16Personalities or 16Personas? — A critique of typological trait models such as MBTI.

Typological trait models, or type-traits, include 16Personalities, MBTI®, the Keirsey Temperament Sorter, Berens’ Interaction Styles, and DiSC®, with conceptual approaches reminiscent to the old right-left brain paradigm. Typological trait models have popular appeal but are fundamentally faulty. These cracks expand into the origins, offshoots and schools in typology, from Jungian to Socionics. Here we focus on the two very well known type-trait models: the corporate ruling, paid or certified MBTI and the culture influencing, free internet 16Personalities. We begin with a critique from the name itself — what is a “typological trait” model?

Trait Assessments to Type Profiles

Contrary to misinformation, the official MBTI instrument that purports to assess dichotomous personality preferences is not invalidated. The instrument likely measures the personality traits that the validated Big 5 does, with statistically significant correlations¹ such as research finding that the “four MBTI indices did measure aspects of four of the five major dimensions of normal personality.”² 16Personalities also claims that their assessment is valid. However, the purpose of this article is not to argue the validity or reliability of either assessment, but to question their continued usage. Either’s validity or any predictive value likely depend on trait correlations, and they are significantly less validated than Big 5 or HEXACO questionnaires. So then, what is the point of models like MBTI or 16Personalities?

The obvious answer is the appeal of typological profiles. But how do these models get to types from arguing for their validity through assessments that measure traits? As in our trait principles, although predominant traits can be labeled by crossing the 50 percent line, the personality has not categorically changed at 1 point over on a spectrum. Not only are these sides not qualitatively different, but those closer to the line are more closely related to one another than to the extremes. A mild extrovert and a mild introvert have more similar personalities than an extreme of either! Instead, models like MBTI and 16Personalities group close introverts and extroverts, only a few measures apart, into categorically different profiles with distant introverts or extroverts. Why? Now the argument flips. Assessments are justified on validity, whereas profiles are justified on utility. Thus the vital question, upon which their models are built, of why and how these models derive type — from traits — is skipped over with little justification. Considering that research into MBTI consistently finds “no support for the typological theory the instrument is intended to embody” and “no evidence that preferences formed true dichotomies” or qualitatively distinct types², vague, circular, and just-so style explanations are insufficient.

The MBTI claims that it assesses types, not traits, because it measures the quantitatively distinct preferences, not the quantitative amount of a personality attribute.³ Thus, their extroversion vs introversion is not only describing an overall behavioral orientation, but inferring an underlying relation to the external vs the internal. And rather than simply being a side effect of more frequent behavior conditioning, this typologizes what “tends to be more automatic and easier“³ as “hardwired into our brains—just like being right- or left-handed.”⁴ Additionally, “with practice, people can better learn to use nonpreferred approaches, but this often takes energy and effort to do so.”⁵ So this preference would be like a natural aptitude, which can then be developed as a skill. Except, “Type does not predict skills or success in any endeavor.”⁵ This incongruency across discussions suggests wording for optics over principles. For their questionnaire, the MBTI typologizes it through binary, ipsative or forced-choice, questions, and by interpreting the resulting tally as the confidence or likelihood PCI (Preference Clarity Index), thus presuming and classifying people as distinctly preferring one over the other to fit their theory. However, this is a measurement technique, not necessarily what it measures. The far more likely explanation is that it measures and misclassifies traits as types, as its correlation to the Big 5 indicates.

While very similar to MBTI, 16Personalities rebrands itself. 16Personalities claims to use the letter acronyms for “simplicity and convenience,”⁶ ignores Jungian concepts because they are “difficult to measure and validate scientifically,”⁶ and instead “reworks and rebalances“⁶ Big 5 personality traits. They neglect to mention that they reworked traits with MBTI concepts, even using the same right-left “hand preference“⁷ analogy. For example, their “Thinking” includes objectivity, rationality, logic, and efficiency,⁶ versus “Feeling” including emotions,⁶ all attributes found in MBTI, in addition to the terms themselves being at odds with Big 5. They similarly claim that “your basic personality type cannot change,”⁸ as with “most personality type theories, the individual’s type is inborn.”⁸ However, the traits of “modern psychological and social research“⁶ can and do change as researched; there’s no reason they couldn’t. Finally, they claim that these dichotomous categories enable conceptualization and theorization about personality and “why we do what we do“⁶ that more scientific models cannot, a claim like the MBTI about some fundamental difference assessed by predominant traits and a superior utility of type. Why?

Our name for these kinds of personality models, “typological trait,” is an oxymoron. These models primarily deal with and assess the subject matter of personality traits, but conceptualize, model, and profile in the manner of types, hence typological. These are probably not actual, hypothetical personality types, which are in some way fundamentally, categorically different from one another. In other words, MBTI and 16Personalities use the “wrong tools for the job,” mapping and applying traits as if they were types. Yes, all models or “maps” are simplifications, abstractions and approximations of the reality they seek to model, after all — “the map is not the territory; the word is not the thing.” But they should be suitable and place these limitations upon themselves, not distort a subject to fit a desired purpose. Therefore, regardless of their own claims, the MBTI and 16Personalities have both traits, real personality spectrums, as an at least partial basis for their facets and assessments, and then typologies for their subsequent profiles and applications.

Correlative Breakdown & the Pro-Con Agenda

Although type-trait assessments like MBTI correlate to validated traits¹, the correlation is inconsistent. Extroversion (vs Introversion) has the strongest correlation. Intuition (vs Sensing) and Openness correlate similarly. Judging (vs Perceiving) correlates with Conscientiousness. However, this correlation breaks down significantly, as Perceiving also correlates (albeit weaker) with Openness, making the JvsP dichotomy a mix-up of trait facets. Feeling (vs Thinking) and Agreeableness has the weakest correlation, covered in the next section. In trait models, these various facets or aspects aren’t an issue, as anyone can freely have varying components. Type-trait models, however, dichotomize these trait combinations and base entire type profiles upon them.

For example, the Judging (Conscientious + Closed) versus Perceiving (Unconscientious + Open) dichotomy contradicts validated traits and their independence. It also inverts the Big One or the general factor of personality. This factor hypothetically superordinates more socially desirable traits (stability, conscientiousness, openness, extroversion, and agreeableness) and correlates to general intelligence and overall life success.⁹ Regardless, conscientious and open (across facets) people exist, as do unconscientious and closed people. In contrast, the MBTI dichotomizes JvsP as types that “prefer to seek closure or stay open to new information.”¹⁰ 16Personalities similarly (again, reflecting MBTI concepts, not Big 5) includes the closed “narrow thinking, resistance to change” as Judging “downsides,”¹¹ versus “adaptability, openness to new things” as Prospecting “upsides.”¹¹ These false dichotomies erase people who are naturally orderly and prepared but also adaptable and open-ended, and those who are spontaneous and scattered but also rigid and unambiguous, replacing them with facile caricatures. Likewise, in the typology community, many argue for cognitive functions over the four letter dichotomies, and may presume to evade this fault. However, these are still derived from the dichotomies, including attributes from the JvsP types defining their Je & Pi versus Ji & Pe functions, respectively.

This correlative breakdown illuminates a deep fracture point around type-traits’ social appeal over validated traits. The Myers & Briggs Foundations states that “types are equally valuable. […] Each preference has gifts (strengths) and challenges (stretches). One is not any better than the other,”¹² while 16Personalities avoids realistic comparison entirely, stating that “Every personality type has its strengths and weaknesses – there is no ideal type just like there are no ideal humans walking on this planet.”⁸ For more polarizing traits, the MBTI and 16Personalities have redistributed facets between different traits to equalize their desirability. Of course all personality facets can have differing efficacy, or fitness across different environments. Scientifically, personality facets are, in and of themselves, neutral. From this, “positive” or “negative” must come from value systems (which are subjective) evaluating how the same personality facet functions “better” or “worse” alongside additional factors and contexts. Facets that function “better” overall are generally more desirable. Rather than remaining academically neutral or at least separating models from auxiliary evaluations, trait-type models force inherently different personality facets together to construct false pro-con/strengths-weaknesses/advantages-disadvantages dichotomies supposedly inherent to personality. This bias is evident throughout the descriptions and discussions of type-traits models.

Feeling like a Thinker, Pt. 1: Conceptual Breakdown

At last, this critique brings us to the least correlation — Feeling vs Thinking and Agreeableness vs Disagreeableness — along with even less conceptual overlap, subpar reliability,¹³ and the most grasping biases in type-trait models. First, let’s summarize the validated traits. In Big 5, more Agreeable people have a “strong interest in others’ needs and well-being” and are seen as “pleasant, sympathetic, and cooperative.”¹⁴ More disagreeable people have “less concern with others’ needs than with [their] own” and are seen as “tough, critical, and uncompromising.”¹⁴ Agreeableness facets include trust, morality (as in straightforward and sincere), altruism, cooperation (as in compromising or compliant), modesty, and sympathy. Low scores or disagreeableness indicates distrust, covertness (as in manipulative, deceptive, or guarded), unhelpfulness, competitiveness (as in intimidating or confrontative), immodesty, and indifference (as in supposedly “not affected strongly by human suffering. They pride themselves on making objective judgments based on reason”).¹⁴ Much of this relates to being people-oriented and having a positive affect or attitude towards others, with the inverse being more self-interested and antagonistic towards others. Some are more related to consensual or mutual relations and a lack of exploitation, which may be better appreciated by HEXACO’s Honesty-Humility domain. This includes sincerity, fairness, greed avoidance, and modesty. Low scorers are manipulative, advantage-taking, status-motivated, and entitled.¹⁵ Overall, these are cleanly principled, conceptually valid spectrums.

In contrast, MBTI and 16Personalities keep much of agreeableness in tact as “Feeling,” encompassing a positive affect towards others in being harmonious or oneself in being authentic. In MBTI, “Feeling” relies more on tenderness, empathy, harmony, accommodation, relationships, people, personal concerns, values, and the subjective.¹⁶ However, “Thinking” dichotomizes different, independent attributes against this, which rely more on tough-mindedness, criticism, questions, tasks, fixing what’s wrong, being reasonable, analysis, logic, systems, impersonal facts, and objective principles.¹⁶ Self-improvement advice for “Feelers” includes “Learn to use logic […] Once you appreciate the value of logic and what it can do for the greater good, you can use it to evaluate information“¹⁷ Maybe this is a good moment for us all to reflect on our presumed values and capabilities. 16Personalities has similar facets and explicitly pits objectivity, rationality, efficiency, and logic against cooperation and of course emotions.⁶ It is even the “Thinking” trait that relates to others “employing fairness” with passions “born of respect.”⁷ The actual opposites and antonyms of “Feeling” or agreeableness are almost entirely absent from “Thinking.” And “Feeling” is notably connotative, not a neutrally or generally defined construct, and excludes more disagreeable or negativistic affects, feelings, and values.

In their assessment, 16Personalities includes questions such as whether you: “prioritize facts over people’s feelings when determining a course of action,” “prioritize proving your point over preserving the feelings of others,” or “focus more on how the affected people might feel than on what is most logical or efficient;“¹⁸ but not questions like whether you: “prioritize how decisions impact yourself, such as your finances or status, winning or avoiding losses, than what is truthful or factual,” or “you prefer words like “logic,” “objective,” or “facts,” regardless of their relevance or accuracy, because they seem stronger, more powerful or authoritative.” Any takers? In MBTI type development, someone who prefers “Feeling” “may develop their Thinking process and become more comfortable with directness and critical analysis,”¹⁹ a far more cerebral take than disagreeable interpersonal criticism, and 16Personalities “Thinkers” tend to “discomfort with emotions […] emotions just puzzle them.”⁷ Again, like the JvsP caricature, FvsT falsely dichotomizes inherently different personality facets and invokes a stereotypical, antisocial intellectual. Although this can exist, it erases those with prosocial and pro-intellectual traits (and by extension, those with both higher EQs and IQs), which are independent spectrums, perfectly complementary, and frequently occur together especially at higher education levels.

Feeling like a Thinker, Pt. 2: The Bigger Picture

Sequestering the dis/agreeableness facets, we detour from personality to the epicenter — where the false dichotomy notable of type-traits reflects the popular rhetorical dichotomy between “Thinking,” as in logical, objective, absolute, empirical, and factual; versus “Feeling,” as in emotional, subjective, relative, circumstantial, and personal. This in turn reflects the dichotomy between being right as in incorrect vs wrong as in incorrect, reasonable vs unreasonable, rational vs irrational, active vs passive, and animalistic vs humanistic. Thus the “Thinking” concept derails into higher veracity and agency, whereas “Feeling” lesser. The errors in these dominos of false conflation are numerous. Chiefly, these factors are selected from lower level affects versus higher level cognitions. They also convey not only biased connotation but definition. “Emotional” is defined and used more negatively such as “determined by strong emotion,” “easily affected by emotion,” and “overwhelmed by mixed emotions.” “Logical” is defined and used more positively as “in agreement with the principles of logic” and “reasonable,” which means “just; fair,” and “proper.” This dichotomy has consequences such as misleading already irrational people further into believing that lower or denied “emotions” count as a net win for their “logic,” or that logic is more trustworthy or less prone to error.

From a rational perspective, all of psychology — pulsion, affect, and cognition — has innate, pervasive irrationality. Higher functions only open the door to rationality; one must still walk through. Just like advancing technologies, tools for good or ill, so the advancement of human psychology holds more potential for right or wrong. Emotion cannot make the claims that logic does; it can only suggest them. Because logic is a higher function, it has potential to be both more true and more false. A vital step into rationality is recognizing the natural irrationality of human cognition and logic — from cognitive biases to logical fallacies — and the rational utility of affect and emotion — such as in emotional regulation. Stunted or misguided development, such as through the demonization or glorification of any function, are deleterious to human potential. Psychological functions do not exist in vacuums and their integration assists and equips higher levels of each. Thankfully, a choice between an illusory division is not one we must make. Unfortunately, the highly slanted usage of these terms in personality enables attitudes otherwise.

Returning to personality, why do these false dichotomies and models containing them appeal to the masses? People often presume that consensus of their beliefs, especially cross-culturally, indicates some truth. However, in and of itself, this only indicates that something is going on and so worth investigating. People frequently hold consistent beliefs due to consistent irrational tendencies. Many popular beliefs also have grains of truth (“half the truth is often a great lie“). The common difficulty lies in differentiating observation from interpretation, along with perception. Perhaps ironically, people typically have a greater subjective distinction and a stronger experience of their “Feelings” and “Thoughts” if conscious of them, along with feeling more in charge of the latter despite underlying irrationality. Thus, this dichotomy is a strong figment of the collective conscious.

As for identification, people like words, like jackdaws like shiny objects. And the perceived rational dominance of words like “objective,” “logic,” or “factual” are very shiny to people with higher disagreeableness, as a kind of appeal to authority, nature, or intellectual superiority. This being a personal, valuational preference, would correctly fit under “Feeling” if these constructs were unbiased. Instead, type-traits enable people to ignore or balance the negative appeal of disagreeableness. Equality is, paradoxically, often a tool of competitiveness, if not to win over, to not lose out. And more considerate and placative people concede to this. It offers up the notion that one can be “logical,” despite performing poorly on actual measures of logic such as standardized academic testing. Although personality might explain why people of the same general ability have tilts or skews, it could only influence a smaller portion of aptitude or skill. Someone of insufficient intelligence and experience will not be “logical” in a positive sense, regardless of how “logical” their personality is. Furthermore, in addition to disagreeable people, because “Feeling” is pigeonholed onto a narrower combination of facets, “Thinking” also collects a broader hodgepodge of personalities. It encompasses and conflates disagreeableness with those who are more strictly technical thinkers, those who are more meaningful thinkers with a tendency towards “cerebral” interests or approaches, and even those who are simply not affectively touchy-feely-people-y. Thus, we conclude that the “Feeling vs Thinking” dichotomy in typological trait models is a fundamentally, conceptually invalid personality construct, and that its weaker correlation with Big 5 appears through more indirect associations.

Moving on with Alternatives

So, finally, has the reader been persuaded that the validity of type-trait models like the MBTI or 16Personalities peaks at their assessments, and plummets into a chasm at their profiles? That their primary appeal is not due to being more insightful or helpful, as said, but being more ideological? That validated traits are superior in both validity and utility? If not, then this website is simply not for you. If yes, and if you are still interested in other speculative facets of personality as alternatives complementary to validated traits, then welcome! The first antidote to typological trait models is to take a Big 5 or HEXACO assessment (links near the bottom). Read about the Big 5 aspects, NEO PI-R dimensions, and HEXACO scale descriptions, which give a far more nuanced and personalized picture of trait facets on conceptually valid spectrums. As for utility, the truth is a solid foundation. Although more complex to work with, valid groupings of traits are being made from real world statistical clusters or “pattern types” from relative predominance. Regardless, to create accurate and thus truly informative models of personality, the reality of traits as such must be preserved.

References

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