MBTI and Self-Validation and Demand Characteristics
Harrison Snow wrote:
> Hey Guys,
> Just a reminder that we are talking about an
> “indicator” around “preferences”…..
> MBTI is not the voice of Destiny and the mother-
> daughter team Myers and Briggs along with Carl Jung
> never claimed that it should be used with that kind of authority. It
> is always up to the individual to validate his or her own preferences
> keeping in mind this is not about strengths or skills or abilities but
> only about how a person prefers to do things.
That’s the theory…the stock line if you will. The question that might be of interest is whether it’s actually true in how people really give, take, and interpret the results.
And whether the instrument can provide results that seem accurate but are not, despite the possiblity that people may “validate them”.
After all, there are hundreds of thousands of people who validate the accuracy of horoscopes every single day. That doesnt’ mean the horoscopes are scientific, valid, or anything accept they sound reasonable.
In fact there are some psychological factors that tend to influence people to accept the results of such instruments at a level way above what the results warrant.
There are often demand characteristics going on in the environment, and the implicit effects of something that purports to be scientific. Both of these factors are well recognized and researched in psychology as possible contaminants of people’s reactions.
There are other issues also why self-validation may be misleading, and actually result in buying into a set of descriptions which may not be accurate at all.