It’s been described as “basically a horoscope,” and I can see how the types are general and lean into confirmation bias, but why is it considered pseudoscientific specifically? Doesn’t it just describe personality traits people have? I’ve been seeing it as a shorthand way of describing general personality/worldview but I’m guessing that’s not the issue people have with it.
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The psychometrics are poor. This means that it’s not a great measure of the constructs it is intended to measure.
The MBTI uses a forced-choice method. This is a poor method of measuring things, so test-retest reliability is low. This means that if people take the test multiple times, they are likely to get different results.
The MBTI also categorizes people into different categories instead of placing them on a scale of low to high. Categorization discards a lot of variance.
A better method of personality testing is the Big 5. Four of the Big 5 traits map pretty well onto the MBTI:
Introversion/Extroversion is similar to Extroversion
Sensing/Intuiting is similar to Openness
Thinking/Feeling is similar to Agreeableness
Perceiving/Judging is similar to Conscientiousness
The MBTI lacks categories that are similar to Neuroticism
Basically it measures most of the same traits as the Big 5, but isn’t as accurate in measuring them.
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