsome and important, and that I care about animals and nature and I recycle and all the good stuff. 


Aubrey: So scientific American ran a test of personality tests, and when they removed neuroticism as a measure from the Big Five, its predictive accuracy of sort of life outcomes fell by about 22%. 


Michael: You're like, “Wait, this just says POS. I thought there were four categories.” {Aubrey laughs] Sorry, what?


Aubrey: So the last thing I would say about the sort of validity thing is, because the Myers-Briggs is not a clinical tool, the research on it is thin. The Myers-Briggs was initially developed sort of for self-knowledge. The idea was to get people to know themselves better so that they could slot into the right jobs and sort of show up in the right way in the world. It was not designed for clinicians. It wasn't even really validated by clinicians for a really, really long time. The research that has happened at this point is mostly older, and it's mostly in, like, HR and management journals,-


Michael: Yeah.


Aubrey: -not in psych journals or in research journals or whatever, right? So given all of that, given all the concerns about its validity, again the jury's sort of out on personality tests writ large, where did the Myers-Briggs come from, and how did it get not only so popular, but ubiquitous? 


Michael: I like that we're getting the science stuff out of the way so you can do what you really want to do and just tell the story. [laughs] 


Aubrey: Just shut up, during the science report I'm going some--


Michael: You've been very transparent about [chuckles] the fact that you're just like, “We're not going to talk about the science all that much.” [laughs] 


Aubrey: So, we want to talk about where the Myers-Briggs comes from. We're going to start in the late 1800s with a woman named Katharine Cook Briggs. She was homeschooled by her father at 13. She enrolled at Michigan State. After college, Katharine married Lyman Briggs, who was a physicist who went on to become a high-ranking bureaucrat in DC. Later in his career, Lyman Briggs went on to lead Roosevelt's Uranium Committee. 


Michael: Okay.


Aubrey: So, Katharine is surrounded by all of these high-achieving sciencey men. She is a high-achieving sciencey lady in a society where there are limited places for high-achieving sciencey ladies, right? 


Michael: Yeah, no kidding. 


Aubrey: In 1897, she gave birth to her daughter Isabel. As a child, Isabel is very, very important to Katharine, not just in the way that any child is very important to a loving parent, but because Katharine lost two other children in infancy. So, Isabel is her one surviving child. She has sort of precious cargo. Around this time, there was this talk from first-wave feminists in particular who were calling for a scientific approach to what they called the vocation of motherhood and Katharine set about doing just that. She commandeered their home's living room. She started calling it the “cosmic laboratory of baby training.” 


Michael: We don't name things the way that we used to. We need to bring it back. [Aubrey chuckles] [00:22:26 unintelligible]


Aubrey: She kept notes on Isabel, observing her behavior and personality development. She was particularly keen to find what role she thought Isabel was meant to play in the world, right. What vocation would best suit her strengths and her weaknesses, her likes and her dislikes, all of that kind of stuff. And after a while, she decided to open up the cosmic laboratory of baby training to other kids. 


Michael: Okay.


Aubrey: She starts systematizing her very plussed up childcare operation, basically, right. She starts administering questionnaires to parents about their kids’ behaviors and temperaments. She starts keeping files of notes on each of the kids. All of this in service of finding out who those kids are meant to be on a deep level so that they can find their calling. That really is her drive in a bunch of this. She also starts writing about her work in the cosmic laboratory of baby training. She writes a couple of pieces about personality and childrearing for the New Republic. She also wrote 33 pieces for The Ladies’ Home Journal focusing on sort of childrearing as a science. So, she becomes a little freelance writer. Through all of that work, she starts researching personality. It's around 1917 when she starts looking into personality. At this particular time Freud and Jung are both alive and publishing. 1917, I should say, is also the year that historians say modern personality testing really began in the US. It began because of something called Woodworth Personal Data Sheet, which was developed as an assessment to give to soldiers during World War I to figure out who might be the most susceptible to shellshock, later called PTSD, - 


Michael: Who's a queer, who's a commie. 


Aubrey: -So, Katharine starts coming up with her own rudimentary set of personality types, just four to begin with based on her observations of her husband, her daughter and these other kids.


Michael: She's basically running a daycare and she's writing down the different types of kids. 


Aubrey: Yep, totally. Which frankly, at this point, is more research than what's going into a lot of psychology. [laughs]


Michael: Yeah, it's more than Freud did. 


Aubrey: It isn't until 1923 that an English translation of Carl Jung's psychological types is published. And Katharine Briggs reads it. She has a very strong reaction to this book. She loves it so much. She recognizes that Jung's thinking has gone way deeper than her own. She starts thinking about how to popularize his work. And that becomes the seed of the Myers-Briggs. It'll take a long time to develop from here. Even though she really loved Jung's work, the Myers-Briggs isn't necessarily a faithful interpretation of it. Some of the changes between Jung's theory and the Myers-Briggs were just lost in translation, from academic language to more popular language. But some of it was also just Katharine playing jazz. She added a preference pair. Judging and perceiving was not part of Jung's original framework, and they really shifted Jung's idea about introversion and extroversion.


Michael: Oh.


Aubrey: I find this really fascinating. It stayed with me in a big way because I think of introversion and extroversion as you mentioned earlier, as being the most obvious, the easiest to kind of wrap your head around. 


Michael: Yeah.


Aubrey: Like, “Here's what this means or whatever.” Jung defined introverts and extroverts very, very differently. This is a little summary of the differences from The Personality Brokers by Merve Emre.


Michael: What defined Jung’s introvert was not quietude, solitude, or indecision as many summaries of the Myers-Briggs type would later claim, but her interest in the self, or what Jung, writing in more technical language, called the subjective factor. What made an introvert, an introvert was her belief in the superiority of her singular orientation of the world, her subjectivity over and above the expectations and desires of those around her. To the extrovert the introvert came across as either a conceited egoist or a crack brained bigot. For the extroverts, behavior was governed by pure, objective conditions. To illustrate the contrast between the two, Jung offered a simple example, on a blustery winter day, the fact that it was cold outside would prompt the extrovert to don his overcoat. While the introvert, the person who wants to get hardened, finds this superfluous. Whereas the extrovert resigned herself to the simple fact of the cold, the introvert sought to overcome it by toughening the very fiber of her being. Oh, this is like, introverts suck and extroverts are cool.


[laughter] 


Aubrey: It's like introversion as like rugged individualism almost. 


Michael: Yeah.


Aubrey: It's so different that I'm just like. I don't know how they got from point A to point B on this one. 


Michael: Yeah. But also, this is just not useful because nobody would self-report that they are this kind of person. 


Aubrey: Totally and Jung wasn't designing this to be a self-report questionnaire. 


Michael: Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. He's judging and Katharine is perceiving. 


Aubrey: Okay. 


Michael: They are real, the binaries. 


Aubrey: I feel like I'm getting a window into the rest of this episode, [Micheal laughs] and I am creating a monster. 


Michael: [laughs] You're reinforcing my belief in Myers-Briggs. I've come back around to it. 


Aubrey: So, Katharine goes head first down a Carl Jung K-hole. She just reads all of the fucking Carl Jung she can get. She starts writing letters to him,-


Michael: Ooh.


Aubrey: -and sometimes he writes back to her, some lady, the letters that I've read most definitely seem like a public figure who's being nice to a fan. 


[laughter]


Aubrey: When [00:28:28 [unintelligible] [Michael laughs] he's like, “Hey, man, good for you. That sounds great. Keep it up.” And she takes that as he is endorsing my work and he understands its importance. 


Michael: Right, right.


Aubrey: At one point, she started fully doing therapy with a child. She writes an initial letter where she's like, “It's such a good, smart family, and this kid is clearly troubled, but just needs some help ba-ta-ta-ta-ta…. and I'm here to help.” 


Michael: Okay. 


Aubrey: He writes her back and is like, “Hey, what are you doing?”


Michael: Oh, really? [laughs] 


Aubrey: You have absolutely overreached. Why would you think this was a good idea? Please stop. Please stop. Please stop. 


Michael: No way. 


Aubrey: She writes back to him and is like, “They told me they didn't want my therapy anyway. And they probably would because they're all dumb and bad.” Like, all of her descriptions of the family went from being the glowing, [crosstalk] lovely descriptions of the family to being like, “Screw those guys anyway. You can't fire me. I quit.” 


Michael: A bunch of fucking introverts over here. [Aubrey laughs] Fucking introverts. Just say it like a slur.


Aubrey: She met Jung a couple of times. She traveled to meet him and she went so far as to write song parodies about how great he is.


Michael: Oh, my gosh. [chuckles]


Aubrey: There were a bunch of, they were like, “She took the tune of blah, blah.” But they're all these songs from 1910 but [crosstalk] have none idea.


Michael: They wouldn’t know, yeah.


Aubrey: There was one that was to the tune of Yale's Boola Boola Fight song, which is just saying, Boola, Boola, Boola over and over again. 


Michael: That's not even a song. 


Aubrey: So, these are the lyrics. Michael, I'm so pleased to report we have lyrics from her Jung songs.


Michael: Okay. [laughs] 


Aubrey: From her Jung [unintelligible 00:30:06]


[laughter]


Aubrey: And I'm-


Michael: Miserable.


Aubrey: -going to make you read them. 


Michael: How did you not give me a trigger warning about this? [Aubrey laughs] I'm doing this in the tune of Rihanna's Umbrella. 


Aubrey: Okay.


Michael: “Dr. Jung came down from his alpine height and completely reeducated Yale, while the wise, the dumb, and the erudite waxed paler and yet more pale. For they had heard great wisdom's word which shook them to their boots when the wise, the dumb, and the erudite behold their psychic roots. And then it just says, Boola, Boola Boola. That's pretty. I mean, that's honestly pretty good. 


Aubrey: Katharine Briggs walked so weird [unintelligible 00:30:46] could run. [Michael laughs] I think we all know this. 


Michael: Her next three are all about pizza. 


Aubrey: Are you ready for the next one? 


Michael: Oh, yeah. There's more. [laughs] 


Aubrey: There’s more. Michael, if you thought I was stopping at one song—[laughs]


Michael: Before we started, you were like, “This is going to take roughly three hours. And I think this is the next two is just songs.


[laughter]


Aubrey: Okay, so this one was to the tune of some show tune- 


Michael: Okay.


Aubrey: -like something about the vagabond I forget.


Michael: “Signs and symbols reading, Jung gives proof exceeding. He knows all humanity, Understands old Adam, not to mention Madam, Wise old owl, so wise is he. Upward, upward, consciousness will come. Upward, upward, from primal scum. Individuation, Is our destination. Hoch, Heil, Hale to Dr. Jung!” This is garbage. [Aubrey laughs] This is like Michelle in fucking Michelle Remembers. The pentameter doesn't work. It's not you got wrong syllables. 


Aubrey: I didn't think it was going to get me that hard after having read it so many times in the course of playing this episode.


Michael: It's because I did it with the right tune, Aubrey. 


Aubrey: So, while Katharine Cook Briggs is sort off making a name for herself as a writer on the success of raising Isabel, in particular, Isabel is off living her life.


Michael: Okay. 


Aubrey: She graduated top of her class at Swarthmore in 1918.


Michael: Fancy.


Aubrey: Isabel married Clarence Myers, who went on to become an attorney. They had two children. While raising her two young kids, she followed her husband to Memphis first for the Air Force and then to Philadelphia where he went to law school. So, she's following him around the country for his work. And she's sort of constantly adjusting, but she's adjusting for his life, right.


Michael: Mm.


Aubrey: And try as she might, she just wasn't really into the role of living for her husband. There's some writing where she kind of tries to convince herself that she's like, “This is good.”


Michael: Oh, yeah.


Aubrey: But she was clearly not into it. She kept a list of her future goals in a notebook that she called Diary of an Introvert Determined to Extrovert, Write and Have a Lot of Children. 


Michael: That's the Michael Hobbes story, other than the children part. 


Aubrey: You and Isabel, two peas in a pod. 


Michael: Two INFPs in a pod. 


Aubrey: This is a comparison you will live to regret.


Michael: Oh, damn it. Okay.


Aubrey: Give me 15 minutes.


Michael: Okay, alright.


[laughter]


Aubrey: So, after several years of just trying to kind of stick it out in this domestic life, in the late 1930s, Isabel was getting restless. She read an article about trying to match workers to the right job. This is sort of at the outset, at the outbreak of war in Europe, we're talking late 30s. We're talking Hitler on the move. We're talking rise of fascism. There's this article about matching workers to the right job. And she's like, “Na-ha, this is going to be really important if folks end up in war. It's going to be really important if, like, in a post war landscape, we're going to need some kind of tool to sort people into the right jobs.” So, she wrote to her mother, Katharine, who was then in her 60s.


Michael: Okay. 


Aubrey: Isabel started picking up on her mother's work, developing this personality type schema, still based in Jungian psychology, but like the way a lifetime movie is based on real events.


Michael: Yeah. [laughs]


Aubrey: She developed the Briggs-Myers Type Indicator. A test booklet that she would sell to whoever would buy it. She and Katharine debuted the type indicator in 1943. It was originally called the Briggs-Myers Type Indicator.


Michael: Yeah.


Aubrey: They switched it around because someone at some point did mention to Isabel, this is going to get turned into an acronym, and you don't want to be the BM Type Indicator. 


Michael: Fair. That's actually a very good advice. 


[laughter]


Aubrey: So, Isabel starts really digging in on the type indicator. Katharine does too. But Isabel's really clearly in the lead here. And because she has envisioned this as a tool for workplaces. She needs an in with businesses. So, she starts working with this family friend who was a management consultant. A thing that I did not know existed in the like, 30s and 40s, right? 


Michael: But it wasn't called McKinsey, it was called McGillicuddy. 


Aubrey: She has this family friend who's a management consultant. His name is Edward Hay. By 1947, Hay started pitching the test to his clients, and he has some pretty big deal clients. He's working with General Electric, he's working with Bell Telephone, he's working with the National Bureau of Statistics. So, they let Edward Hay and Isabel Briggs-Myers come in and start testing this on some university students, some workers at these different businesses, sort of it's a little all over the place. It is definitely not a randomized controlled trial test. It's just like, “How does this thing actually work out in the world?” 


Michael: So, this is based on Katharine's experience in the daycare. What is Isabel drawing on? 


Aubrey: Isabel's drawing on her own personal observations as well. 


Michael: Just her life. Just this is people I know. 


Aubrey: Again, sort of like a LaCroix approach to Carl Jung. 


Michael: [chuckles] What does that mean? 


Aubrey: Well, just like in the same way that if you're drinking, like a Pamplemousse LaCroix, you're not eating a grapefruit. 


Michael: Oh, right, yeah, yeah. 


Aubrey: It's like the Jolly Rancher flavor [laughs] version--


Michael: Like a watered-down facsimile. Yeah.


Aubrey: We should say that according to the New Yorker, by 1952, one third of American companies were using personality tests in the workplace. So, the Myers-Briggs was jockeying to be part of a very large, growing and profitable field. By 1957, Isabel starts a conversation with the educational testing service. She wants them to distribute the test. They have a big library of educational tests, cognitive tests, psychometric tests, all that kind of stuff. She wants them to add it to their library of tests and distribute it for her, basically. They tested it internally to see if they wanted it, but ultimately, they decided not to add it to their very large library of tests. And they stopped working with Isabel pretty much entirely. 


Michael: Okay.


Aubrey: That might because of the test not measuring up. Again, it certainly doesn't measure up. 


Michael: Yeah.


Aubrey: But it also might have been because of Isabel's presence in the office. 


Michael: Okay. 


Aubrey: She would just show up at ETS at the office all the time. She'd show up after the office was closed or before it was open and sort of rifle through people's stuff. She'd like interrupt their work day and chit chat with them. But the biggest complaint seems to be that she left like, messy, sticky fingerprints.


Michael: What? 


Aubrey: Everywhere like a kid. 


Michael: What? 


Aubrey: And that's because she had a favorite energy drink that she liked to drink at the time. 


Michael: Another thing I didn't think existed then. 


Aubrey: She called it tiger's milk. 


Michael: Okay. 


Aubrey: It was a mix of milk, nutritional yeast, and Hershey bars. 


Michael: What? [laughs] 


Aubrey: So, she apparently mixed it with her fingers and left her little chocolate milk. nutritional yeast fingerprints everywhere. [laughs] 


Michael: Okay, you're right. I'm not an INFP because I'm judging. Whatever the judging one is, I'm judging this. I'm an IJJJ.


Aubrey: Also, just a reminder, Katharine Cook Briggs made her name on raising this woman, [laughs] leaving fingerprints everywhere, just fucking up people's days. 


Michael: I feel like if you want to be an expert on parenting, you have to prove that you didn't raise a caveman, someone who just sticks their hand- 


[laughter]


Michael: -into liquid and just stirs it around. Like you're mixing pottery glaze.


Aubrey: So, she had a nickname in the ETS office. She had one nickname when she was sort of on the younger end, and then as she got older, that nickname changed. The young nickname was That Horrible Woman. [chuckles]


Michael: Oh, my God. [laughs] THW, that's another type. I took the test and I got a THW. 


Aubrey: The older nickname was That Horrible Old Woman.


[laughter]


Michael: She's like, “Can you guys please call me something else?” And they're like, “Okay.”


[laughter] 


Aubrey: This is straightforwardly a horrible way to talk about someone that you know and work with.


Michael: Unless they have sticky little fingers [Aubrey laughs] all around your desk. 


Aubrey: But also, as a story from decades ago, it's extremely funny.


Michael: Or their other-- She must have been annoying in other ways. It can't just be the fingers. 


Aubrey: So, Isabel wasn't just, like, kind of quirky or annoying. She had some deeply terrible ideas. At one point, she wanted to create separate test result packets for men and for women.


Michael: Okay.


Aubrey: So, if you and I both tested as an INFP, you would get the dude INFP packet and I would get the lady INFP packet. 


Michael: Mike, a powerful mediator. Aubrey, a weak surrenderer.


Aubrey: So, that one's not great. Here's one that's worse. She reportedly refused to administer the test to people with an IQ of under 100 because she believed that they lacked the capacity to develop a personality. 


Michael: Ugh. So, it's 16 types and then not applicable. 


Aubrey: Yeah. There's a whole passage with Katharine writing about how much she hates flappers. 


Michael: I love the irony of creating this entire framework that's, “All personality types are equally worthy and valuable, and then being like unless they wear their hair short.” [ Aubrey laughs] Unless they're out doing Boop, Boop, Be Doop on Fridays. 


Aubrey: At one point, she wrote a letter to her business partner expressing serious anger and frustration at a trainee who she ran a Myers-Briggs workshop. One of the attendees suggested that all races and genders should be equal. And she wrote this wild ass angry letter to Edward Hay, [crosstalk] being like, “Get out of town. What's this person talking about?” 


Michael: I like the episodes of the show where we just judge people from previous times. 


Aubrey: Listen, I was thinking about this while I was putting this episode together that you and I in The Grifties last year talked about, Bryan Johnson,-


Michael: The anti-aging millionaire.


Aubrey: s-the anti-aging guy and you were like, “We didn't really talk about this on the main feed because a lot of the coverage is just is like, get a load of this guy.” 


Michael: Yeah, yeah. 


Aubrey: And this episode is fully, get a load of these ladies. [laughs]


Michael: Get a load of these ladies turns [unintelligible 00:41:45] with their fingers. We're doing very sophisticated work here today.


Aubrey: In the late 1960s, Isabel recruits a psychology professor from the University of Florida named Mary McCaulley to join the team to help essentially professionalize the Myers-Briggs, right. 


Michael: Mm.


Aubrey: But it's worth noting that didn't change really their research. This is not someone who then came in and reverse engineered the whole thing and was like, “All right, we're scrapping it. We're starting from scratch. We're starting with data. Here we go.” This is someone whose job it was to package it up differently. 


Michael: Right. It's more marketing than anything else. It's like the doctor approved personality test. 


Aubrey: Totally. In 1975, Isabel finds her distributor that she's been looking for all this time, Consulting Psychologists Press, CPP started distributing the Myers-Briggs in 1975. Isabel doesn't love that they're trying to sort of gloss it up, but they do. They package it for sale, and it absolutely took off. 


Michael: Yeah. 


Aubrey: CPP's revenue went through the roof. Some reports say that their revenue shot up 1000% in four years. 


Michael: What explains why it took off so much? 


Aubrey: CPP was well positioned to distribute it, and it had this sort of foothold with employers after years and years, and year, right. 


Michael: Umm.


Aubrey: And that gave them this built in customer base. And the Myers-Briggs was one of the only tests that was like, “We're not here to hurt your feelings.” 


Michael: Right.


Aubrey: So, you could administer it to employees without risking the level of blowback of a test that did measure something like neuroticism or job performance or dedication or any other sort of, like things that might ruffle some feathers right.


Michael: There’s also, I guess, this trend of scientific management practices.


Aubrey: Yep. 


Michael: And one of the problems with frameworks like the Myers-Briggs is that they seem quantitative. They seem like you're doing real science, even though they're very qualitative exercises. 


Aubrey: I also think on an individual level, the Myers-Briggs can be really comforting, and it gives us a mirror to see our own behavior, which I think is something that a lot of us are hungry for feedback that feels grounded and real and actionable and compassionate. 


Michael: I would actually like less feedback on my personality, but I also know [Aubrey laughs] that most Americans cannot check iTunes reviews or a star rating of what kind of person they are. 


Aubrey: And I think on a corporate level, it does a similar sort of thing. Labor is the largest cost for most businesses, and bosses want a sense that they're making sort of a sure-fire investment in a person. 


Michael: Right. 


Aubrey: They want, like, a CARFAX of people. 


Michael: Yeah. Which is ridiculous. 


Aubrey: Can I illustrate to you, Michael, how well it went for CPP? 


Michael: Okay. 


Aubrey: CPP has since rebranded, and they are now known as just The Myers-Briggs Company. 


Michael: Oh, right. Okay, that makes sense. 


Aubrey: Since CPP/The Myers-Briggs Company took over distribution of course, Katharine and Isabel have both since passed. Katharine died in 1968. She was 93. Isabel died at 82 in 1980. They both saw the test grow in popularity and in use, which I'm sure was very rewarding for both of them. But they both missed its continued rise as this sort of widespread language of personality that people picked up in this colloquial kind of way. It really seems like this would have been a dream scenario for them, right.


Michael: Yeah.


Aubrey: The initial goal for Katharine certainly was for people to know themselves, have a real sense of themselves, and then give of themselves from that knowledge, right.


Michael: Mm.


Aubrey: That really is sort of what I think a lot of Myers-Briggs content now does think that it's doing.


Michael: Oh, really? Yeah. 


Aubrey: That is what it's aimed at. Since then, the Myers-Briggs has had waves of popularity in the 90s and 2000s. It gets a big boost when tests are computerized and people can take them more easily and just get immediate scoring back, right.


Michael: Mm.


Aubrey: There is a big wave of popularity on YouTube and on the TikTok. 


Michael: Yeah.


Aubrey: There has been, in just the last few years, a big uptick in popularity in both South Korea and China, in employment, but also in dating, especially since [crosstalk] the onset of COVID-19 that people are like, “Don't waste my time. 


Michael: I've even heard of some low effort podcasts doing them as Patreon bonus episodes. [Aubrey laughs] Now it's really taken over. Very worrying. 


Aubrey: It comes and goes in terms of media interest. But by all accounts, it is really, really profitable. 


Michael: Yeah, it must be. Yeah. 


Aubrey: Today, taking the test on the Myers-Briggs website costs $60, $59.95. 


Michael: What? 


Aubrey: Uh-ha. 


Michael: We're going to have to pay money when we do it. 


Aubrey: We're not going to take the official one. We're going to take one of the many free rip offs. [chuckles] 


Michael: Okay, good. Okay, okay.


Aubrey: Aha-ah. [chuckles] As a result of all of that powerful distribution, all of that popularity, and all of that profitability, the Myers-Briggs is as popular now as it has ever been especially in the work place. Major, major corporations across the US and around the world use personality tests. Government agencies use personality tests. And the Myers-Briggs in particular, the US military uses the Myers-Briggs. The National Institutes of Health uses the Myers-Briggs. The US Geological Survey--


Michael: Shouldn't they be doing like, “What type of rock are you? BuzzFeed quiz?” 


Aubrey: Perhaps both the darkest and the funniest is that the Myers-Briggs has also been used by law enforcement. 


Michael: [chuckles] Okay.


Aubrey: I just sent you a book cover.


Michael: Oh.


[laughter]


Michael: No, this is not real. Oh, my God. Okay, so it's a book called, Thinking Cop, Feeling Cop. 


[laughter]


Michael: An interesting look at how the deviations from two true north uncommon Jungian personality types function in the law enforcement profession. [Aubrey laughs] Jesus Christ. I mean, I would rather have both more thinking cops and feeling cops.


Aubrey: You can only do one, Mike. It's a forced binary. 


Michael: The thing is, I think that's where, to the extent that there's harm of Myers-Briggs, this is where the harm comes in. It's like employers using it to separate, you know the people that they're going to hire or not hire or promote or not promote. 


Aubrey: The Myers-Briggs company has a whole thing that they say about how like,” We actually don't allow clients to use it in that way anymore. And one time we found out that a client was using it for hiring and firing, and we severed ties with that client.” But I also feel sort of like the best-case scenario is that just becomes another sort of hoop to jump through to get a job- 


Michael: Yeah.


Aubrey: -Is like you got to figure out how to game these personality tests. There's a whole nonprofit in New York that is working to train lower income people and unemployed people on how to take these tests. 


Michael: It then just becomes a huge waste of everybody's fucking time. Because you're not measuring personality. You're just measuring, did this person have the money or the time to get test prep.


Aubrey: SAT style? 


Michael: Just how good are you at faking this thing? Which I guess, is also what job interviews are. [laughs] 


Aubrey: Yes. The whole process is a facade, and I think so we're zooming out here from Myers-Briggs personality tests in the workplace writ large just to be clear. A number of that sort of broader set of workplace personality tests will issue a red light for some results, barring the applicant from being hired in that company, and sometimes also in affiliated companies owned by the same parent company. This is something that's been documented quite a bit in reporting around these personality tests. The person is notified that they have been red lighted.


Michael: Okay. 


Aubrey: They just get rejected for that job and rejected for any other jobs in that company. And you can be red lighted for answering honestly about your own preferences. For example, if there is a question on a personality test that's like, “Hey, in conflict, do you prefer to speak up or hang back, right?”


Michael: Right. 


Aubrey: That's a question about a preference. They are ostensibly interpreting that through the lens of your job, right.


Michael: Right. But like, “You can go, yeah, yeah, yeah, my preference is to stay quiet. But I understand that at my job, I might need to step up.” But you're asking about my preference. My preference is to stay quiet. 


Michael: Right. 


Aubrey: That's a kind of answer that could get you a red light. 


Michael: Never tell the truth at work.


Aubrey: Even if it's annoying hoop to jump through fine. As you note, that's so much of the hiring process is annoying hoops to jump through. These kinds of tests can and likely do penalize people with disabilities-


Michael: I'm sure, yeah. 


Aubrey: -because the tests ask about behavior and inclinations and preferences, They don't explicitly ask about mental illness or developmental disabilities or autism or whatever. 


Michael: Right. 


Aubrey: But they screen on the basis of behaviors that may be a direct result of those conditions. 


Michael: It's basically asking people, “Are you disabled?” But you can't ask, “Are you disabled?” But a lot of these questions are essentially synonyms for, “Are you disabled?”


Aubrey: They hew so closely to that question that the EEOC has actually cracked down on large corporations for violating both the Civil Rights Act and the American with Disabilities Act. 


Michael: Yeah. 


Aubrey: Part of the reason that they're able to do this, I read a law blog that was ostensibly sort of addressed to their clients being like, “Hey, please, please, please stop using these personality tests.”-


Michael: Yeah.


Aubrey: -[chuckles] They expose you to so much legal risk. And one of the first things that they listed was that they were like, “It definitionally puts every question in writing.” [laughs]


Michael: Oh, yeah. Yeah.


Aubrey: And every answer like, “You have a record now.”


Michael: Right. 


Aubrey: Plus, questions from some personality tests, including the Myers-Briggs, can overlap with diagnostic criteria for disabilities and mental illnesses. So, it ends up being this sort of backdoor into asking about disability and making personnel decisions based on disability, both of which are illegal.


Michael: Yeah.


Aubrey: Because of those EEOC charges, several companies have been required to stop using personality tests. CVS has had to stop. Target paid a $2.8 million settlement, which sounds like a lot, but is not very much for Target. 


Michael: Right. 


Aubrey: And Best Buy have all stopped using tests in the 2010s. Those were all in the 2010s. Some have stopped using them without an investigation just because they didn't work very well. Xerox stopped using them. Whole Foods stopped using them because they were like, “We're getting all this information on personality, but we're not getting very good information on food prep.” 


Michael: Yeah. It just seems like [Aubrey laughs] the question should be like, “Have you done this work before?” I don't know what it offers to be like, “Are you a thinker or a perceiver?” 


Aubrey: So, while all of this is happening, the Myers-Briggs framework and personality tests as a whole continue to get mostly bad press. From journalists, from professional associations, from psychologists, from science organizations, since the 80s, researchers and clinicians have been extremely skeptical, by and large, about the utility of the Myers-Briggs, to the point that board members of the Myers-Briggs Corporation, who are psychologists, have been asked, “Hey, do you use the Myers-Briggs in your research at your university?” And one of them was like, “No, all of my colleagues would make fun of me.” 


Michael: Oh, that's great. [laughs] 


Aubrey: In 1991, a National Academy of Sciences Review Committee went over research related to Myers-Briggs. Their review included the choice phrase, “The popularity of this instrument in the absence of proven scientific worth is troublesome.” 


Michael: I think there's this bottomless desire for kind of scientific ways of classifying people. Something that's real like there's an objective metric for what kind of employee you're going to be or what kind of boyfriend or whatever. And I just don't think that there is. I think that every person has to be assessed qualitatively. 


Aubrey: Yes, yes. 


Michael: I just don't think that the kinds of decisions that we make that are important in our lives are ever going to be that easy. 


Aubrey: I think ultimately, all of this amounts to there's all this bad press, right? And it doesn't really seem to make a difference in the popularity of the Myers-Briggs [crosstalk] and I think that's just the appeal of reaching for certainty in an uncertain world. 


Michael: Yeah.


Aubrey: That's like, somebody can tell you for sure that you're making the right hire. Somebody can tell you for sure that the person you're engaged to is the right partner for you. Somebody can tell you for sure that you're not going to screw up a major life decision or that things aren't going to go badly this time, right. 


Michael: Right, right.


Aubrey: It's very human and it's very flawed.


Michael: There's also so many institutions like this in America where everyone kind of knows that they suck. And all we talk about is how much they suck and then nothing ever fucking changes. It's like the Oscars. 


Aubrey: Man, I bet Isabel would have loved Green Book.


[laughter]


Michael: She's a Crash gal. She's really into Crash--


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Aubrey Gordon

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