an article by Sophie McBain published in the New Statesman
The simplest way to tell this story is that the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, the world’s most popular personality test, is a sham. It was conceived by a mother-and-daughter team, and the indicator reflects the private obsessions and personal observations of two brilliant and eccentric women, rather than any scientifically validated theory. Their assumptions that all humans conform to one of 16 types and that our personality traits are constant and unchanging do not withstand scientific scrutiny. Even so, two million people take the Myers-Briggs test each year, and it has helped spur a $2bn personality-typing industry.
Countless people are convinced that the Myers-Briggs test has given them powerful, sometimes life-changing insights, and has helped them change their job, save their marriage or get a promotion. The simple version of the story isn’t quite right. And luckily, Merve Emre, an Oxford English professor and an editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books, is a masterful and nuanced storyteller. What’s Your Type is a riveting biography of Katharine Briggs and Isabel Myers and their controversial, influential test.
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