The TypeFinder® Personality Test – Personality typing is a way of categorizing people according to their tendencies to think and act in particular ways. The most popular system of personality typing was developed by Isabel Briggs Myers and her mother, Katharine Briggs, in the 1960’s. Myers and Briggs proposed using four key dichotomies to differentiate people: Introversion vs. Extraversion, Sensing vs. Intuition, Thinking vs. Feeling, and Judging vs. Perceiving.
Myers and Briggs built on the theories of psychiatrist Dr. Carl Jung, developing one of the world’s most popular personality assessments, the Myers Briggs Type Indicator® (MBTI®). Although the MBTI® assessment is often considered the “official” personality type test, newer assessments have built and expanded on the theory, including the highly accurate and validated TypeFinder® assessment published by Truity.
Used widely for decades in academic and corporate settings, the 16 personalities system helps people discover their own strengths and gain a better understanding of how people are different. Myers and Briggs’ theory of personality types tells us that seemingly random variations in people’s behavior are actually quite predictable, as they are due to basic differences in the ways individuals approach key functions of thought, behavior and interaction.
What is the MBTI Test?
MBTI® stands for Myers Briggs Type Indicator®, a personality assessment developed by mother-daughter team Katharine Briggs and Isabel Myers, and based on the work of psychiatrist Dr. Carl Jung. The MBTI assessment measures four personality dimensions and describes people in terms of a four-letter code, or personality type, such as INFJ or ESTP. The MBTI assessment is published by the Myers-Briggs Company, in both paper and online formats.
The MBTI® assessment is often considered the most well-known and popular personality test in the world, and is used in corporations and organizations, as well as schools and clinical settings. It can be helpful in a wide range of applications. In the workplace, it is used to highlight individual differences so that employees can be better aware of their strengths and weaknesses and more conscious of different communication and conflict styles. For individuals, it can be used to identify areas of natural talent in order to pick an appropriate career, or simply for general self-exploration and growth. Whatever the setting, Myers and Briggs intended their creation to help people understand themselves better so that they could make choices that suited their personalities, and so that they could appreciate the unique gifts of others.
The MBTI® assessment has been criticized for its validity, specifically compared to the more robust Big Five model, and it is rarely used in academic research. Much criticism is based on the MBTI model’s use of a type-based system, which requires boxing people into rigid categories, rather than describing their individual traits on a more fluid spectrum. While a type-based model does tend to be less precise, it has the advantage of being easier to learn and apply in everyday life. The MBTI system has likely endured—in spite of these criticisms—thanks to this approachability and ease of use.
The MBTI® assessment is often deemed the “official” personality type test, as it is the instrument created by Myers and Briggs themselves. However, since Myers and Briggs developed their theory in the 1960’s, many other tests and quizzes have been created based on their ideas. Some of these have been created by hobbyists with little training and should be considered “just for fun.” Other assessments have been developed to professional standards and can be considered comparably reliable and valid, such as the TypeFinder® published by Truity