The ‘Myer Briggs Type Indicator’ was invented by Katharine Cook Briggs and her daughter Isabel Briggs Myers in the very early 1920s. They weren’t psychologists or trained researchers, and they invented the types without doing extensive testing or research.
‘Types’, in the Myer Briggs world, are inflexible, and predictive. Which is why people like this test for deciding what sort of jobs kids should do when they grow up. In this schema, we are a combination of traits, and we self-identify our traits. These traits are:
1. extraversion/introversion
2. sensing/intuition
3. thinking/feeling
4. judging/perceiving
The theory has since been disproved, critiqued, and generally shat on by anyone who’s done any extensive work with real human beings (the wikipedia article has some nice links). Or stopped and thought about it properly. But people luuuurve to self-identify their personalities.
The extrovert/introvert dichotomy that’s been pounding through interweb listicles and reasons-why-you-love/hate-iso articles is one of the Myer-Briggs types. It’s a totally made up rubbish idea that you are either an extrovert or an introvert. Humans are far, far more complex. But people really really like this idea of being one or the other.
If I was going to a 1920s costume party, I’d go as both Myer and Briggs. Because the 20s were wacked as fuck.
