Psychological Type and the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator

Northwestern State University of Louisiana

Psychological Type and the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator

One of the most enduring typological classifications was devised by Jung and has served as the foundation for the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (Anastasi, 1997). The Myers-Briggs (MBTI) designates one's personality type, based upon a classification scheme, which consists of four basic scales and two types within each scale. Thus, there are sixteen possible Myers-Briggs personality types. The scheme is based upon the intuitions of Carl Jung, whose gifted insight revealed that all people at all times are best understood in terms of extroversion/introversion, sensation/intuition, and objective/subjective. The latter category has since been subdivided into two classes by revisionists: feeling/thinking, and perceiving/judging. Classifying people did not originate with Jung.

In the middle of the fifth century B.C.E., Hippocrates explained the four temperaments in terms of dominant humors in the body: melancholic, sanguine, phlegmatic, or choleric

In the early 1940's, Isabel Briggs Myers and Katherine Cook Briggs began developing the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator to make Carl Jung's theory of human personality under-standable and useful in everyday life. The MBTI is based on Jung's ideas about perception and judgment. The essence of the theory is that much seemingly random variation in behavior is actually quite orderly and consistent, being due to basic differences in the way individuals prefer to use their perception and judgment. Perception involves all the ways of becoming aware of things, people, happenings, or ideas. Judgment involves all the ways of coming to conclusions about what has been perceived. The Educational Testing Service first published the MBTI as a research instrument in 1962. In 1977, its use began to multiply. The main aim of the MBTI is to identify from self-report, the basic preferences of people in regard to perception and judgment, so that the effects of each preference, singly and in combination, can be established by research and put to practical use. If people differ systematically in what they perceive and in how they reach conclusions, then it is only reasonable for them to differ correspondingly in their reactions, interests, values, motivations, and skills (McCaulley, 1995). At the heart of MBTI use is the belief that individuals have naturally occurring preferences for certain attitudes and approaches to the world as well as for certain modes of perceiving it and making judgments or decisions pertaining to it. These preferences should not be equated with abilities. Identifying one's own preferences can be an aid in seeking work, relationships and so forth, whereby what comes most naturally to the person will be the very thing that will be the most demanded, desirable, appropriated, or appreciated. Understanding other persons' preferences can aid in communication and make working or living together more effective and satisfying (Carskadon, 1994).

Carskadon, T.G. (1994). Student Personality Factors: Psychological Type and the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. In Prichard, K.W. & Sawyer, R. M. (Eds.), Handbook of College Teaching: Theory and Applications. (69-81). Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.

· It is designed to implement a theory; therefore the theory must be understood to understand the MBTI.

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Approximate Word count = 2390
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page double spaced)