I've often wondered about this, because I can't see how simple categorisation across 4 axis can be either scientific or unscientific. It's just categorisation, it doesn't make predictions.
I enjoy reading the different type descriptions, unlike horoscopes (which are basically barnum phrases) they do seem to describe me with a high degree of accuracy.
Then again, I stopped at this point, and never dived deeper into all that Jungian shadow self stuff which I fully accept started to sound like pseudo-scientific drivel.
>It's just categorisation, it doesn't make predictions.
If it doesn't make predictions, it isn't science.
The Big Five model of personality is reasonably scientific, because it has some predictive power. If you give someone a standardised test to measure their Big Five traits, you can make better-than-chance predictions about their behaviour in the real world. If they're high on openness to experience, they're more likely to vote Democrat. If they're low on agreeableness and conscientiousness, they're more likely to have a criminal record. The MBTI has a tiny little bit of predictive power, but it's grossly inferior to most psychometric instruments with similar aims.
IMO the biggest problem with the MBTI is that it presupposes false dichotomies. Most psychological traits are approximately normally distributed, with most people being somewhere near the average. It makes no sense to categorise people as either "Thinking" or "Feeling" while excluding the middle. Knowing that someone is ESTJ or ISFP tells me almost nothing about them; they might be almost completely average on every domain, or they might be extreme on one of them. This false dichotomy also gives the MBTI very poor reliability - someone who is very slightly above average on extraversion might be slightly below average next week or next month.
> If it doesn't make predictions, it isn't science.
This was kind of my point, if it's not science, criticising it as unscientific doesn't seem to be a particularly meaningful activity.
One has to consider how MBTI is used by people in the real world, I've come across two scenarios in my own life:
1) A business does it during some form of team day or off-site. The main purpose is to highlight that people think/operate in different ways and have different value, and an effective team is sensitive to this and works within it rather than trying to fight it. My comment is that the _specifics_ are kind of irrelevant, as long as the message that people are different is communicated effectively.
2) People use it in their personal lives as a form of reassurance, they've found something that they feel describes themselves and perhaps is useful in explaining themselves to others. This won't happen for the people who are close to the centre of the various axis, because they'll feel that more than one of the "types" could apply to them. But for the people who are closer to the extremes (like myself) find them to be rather accurate. And we're the people who'll find value in it. So my comment here is simply that if someone thinks their MBTI type is meaningful, it probably is -- because for the purposes they care about (how do I explain myself to others, or similar), it actually is pretty helpful.
I enjoy reading the different type descriptions, unlike horoscopes (which are basically barnum phrases) they do seem to describe me with a high degree of accuracy.
Then again, I stopped at this point, and never dived deeper into all that Jungian shadow self stuff which I fully accept started to sound like pseudo-scientific drivel.