At my first corporate job, a laminated MBTI badge hung from my lanyard like a digital passport: INFP — idealistic, intuitive, emotionally attuned. I was 22, fresh out of college, and oddly relieved to have a label. It made me feel less invisible. Like someone had cracked me open and sorted the contents into a neat little drawer marked “dreamy but good in crises.”
Every new hire took the test. It was practically onboarding gospel. At our first retreat, someone joked, “You can’t sit with us unless you’re an E.” I laughed, but filed it away. I learned to work around the extroverts, apologize for my “P-ness,” and treat my four-letter code like a personality résumé. We all did.
Years later, I’ve come to see the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) not as a revelation, but a religion — one built on the illusion of self-knowledge, dangerously easy to worship.
There’s something undeniably comforting about MBTI. With 16 unique types distilled from four dichotomies (Introvert/Extrovert, Sensing/Intuition, Thinking/Feeling, Judging/Perceiving), it offers the promise of clarity — a way to “know yourself” and navigate others.
It’s a system that fits neatly into dinner party conversations, dating app bios, LinkedIn profiles. No wonder it’s endured since the 1940s, when Katharine Cook Briggs and her daughter Isabel Briggs Myers, both amateur theorists, adapted Carl Jung’s ideas into a formal test.
But here’s the catch: it’s not really science.
“There’s very little evidence that MBTI is a valid or reliable measure of personality,” says Adam Grant, organizational psychologist at the Wharton School. “Most research finds that the test lacks predictive power, and up to 75% of people get different results when they retake it.”
The test’s binary structure — you're either an introvert or an extrovert — doesn’t reflect what we know about personality, which tends to exist on spectrums, not switches. It also ignores context. You might be a “J” at work, but a “P” on vacation. So, which one are you? Both. Neither. It depends.
MBTI is not inherently dangerous. The harm creeps in when we use the label as a verdict, not a lens. When a system built to promote self-reflection becomes shorthand for permanence.
At a former job, a manager once described a struggling coworker as “too much of an ISFJ to handle pressure.” No follow-up. No plan. Just a diagnosis disguised as empathy.
We see it in relationships too. People justify emotional avoidance with “Well, I’m a Thinker — I don’t do feelings.” MBTI becomes a kind of psychological astrology: more about excusing patterns than evolving them.
There’s also the subtle trap of internalization. When you believe your type defines you, you begin to perform it. I’ve held back from asking for help because I thought, “An INFP would figure this out alone.” What started as insight hardened into identity.
It’s no accident that personality tests — not just MBTI, but Enneagram, DISC, StrengthsFinder — have boomed over the last decade.
In a world of algorithmic identity and career instability, MBTI offers a kind of psychological anchor. It whispers: You are this. Others are that. Here’s how to relate. That’s a powerful promise in a fragmented world.
“People are drawn to typologies because they give us stories about ourselves,” says Merve Emre, author of The Personality Brokers. “They make identity feel legible, even if the science behind them is weak.”
To its credit, MBTI invites introspection. It gives language to the way we move through the world. I’ve seen it spark empathy — helping people realize not everyone processes life the same way. That’s valuable.
But here’s what it doesn’t give us:
Psychologists now favor models like the Big Five (openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, neuroticism) — a framework grounded in decades of research and nuance. No acronym, but a better reflection of how we actually work: fluid, contextual, layered.
Treat them like you would any other label: lightly.
Use your type to spark questions, not seal answers. Let it be a mirror, not a mask. Notice the moments when you’re “out of character.” Maybe that’s where growth lives.
Above all, remember: the real work of knowing yourself doesn’t come from a quiz. It comes from life — from discomfort, from contradiction, from becoming someone your 22-year-old self couldn’t have typed.
I’m still an INFP on paper. But some days I’m direct and impatient. Some days I love a spreadsheet. Some days I crave people. Some days I hide.
The point isn’t to contradict the label. The point is to outgrow it.
Personality isn’t a puzzle to solve. It’s a landscape to wander — shifting, surprising, complex.
And maybe that’s the most honest self-definition of all.
