I'm not saying that ISTJ is better than ENFP or anything like that. It's that I noticed that I associated their behaviour with my perception of their personality. Fitting to the curve. No, you're also trying to predict the future behaviour of others with a system that at best might give you a slightly better perspective of yourself. Here's my result. I made the test honestly, swear to god, but apparently my place is dead center. Your Cognitive Functions: Extroverted Intuition (Ne) 9.15 Introverted Intuition (Ni) 5.925 Extroverted Feeling (Fe) 5.38 Introverted Feeling (Fi) 4.85 Extroverted Sensation (Se) 4.48 Introverted Sensation (Si) 4.24 Introverted Thinking (Ti) 4.15 Extroverted Thinking (Te) 3.62 Your Extroverted Intuition (Ne) is very developed. Your Introverted Intuition (Ni) is moderate. Your Extroverted Sensation (Se) is moderate. Your Introverted Sensation (Si) is moderate. Your Introverted Thinking (Ti) is moderate. Your Extroverted Thinking (Te) is moderate. Your Extroverted Feeling (Fe) is moderate. Your Introverted Feeling (Fi) is moderate. Now, what does that tell about me? I'd love to know. Maybe I should become moderator. Any reason why? I haven't heard a good counterargument to what I said there. And it isn't possible that some people can just cooperate well with introverts? So are some horoscopes.Nothing is inherently "better", just different.
That's the whole point.
The tests are there to give you an idea of where you fall, not to determine your type. Which is why most of them provide percentages and probabilities.
I don't see it that way.
Yet, I find some extraverted people (not all, and definitely not most) seem to just make me "click" and I can easily be myself and converse. Up until now, I had no clue why that would be the case.
Facebook-questionaires really have nothing to do with categorizing based on personality.
It was a blunt example to get my point across. Maybe a better comparison: every time you say "as an [MBTI category]", it sounds to me like "as a Capricorn / Leo / Virgo / etc". This part of a Penn & Teller episode on astrology reminds me of your MBTI categorization. Yes, MBTI is technically science and not made up but your reaction to the categorization is the same.It's scarily accurate.
I think what we see here with certain people's adherence to the MBTI types is very similar to what happens with horoscopes: "I like what I read and it is vague and general enough that it absolutely can apply to me, so by god, it's right!" I mean, my MBTI type is "mastermind." It's very flattering to think I"m a rare test result and come on, a name like mastermind? I could go on and on bragging about my type if I wanted to. But it's meaningless. I don't. I agree with all statements about confirmation bias and wanting to see in yourself what you read in your result. It's flattery, plain and simple.
I agree, when people take these tests they expect their answers to come out the way they want them to. Although I don't think that this necessarily disproves the validity of the test, because it still makes you look for what you believe to be true about yourself. I know myself to be an introvert, so when my results came out as INTP/INFP, I found it interesting to see things that seemed to fit my personality type. Flattery-maybe. Untrue-not entirely.
Cognitive dissonance as well. It's a line of thinking that fits with people's current perspective and thus very easy to accept. If the test would say stuff that wasn't true, it would be far easier to dismiss. But the test has a good category for everyone, there's no 'bad' category.I agree with all statements about confirmation bias and wanting to see in yourself what you read in your result. It's flattery, plain and simple.