Podcast - Episode 0262 - Finding The Most Accurate Personality Test

5 comments

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  • IxTx?
  • January 14, 2020 at 6:13 pm

  I’m sorry for commenting after only listening to half the episode, but I must write this before I forget it:

  Sorry for “swearing in church”, but personal development isn’t the reason I’m listening to the podcast, it is becoming certain enough of my type, for other reasons.

  How I see it is this: While finding your correct type gives you possibilities, of which personal development is one, mistyping is dangerous, especially if you’re writing/YouTubing about it. If you have an incorrect understanding of what belongs to each type/function-combination/function, and successfully spread that information, it can cascade out, and soon a great number of people have mistyped themselves. There’s an article on this site indicating the dangers of mistyping: "The Misalignment that Comes from Pursuing the Wrong Personality Type ".

  Therefore I see it as imperative – depending on what you’re going to do with the information – to be very certain BEFORE taking action from it. If you use it personally, the level of risk taking is up to you. You might be willing to have a, say, 20% risk of messing up your life instead of achieving great success, and that’s fine, it’s your call, but please don’t make “how to type yourself” videos and pages unless you’re at least 99.9% sure that you aren’t spreading misinformation. Consider the probabilities, the good you’re doing if you’re right AND the damage you’re doing if you’re wrong. Then 99.9% doesn’t seem unreasonably high at all.

  People will no doubt want to respond something like “but then we would barely have any typology resources at all, to use for our development”. OK, but at least INDICATE a crude level of your uncertainty, so that the 20%-ers can take it at face value, and us with a higher requirement can take it with a truckload of salt (or even stay away from it, for some people/cases).

  I probably come across as pretty annoyed at this, and that’s because I am. I haven’t found my type yet, after probably 100+ hours of research*, and this is – I dare to say ONLY – because of this very problem. I start seeing how one type fits best, and then all of a sudden I read an article that describes much of what I have learned of type or function X and attributes it to type/function Y, and its complete opposites to X.

  (*Many would probably tell me to just give up. I won’t.)

  To Antonia and Joel: In what I have written above, I can identify what I understand from your descriptions as Ni-Perspectives (Seeing how others would think about it, how it will play out (however, to a certain degree it obviously already has), seeing how it could fit to different functions), Ti-Accuracy(Clean-slicing data, wanting things to make sense logically, wanting to block bad data sources), and Te-Effectiveness(It won’t work, and even be quite counterproductive, referencing actual example), maybe Si-Memory(Safety-oriented, referencing past (own experience, the article)), and Ne-Exploration(Seeing the pattern of information dissemination), and the annoyance I suppose would be Fx, I’m not sure which though, I guess Fi-Authenticity(I feel that I want to know this).
  Since I’m not sure about the Fx, and Se not really applying since it’s a comment field on the internet (not much to physically interact with here…), I’m left with all four IxTx types still (and occasionally wondering if I could be a very broken Feeler). Sure, it’s just one comment, but similar things happen when applying it to most aspects in my life. “Is this Ni or Ti coming to these conclusions?”, “Is this action planned enough to fall under Te or in-the-moment enough to fall under Se?”, “Am I doing this because it works (Te) or because it makes logical sense (Ti)?” “Am I really good enough at physical stuff to have Se co-pilot, or am I really bad enough to have Se 3y.o., and how good/bad would I be if it isn’t inside the car at all?” So on and so forth.
  Remember that this interpretation is from YOUR descriptions through the articles and podcasts, I have tried as much as possible to disregard previous information (although I of course can’t completely at all. I don’t know where all information I’ve gathered came from). Either you’re unclear (I’m pretty sure I’ve heard you ascribing the same properties to two or more functions), or I’m reading in too much or too little into what you’re saying. Probably both. Sorry for the rant, but apart from the obvious and primary personal interest, I think it’s important that also the less positive feedback and opinions are taken into consideration. Please see it as a chance to improve, and not as h*ate or s*pam (bad-word fil*ter blocking stars).

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  • Eleanor Akaho
  • February 10, 2019 at 1:57 pm

  This episode is the epitome of why I love Personality Hacker. I love that you both inject your values of personal growth and positive evolution into Typology. I’m with you in trying to ensure that everyone is teaching their audiences how to become the best versions of themselves. Keep being a lighthouse in the personality world!

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  • Megan Mills
  • February 7, 2019 at 5:14 pm

  Great job on the book promo Antonia!

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  • Cat Starr
  • January 30, 2019 at 12:49 pm

  Really love your Podcast and this was another awesome episode.

  I don’t think any online test is every going to be an equal to interaction with another human being or to personally delving into types and determining best-fit through self reflection. I think online tests and systems can come close and point someone in the right direction but there are so many factors – the complexity of personality, context (what kind of day someone is having when they take the test), and also where they’re at mentally/emotionally – are they a healthy version or a really really unhealthy version (and how do tests take that into account?).

  As an example – I tested a lot as an INTP when I was first seeking a tool that would help me with personal development. I’m actually an INFP. But because I was in the grip of Te – I felt very alienated from my own feelings and was very nit-picky, I saw problems and errors everywhere that needed correction. I was obsessed with ‘objective’ truth and trying to fit myself to that. So the tests I was doing, I guess, were picking up on the over-rationalisation I was doing, while also picking up on Ne and Si, and were determining that I was an INTP.

  At that time, I had a flawed ‘ah ha’ moment where I thought – oh, this is why I’m in so much emotional pain – I need to be MORE rational and logical because that’s where my strength is. But actually it sent me totally in the wrong direction and I ignored my feelings even harder than I was before.

  When I started typing as an INFP on the online tests, I was also kind of put off by the naming of the type – ‘the mediator’ (16personalities) because I was at that point in total burnout and sick and tired of putting other people’s needs ahead of my emotional truth and felt like a punch bag. ‘The mediator’ felt like a prison sentence – like I was supposed to be stuck in the middle of people’s warring emotions forever – like there was this huge weight of obligation tied to it. So I was honestly quite repelled by that. It was only when I discovered Personality Hacker and ‘Authenticity’ and ‘Exploration’ that I suddenly felt like this balm had been applied to my soul and I was like ‘Yessss’.

  Of course, finding my ‘accurate’ type was only step one. But I’ve learned that healing pain is different to wound pain and that has been one of the most important discoveries of my life.

  Basically, I think online tests are shortcuts a lot of the time and shortcuts by definition mean that you miss some stuff out. It shouldn’t be like ‘which MBTI type are you’ alongside ‘which type of sandwich are you’, you know? It’s right to invest one’s own time and energy into self discovery, or engaging a profiler or some other human being who can pick up on who you really are, even if at that moment in your life you’re showing up as a really unhealthy version of your type.

  Maybe all this does or doesn’t make sense, but it makes sense to me :)

• 

  • Alex
  • January 29, 2019 at 9:53 pm

  I realllllly enjoyed this podcast. I’m really glad to hear your guys’ perspective on this directly because I always had the sense that this was your approach, from everything else you’ve said tangentially.

  I recently walked an interested friend of mine through finding her best fit type and explaining how understanding the relationship of the functions could help her.

  I kept adding disclaimers like every 5 minutes, saying “look, I understand that this not a 100% scientific thing, and none of these things are labels that mean you are one thing and not another, or that you are one thing all the time.” I’d say “it’s just one way of organizing information about yourself so that you can make meaning from it and do something with it.” Also I’d say “I’m just particularly passionate about it because it helped me through X time in my life and changed the way that I view my unhealthy/healthy behavior so that I can make better decisions.”

  And after a couple times she was like “yes yes I get it, let’s just do this thing already.” But I just felt so anxious about making sure I framed it correctly, because I’m very aware of the misunderstandings negative connotations that abound.

  So now, listening to this episode, I realize that what I was doing was showing up as the best as possible version of myself, and explaining that typology is how I got there.

  Random interactions about mbti happen at least a couple times per year without my prompting— like just the other week a classmate was like, “what’s your personality thingy” and I answered her, and then another peer started talking about how the big 5 was “more valid and reliable,” and I felt a little asshole-ish when I began to explain why I found value in MBTI, and about my personal stance on the importance of “validity and reliability” as it relates to the usefulness of what I see as systems of information organization.

  Now, hearing you all talk, I feel more confident about standing up for the “industry” and understand why it’s important to do so.

  Anyhow, thanks for the timely episode.