Neuroscience of Personality | Dario Nardi | Talks at Google

…oned psychology. It could still be highly inaccurate, but it is unusually consistent (once you accept that the tests for it are generally terrible). 1 Here are some good resources on their basic definitions: link link 2 This talk goes into some detail about how specific brain patterns seem to correlate with the Jungian cognitive functions: link to this video…

Since there's bound to be some discussion about MBTI's validity now that you brought it up, I'd like to point out that there's some interesting research emerging that seems to reliably correlate MBTI type with observed brain activity patterns: link to this video link link

Background Many of us must have come across personality theories like MBTI which use part of Carl Jung's concepts to make a theoretical system used to divide people into types . For example, MBTI says that if the person is not neurotic or something like that, then he/she must fall into one among the 16 personality types that have been defined. Over simplification of the MBTI over the Internet has made the base of this theory unknown to many people, but talking about that in this question helps nobody. MBTI as taken by psychologists, seems to be centered more around the concept of Functions more than the four letter model. Typing a person is done generally after recognizing their Dominant…

tl;dr - The issue of the MBTI and psychometrics in general is nuanced, and strongly held opinions of either pseudoscience, or devoted metaphysical truthiness, are equally problematic. The MBTI test as it currently stands, deserves the reputation as flawed empirical instrument, yet at the same time it's utility is undeniable. Unlike horoscopes, individual descriptions do differ rather significantly. The biggest issue in my view is not a fundamental one, but rather a flawed set of assumptions. The principle being that the test taker, possesses intimate self knowledge and presents an accurate and unchanging self portrait. In addition to the wonderful qualities humans have, there remains a numbe…

The tests are wildly inaccurate, and MBTI itself is not the full story of cognition and personality, but I think there is enough evidence suggesting that the cognitive functions as described by Jung0 are very real. The article you linked to uses lack of MBTI in psychology journals as an argument against its validity, but its applications in the field are very limited. You're more likely to find MBTI references in neuroscience journals as there are appears to be clear correlations between type preferences and brain activity patterns1. Even so, knowledge of a persons cognitive preferences just isn't very useful. So the main application of MBTI is indeed "just for fun". 0: link 1: link to this video