Does the Myers-Briggs personality assessment really tell you anything?

Re:Does the Myers-Briggs personality assessment really tell ... by mechanical_fish on Friday February 12, 2010 @11:27PM (#1122539)

Like so many similar things, from divination to Dungeons and Dragons, the Myers-Briggs is a game designed to provide a structure on which to hang conversations and creative thought. [1] It gives you some ground rules, some traditional starting points, some classic teams to root for (go ENTJ, go!) and an assortment of useful pivots and props that can be artfully used by the participants to steer their conversation as it progresses.

As such, it's quite useful, though I would no more try to defend it as a scientific theory than I would try to defend chess as an accurate representation of medieval battle tactics. [2]

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[1] You know what would be fun, or at least funny? A Dungeons-and-Dragons version of the Meyers/Briggs. In fact, I think the AD&D alignment system may be more than halfway there already.

[2] Which is not to say that medieval tacticians, to say nothing of modern tacticians, didn't play a lot of games as part of their practice.

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Re:Does the Myers-Briggs personality assessment really tell ... by tbrownaw on Saturday February 13, 2010 @01:37AM (#1122659)

> You know what would be fun, or at least funny? A Dungeons-and-Dragons version of the Meyers/Briggs. In fact, I think the AD&D alignment system may be more than halfway there already.

A few months ago, we actually had a "personality types and how to get along with them" sort of training at work (not Meyers/Briggs, but something similar). I thought it seemed kind of bogus, so when it was time to fill out the feedback forms afterwards I suggested that a follow-up "alignments in the workplace" training would be at least as useful.

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