Transcript

Selects: How Personality Tests Work | STUFF YOU SHOULD KNOW

From Stuff You Should Know · Episode page · Watch on YouTube

· 57 min · 10,398 words · 288 timestamped sections

This is the full, timestamped transcript of "Selects: How Personality Tests Work | STUFF YOU SHOULD KNOW", an episode of Stuff You Should Know published November 16, 2025 (57 min, about 10,398 words). It mentions 98 people, works and ideas, including personality tests, MyersBriggs type inventory, Big Five, mental illness, Minnesota.

What this episode is about

The discussion focuses on the fundamentally flawed nature of personality tests, highlighting that many, if not all, lack scientific validity and can mislead individuals in serious contexts such as mental health diagnoses and employment decisions. The episode touches on popular tests like the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, emphasizing the potential negative implications of their misuse.

Key takeaways

  • Personality tests: More like astrological signs in office attire.
  • Using Myers-Briggs for hiring? It's like using horoscopes for weather forecasts.
  • 13% of companies trust personality tests - proof some businesses still love horoscopes.
  • Personality tests: Scientifically unfounded, yet still a worldwide obsession.
  • Over 89 of Fortune 100 use Myers-Briggs - corporate peer pressure at its finest.

Who speaks in this episode?

What is discussed, and when

  1. – 5:00: MyersBriggs type inventory, personality tests, British companies, Corporate America
  2. – 10:00: black bile, German, melancholy, four humors
  3. – 15:00: psychoanalysis, Alfred Benet, Curtis Wayne Wright, Isabelle Briggs Meyers
  4. – 20:00: Big Five, personality tests, agreeableness, neuroticism
  5. – 25:00: Big Five, bell curve, Minnesota, neuroticism
  6. – 30:00: E or I, judging and perceiving, mental illness, psychometric instruments
  7. – 35:00: MyersBriggs type inventory, Copyright, Travel Velocity
  8. – 40:00: MyersBriggs type inventory, Tootsie Rolls
  9. – 45:00: self-reporting, Asheville, Bowling Green State University, comprehensive system
  10. – 50:00: Minnesota, Child custody cases, comprehensive system, criminal trials
  11. – 55:00: Bertram Forer, Boo Radley, Daily Horoscopes, forer effect
  12. – 57:27: Bhutan, iHeart Radio, iHeart Radio app, online provider

Notable quotes from "Selects: How Personality Tests Work | STUFF YOU SHOULD KNOW"

  • Hey everybody, it's me Josh and for this week's select, I've chosen our August 2017 episode on personality tests. It turns out that the vast majority of them, maybe all of…
    about personality tests · at
  • Strings of letters. They actually do make sense if you're familiar with what Chuck just said, the MyersBriggs type inventory, which if you are in corporate America and have…
    about MyersBriggs type inventory · at
  • Tests aim to do. for various reasons which we'll go over later, but going back and this was a Grabster article, correct?
    about Grabster · at
  • It was an early attempt. Yeah, they talked about the four fluids or the four humors, black bile, yellow bile, flem, and blood. and an imbalance in those will cause disease, but…
    about black bile · at
  • Who wrote a book called psychological types.
    about psychological types · at
  • So the big five are and this is the big five I get the feeling are the psychological tests that legit psychologists are more in favor of over something like the MBTI. Is that right?
    about Big Five · at
  • Version, agreeableness, openness to experience conscientiousness and neuroticism.
    about neuroticism · at
  • We'll talk a lot more about the Minnesota Multi-phasic Personality Inventory.
    about Minnesota · at

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

  • Grabster — Person · 3 mentions · first at
  • Josh Malcolm Clark — Person · 1 mention · first at
    Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. There's Jerry over there. And this is Stuff You Should Know.
  • Hypocrates — Person · 1 mention · first at
    And that's this is Hypocrates, by the way. He kind of further refined these concepts of the temperament. So melancholic flaggmatic sanguine, and what is it? Calleric.
  • Alfred Benet — Person · 1 mention · first at
    And so even before Jung, there were guys like Alfred Benet who was one of the indirect fathers of the intelligence test, the IQ test. a pair of researchers named Gray and Wright and plenty of others who wanted to say no.
  • Curtis Wayne Wright — Person · 1 mention · first at
    Indirect fathers of the intelligence test, the IQ test. a pair of researchers named Gray and Wright and plenty of others who wanted to say no no you can study psychology you…
  • Katherine Cook Briggs — Person · 1 mention · first at
    Table for this and many years later, although not that many there was a woman named Katherine Cook Briggs.
  • Isabelle Briggs Meyers — Person · 1 mention · first at
    And she was working on this with her daughter won Isabelle Briggs Meyers.
  • Herman Rochek — Person · 1 mention · first at
  • John Xner — Person · 1 mention · first at
  • Howard Garb — Person · 1 mention · first at
    No. This Howard Garb in this one article you sent, he's a co-author of what's wrong with the Roarshack and he is head of psych or at least at the time of this article, he may still be head of.
  • William White — Person · 1 mention · first at
    Yeah. And actually, you're in agreement with this a sociologist named William White who criticized the MMPI as a tool that helped to create and perpetuate the oppressive group think of mid-century organization. man.
  • Bertram Forer — Person · 1 mention · first at
    There was a psychiatrist named Bertram Forer.
  • Boo Radley — Person · 1 mention · first at
    That's not bad. Or the stuff you find in a tree hole that Boo Radley left for you.
  • Amie Gray — Person · 1 mention
  • Ari Eric De Jung — Person · 1 mention
  • Exner — Person · 1 mention
  • Rorschach — Person · 1 mention

Books & papers

Companies & orgs

  • Stuff You Should Know — Company · 2 mentions · first at
    Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio.
  • iHeart Radio — Company · 2 mentions · first at
    Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio.
  • How Stuff Works — Company · 1 mention · first at
    I don't remember what I am. We've taken it before. How Stuff Works hosted it years back. Do you remember?
  • Fortune 100 — Company · 1 mention · first at
    Yeah. And was it 89 of the Fortune 100 use it?
  • British companies — Company · 1 mention · first at
    Well, 16 years old, right? But they said that the I think British companies somewhere between 10 and 40% of British companies use them.
  • tobacco industry — Company · 1 mention · first at
    Whose work was later secretly funded by the tobacco industry who were looking for anything to explain heart attacks besides smoking.
  • Travel Velocity — Company · 1 mention · first at
    I got that from Travel Velocity.
  • George Washington University (GWU) — Company · 1 mention · first at
    To really establish the test was they managed to administer it to like 5,000 George Washington University medical students and they took those results and track the students to…
  • Bowling Green State University — Company · 1 mention · first at
    Totally subjective from beginning to end. And then in I think 1975, a guy at Bowling Green State University, which is right outside of Toledo, came up with this a really…
  • University of Minnesota — Company · 1 mention · first at
    And it was created at the University of Minnesota in the ' 40s by a psychiatrist and a nur neurologist I believe. And they hit upon a pretty clever idea. They said, We're not going to interpret the.
  • online provider — Company · 1 mention · first at
    I haven't owned a TV for many years, but my partner has since subscribed to an online provider. And I realize how watching TV has not helped my anxiety. I also remember reading…
  • Consulting Psychologists Press — Company · 1 mention
  • CPP — Company · 1 mention
  • HR — Company · 1 mention
  • Tootsie Roll Industries — Company · 1 mention

Products & tech

  • Tootsie Rolls — Product · 1 mention · first at
    Right. I remember it kind of being a fun day and Tootsie Rolls.
  • television — Product · 1 mention · first at
    That a big part of my tackling anxiety levels has been to abandon watching television and fistfuls of psychotropic drugs.
  • psychotropic drugs — Product · 1 mention · first at
    Levels has been to abandon watching television and fistfuls of psychotropic drugs.
  • iHeart Radio app — Product · 1 mention · first at
    Stuff you should know is a production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts, iMheart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Concepts & topics

  • personality tests — Concept · 8 mentions · first at
  • MyersBriggs type inventory — Concept · 7 mentions · first at
  • Big Five — Concept · 5 mentions · first at
  • mental illness — Concept · 4 mentions · first at
    Outright made up. This can be a real problem if they're being used to diagnose you with a mental illness or hire or fire you or put you in jail. And that actually happens. So…
  • black bile — Concept · 3 mentions · first at
  • neuroticism — Concept · 3 mentions · first at
  • four humors — Concept · 2 mentions · first at
    In the day I know in our grave robbing live grave robbing episode we talked about the four humors, right?
  • melancholy — Concept · 2 mentions · first at
    Personality types too, right? Yeah. So, like the word melancholy in English, it's an adaptation of the Greek words, I believe, for black bile.
  • German — Concept · 2 mentions · first at
    How do you say it though in German?
  • thinking and feeling — Concept · 2 mentions · first at
    And he created these four categories sensation intuition thinking and feeling.
  • psychoanalysis — Concept · 2 mentions · first at
    But he was a very wellrespected psychoanalyst and he was part of the early movement for psychoanalysis with Freud. They were colleagues although Jung was much younger. but they…
  • objective — Concept · 2 mentions · first at
    But these tests generally as Grabster points out falls into a couple of types. projective and objective.
  • agreeableness — Concept · 2 mentions · first at
    Or she so the big five are extrovert version, agreeableness, openness to experience conscientiousness and neuroticism.
  • openness to experience — Concept · 2 mentions · first at
    Or she so the big five are extrovert version, agreeableness, openness to experience conscientiousness and neuroticism.
  • statistical analysis — Concept · 2 mentions · first at
    Eventually if you put all of them together and run them through a statistical analysis, yeah, they're actually going to come up with your genuine answer, which is kind of one way or another, right? The other way that they get.
  • psychometric instruments — Concept · 2 mentions · first at
    Series of questions that you answer, I think they call them instruments by the way. Psychometric instruments, which are basically a series of questions on a piece of paper. Yeah, it sounds like a test.
  • self-reporting — Concept · 2 mentions · first at
    Construction of the instrument itself is problematic. because one, like we talked about, it's self-reporting.
  • comprehensive system — Concept · 2 mentions · first at
    And it was a test called the comprehensive system. 140 components. And in this article you sent, they said that Rorchack was probably going away had it not been for Exner's accompanyment.
  • MyersBriggs personality test — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    They paid for someone to come to our office and administer the MyersBriggs personality test at gunpoint.
  • yellow bile — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    It was an early attempt. Yeah, they talked about the four fluids or the four humors, black bile, yellow bile, flem, and blood. and an imbalance in those will cause disease, but…
  • sanguine — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    Cuz sanguine is one of my favorite words.
  • projective tests — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    Projective tests are things like the Roarshack test where you're shown something some kind of stimulus and it's open to interpretation and you tell them what you think about it and someone.
  • extraversion — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    Can't remember what it was called, but they were basically they were going over it like extraversion is again just part of the scientific literature at this point.…
  • emotional stability — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    Yeah. neuroticism, which is some kind sometimes called emotional stability.
  • psychometrics — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    Traits, personality traits in a quantitative way is called psychometrics.
  • bell curve — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    If you look at psychrometric tests, a legitimate psychometric test is going to basically look like a bell curve.
  • E or I — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    And those are at the very base you're either introverted or extroverted like we said E or I.
  • S and N — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    Y sensing or intuition S and N. and these words, they sound a little confusing, like what the heck does a sensing person mean?
  • judging and perceiving — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    And then lastly, there's judging and perceiving. Those are that's a dichotomy. Judging is where you prefer schedules, you prefer decisiveness. That's how you kind of.
  • type A and type B personalities — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    That's almost kind of like the difference between the type A and type B personalities, which by the way was made up by a pair of cardiologists.
  • Copyright — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    You cannot legally administer this test or you're infringing on their copyrights. Unless you are certified by CPP to do this, we should do it with one another on the air and risk a lawsuit.
  • elementary school kids — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    Right? Okay. So, there was this study in 2000 that was given to like 100 mentally sound elementary school kids.
  • ink blot test — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    And it was because of this ink blot test that's 100 years old.
  • criminal trials — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    And then secondly, these tests are also being submitted and accepted as evidence in criminal trials.
  • Child custody cases — Concept · 1 mention · first at
  • MMPI-2 — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    Quick kids like I like bunnies. The another one that we have to talk about is the MMPI now the MMPI-2.
  • lawsuits — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    When companies use it for hiring and firing, it's way too invasive. And apparently lawsuits have been filed against companies for using it.
  • forer effect — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    But that taps into what's called the forer effect. F O R E R.
  • Daily Horoscopes — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    Well, it was favorable. He actually called it from Daily Horoscopes.
  • pet frog — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    The only thing that should live in a box is temporary housing for a pet frog.

Places & events

  • Minnesota — Place · 4 mentions · first at
  • Corporate America — Place · 2 mentions · first at
    Make sense if you're familiar with what Chuck just said, the MyersBriggs type inventory, which if you are in corporate America and have been a part of corporate America for…
  • Asheville — Place · 1 mention · first at
    Right. And even today, he's got an institute in Asheville that's dedicated to the Roshchack test. Right. So, one thing I've noticed from researching this is each of these personality inventories has like its adherence and its.
  • Bhutan — Place · 1 mention · first at
    Watching TV has not helped my anxiety. I also remember reading that after TV's became mainstream in Bhutan, their crime rate went up something like 700%.

Sponsors

Full transcript with timestamps

Hey everybody, it's me Josh and for this week's select, I've chosen our August 2017 episode on personality tests. It turns out that the vast majority of them, maybe all of them, are scientifically faulty to at least some degree, and some of them are just outright made up. This can be a real problem if they're being used to diagnose you with a mental illness or hire or fire you or put you in jail. And that actually happens. So dig into this deceptively interesting episode and enjoy it. And I'm an ENFP, by the way. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio.

Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. There's Jerry over there. And this is Stuff You Should Know. Yeah, just a couple of ITJ S's.

I don't remember what I am. We've taken it before. How Stuff Works hosted it years back. Do you remember?

Yeah. We had uh like many companies do, as you'll see, we had uh when we were under Discovery's uh Tinder wing.

They they paid for someone to come to our office and and administer the MyersBriggs personality test

at gunpoint. Yeah. I I don't remember, but I'm pretty sure I was an ENFP. I I don't remember what I was. I'll I'll probably say like three different things as we go through this one.

Like just looking at it again, I'm pretty sure I was an ENFP. Okay. P stands for Pisces,

right? Or pooper. Yeah. Let's see. Extroverted intuitive. Okay. What does the F stand for?

Feeling pooper. This is a spoiler. Yeah, feeling pooper. So, we're what we're talking about. We're It sounds like we're saying strings of letters. They actually do make sense if you're familiar with what Chuck just said, the MyersBriggs type inventory, which if you are in corporate America and have been a part of corporate America for more than probably three years, there's probably a pretty good likelihood that you've taken the MyersBriggs type inventory

for sure. Like it's really widespread. Yeah, people love it. I saw something like 13% of companies in America use it. That's a lot.

Yeah. And was it 89 of the Fortune 100 use it? Right. And then I saw another stat. It was from 2001 though, so I'm not sure how current it is.

Well, 16 years old, right? But they said that um the the uh I think British companies somewhere between 10 and 40% of British companies use them.

All right. So I mean it's who knows it's pretty wild guess it sounds like but I wonder if they have their own.

It's uh No, the MyersBriggs test they don't call it a test as we'll see. Sure. But the the test um is it's worldwide. It's translated into tons of different languages there. And no, it's it's the MyersBriggs test. And there's tons of knockoffs.

Oh, sure. There's tons of personality tests in general, which really is the uh larger umbrella the MyersBriggs test falls under, but it's probably the most famous of all time, at least as far as pop culture goes.

Yeah. And we're going to hit on everything from Roar Shack to the MyersBriggs. Sure.

Uh but we're going to hit on them. But the MBTI definitely um is more the focus of this one because of its ubiquity,

right? And because most people know it and because it's a a one of the overlooked pastimes in the United States to take pot shots at the MyersBriggs Type Inventory.

Sure, it's fun. Uh so categorizing one's personality is nothing new. Uh and that's what these tests aim to do. um for various reasons which we'll go over later, but um going back and this was a Grabster article, correct?

That's right. So, you know, it's good. Yeah. And Grabster was just at our show in Toronto.

Yeah, he was for the second time. He stood up and like did that victory shake. Oh, did he do that?

No, he did. Oh, I'm a big fan of that. That's old school. Oh, it is. It's a good way to go. Uh,

it looks like you should be wearing those dolphin shorts and just having crossed the finish line and you're doing that.

Um, so yeah, it's nothing new trying to categorize personalities. Um, way back in the day uh I know in our um grave robbing live grave robbing episode we talked about the four humors, right?

And we've talked about them before um before medical science was kind of a real thing. Um

it was an early attempt. Yeah, they talked about the four fluids or the four humors, black bile, yellow bile, flem, and blood. Uh, and an imbalance in those will cause disease, but they were also, this is something I didn't know, these are also linked to uh corresponding personality types too,

right? Yeah. So, like the word melancholy in English, it's an adaptation of the Greek words, I believe, for black bile. There it is.

And and melancholy personalities were associated with an overabundance of black bile. And um basically you're melancholy. You're you're a depressed person or you're very reserved or quiet. And for thousands of years people thought guy's got a lot of black bile.

Yeah. That explains his personality. The other ones are pretty pretty um interesting too. Like flaggmatic

uh flegatic. I've seen flaggmatic. I've heard flag magic. Oh, really? I've seen it, too.

So, like when you cough something up, do you call it flaggum? Sometimes flaggs. If it had like a lot of extra chunks in it, it's flaggum.

Oh, gosh. But phatic, I say flaggmatic. Uh, that's very laid-back. Did you know that?

Uh, well, yeah, cuz I looked all these up. Oh, okay. Um, cuz sanguine is one of my favorite words.

Yeah. Um, and that's this is Hypocrates, by the way. He he kind of further refined these concepts of the temperament. So melancholic flaggmatic sanguine, and what is it? Calleric.

Yeah. Coloric. Yeah. Calleric. Coloric. Calleric is like irritable and short and tur and curt.

Yeah. But the thing is there's something weird here right? If you are a thinking human being,

Yes. who is not in a vegetative state right now. Correct. And for all we know at this point in medical science, maybe even if you are in a vegetative state, you're probably thinking, uh, it doesn't seem like anyone I've ever met is just flaggmatic or just calleric or just sang wine.

Yeah. Or just melancholy. Sometimes I'm all four of those things. Sometimes I go through those things, all four in a day, depending on how weird the day is.

Sometimes I go through all four of those within the course of one happy hour. Sure. Okay. Right. And and that's kind of the point here and it's also the basis of any criticism from the this moment in the podcast here on out is that this whole thing that started back with the four humors and continues on to this day in the guise of personality tests.

Yeah. Is an attempt to take a human personality and say you're this Yeah. You're this one type. You're this type. This is your type. this is what you're like right?

Yeah. And the human personality is just too complex, too squishy, too jelly like to be boxed into one thing like that.

Yeah. And we'll get into all the criticisms, but that definitely is the leading criticism that is uh well, we'll save that.

Okay. Um that was a tease. It was a good tease. It was a flaggmatic one. Uh all these classifications though um that we talk about now are uh or most of them at least are derived uh lay at the feet of one man one Carl Yong.

Yeah. Who wrote a book called uh psychological types. How do you say it though in in German?

I don't know. It's um Oh, where is it? Let me see. Oh, there it is. I I can't even begin to do it. Uh psycho psycho sorry psychologicish psychologicish typing.

That's not bad. It's so tiny. That was the problem cuz you Oh, yeah. I do 10 point. I don't like to waste paper.

Well, you know me. I'm I You do like 16 point Times New Roman. I love paper and I don't want to waste it, but I also have to do my job.

Sure. Maybe I should go double-sided, but then my highlighter gets in the way. Oh yeah, it'd be a problem.

Oh man, everything would be highlighted. You might as well just dip the whole page in yellow ink or something.

Yeah, exactly. Um, so anyway, Jung wrote this book, that book uh in 1921 in German and had it translated to uh English a couple years later.

Mhm. And he created these four categories uh sensation intuition thinking and feeling.

Right. So those were his four that kind of most of these modern tests are based on in some way or another.

Yeah. And um it's really almost impossible that I guess we could just save all the criticisms for the end and just pile them on. But it's it's really tough to talk about this stuff and not like as you present one fact talk about the problem with that fact

as it relates to modern incarnation. What what do you think we should do? Should we just save them like you say? because I can bite my taunt.

Yeah, let's save them. Okay. And then you can just like I'm not even trying like I'm not I'm not going crop circle here. I'm just saying like there's just there's just a lot wrong with this. But um even before Jung who created these the the concept of the modern concept I should say of personality types and he created the idea of introvert and extrovert which say what you will about Yung and a lot of psychologists have a lot to say about him. Yeah. Not necessarily the nicest things to say, but introversion and extroversion is so widely accepted.

Yeah. Inside and out of the field of psychology that I mean, if that were his only contribution to the field, that's that's enough to to engrave it on your tombstone for sure.

Yeah. And each of those um four uh psychological types he was talking about are modified by whether or not you're introverted or extroverted,

right? So they all kind of work together to box you in. That was like the right that was the main thing is how you how you approach life as introvert or extrovert and everything else was like a sub kind of a subsection of that or something.

Yeah. And and one of the issues with this and I don't think this is part of the criticism but

I was going to say I thought we were saving him. He was uh this was based on his ideas. It wasn't like he

had all this research and all this data. He he was a deep thinker and he sat around and and thought of these things.

Right. Exactly. And then he wrote entire books based on them. Yeah. But he was a very wellrespected psychoanalyst and he was part of the early movement for psychoanalysis with Freud. They were they were colleagues although Jung was much younger. Um but they eventually said I don't like you anymore. We're parting ways. Um but as as all as psychoanalysis was really kind of establishing itself and if you want to know more about that background and the origin of psychoanalysis go listen to our how PR works the live show we talked a lot about that. Um but as this was going on and it was starting to kind of dominate the field of psychology, there was a whole other movement, a parallel movement that said, you know what, we think all that's a little mushy. We like the idea of being able to quantify psychology.

Yeah. And so even before Jung, there were guys like Alfred Benet who was uh one of the indirect fathers of the intelligence test, the IQ test. um a a pair of researchers named Gray and Wright um and plenty of others who wanted to say no no no no you can study psychology you can study things like the human personality and you can typify them you can add numbers you can quantify this stuff and in doing so we will prove psychology as a science as well

so this this whole movement to typify people and put them into convenient um almost numerical categories. Yeah. Came out of this urgent need to sc to establish a scientific basis for psychology.

Yeah. And Jung uh he kind of laid the table for this and many years later, although not that many um there was a woman named Katherine Cook Briggs.

Yeah. Uh and she was working on this with uh her daughter uh won Isabelle Briggs Meyers.

Think you see where this is going? I do. Uh this is postw World War II when they women were kind of for the first time really going uh into the workforce in full

uh and on mass. And so they thought well maybe we can put together some personality types to find out um what kind of jobs these women might be suited for, what types of jobs they might enjoy,

right? Um, so they started working together on this and um, as legend has it, the the mom, Katherine uh, Briggs, Cook Briggs, she was doing her thing and then saw Yung's works and said, "I got to start over. This is this is the stuff."

She had already been working on a personality test. Yeah. But apparently, according to the legend, threw her work into the fire.

Yeah. Said, "I'm starting from scratch." She dramatic. She was a voracious reader and uh especially of um the psychology the new psychology books that were coming out of Europe, right?

She didn't read Jung. She did. Well, eventually, but yeah. And then seems like it kind of came along later. Well, so yeah, there's a there's kind of a weird discrepancy in the history and I don't know if it's just it hasn't been covered right or if there is a weird discrepancy, but supposedly she initiated it and so it would have been contemporary or shortly after Jung's psychology or personality types Yeah. was translated into English in 1923. Mhm.

So, but it was her daughter Isabelle who really uh took it and ran with it because of World War II and the need for uh women in the workplace.

Correct. Uh so they, you know, kind of kept some of Young's stuff um built on that. They kind of stripped some of it away. Uh most notably a lot of the unconscious stuff. They might have thought that was a little too weird

for, you know, the modern American workforce. Yeah. Uh so what they ended up coming up with was the the MBTI MyersBriggs type indicator,

right? Very famously. Yeah. And they had a they had a publishing arrangement with one group. I can't remember what they were called, but they thought it didn't do very well. And then in 1975, they went with another publisher, CPP, and they're the current publishers of the MyersBriggs type indicator. And since then it that's when its ubiquity like just really spread was starting in the 70s and and now it's just it's basically married to corporate America.

Should we take a break? Sure. Go get married to corporate America. Yeah. As if we aren't already.

All right. We'll come back and we'll talk a little bit about personality tests in general and then uh focus in a little more on the MBTI. S Y L Y S K S K You should know.

All right. So um personality test is just there are many many ways you can get evaluated psychologically uh by a professional. Uh this is just one way and um

you can get your head measured with calipers. Back in the day they did that right.

They give you a bunch of drugs and see what you do. There's a lot of ways. Uh but these tests generally um as Grabster points out falls into a couple of types. Uh projective and objective. Uh projective tests are things like uh the Roarshack test where you're shown something uh some kind of stimulus and it's open to interpretation and you tell them what you think about it and someone sits back very quietly and taps on a pad of paper

and makes an evaluation. Very interesting. And then objective are more like these personality tests. They're standardized assessments that people use. Um, and while it's subjective what you put down, they are then evaluated again by a professional,

right? But ultimately that objective name is a bit of a misnomer because on the end of it, it's still interpreted by a person.

Yeah. Which is therefore makes it subjective, right? And which depending on who you ask is the fatal flaw of all personality tests.

It should be the uh like uh good songs from the 70s had a little parenthetical at the end of the title,

right? should just say subjective also, right? In parenthesis, baby. Um, so the big five are and and this is the big five I get the feeling are the psychological tests that that legit psychologists are more in favor of over something like the MBTI. Is that right?

Yeah. It's not just there's tests to sus out the big five. big five are the personality types that the field of psychology has come up with that say

well yeah but the tests that that you utilize that they kind of think are more legit than the MBTI

yeah there's not a psychologist alive who uses the the MBTI in their regular practice

oh I bet there are not in not not that not that are speaking up I I guarantee you there's someone out there

sure a freewheeling type or she uh so the big five are extrovert version, agreeableness, openness to experience uh conscientiousness and neuroticism.

Right? Sounds like it could be like a dating site thing that you fill out. It's funny. Every time I see or hear the word neuroticism, a bell goes off in my head,

like ding. Just a silent bell. Yeah. Oh, I don't know what that means. I don't either, but it draws my attention to it. Um, so some of these tests, uh, I mean it depends on what it is. They might not all call them by those exact words, but they're generally using they call them, you know, like I said, the big five.

Yeah. And I was I was looking into that big five. And um, this this site, I can't remember what it was called, but they were basically they were going over it like extraversion is again just part of the scientific literature at this point. Um, agreeableness is like whether you're how sympathetic or kind or affectionate you are. Yeah. Conscientiousness is are you organized? Are you thorough? Are you the type who shows up on time? That kind of thing. Yeah. Um, neuroticism, which is some kind sometimes called emotional stability.

Um, how tense are you? How moody? How anxious? Ding. Uh, and then like uh openness to experience right?

Yeah. They sometimes call that intellect, imagination. Do you have wide interests?

Yeah. Are you an imaginative person? Are you insightful? And this this site really went to a lot of pains to point out that what you would call these things the big five personality traits

are as far as a psychologist is concerned just one dimension of you the human being. Yeah. And that to get a clearer picture of you, they would also need to study your motivations, your emotions, your attitudes, your abilities, your self-concepts, your social roles, autobiographical memories, your life stories. And if you start to put all these things together, then you can start to kind of approximate the person's personality. Yeah.

But it would just it it takes a lot of study of an individual and these different components that make up their personality to get a clear picture. So I I don't think there are any psychologists walking around saying the big five personality types or like the beginning and end of a personality. It's just if you put them together, you have just a sketch of somebody's personality and you you should go much deeper if you're analyzing someone.

Yeah. I think I used to think this stuff was a lot neater when I was younger and now it kind of gives me a little anxiety.

Oh yeah. Yeah. Like I just I don't know as far as doing this to myself and I still enjoy therapy like that's different but

right I don't know cuz every single one of these I like my answer would be well it depends. Well, I think I think also though um and I don't mean to speak for you, but one of the issues that's that's comes up for me is if somebody goes to you and says, you know, you you you rate pretty high on the spectrum of neuroticism,

like that's obviously you're going to obsess about that kind of stuff, especially if they're right. It can make you neurotic.

But yeah, it's a it's a boundary that somebody has just established for you that you may need feel the need to stay in

because that's the boundary that you're bound by whether you are or not. Like this is my box,

right? I'll live in it. That would be the reason it raises anxiety for me. Yeah. Well, my whole thing, like I said though, is just depends. Every single question that I would get asked, well, not everyone. Sometimes I'm pretty like set on something, but usually I'd say I don't know. Depends on the scenario,

right? Am I uh more prone in a crowd to do X or Y? Maybe, right? Maybe not. Depends on my mood.

So, one one with these other personality tests and and the whole field in psychology of um studying traits, personality traits in a quantitative way is called psychometrics.

Yeah. So with these tests, the more sophisticated ones, if they had a test taker like you, they're designed to get around that. So they're going to ask a bunch of different questions about the same thing but in different ways coming from different directions so that eventually if you put all of them together and run them through a statistical analysis, yeah, they're actually going to come up with your genuine answer, which is kind of one way or another,

right? The other way that they get around this um that kind of heming and hawing, I guess,

is um by placing it on a spectrum. You're not being lumped into one category or another. It's here's one end of the spectrum, here's the other end of the spectrum, and based on your answers, you fall somewhere around the middle like almost everybody does, right?

If you look at psychrometric tests, a legitimate psychometric test is going to basically look like a bell curve.

Yeah. where most people are going to be distributed toward the middle. Yeah, that's

I think what that's why it gives me anxiety. It's like what's the point? Don't don't box me in.

It's a great question. Um well, I think the second half of this is a lot of what's the point. Yeah. You know,

uh so looking speaking uh on these tests to see if it's actually if there is a point, if it's a valid thing to do,

uh there are a couple of measures that one must look at and that psychologists do look at. um is it valid and is it reliable? Valid in the sense that it really is a pretty good reflection of Josh or Chuck or whoever and is it reliable? So if we take this test

tomorrow or a different test that's um just you know maybe different questions will it repro uh reproduce the same result?

Right? And that's a big deal like if you're talking science and you're trying to have a foundation that says no this is science. It's not just a bunch of uh questions and hippie- dippy questions that we're asking.

Uh if you really want real data and science behind it, you have to be able to reproduce it,

right? Um one of the other things too that these tests are designed to do is to weed out fakers,

right? We'll talk a lot more about the Minnesota Multi-phasic Personality Inventory.

Um which is one of the the big ones. Yes. probably the most taken personality test in the world.

Yeah. Um and it has a lot of built-in mechanisms and apparently is really good at detecting people who are faking

they're faking a mental illness or who are trying to pretend that they aren't suffering from a mental illness.

Yeah. It's really good at detecting that because it's so exhaustive and um using statistical analysis, if somebody's skewed really far one way or skewed really far the other, they're just immediately exposed as as gaming the test as best they can.

Yeah. And one way they do that, which is in its own way, its own little psychology experiment at least, is by telling you we have ways,

right? Like you will be rooted rooted out and we will know. Exactly. So they tell people that beforehand so you're more inclined to just be like, "All right, well, screw it. I'll tell the truth."

Right. Especially when they're sitting there like clearing the air out of a syringe.

That's creepy. It is. All right. So, let's get back to uh CPP and the MBTI, the uh consulting psychi psychologists press,

right? And the MyersBriggs uh we'll just keep calling it a test even though they say it's not a test.

It's a it's a type inventory. Yeah. Uh so we'll we'll just go ahead and break down the deal here. There are the object is to sort you into one of 16 different types personality types uh based on which side of four pairs or dichotoies that you're going to fall on. And those are um at the very base uh you're either introverted or extroverted like we said E or I.

Y uh sensing uh or intuition S and N. Um, and these words, they sound a little confusing, like what the heck does a sensing person mean?

Yeah. It means you like the big data and empirical data and a lot of information.

Right. Whereas intuition is like you just go with your gut. That's how you prefer to be.

Correct. Right. Uh then next we have thinking and feeling. Uh thinking being uh more focused on logic. Uh did I say logic

with a t? Sure. And objectivity. And then if you're feeling, you're going to be um more interested in in relationships and harmony among your group.

Those two are pretty straightforward. Yeah, I think so. Uh and then lastly, there's judging and perceiving. Those are that's a dichotomy. Judging is where you um you prefer schedules, you prefer um decisiveness. That's how you kind of approach life. Yeah. And perceiving is where you're just kind of like whatever. Yeah. I'm not too worried about it. Yeah.

Um, that's almost kind of like the difference between the type A and type B personalities,

which by the way was made up by a pair of cardiologists. Oh, really? Whose work was later secretly funded by the tobacco industry who were looking for anything to explain heart attacks besides smoking.

Uhhuh. So, they funded type A and type B personality research for years. Interesting.

Yeah, it really is. There's a um just as an aside, there's a really interesting price uh I think yeah price um article

on type A and type B. Yeah, just look it up. I don't remember the name. All right. Um so when you sit down to take one of these uh not tests with a series of questions that you answer,

I think they call them instruments by the way. Psychometric instruments, which are basically a series of questions on a piece of paper. Yeah, it sounds like a test.

Um, they will say things like, uh, Ed has some good examples here. When you go on a trip, do you want everything planned out in advance or would you rather just take each day as it comes and do whatever you feel like? Pretty straightforward kind of stuff,

right? Uh, and then they also have things like uh word pairs just to see literally what word you like better,

like uh compassion, foresight, like which word do you like better, carrots or fruit? Uh fruit.

Fruit. Yeah, this is prettier. It is. So, I'm looking back here. I just want to say so I think

you trying to figure out what you were. Yeah, I think ENFP maybe. I think that's what I was. We weren't in the same thing.

I don't remember. Yumi and I got the same thing. She found an old email, but she forgot to tell me what we were.

Oh, really? I I really I don't know. Problem is, would we still be the same today?

Yeah. And I think, if I'm not mistaken, didn't we have this up on a big board in the office for a while?

I think so. Yeah. That seems like a Jerry's nodding. That seems like a breach of protocol.

Sure. Like privacy. Yeah. Well, again, being forced at gunpoint to do it was just from the start.

I remember it was kind of fun. I had a fun day. Well, we'll talk about that as well.

Um, so it's going to cost you if you just do this as a single individual. Um, not meaning not married, but just a person. About 50 bucks. Um, although they should charge more if you're married. It's more complex test. Uh, about 50 bucks. If you want an hour of feedback, that'll cost you an extra hundred. And if you want a career report all typed up, uh, that'll be $16.95.

Yeah. And if you um, this is $1,500 for a on-site training class. Is that like what we had?

So, this is a this is not very well explained. If you want to administer the MyersBriggs personality or type inventory, yeah, you can get certified. It's 4-day training course.

Oh, okay. You pay $1,500 to $1,600. That's what you cannot legally administer this test or you're infringing on their copyrights. Unless you are certified by CPP to do this,

we should do it with one another on the air and risk a lawsuit. Well, yeah. Well, you probably got a suit already with that one question you asked out loud.

Which one? Oh, just the one. Yeah. When you go on a trip, do you want everything planned out in advance?

I just made that up. Oh, good job. Good job. I got that from uh Travel Velocity.

Nice. Okay. Yeah, that little gnome whispered it in your ear. That's right. But so you you uh would go and get certified and then now you can go around to businesses and say, "Hey, uh do you want to know more about your employees? You want to know who's good at what? let me come give uh the MyersBriggs type inventory to your your um employees and it'll be it'll be wonderful. Right? So that's how the whole process goes. You pay to become certified and then you go become something of an evangelist for the MyersBriggs test

and you sell the test. You basically become a salesman as well. It's a it's very interesting um dynamic that they have going.

That is it's a good word dynamic. um they want to point out that um the person taking the test is the expert. Um and they also use this metaphor of handedness, which I didn't fully understand. They say things like, uh it feels more comfortable to sign your name with your dominant hand, but technically you can sign with your non-dominant hand if you need to. Right?

I'm not sure what they're trying to prove there. They're trying to say that despite the MBTI pigeon holing you fully in one category or another rather than on a spectrum,

they're saying that category that it's pigeon holing you into is actually just your preference. It's not you specifically. It's just predisposition. Yeah, you tend to be an extrovert. But of course, everybody likes their own personal alone time. So yeah, you're going to be an introvert once in a while, but you're an extrovert more than than other times.

Yeah, cuz I can't sign my uh name with my left hand. That I didn't like that analogy because it literally I can barely hold a pen with my left hand. I'm seeing you're doing it right now.

Wow, that was pretty bad. If I tried to do it, it would look like a uh a three-year-old with arthritis has tried to like scribble it out. Mine Mine looks like Unum.

Unum. UDM. Um. Yeah. Um, it's my signature with my left hand. And they do they do try and point out like you said that. It's interesting because they box you in, but at the same time they're saying, but you know, like you said, it's just predisposition. And don't really think of it about you being this type of person even though you are an ENFB,

right? Like you said it was earlier it was almost numbered. I mean it is it's lettered,

right? It's just a different way of quantifying it. Yeah. But without numbers. All right. You want to take a break and then come back and and maybe do a little criticism?

Yeah. Okay. S Y L Y S K S K. You should know. All right, Chuck. Like I said, it's kind of a pastime in the United States to to tee off on the MyersBriggs type inventory.

Yeah. This is not us here. This is No, this is us talking about other people teeing off on it.

Yeah. It's widely been criticized over the years from um psychologists and uh well, amateur no nothings like us.

Sure. One of the big criticisms is that companies use this stuff um and hiring and firing and promoting. Um

but even the MyersBriggs people CPP say like don't do that. Well, I know but they say that but then don't go to an office and get hired by a corporation to administer it,

right? Or go sell your services, you know. Yeah. Yeah. Agreed. And that's part of the problem to me that is more um the corporation's fault.

Well, sure. Like if you have an HR person who's like diehard believer in the MBTI Yeah.

and will hire or fire somebody based on their MBTI type. Fire that person. Yeah.

Cuz you have a real dumb dumb on your hands. They're a DD and they should not be responsible for people's livelihoods.

Yeah. Even I don't think they would put it quite in those terms, but even the MyersBriggs people say like you shouldn't use this for hiring or firing.

And yet, yes, some people do. Some people swear by this. The impression that I have is that the MyersBriggs people tend to think of this as more like a team building exercise,

right? or or where like a a a certified MBTI administrator can come to your place, get all your employees together and they find out like all their personality types. And by the way, there's not a single negative personality type and all personality types are equal.

Sure. So, everybody gets a participant ribbon in the form of their personality type.

Yeah. And um but at the same time, and this seems to be the crux, at the same time, everybody's finding out like, "Oh, you're a little different than me and I'm a little different than you and we all have differences and different perspectives. So, let's celebrate that and let's respect one another's

differences." And there is the actual point from what I understand of the MyersBriggs type inventory and taking it in a corporate setting.

That's what stands out to me as what happened with us was right. I remember it kind of being a fun day and

Tootsie Rolls. Yeah, we all goofed off and had a good time and the person leading it, if they're good at what they do, which this person was, is always, you know, it's always kind of a fun person and uh cracking jokes and uh they don't take it too seriously, right?

None of us took it too seriously. Uh and we all had a good time and it did it was very much like a team building thing,

right? So, as long as there's like a wink wink nudge nudge kind of thing. Yeah. and that the people who take it actually take it seriously are taken off to the side by their HR rep to say like no this is a a little less serious than than you're taking it then it's fine but yes once you start deciding people's fate based on this

then you have real problems because as just about anybody will tell you the MyersBriggs type inventory is based at best on some shaky science if at all if you go back to the very beginning it's based on the theories of Carl Jung which have never been based on science. They were basically personal observations by Jung

and the psychology community has disavowed Jung in large part. So therefore anything based on his teachings and theories is is by proxy disavowed as well. But if that weren't enough, psychology as a field loves going after the MyersBriggs type inventory.

It just loves it as as totally baseless scientifically. All right. So, we've got um shouldn't use it to hire and fire in corporations or or give promotions, right?

We have not based on real science uh and science and scientific data, right? Um these four dichotoies are problematic in and of themsel because everyone is on a spectrum. You can't say like, you know, you answered these 10 questions so you're either this or you're that,

right? Um, and when one of the rebuttals, uh, cuz I think Ed interviewed someone from CPP, right?

Yeah. Um, one of the rebuttals about being a nonre repeatable, um, experiment of sorts is like, hey, yesterday I was an ENFP and today I'm this. They'll say, well, you know what? But if you had different answers, that means you were sort of on the cusp, right there in that center line

on some of these questions, and you might have just leapt over to that other side, which means you're basically kind of down the center, yet they don't have a categorization for down the center.

Yeah. Because depending on, as Ed puts it, you could answer uh all 24 questions on the feeling side. Yeah. and you're going to get the same result as somebody who answered 11 questions for thinking and 13 questions for feeling, right?

Same thing. You're still both an an F in that respect. And I saw elsewhere it put like if the MyersBriggs test um measured height, you would either be tall or short.

Yeah. You could say, "Well, actually, I'm right there in the middle." And they'd be like, "Well, that's short,

right?" Or for you, it's short. For the guy who who is the same exact height, they're tall,

right? And trust me, nobody that's 5'10 likes to be considered short, right? I can say that from experience

because you're not you're in you're average. I'm average, right? I like being average.

The the the fact that there isn't a spectrum is one thing that really makes it in stark contrast of of other much more widely accepted psychometric instruments.

For sure. Um, Ed also points out to the Grabster that they're uh the construction of the um instrument itself is problematic. Uh because one, like we talked about, it's self-reporting. Anytime you're self-reporting, there's going to be some weird bias in there.

Sure. Just almost impossible to avoid 100%. That's right. And the other one is that um he says a couple of these dichotomies are uh entangled, which I never really thought about that, but that's a pretty good point. Yeah.

So, um, judging perceiving scale are correlated with answers on the sensing intuition scale. And if you like those should be separated out for sure.

For sure. I don't know why they don't. I don't either, you know, because they've really put a lot of work into this.

Yeah. Um, I mean, it's not baked in stone from the the 1940s and 50s and 60s, is it?

No, it's not. And even while they were creating it was an ongoing exhaustive process that um Mrs. Briggs and Mrs. Meyers um engaged in.

Yeah. We don't want to give they spent decades on this. Yes. It wasn't like something they threw together.

No. The problem is is they they did it backwards. They came up with the personality types and then set about right

creating the test that would detect these personality types rather than going out and testing people seeing what personality types emerged and then figuring out a test to find that in other people. They did it backwards. That's a good point. It was based on Jung,

but it was not for lack of trying. Like as a matter of fact, one of the first things they did after they they started to really establish the test was they they managed to administer it to like 5,000 George Washington University medical students and they they took those results and track the students to see what fields of medicine they went in. They like really worked on this. I read an article in the Washington Post where um this I think Isabelle uh Meyers's son um remembers their vacations were basically like factf finding um missions all around the country

like they would go administer tests like everything was about this test and they worked on it for decades. So yeah, the problem is it was just it's just not based on science. They didn't follow the scientific method.

Yeah. So sc so science kind of poo poos the MBTI. But wait, wait, wait, get back here because a lot of these criticisms fall just as easily on every other psychometric test around. Well, yeah, and that's one of the things that um I can't remember who was interviewed in here, but um in one of those other articles you sent, one of the um Meyers or I don't know if it was or maybe it was a ROS defender,

right? Um said, you know, like everyone Yeah, it was Rorchack. Like everyone's always picking on Rorchack, right?

When all of these psychological tests are, you know, subject to criticism, they are. You know,

I think it's really easy for Ro to tee off on Rorchack as well because I mean, we're talking ink plots, man. It is the epitome of subjective self-reporting. You're saying I uh let's see in this one I see mom's boobs.

Uh yeah, mom's boobs in that one, too. Dad's boobs. Right. Exactly. So, and then from that, it was strictly up to uh initially Rorchack, who I think came up with this test in 1915, 1917. What's his name? Herman.

Uh I think so. He's a Swiss psychiatrist. Herman Rochek. It was it was initially up to him and then later on his followers to interpret this which is basically like interpreting dreams.

Yeah. And um so subjective. Totally subjective from beginning to end. And then in I think 1975, a guy at Bowling Green State University, uh, which is right outside of Toledo, um, came up with this a really exhaustive interpretive test that sought to quantify Roarshack answers.

Yeah. John Xner. Yeah. Uh, and it was a test called the comprehensive system. Uh, 140 components. And in this article you sent, they said that Rorchack was probably going away um had it not been for Exner's accompanyment um with this other process.

Right. And even today, he's got an institute in Asheville that's dedicated to the Roshchack test. Right. So, one thing I've noticed from researching this is each of these personality inventories has like its adherence and its detractors. Yeah. And just judging from the outside, it looks a lot like cults. Yeah. Gathered around their various idols, right? There's like the original figurehead who came up with it and everybody worships them and he's attacked by these other followers who have a very similar figurehead who came up with something very similar, but it's just different enough that that there's a huge chasm between the two and there's a lot of dogma surrounding it. But the uh the Rorchack test in particular is apparently well known to give wildly inaccurate results.

I took one today. Did you? Online. How'd you do? Uh I got two out of 10, which means um I was only two two away, whatever that means, from being labeled like a psychotic.

So yeah, there was a you get four out of 10. I think there's a Oh, really? I think that's what it said. Yeah.

Oh, that's close. I mean, this is an online uh test. I don't know if it's like how true it was to the original.

I got you. Or maybe the original. Who knows? Could be. And then they have a algorithm that runs the uh analysis.

I kept seeing all kinds of things when I looked at it. And I've never done an inkplot test. I would say, "Oh, that looks like a bat." And then I was like, "No, it's like two bunnies." And then no, it looks like a cool Martyra mask.

Did they Did they move to you? Did you see colors? Well, some of them were colored.

Oh, okay. Most of them were black and they had a the one I took had a had a one and a two like um what do you see and what's like a secondary thing that you see,

right? So, you know, supposedly people who are supporters of the Roshack test say no man there's we don't know how it's working but if you see movement in the Roarshack ink blotss it's suggestive of depression or something like that. And they say statistically it's correlated, but like I was saying, it's also notorious for giving incorrect results.

Yeah. Like saying you're you have a mental illness, right? Okay. So, there was this study in 2000 that was given to like 100 mentally sound elementary school kids.

Yeah. And some like high percentage of them came back as borderline psychotic because of the Roarshack test. Right. And it's hilarious to hear stories like that. Like I'm laughing inside right now, but um the problem is is you were at the very least being labeled as psychotic.

Sure. Not a label you want in society. No. And it was because of this ink blot test that's 100 years old.

Yeah. And then secondly, these tests are also being submitted and accepted as evidence in criminal trials.

That's the biggest part. Child custody cases. Yeah. I mean, they're still given real weight and like

lives are changed and ruined based on looking at a 100-y old ink blot. Yes. And a person's subjective analysis of that.

That's not okay. No. This um Howard Garb in this one article you sent, he's a co-author of what's wrong with the Roarshack and he is head of psych or at least at the time of this article, he may still be head of psychological testing for the Air Force. uh he said that even with Exner's comprehensive system, he said only 10% of his system uh even meets the most basic scientific standards and um

they did uh they examined data of over 30 different rorch studies and he said they all have a tendency to label healthy people mentally ill.

Right. And if you're trying to get custody of your kid or if you are on trial as a criminal like it's just

that's the last thing you need. Yeah. is somebody's subjective opinion of is it a bunny or is it a bat?

Oh, he said a bat. Take that kid. You know, quick kids like I like bunnies. The uh the um another one that that we have to talk about is the MMPI now the MMPI-2. I think as of 2012 they revised it dramatically.

Yeah. Does this one is that right? It has over 500 questions. Yeah. Wow. Some of them originally were about like your bowel movements. Okay.

Um really nutoo questions that supposedly really got to the heart of whether you were mentally disturbed or not. Right.

Yes. And it was created at the University of Minnesota in the ' 40s by a psychiatrist and a nur neurologist I believe. And they hit upon a pretty clever idea. They said, "We're not going to interpret the results, right, and say, you know, oh, this person said that they do feel like smashing something sometimes." Yeah. And that means this. Instead, we're going to come up with this test of like 504 questions, and we're going to give it to

the patient or the family and staff of a mental hospital who we're sure are sane. and we're going to take their answers and they're going to become our control group, our baseline. Yeah.

So then anybody who takes this test, we're going to compare the test takers answers to the same control group's answers. And you know, depending on how it relates to the same control group, they're either mentally ill or not.

You better have gotten that control group right. Well, that's the thing to begin with. So, a group of like family and friends in Minnesota is the picture of sanity throughout the world is the basis of this test. That's a huge problem with it to begin with.

Yeah. But apparently a lot of people say like no, it it really has it does a pretty good job of sussing sussing out mental illness.

Yeah. Um it's also really good at detecting faker faking one way or the other. Yeah. Um, but it's it's too invasive and when companies use it for hiring and firing, it's way too invasive. And apparently lawsuits have been filed against companies for using it.

Well, I think that um most people are far more um troubled than they ever let on in life.

Sure. And um part of success in life comes down to how good you are at um covering that up or hiding it or dealing with it and processing it

coming to terms with it. Um it's just to find a a core group that are quote unquote sane normal people,

right? Um it's just you're starting off with a a problem if you ask me. a faulty premise right?

Yeah. It just there's no way like everyone has their issues, their deep dark uh things at their brain that they don't want anyone to know. Sometimes even the people closest to them don't even know.

Yeah. And actually, you you're in agreement with this a sociologist named William White who criticized the MMPI as a a tool that helped to create and perpetuate the oppressive group think of mid-century organization. man.

Yeah. Where it's basically like here is what we think is normal. Anything outside of that is abnormal. We're not going to hire you because you don't fit into this picture of normaly which is basically white crew cut Minnesota.

Yeah. From the 40s, right? That's the picture of normaly. That's highly debatable.

Uh the other thing I thought was interesting is a lot of skeptics and critics point to things like the MBTI and saying this is just like astrology.

Yeah. is really no different than reading your horoscope because it's all positive psychology um at the end of a of a MyersBriggs um non- test. No one walks away feeling bad usually. It's all sort of positive wording and like like this is what you are. You're just this. So kind of don't worry about it. The same way you read your horoscope in in a given day. I mean, how many horoscopes say like, um, today you you will be prone to depression and wonder what it's all about,

right? Maybe you should work on your core character because people don't like being around you that much. You don't hear that kind of stuff.

No. But that taps into what's called the forer effect. F O R E R. Um, there was a psychiatrist named Bertram Forer.

I thought this was so interesting. He he Well, take it. It's pretty interesting stuff. Well, I mean, basically, didn't he give the same He had people take these tests and then gave all of the people the exact same assessment,

right? But telling everyone it was tailored for them, their own personality assessment.

And I think the people who just thought it was favorable were like, "This is great."

Well, it was favorable. He actually called it from Daily Horoscopes. Well, yeah, but what were they responding positively to?

Well, they it was whether or not they wanted to feel that way about themselves.

No, they were it was a positive assessment. There was nothing negative in there. So it was all positive stuff like you have a lot of unused potential that kind of stuff people stuff people wanted to identify with. So the more flattering it was the more likely the people were to say this is an accurate assessment of me.

Oh okay. So despite the fact that it was the same one given to the entire class he took their answers and threw them out and said here's your assessment. It's the same one for everybody.

It got like an 85% accuracy from the class as a whole. Well that's what I wondered. It was about the 15%. Were those people just super honest? maybe

and like no this I'm really no people actually don't like being around me. I'm using all of my potential and they still don't like me.

Yeah, that's what I couldn't figure out. But I guess that makes sense. There are people out there that are

I think I would be one of those that would be like this isn't right. Yeah, I'm not like that.

Sure. You got anything else? I think not. This is a good one. We've been we've been wanting to do this for a while. So

yeah, this is a special request by me and others. Uh, if you want to know more about personality tests, well, you can go take them online. They're kind of huge right now. Uh, find out what kind of um hobbit you are. I don't know

what box do you live in. Yeah. Uh, and in the meantime, you can type personality test in the search bar, houseofworks.com. And since I said that, it's time for listener mail. The only thing that should live in a box is uh temporary housing for a pet frog.

That's not bad. Or the stuff you find in a a tree hole that Boo Radley left for you.

Yeah, that can live in a box. Uh, hey guys. Feel compelled to write you today to tell you how grateful I am for your show. Uh, and praise your good work. Um, recently became a listener and I'm working my way through the entire archive. I think a lot of folks might be able to relate to this. Until recently, I found out I found it really hard to relax and suffer with anxiety. Two months ago, I read an article basically pointing out how our obsession with being productive and associated guilt is a modern phenomenon. Um, I think that for sure, you know.

Yep. Uh although I had heard this before, something really clicked in my head. So, I decided to abandon guilt and embrace relaxation, taking control of my own stress levels. You guys have been a big part of this. Uh, I have taken the time to slowly potter around my flat, go for walks while listening and learning to your fascinating podcast, and they've lifted my mood. I feel mentally healthier than I ever have before.

Nice. Uh, although the content of what you discuss might not always be positive, the way in which you explain them, and your own views personally revive my hope in humanity.

That is ridiculously flattering. Isn't that nice? Yeah. Uh, I guess I should also mention that a big part of my tackling anxiety uh levels has been to abandon watching television

and fistfuls of psychotropic drugs. I would be really interested to know if there's been any research conducted into the effect TV has upon our lives. Oh, I'm sure there has been.

Sure. Uh, I haven't owned a TV for many years, but my partner has since subscribed to an online provider. And I realize how watching TV has not helped my anxiety. I also remember reading that after TV's became mainstream in Bhutan, their crime rate went up something like 700%. Might prove an interesting topic for a future show.

Yeah. Uh anyway, sincerely grateful. Keep it up. I am now recommending your shows to as many people as I can. Big love from the UK. Mac,

thanks a lot, Mac. That was great. We hear from a lot of people actually who say that we help them with their anxiety. No idea how, but it doesn't matter. So, thank you.

Yep. Yeah. Uh, if you want to get in touch with us like Mac did, you can send us an email to stuffodcast@ iheartradio.com. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts, iMheart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Questions about this episode

Who speaks in "Selects: How Personality Tests Work | STUFF YOU SHOULD KNOW"?

Josh Clark (Host), Charles W. "Chuck" Bryant (Host), Jerry (Guest), Ed Grabianowski (Guest), Mac (Guest).

What is "Selects: How Personality Tests Work | STUFF YOU SHOULD KNOW" about?

The discussion focuses on the fundamentally flawed nature of personality tests, highlighting that many, if not all, lack scientific validity and can mislead individuals in serious contexts such as mental health diagnoses and employment decisions. The episode touches on popular tests like the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, emphasizing the potential negative implications of their misuse.

What is mentioned in this Stuff You Should Know episode?

98 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including personality tests, MyersBriggs type inventory, Big Five, mental illness, Minnesota, Grabster. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "Selects: How Personality Tests Work | STUFF YOU SHOULD KNOW"?

The episode runs 57 min; the transcript is about 10,398 words in 288 timestamped sections.

More from Stuff You Should Know

About this transcript: the episode's spoken words as captioned on YouTube, split into timestamped sections. Reclip.Me locates every person, work and idea in the text, keeps the time it is first named, and quotes the words around it verbatim. Last updated December 14, 2025.