Understanding personality type: Introduction
BMJ 2004; 329 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/sbmj.0410366 (Published 01 October 2004) Cite this as: BMJ 2004;329:0410366
- Anit Houghton, careers counsellor1
Earlier this year an interesting event took place in London. It was supported by Peter Lees, director of clinical leadership at the NHS Leadership Centre, and organised by a group of people who were keen to improve the NHS and medical education through increased knowledge of psychological type, and brought together 60 influential people from UK medical schools, trusts, deaneries, and other health related organisations. The aim of the event was to explore the various ways in which the Myers Briggs type indicator (MBTI) could be used to help health professionals in their work.
The architect of the event, Carol Parkes, challenged the audience to consider the diversity agenda in the health service. Although most would agree that the NHS has a long way to go in terms of achieving a diverse workforce, few would deny that it is a worthy aim, not only in terms of equity, but also the broader benefits to the service and its users. The United Kingdom now has policies to improve equal opportunities for people of different race, sex, physical ability, and sexual orientation, and in the next couple of years we expect to see legislation against ageism. So what about personality? Do we think that people of different personality are treated equally? Do we guard against recruiting certain types and excluding others? Do we protect different types against discrimination once they are in the workforce? Or are we missing out on huge potential by failing to do these things?
Reasons to be nervous
Mention personality types and people get nervous. Instantly there is a fear that if we start answering questionnaires on what we are like, all the careful work that we have put into our outward appearances will be uncovered. And if it is not a fear of exposure that besets people, it is a fear of being boxed in: “I'm an individual, how can I be put into a box with a whole bunch of other people?” they cry.
Yet of all the techniques that I use to help people understand the achievements and challenges in their working lives, increasing their awareness of their personal style and preferences is one of the most powerful. If people can realise the importance of understanding and valuing what they are like, it is a short step to understanding and valuing others. The net result is likely to be higher productivity, better working relationships, and happier more fulfilled working lives. Surely that would be good for the NHS, its staff, and the people it serves?
Our series
The purpose of this series of articles is twofold.
To help you explore your own personal style, and how it can be used to improve your working life
To show how all preferences and types are important and valuable and how any group of people—whether it be an organisation, a team, or a family—can benefit from having a diversity of styles
An introduction to Jungian typology The MBTI instrument originated from a theory of psychological type developed by the psychiatrist Carl Jung in the early 1900s.1 Four important ways in which people differ The beauty of the MBTI is that it provides a simple framework to describe four important ways in which people differ, while allowing room for great depth and complexity. These four ways are:
Where we prefer to focus our attention—either in the outside world (extraversion) or in our heads (introversion)
The way we prefer to take in and process information— either literally and stepwise (sensing) or generally and in patterns (intuition)
The kinds of information we prefer to prioritise in decision making—either logical and objective (thinking) or value based and people oriented (feeling)
Our preferred style of living and working—either scheduled and organised (judging) or spontaneous and flexible (perceiving)
Principles
The principles behind the MBTI are:
Only the individual can decide on his/her type
Type describes preferred styles, not abilities. We can all learn non-preferred behaviours.
All types are valuable
But is it valid?
Medics are naturally sceptical, trained to trust nothing short of a large randomised controlled trial before accepting any piece of information. Although the MBTI has been validated extensively,1 what convinces more than any well designed study is experiencing the power of type first hand. To take an analogy, is it necessary to have a trial of dominant handedness to be convinced that we write better with one hand than the other?
Exploring your own type: a taster
In this series I will be describing each pair of preferences in some detail, including:
The main characteristics of people with each preference
Their special contributions in the workplace and their challenges
The problems that can arise from difference
How to maximise your contribution at work and minimise your stress
To start thinking about type, though, have a look at the pairs of statements describing how you like to work, and place a cross at the point that best describes how drawn you are to each statement (fig 1). You will probably relate to both statements to some degree, but be drawn, however slightly, more to one than the other. Analyse your results (fig 2).
Over the next few months you will have the chance to test out your initial assessments and see what it means for you and your career.
Responses published this month
CAREERS
Understanding personality type: Introduction
Anita Houghton (October 2004)
Abubakre Seifeldin IbrahimT, medicine, 4th year, International Univ of Africa, Sudan
(October 06, 2004)
bakreleicester{at}hotmail.com
I take this chance to thank u for this nice participation. We as medical student usually suffer from understandin our own personalities sometimes. I think with less time given to study ourselve and the rush of exams, homeworks and alot of books and refrences, we find our self driven in a car without a wheel.
I am realy concerned abit about myself and I try to change many thing of my personaality that I dont like but I keep failing to improve. I think I am a spontaneous man I do not like too much planning and studying but rather face the facts. I would love to be more clear with myself and be calm and better arraning myself, and use papers. Also I do not talk alot I feel more loke acting than doing. I hate this thing on myself when I am having friends expecting me to talk….many things I hate on myself and wish to change...but would I be able to, or better stop and get adapted with whom I am.
I will be happy to read your comment and the rest of the series.
CAREERS
Understanding personality type: Introduction
Anita Houghton (October 2004)
Paul Matthews, graduate student, Dept. Psychiatry, Uni. Oxford
(October 14, 2004)
paul.matthews{at}psych.ox.ac.uk
“Although the MBTI has been validated extensively,1 what convinces more than any well designed study is experiencing the power of type first hand. To take an analogy, is it necessary to have a trial of dominant handedness to be convinced that we write better with one hand than the other?”
Unfortunately for MBTI proponents a false analogy is not more convincing than scientific evidence, and the scientific evidence for the validity of the MBTI is not good [e.g. 5, 8].
The fundamental weakness of the MBTI is that it uses zero points on continuous dimensions (e.g. Extroversion-Introversion) such that those falling on either side are considered to be qualitatively different. This classifies people together who have very different scores on the continuous dimensional measure, and then uses this categorisation to infer characteristics of those individuals. At the same time it contrasts those falling either side of the cut-off, but scoring closely numerically, as qualitatively different. For this approach to be valid the sixteen different personality types in the MBTI should contain some predictive power over and above the continuous dimensions they dichotomise – that is they should tell us more than simply that someone scored above or below the cut-off score on a continuous dimension.
Bimodality of the underlying preference scores would suggest two different populations within a dimension, and that, therefore, the dimensional score might be a good way to classify someone into one of the two populations. At the very least bimodality reduces the numbers falling in the cut-off region and improves certainty in classification. However the MBTI dimensions are not bimodal [e.g. 1, 3, 6, 9].
Unlike handedness, the dichotomous classifications are actually very unreliable. This is because of uncertainty of type classification around the mid-distribution dichotomous cut-offs for centre-weighted dimensions. Only about 50% tested within nine months score the same on all four dimensional dichotomies (i.e. remain the same type) and around 36% remain the same after nine months. Within each scale ∼83% retain the same categorisation when retested within nine months, and ~75% when tested after nine months [4]. This is not good for a test supposed to detect categorical type, fixed over a lifetime, and undermines the use of a typological classification, particularly given the many revisions to the scoring system. Form M of the MBTI is reported to show an overall type agreement with the previous Form G of only 60% [7]. In true-type studies (where a personal evaluation of the MBTI type is compared with the MBTI type allocated by the test), Carskadon & Cook [2] found that 50! % of people picked their test assigned MBTI profile, while 13% picked the completely opposite profile.
Thus there is very little evidence for 16, qualitatively different, personality types. “In the absence of evidence for the typology, the instrument becomes merely a series of scales whose information is reduced, rather than increased, by dichotomous classifications” [6].
Notes
Originally published as: Student BMJ 2004;12:366