Personality is defined as “the combination of characteristics or qualities that form an individual’s distinctive character” (Merriam-Webster Online, 1996). It is what makes you different from anyone else on the Earth; it is a celebration of individuality. Yet, many people often struggle to discover and act as the truest versions of themselves. Others would go as far as to say that they are having trouble finding themselves, that they do not really know “who they are.” This uncertainty found in many people across the world created a psychological and economic market for a test, a simple assessment of an individual’s tendencies and thoughts that would result in a specific personality type with which that individual could identify. The Myers-Briggs …show more content…
She noticed that Clarence, while a suitable match for her daughter, saw the world differently than Isabel did, and had different temperaments than her as well. Katharine developed many of her theories through reading psychologist Carl Jung’s publication of Psychological Types. Jung is considered one of the pioneers of psychology as it is known today, and Psychological Types focuses on the theory that people have different ways of acting and viewing the world based on the makeup of their own personalities. It was Katharine’s daughter, Isabel, who decided to take her mother’s research and turn it into something that people could put into practice, by creating a test that people could use publicly to determine their own personalities. Isabel enlisted help from psychometricians (psychologists who specialize in giving and formulating tests) and professors from various universities, and the MBTI was born (The OPP, p. …show more content…
We all did and compared our various personality types in class. It was interesting to see the variety (we had almost one of each type throughout the class) and the accuracy of the results. The 16 Personalities had a lot of information about the types in terms of relationships and friendships, work ethic, and how specific personality types dealt with conflict. My roommates also took the test and we compared our results with each other, and it seemed that their types strikingly fit their personalities. I was surprised to find that psychologists did not find any part of this test accurate when it seemed to be for me and so many of my peers, so I decided to research this topic further in order to learn about the test’s history and see why it is so largely debated, but still so popular. My result when taking the test was ENFJ, or extraverted, intuitive, feeling, and judging, and the description of my type said that I was tolerant and social but could struggle to make decisions at times. In terms of sociability, the test stated that I value long-term friendships and relationships over having many acquaintances, and that a potential career path for me was teaching (and I am studying to be a teacher). I took the test again (two years from the last time that I did), and yielded the same result, so the test was reliable from my