The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) assessment is a psychometric questionnaire designed to measure psychological preferences in how people perceive the world and make decisions. These preferences were extrapolated from the typological theories proposed by Carl Gustav Jung and first published in his 1921 book Psychological Types (English edition, 1923).
The original developers of the personality inventory were Katharine Cook Briggs and her daughter, Isabel Briggs Myers. They began creating the indicator during World War II, believing that a knowledge of personality preferences would help women who were entering the industrial workforce for the first time to identify the sort of war-time jobs where they would be “most comfortable and effective”. The initial questionnaire grew into the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, which was first published in 1962. The MBTI focuses on normal populations and emphasizes the value of naturally occurring differences.
CPP Inc., the publisher of the MBTI instrument, calls it “the world’s most widely used personality assessment”, with as many as two million assessments administered annually. The CPP and other proponents state that the indicator meets or exceeds the reliability of other psychological instruments and cite reports of individual behavior. Some studies have found strong support for construct validity, internal consistency, and test-retest reliability, although variation was observed.
However, some academic psychologists have criticized the MBTI instrument, claiming that it “lacks convincing validity data”. Some studies have shown the statistical validity and reliability to be low. The use of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator as a predictor of job success has not been supported in studies, and its use for this purpose is expressly discouraged in the Manual.
The registered trademark rights to the terms Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and MBTI have been assigned from the publisher to the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator Trust.