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but context
Oct. 7th, 2012 01:29 amI finally took a Myers-Briggs personality test. Well, sort of. I had one mark for questions I felt strongly about, another for questions I had a weak preference for, and skipped any questions that made me shout YOU DIDN'T TELL ME THE CONTEXT. I skipped a lot of questions. You can say this is cheating because something is revealed when you are forced to pick one, but I feel that ship sailed when they made it a self-assessment test with direct questions. I'm already choosing the answer myself, there's no reason I shouldn't be in charge of assessing relevance.
If you tally up the questions I *did* answer, I'm an INTJ, which is exactly what I selected for myself based on reading the type descriptions (full disclosure: I didn't bother reading any of the extrovert types). Still, I'm not impressed. Introvert feels like what I am, and is unchanged from one situation to another. But all of the other traits? They're tools. I use facts for the problems of facts (what computer do I want?) and emotions for the problems of emotions (what should I name my computer?). Some problems are emotional (do I want to date this guy?) but have data overrides (...who has a serious drug problem?). As for intuitive versus conscious, there is actually lots of data telling you when each is appropriate (based on either objective measure of value or people's self-assessed happiness with their choice afterwords). I believe how much I enjoy smelling a vitamin is a good indicator of if I need that vitamin, but I did verify that with data.
How are sensing and intuitive even opposed? The description of the axes is nothing I associated with either word, but actually has to do with what level of abstraction you like to work with. Surely that depends on the problem you're solving? People will have different functions for how much abstraction they use when, but you're never going to tease that out with a self-report test.
They also make a very big deal about having problems settled versus open, without any mention of the type of problem or how it was solved. I prefer my problems solved but not prematurely so, and I assume everyone else does too. I know I'm being kind of a smart ass, but this feels like a real weakness in the test. What I would like to do is a have a series of questions about situations with varying levels of data, importance, and obstacles and have you decide how important each thing is in that circumstance. Then you could fit people to a curve and figure out where their tipping point was relative to the average person. That would be interesting.
If you tally up the questions I *did* answer, I'm an INTJ, which is exactly what I selected for myself based on reading the type descriptions (full disclosure: I didn't bother reading any of the extrovert types). Still, I'm not impressed. Introvert feels like what I am, and is unchanged from one situation to another. But all of the other traits? They're tools. I use facts for the problems of facts (what computer do I want?) and emotions for the problems of emotions (what should I name my computer?). Some problems are emotional (do I want to date this guy?) but have data overrides (...who has a serious drug problem?). As for intuitive versus conscious, there is actually lots of data telling you when each is appropriate (based on either objective measure of value or people's self-assessed happiness with their choice afterwords). I believe how much I enjoy smelling a vitamin is a good indicator of if I need that vitamin, but I did verify that with data.
How are sensing and intuitive even opposed? The description of the axes is nothing I associated with either word, but actually has to do with what level of abstraction you like to work with. Surely that depends on the problem you're solving? People will have different functions for how much abstraction they use when, but you're never going to tease that out with a self-report test.
They also make a very big deal about having problems settled versus open, without any mention of the type of problem or how it was solved. I prefer my problems solved but not prematurely so, and I assume everyone else does too. I know I'm being kind of a smart ass, but this feels like a real weakness in the test. What I would like to do is a have a series of questions about situations with varying levels of data, importance, and obstacles and have you decide how important each thing is in that circumstance. Then you could fit people to a curve and figure out where their tipping point was relative to the average person. That would be interesting.
