Selects: How Personality Tests Work

Summary

Podcast Summary: "Selects: How Personality Tests Work"

Podcast: Stuff You Should Know (iHeartPodcasts)
Hosts: Josh Clark & Charles W. "Chuck" Bryant
Air Date: November 15, 2025
Episode Theme:
An accessible yet critical deep dive into the world of personality tests—past, present, and (problematic) future. Josh and Chuck dissect the popularity, origins, and scientific merits (or lack thereof) of personality testing, with emphasis on the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), the "Big Five," and other notable instruments.

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Main Theme & Purpose

The episode demystifies the world of personality tests, exposing the surprisingly unscientific roots and misuse of widely accepted instruments like the MBTI. The hosts explore:

• The historical and psychological evolution of categorizing human personalities
• The functions (and failures) of popular personality tests in workplaces and clinical settings
• Critical perspectives from psychologists and their skepticism toward these instruments
• Why we continue to love these quizzes even if they don’t hold up scientifically

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Breakdown of Key Discussion Points

1. Personality Testing: Ancient Roots to Modern Mania

• [06:25] Attempts to categorize personality date back to ancient Greece's "four humors" (black bile, yellow bile, phlegm, blood), each linked to temperament (melancholy, phlegmatic, sanguine, choleric).
• [08:54] Critique: Real people are complex—everyone displays traits from all categories, sometimes in a single day.
  • Josh: "The human personality is just too complex, too squishy, too jelly-like to be boxed into one thing like that." (09:37)

2. Carl Jung: The Godfather of Types

• [10:08] Carl Jung’s 1921 "Psychological Types" posited basic structures: sensation, intuition, thinking, and feeling—each modified by introversion or extraversion.
• [12:27] Jung’s influence set the stage for personality tests, albeit from armchair theorizing, not empirical study.
  • Chuck: "It wasn't like he had all this research and all this data … he was a deep thinker and he sat around and thought of these things." (12:58)

3. Birth of Myers-Briggs (MBTI)

• [15:46] Katherine Cook Briggs and daughter Isabel Briggs Myers drew directly from Jung, adapting and modifying his ideas to create the MBTI—initially to help guide post-WWII women entering the workforce.
• [17:09] MBTI’s corporate spread began in the 1970s after rights shifted to CPP (Consulting Psychologists Press).

4. Types of Personality Tests: Projective vs. Objective

• [21:23] "Projective" tests (e.g., Rorschach) ask for subjective interpretations; "Objective" tests (e.g., MBTI, Big Five) are standardized but still rely on subjective input.
  • Josh: "Ultimately that objective name is a bit of a misnomer because on the end of it, it's still interpreted by a person, which therefore makes it subjective." (22:10)

5. The Big Five: Psychology’s Preferred Model

• [22:28] Most psychologists prefer the "Big Five" traits: extraversion, agreeableness, openness, conscientiousness, neuroticism.
• [24:41] Big Five aren't the full picture; they're a sketch of a person, not a total assessment.

6. The MBTI: Mechanics and Ubiquity

• [30:54] MBTI sorts you into 1 of 16 types via four dichotomies:
  • Introversion/Extraversion
  • Sensing/Intuition
  • Thinking/Feeling
  • Judging/Perceiving
• [33:13] Test consists of either/or questions and word pair choices.
• [35:17] Administering MBTI requires paid certification; ties test to a business model.

7. Critique Roundtable: MBTI and Its Peers

• Major MBTI Criticisms

  • [41:58] Widely used in hiring, firing, and promotion—even though its creators say it shouldn't be.
    • Josh: "If you have an HR person who's like, die hard believer in the MBTI and will hire or fire somebody based on their MBTI type, fire that person because you have a real dumb, dumb on your hands." (43:11)
  • [45:49] Based on Jung's armchair ideas, not empirical data; modern psychology largely disavows his theories.
  • [46:18] MBTI dichotomies are too rigid—real people live on spectra, not in boxes.
    • Josh: "If the Myers-Briggs test measured height, you would either be tall or short … You could say, 'Well, actually I'm right there in the middle.' And they'd be like, 'Well, that's short.'" (47:07)
  • [49:00] The MBTI was developed backwards: types first, then test to slot people into them; not grounded in observed data.

• Self-Reporting & Bias

  • [48:06] All personality tests are affected by inherent bias when people describe themselves.

• Comparisons with Other Tests

  • [50:44] Rorschach and MMPI are also problematic; notorious for subjective interpretation and labeling healthy people as mentally ill.
    • Chuck: "That's the last thing you need, is somebody's subjective opinion of, is it a bunny or is it a bat?" (55:05)
  • MMPI relies on a control group of “sane” people—whose definition of sanity was very much 1940s Minnesota.

• Forer Effect & Astrology Parallel

  • [60:21] Positive, flattering test feedback feels accurate—same trick used in astrology.
    • Josh: "Despite the fact that it was the same one given to the entire class, he took their answers and threw them out and said, here's your assessment. Same one for everybody." (61:22)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "(Talking about MBTI at work) Like privacy... Well, again, being forced at gunpoint to do it was just from the start." — Josh (34:24)
• "The human personality is just too complex, too squishy, too jelly-like to be boxed into one thing like that." — Josh (09:37)
• “If you have an HR person who's like, die hard believer in the MBTI and will hire or fire somebody based on their MBTI type, fire that person because you have a real dumb, dumb on your hands." — Josh (43:11)
• "If the Myers-Briggs test measured height, you would either be tall or short … You could say, 'Well, actually I’m right there in the middle.' And they'd be like, 'Well, that's short.'" — Josh (47:07)
• "It's a good word—dynamic. They want to point out that the person taking the test is the expert." — Chuck (36:23)
• "Despite the fact that it was the same one given to the entire class, he took their answers and threw them out and said, here's your assessment. Same one for everybody." — Josh (61:22)

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Memorable Segments & Timestamps

| Timestamp | Segment/Event | Summary | |-----------|-----------------------------------------|------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 06:25 | Four Humors | How Greeks categorized personality, early foundations of "types" | | 10:08 | Carl Jung introduction | How Jung’s theories provide basis for MBTI and other systems | | 15:46 | Briggs & Myers Introduction | How they devised MBTI for women entering workforce post-WWII | | 22:28 | Psychologists’ preference: The Big Five | "Legit" psychometrics vs. pop-psychology favorites | | 30:54 | MBTI Structure | MBTI’s dichotomies, mechanics, and the “not a test” controversy | | 41:58 | Criticism starts | Major critiques: use in hiring/firing, shaky science, all-positive feedback | | 47:07 | Spectra not boxes | MBTI’s problem with gray areas—everyone is “tall or short” | | 55:05 | Legal and life consequences | How Rorschach and MMPI results can seriously (and wrongly) affect lives | | 60:21 | Forer effect | Why tests feel “accurate” (because everybody likes flattery, even if generic) |

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Overall Tone & Style

Josh and Chuck keep it conversational and humorous ("P stands for Pisces, right? Or Pooper." — 03:30), blending pop-culture references and asides with approachable skepticism toward the topic. The episode is packed with historical trivia, personal anecdotes (including their own Myers-Briggs experience at work), but always circles back to the scientific reality (or lack thereof) behind popular psychology fads.

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Conclusion/Takeaway

Personality tests—especially the MBTI—are fun, occasionally helpful for opening conversations or personal reflection, but are not scientifically rigorous and should not be used for serious life decisions like hiring, firing, or diagnostics. The psychology field generally prefers the spectrum-based “Big Five” to rigid typologies, but all personality inventories have pitfalls rooted in human complexity and self-reporting bias.

“Don't box me in.” — Chuck (28:18)

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For Listeners Who Haven’t Tuned In

If you’ve ever taken an MBTI test at work, wondered about your “type,” or been labeled “too neurotic” by a Big Five quiz, this episode will arm you with historical context, a skeptical eye, and a chuckle at how much of personality science is more personality than science.

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End of Summary

Transcript

[Josh Clark]

This is an iHeart podcast.

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[Narrator/Promo Voice]

With a rare autoimmune condition comes with challenges but also incredible strength, especially for those living with conditions like myasthenia gravis or mg and chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy, otherwise known as cidp, for finding empowerment in the community is critical. Untold Stories Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, a Ruby Studio production in partnership with Argenics, explores people discovering strength in the most unexpected places. Listen to Untold Stories on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The universe is full of mysteries. Black holes, quantum physics, galaxies. On TikTok, millions of people are learning more about the universe around them every day. Scientists break down complex theories, demonstrate experiments, and connect dots between the cosmos and our daily lives. One scroll might reveal the concepts on the fabric of spacetime. The next, an optical illusion. Its discovery on a massive scale where millions learn something new every day. Hey everybody, it's me, Josh. And for this week's select, I've chosen our August 2017 episode of On Personality Tests. It turns out that the vast majority of them, maybe all of them, are scientifically faulty to at least some degree. And some of them are just outright made up. This can be a real problem if they're being used to diagnose you with a mental illness or hire or fire you or put you in jail.

[Josh Clark]

And that actually happens.

[Narrator/Promo Voice]

So dig into this deceptively interesting episode and enjoy it. And I'm an enfp, by the way.

[Podcast Announcer]

Welcome to Stuff youf Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

[Josh Clark]

Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry over there. And this is stuff you should Know.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, just a couple of it.

[Josh Clark]

J Ss I don't remember what I am. We've taken it before. How stuff works. Hosted it years back. Do you remember?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. We had, like many companies do, as you'll see. We had. When we were under Discovery's tender wing, they paid for someone to come to our office and administer the Myers Briggs Personality Test.

[Josh Clark]

At gunpoint.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I don't remember, but I'm pretty sure I was an enfp.

[Josh Clark]

I. I don't remember what I was. I'll. I'll probably say, like three different things as we go through this one.

[Chuck Bryant]

Like just looking at it again, I'm pretty sure I was an enfp.

[Josh Clark]

Okay.

[Chuck Bryant]

P stands for Pisces. Right.

[Josh Clark]

Or pooper.

[Narrator/Promo Voice]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Let's see. Extroverted Intuitive.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay.

[Josh Clark]

What does the F stand for? Feeling pooper.

[Chuck Bryant]

This is a spoiler. Yeah. Feeling pooper.

[Josh Clark]

So we're. What we're talking about, it sounds like we're saying strings of letters. They actually do make sense if you're familiar with what Chuck just said. The Myers Briggs Type Inventory, which if you are in corporate America and have been a part of corporate America for more than probably three years, there's probably a pretty good likelihood that you've taken the Myers Briggs Type Inventory.

[Chuck Bryant]

For sure.

[Josh Clark]

Like, it's really widespread.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. People love it.

[Josh Clark]

I saw something like 13% of companies in America use it. That's a lot.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Was it 89 of the Fortune 100 use it.

[Josh Clark]

Right. And then I saw another stat, it was from 2001, though, so I'm not sure how current it is.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, 16 years old.

[Narrator/Promo Voice]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

But they said that.

[Chuck Bryant]

The.

[Josh Clark]

I think British companies, somewhere between 10 and 40% of British companies use them. All Right. So, I mean, it's. Who knows? It's pretty wild guess, it sounds like.

[Chuck Bryant]

But I wonder if they have their own.

[Josh Clark]

No, the Myers Briggs test, they don't call it a test, as we'll see. But the test, it's worldwide. It's translated into tons of different languages and. No, it's. It's the Myers Briggs test. And there's tons of knockoffs.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, sure.

[Josh Clark]

There's tons of personality tests in general, which really is the larger umbrella. The Myers Briggs test falls under, but it's probably the most famous of all time, at least as far as pop culture goes.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And we're going to hit on everything from Rorschach to the Myers Briggs.

[Josh Clark]

Sure. But we're going to hit on them.

[Chuck Bryant]

But the MBTI definitely is more the focus of this one because of its ubiquity.

[Josh Clark]

Right. And because most people Know it. And because it's one of the overlooked pastimes in the United States to take potshots at the Myers Briggs type inventory. Sure, it's fun.

[Chuck Bryant]

So categorizing one's personality is nothing new. And that's what these tests aim to do for various reasons, which we'll go over later. But going back. And this was a Grabster article, correct? That's right. So you know, it's good. Yeah. And Grabster was just at our show in Toronto.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, he was.

[Chuck Bryant]

For the second time.

[Josh Clark]

He stood up and like, did that victory shake.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, did he do that?

[Josh Clark]

No, he did.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, I'm a big fan of that. That's old school.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, it is. It's a good way to go. It looks like you should be wearing those dolphin shorts and just having crossed the finish line and you're doing that.

[Sponsor Legal/Disclaimer Voice]

So.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, it's nothing new. Trying to categorize personalities way back in the day. I know. In our grave robbing live. Grave robbing episode, we talked about the four humors. And we've talked about them before. Before medical science was kind of a real thing.

[Josh Clark]

It was an early attempt.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. They talked about the four fluids or the four humors. Black bile, yellow bile, phlegm and blood. And an imbalance in those will cause disease. But they were also. This is something I didn't know. These are also linked to corresponding personality types too, right?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. So like the word melancholy in English. It's an adaptation of the Greek words, I believe, for black bile.

[Chuck Bryant]

There it is.

[Josh Clark]

And melancholy personalities were associated with an overabundance of black bile.

[Chuck Bryant]

And.

[Josh Clark]

And basically you're melancholy. You're a depressed person, or you're very reserved or quiet. And for thousands of years people thought, guy's got a lot of black bile. That explains his personality. The other ones are pretty interesting too. Like phlegmatic.

[Chuck Bryant]

Phlegmatic.

[Josh Clark]

I've seen flagmatic. I've heard phlegmatic. Oh, really? I've seen it too.

[Chuck Bryant]

So, like, when you cough something up, do you call it phlegm?

[Josh Clark]

Depends. If it had like a lot of extra chunks in it, it's flag.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, gosh.

[Josh Clark]

But phlegmatic. I say phlegmatic. That's very laid back. Did you know that?

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, yeah, because I looked all these up.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, okay.

[Chuck Bryant]

Because sanguine is one of my favorite words.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

And that's. This is Hippocrates, by the way. He. He kind of further refined these concepts of the temperament. So melancholic, Phlegmatic, Sanguine. And what is it?

[Josh Clark]

Choleric yeah, Choleric. Yeah, choleric.

[Chuck Bryant]

Choleric.

[Josh Clark]

Choleric is like irritable and short and terse and curt.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

But the thing is, there's something weird here, right. If you are a thinking human being who is not in a vegetative state right now.

[Chuck Bryant]

Correct.

[Josh Clark]

And for all we know at this point in medical science, maybe even if you are in a vegetative state, you're probably thinking. It doesn't seem like anyone I've ever met is just phlegmatic or just choleric or just sanguine.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Or just melancholy. Sometimes I'm all four of those things. Sometimes I go through those things, all four in a day. Depending on how weird the day is.

[Chuck Bryant]

Sometimes I go through all four of those within the course of one happy hour.

[Josh Clark]

Sure. Okay. Right. And that's kind of the point here, and it's also the basis of any criticism from this moment in the podcast here on out is that this whole thing that started back with the four humors and continues on to this day in the guise of personality tests is an attempt to take a human personality and say, you're this. You're this one type. You're this type. This is your type. This is what you're like, Right?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

And the human personality is just too complex, too squishy, too jelly like to be boxed into one thing like that.

[Sponsor Voice]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

And we'll get into all the criticisms, but that definitely is the leading criticism. That is. Well, we'll save that.

[Josh Clark]

Okay. That was a tease.

[Chuck Bryant]

It was a good tease.

[Josh Clark]

It was a phlegmatic one.

[Chuck Bryant]

All these classifications, though, that we talk about now are, or most of them at least are derived, lay at the feet of one man, one Carl Jung.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Who wrote a book called Psychological Types.

[Josh Clark]

How do you say it, though, in. In German? I don't know, it's. Oh, where is it? Let me see. Oh, there it is. I. I can't even begin to do it.

[Chuck Bryant]

Psycho. Psycho. Sorry. Psychological. Psychologic. Ish typing.

[Josh Clark]

That's not bad.

[Chuck Bryant]

It's so tiny. That was the problem because you.

[Josh Clark]

Oh Yeah, I do 10 point. I don't like to waste paper.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, you know me.

[Josh Clark]

You do, like 16 point times new Roman.

[Chuck Bryant]

I love paper and I don't want to waste it, but I also have to do my job.

[Josh Clark]

Sure.

[Chuck Bryant]

Maybe I should go double sided, but then my highlighter gets in the way.

[Josh Clark]

Oh yeah, it'd be a problem.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, man.

[Josh Clark]

Everything would be highlighted. You might as well just dip the whole page in yellow ink or something.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, exactly. So Anyway, Jung wrote this book, that book in 1921 in German and had it translated to English a couple of years later. And he created these four categories. Sensation, intuition, thinking, and feeling. Right. So those were his four. That kind of. Most of these modern tests are based on in some way or another.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And it's really almost impossible that I guess we could just save all the criticisms for the end and just pile them on. But it's really tough to talk about this stuff and not, like, as you present one fact, talk about the problem with that fact as it relates to modern incarnation. What do you think we should do? Should we just save them like you say? Because I can bite my tongue. Yeah, let's say them. Okay.

[Chuck Bryant]

And then you can just.

[Josh Clark]

Like, I'm not even trying. Like, I'm not going crop circle here. I'm just saying, like, there's just a lot wrong with this. But even before Jung, who created these, the concept of. The modern concept, I should say, of personality types, and he created the idea of introvert and extrovert, which. Say what you will about Jung, and a lot of psychologists have a lot to say about him. Not necessarily the nicest things to say, but introversion and extroversion is so widely accepted inside and out of the field of psychology that, I mean, if that were his only contribution to the field, that's enough to engrave it on your tombstone for sure.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And each of those four psychological types he was talking about are modified by whether or not you're introverted or extroverted.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

So they all kind of work together to box you in.

[Narrator/Promo Voice]

That was like the.

[Josh Clark]

Right. That was the main thing, is how you. How you approach life as introvert or extrovert. And everything else is like a sub, kind of a subsection of that or something.

[Sponsor Voice]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

And one of the issues with this, and I don't think this is part of the criticism, but I was gonna.

[Josh Clark]

Say I thought we were saving him.

[Chuck Bryant]

He was. This was based on his ideas. It wasn't like he had all this research and all this data.

[Product Advertiser]

He.

[Chuck Bryant]

He was a deep thinker and he sat around and. And thought of these things.

[Josh Clark]

Right, exactly. And then he wrote entire books based on them. Yeah. But he's a very well respected psychoanalyst and he was part of the early movement for psychoanalysis with Freud. They were. They were colleagues. Ellie. Jung was much younger, but they eventually said, I don't like you anymore. We're parting ways.

[Narrator/Promo Voice]

But.

[Josh Clark]

As psychoanalysis was really kind of establishing itself, and if you want to know more about that background and the origin of psychoanalysis. Go listen to our How PR Works, the live show. We talked a lot about that. But as this was going on and it was starting to kind of dominate the field of psychology, there was a whole other movement, a parallel movement, that said, you know what? We think all that's a little mushy. We like the idea of being able to quantify psychology. And so even before Jung, there were guys like Alfred Binet, who was one of the indirect fathers of the intelligence test, the IQ test, a pair of researchers named Gray and Wheelwright and plenty of others who wanted to say, no, no, no, no, you can study psychology. You can study things like the human personality, and you can typify them. You can add numbers, you can quantify this stuff. And in doing so, we will prove psychology as a science as well. So this whole movement to typify people and put them into convenient, almost numerical categories came out of this urgent need to establish a scientific basis for psychology.

[Sponsor Voice]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

And Jung, he kind of laid the table for this. And many years later, although not that many, there was a woman named Catherine Cook Briggs, and she was working on this with her daughter, one Isabel Briggs Myers. I think you see where this is going. This is Post World War II, when women were kind of, for the first time, really going into the workforce in full and en masse. And so they thought, well, maybe we can put together some personality types to find out what kind of jobs these women might be suited for, what types of jobs they might enjoy. So they started working together on this. And as legend has it, the mom, Catherine Briggs, Cook Briggs, she was doing her thing and then saw Jung's works and said, I gotta start over.

[Josh Clark]

This is the stuff she had already been working on. A personality test.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

But apparently, according to the legend, threw her work into the fire. Said, I'm starting from scratch.

[Chuck Bryant]

So dramatic.

[Josh Clark]

She was a voracious reader, especially of the psychology, the new psychology books that were coming out of Europe. Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

She didn't read Jung. She did well eventually, but seems like it kind of came along later.

[Josh Clark]

Well, so, yeah, there's kind of a weird discrepancy in the history. And I don't know if it's just. It hasn't been covered. Right. Or if there is a weird discrepancy. But supposedly she initiated, and so it would have been contemporary or shortly after Jung's Psychology or Personality Types was translated into English in 1923. But it was her daughter Isabel who really took it and ran with it because of World War II and the need for women in the workplace. Correct.

[Chuck Bryant]

So they kind of kept some of Jung's stuff built on that. They kind of stripped some of it away. Most notably a lot of the unconscious stuff. They might have thought that was a little too weird for, you know, the modern American workforce.

[Narrator/Promo Voice]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

So what they ended up coming up with was the, the MBTI Myers Briggs type Indicator. Right. Very famously.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And they had, they had a publishing arrangement with one group, I can't remember what they were called, but they thought it didn't do very well. And then in 1975 they went with another publisher, CPP and they're the current publishers of the Myers Briggs Type indicator. And since then, that's when its ubiquity like just really spread was starting in the 70s and. And now it's just, it's basically married to corporate America.

[Chuck Bryant]

Should we take a break?

[Josh Clark]

Sure.

[Chuck Bryant]

And go get married to corporate America?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. As if we aren't already.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right, we'll come back and we'll talk a little bit about personality tests in general and then focus in a little more on the MBTI.

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[Chuck Bryant]

All right, so personality test is just. There are many, many ways you can get evaluated psychologically by a professional. This is just one way.

[Josh Clark]

And you can get your head measured with calipers.

[Chuck Bryant]

Back in the day they did that, right?

[Josh Clark]

They give you a bunch of drugs and see what you do. There's a lot of ways.

[Chuck Bryant]

But these tests generally, as Grabster points out, falls into a couple of types, projective and objective. Projective tests are things like the Rorschach test, where you're shown something, some kind of stimulus and it's open to interpretation and you tell them what you think about it and someone sits back very quietly and taps on a pad of paper and makes an evaluation very interesting. And then objective are more like these personality tests. They're standardized assessments that people use. And while it's subjective, what you put down, they are then evaluated again by a professional.

[Josh Clark]

Right, but ultimately that objective name is a bit of misnomer because on the end of it it's still Interpreted by a person, which therefore makes it subjective.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

And which, depending on who you ask, is the fatal flaw of all personality tests.

[Chuck Bryant]

It should be like good songs from the 70s. A little parenthetical at the end of the title should just say subjective. Also in parentheses, baby. So the big five are. And this is the big five, I get the feeling, are the psychological tests that legit psychologists are more in favor of over something like the mbti. Is that right?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. It's not just. There's tests to suss out the big Five. The big five are the personality types of the field of psychology has come.

[Chuck Bryant]

Up with that, but the tests that utilize that they kind of think are more legit than the mbti.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, there's not a psychologist alive who uses the MBTI in their regular practice.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, I bet there are.

[Josh Clark]

Not that are speaking up.

[Chuck Bryant]

I guarantee you there's someone out there.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, sure. He's a freewheeling type. Horseshi.

[Chuck Bryant]

So the big five are extraversion, agreeableness, openness to experience, conscientiousness and neuroticism.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

Sounds like it could be like a dating site thing that you fill out.

[Josh Clark]

It's funny, every time I see or hear the word neuroticism, a bell goes off in my head, like, ding.

[Chuck Bryant]

Just a silent bell.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

I don't know what that means.

[Josh Clark]

I don't either, but it draws my attention to it.

[Chuck Bryant]

So some of these tests, I mean, it depends on what it is. They might not all call them by those exact words, but they're generally using. They call them, like I said, the Big five.

[Narrator/Promo Voice]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

And I was looking into that Big five and this site, I can't remember what it was called, but they were basically, they were going over it like extroversion is, again, just part of the scientific literature at this point. Agreeableness is like whether you're how sympathetic or kind or affectionate you are. Conscientiousness is. Are you organized? Are you thorough? Are you the type who shows up on time kind of thing. Neuroticism, which is sometimes called emotional stability. How tense are you? How moody, how anxious?

[Narrator/Promo Voice]

Ding.

[Josh Clark]

And then like openness to experience. Right?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

They sometimes call that intellect, imagination. Do you have wide interests? Are you an imaginative person? Are you insightful? And this sight really went to a lot of pains to point out that what you would call these things, the big five personality traits, are, as far as a psychologist is concerned, just one dimension of you, the human being, and that to get a clearer picture of you, they would also need to study your motivations. Your emotions, your attitudes, your abilities, your self concepts, your social roles, autobiographical memories, your life stories. Now if you start to put all these things together, then you can start to kind of approximate the person's personality. But it would just. It takes a lot of study of an individual and these different components that make up their personality to get a clear picture. So I don't think there are any psychologists walking around saying the big five personality types are like the beginning and end of a personality. It's just if you put them together, you have just a sketch of somebody's personality and you should go much deeper if you're analyzing someone.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I think I used to think this stuff was a lot neater when I was younger, and now it kind of gives me a little anxiety.

[Josh Clark]

Oh yeah?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Like I just, I don't know as far as doing this to myself. And I still enjoy therapy. Like, that's different. But I don't know because every single one of these, like, my answer would be, well, it depends.

[Josh Clark]

Well, I think also though, and I don't mean to speak for you, but one of the issues that comes up for me is if somebody goes to you and says, you know, you rate pretty high on the spectrum of neuroticism, like, that's obviously you're gonna obsess about that kind of stuff, especially if they're.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right, it can make you neurotic.

[Josh Clark]

But yeah, it's a boundary that somebody has just established for you that you may need. Feel the need to stay in because that's the boundary that you're bound by whether you are or not.

[Chuck Bryant]

Like, this is my box.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

I'll live in it.

[Josh Clark]

That would be the reason it raises anxiety for me.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Well, my whole thing, like I said though, is just depends. Every single question that I would get asked. Well, not everyone. Sometimes I'm pretty set on something, but usually I'd say, I don't know. Depends on the scenario. Am I more prone in a crowd to do X or Y? Maybe, maybe not. Depends on my mood.

[Josh Clark]

So with these other personality tests and the whole field in psychology of studying traits, personality traits in a quantitative way is called psychometrics. So with these tests, the more sophisticated ones, if they had a test taker like you, they're designed to get around that. So they're going to ask a bunch of different questions about the same thing, but in different ways, coming from different directions. So that eventually if you put all of them together and run them through a statistical analysis, they're actually going to come up with your genuine Answer, which is kind of one way or another.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

The other way that they get around this, that kind of hemming and hawing, I guess, is by placing it on a spectrum. You're not being lumped into one category or another. It's here's one end of the spectrum, here's the other end of the spectrum. And based on your answers, you fall somewhere around the middle like almost everybody does.

[Sponsor Voice]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

If you look at psychometric tests, a legitimate psychometric test is going to basically look like a bell curve.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Where most people are going to be distributed toward the middle.

[Sponsor Voice]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

I think that's why it gives me anxiety. It's like, what's the point? Don't box me in.

[Josh Clark]

It's a great question.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, I think the second half of this is a lot of what's the point? So looking, speaking on these tests to see if it's actually, if there is a point, if it's a valid thing to do, there are a couple of measures that one must look at and that psychologists do look at. Is it valid and is it reliable? Valid in the sense that it really is a pretty good reflection of Josh or Chuck or whoever. And is it reliable? So if we take this test tomorrow or a different test that's just maybe different questions, will it reproduce the same result? And that's a big deal. Like if you're talking science and you're trying to have a foundation that says no, this is science, it's not just a bunch of questions and hippie dippy questions that we're asking. If you really want real data and science behind it, you have to be able to reproduce it.

[Josh Clark]

Right. One of the other things too that these tests are designed to do is to weed out fakers.

[Sponsor Legal/Disclaimer Voice]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

We'll talk a lot more about the Minnesota Multi Phasic Personality Inventory, which is one of the big ones, probably the most taken personality test in the world. And it has a lot of built in mechanisms and apparently is really good at detecting people who are faking, they're faking a mental illness or who are trying to pretend that they aren't suffering from a mental illness, it's really good at detecting that because it's so exhaustive and using statistical analysis, if somebody's skewed really far one way or skewed really far the other, they're just immediately exposed as gaming the test as best they can.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And one way they do that, which is in its own way, its own little psychology experiment at least, is by telling you we have ways.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

Like you will Be rooted out and we will know.

[Josh Clark]

Exactly.

[Chuck Bryant]

So they tell people that beforehand. So you're more inclined to just be like, all right, well, screw it, I'll tell the truth.

[Josh Clark]

Right. Especially when they're sitting there, like clearing the air out of a syringe.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's creepy.

[Josh Clark]

It is.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right, so let's get back to CPP and the mbti, the consulting psychologists press.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

And the Myers Briggs. We'll just keep calling it a test, even though they say it's not a test.

[Josh Clark]

It's a. It's a type inventory.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. So we'll just go ahead and break down the deal here. The object is to sort you into one of 16 different types, personality types, based on which side of four pairs or dichotomies that you're going to fall on. And those are at the very base. You're either introverted or extroverted. Like we said, E or I, sensing or intuition, S and N. And these words, they sound a little confusing. Like, what the heck does a sensing person mean?

[Narrator/Promo Voice]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

It means you like the big data and empirical data and a lot of information.

[Josh Clark]

Right. Whereas intuition is like, you just go with your gut. That's how you prefer to be correct. Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

The next we have thinking and feeling. Thinking being more focused on logic. Did I say logic with a T?

[Josh Clark]

Sure.

[Chuck Bryant]

And objectivity. And then if you're feeling, you're going to be more interested in relationships and harmony among your group.

[Josh Clark]

Those two are pretty straightforward.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I think so.

[Josh Clark]

And then lastly there's judging and perceiving. That's a dichotomy. Judging is where you prefer schedules, you prefer decisiveness. That's how you kind of approach life.

[Sponsor Voice]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

And perceiving is where you're just kind of like, whatever. Yeah, I'm not too worried about it.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

That's almost kind of like the difference between the Type A and Type B personalities, which, by the way, was made up by a pair of cardiologists.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, really?

[Josh Clark]

Whose work was later secretly funded by the tobacco industry, who were looking for anything to explain heart attacks besides smoking. So they funded Type A and Type B personality research for years.

[Chuck Bryant]

Interesting.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, it really is. There's a. Just as an aside, there's a really interesting price, I think. Yeah. Pricenomics.

[Chuck Bryant]

Article on Type A and Type.

[Josh Clark]

B. Yeah, just look it up. I don't remember the name.

[Chuck Bryant]

So when you sit down to take one of these knot tests with a series of questions that you answer, I.

[Josh Clark]

Think they call them instruments, by the way, psychometric instruments, which are basically a.

[Chuck Bryant]

Series of questions on a piece of paper.

[Josh Clark]

It sounds like a test.

[Chuck Bryant]

They will say things like. Ed has some good examples here. When you go on a trip, do you want everything planned out in advance or would you rather just take each day as it comes, do whatever you feel like? Pretty straightforward kind of stuff.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

And then they also have things like word pairs just to see literally what word you like better. Like compassion, foresight. Like, which word do you like better, Carrots or fruit? Fruit.

[Josh Clark]

Fruit. Yeah. This is prettier.

[Chuck Bryant]

It is.

[Josh Clark]

So I'm looking back here, I just want to say.

[Chuck Bryant]

So I think you're trying to figure out what you were.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, I think ENFP maybe.

[Chuck Bryant]

I think that's what I was. We weren't in the same thing.

[Josh Clark]

I don't remember. Yumi and I got the same thing. She found an old email, but she forgot to tell me what we were.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, really?

[Josh Clark]

I really. I don't know. Problem is, would we still be the same today?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And I think, if I'm not mistaken, didn't we have this up on a big board in the office for a while?

[Josh Clark]

I think so, yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

That seems like a Jerry's nodding. That seems like a breach of protocol.

[Josh Clark]

Sure.

[Chuck Bryant]

Like privacy.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Well, again, being forced at gunpoint to do it was just from the start.

[Chuck Bryant]

I remember it was kind of fun. I had a fun day.

[Josh Clark]

We'll talk about that as well.

[Chuck Bryant]

So it's going to cost you if you just do this as a single individual, not meaning not married, but just a person, about 50 bucks. Although they should charge more if you're married. It's a more complex test. About 50 bucks. If you want an hour of feedback, that'll cost you an extra hundred. And if you want a career report all typed up, that'll be 1695.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

And if you. This is $1,500 for a on site training class. Is that like what we had?

[Josh Clark]

So this is. This is not very well explained. If you want to administer the Myers Briggs personality or type inventory.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

You can get certified. It's four day training course.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, okay.

[Josh Clark]

You pay 1,500 to $1,600.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, that's what that is.

[Josh Clark]

You cannot legally administer this test or you're infringing on their copyrights. Unless you are certified by CPP to do this.

[Chuck Bryant]

We should do it with one another on the air. And risk a lawsuit?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Well, you probably got a suit already with that one question you asked out loud.

[Chuck Bryant]

Which one? Oh, just the one.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. When you go on a trip, do you want everything Planned out in advance.

[Chuck Bryant]

I just made that up.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, good job, good job.

[Chuck Bryant]

I got that from Travelocity.

[Josh Clark]

Nice. Okay. Yeah, that little gnome whispered it in your ear.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right.

[Josh Clark]

But so you would go and get certified and then now you can go around to businesses and say, hey, do you want to know more about your employees? You want to know who's good at what? Let me come give the Myers Briggs type inventory to your employees and put them all in place. It'll be wonderful. Right. So that's how the whole process goes. You pay to become certified and then you go become something of an evangelist for the Myers Briggs test and you sell the test. You basically become a salesman as well. It's very interesting dynamic that they have going.

[Chuck Bryant]

That is. It's a good word dynamic. They want to point out that the person taking the test is the expert. And they also use this metaphor of handedness, which I didn't fully understand. They say things like, it feels more comfortable to sign your name with your dominant hand, but technically you can sign with your non dominant hand if you need to.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

I'm not sure what they're trying to prove there.

[Josh Clark]

They're trying to say that despite the MBTI pigeonholing you fully in one category or another rather than on a spectrum, they're saying that category that it's pigeonholing you into is actually just your preference. It's not you specifically, it's just your inclined predisposition. Yeah, you tend to be an extrovert, but. But of course, everybody likes their own personal alone time. So yeah, you're going to be an introvert once in a while, but you're an extrovert more than other times.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, because I can't sign my name with my left hand. I didn't like that analogy because it literally. I can barely hold a pen with my left hand. I'm seeing you're doing it right now.

[Josh Clark]

Wow, that was pretty bad.

[Chuck Bryant]

If I tried to do it, it would look like a three year old with arthritis has tried to like scribble it out.

[Josh Clark]

Mine looks like Unum.

[Chuck Bryant]

Unum.

[Josh Clark]

Udm.

[Chuck Bryant]

Udum.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, Udum. It's my signature with my left hand.

[Chuck Bryant]

And they do try and point out, like you said, that it's interesting because they box you in, but at the same time they're saying, but you know, like you said, it's just predisposition. Don't really think of it. About you being this type of person even though you are an enfb.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

Like you said it was earlier. It was almost Numbered. I mean it is, it's lettered.

[Josh Clark]

Right? This is a different way of quantifying it. Yeah, but without numbers. All right, you want to take a break and then come back and maybe do a little criticism? Yeah. Okay.

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[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

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[Josh Clark]

All right, Chuck. Like I said, it's kind of a pastime in the United States to tee off on the Myers Briggs type inventory.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, this is not us here. This is.

[Josh Clark]

No, this is us talking about other people teeing off on it.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. It's widely been criticized over the years from psychologists and, well, amateur know nothings like us.

[Josh Clark]

Sure.

[Chuck Bryant]

One of the big criticisms is that companies use this stuff in hiring and firing and promoting.

[Josh Clark]

But even the Myers Briggs people, cpp say, like, don't do that.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, I know, but they say that. But then don't go to an office and get hired by a corporation to administer it.

[Narrator/Promo Voice]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

Or go sell your services, you know? Yeah, yeah, agreed. And that's part of the problem. To me, that is more the corporation's fault.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, sure.

[Josh Clark]

Like, if you have an HR person who's like, die hard believer in the MBTI and will hire or fire somebody based on their MBTI type, fire that person because you have real dumb, dumb on your hands. They're a DD and they should not be responsible for people's livelihoods.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Even I don't think they would put it quite in those terms. But even the Myers Briggs people say, like, you shouldn't use this for hiring or firing. And yet, yes, some people do. Some people swear by this. The impression that I have is that the Myers Briggs people tend to think of this as more like a team building exercise.

[Sponsor Voice]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

Or we're like a certified MBTI administrator, can come to your place, get all your employees together, and they find out like all their personality types. And by the way, there's not a single negative personality type. And all personality types are equal.

[Chuck Bryant]

Sure.

[Josh Clark]

So everybody gets a participant ribbon in the form of their personality type.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

And. But at the same time, and this seems to be the crux at the same time, everybody's finding out like, oh, you're a little different than me and I'm a little different than you and we all have differences and different perspectives. So let's sell celebrate that and let's respect one another's differences. And there is the actual point, from what I understand of the Myers Briggs type inventory and taking it in a corporate setting.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's what stands out to me as what happened with us was.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

I remember it kind of being a fun day.

[Josh Clark]

They were like Tootsie Rolls.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, we all goofed off and had a good time. And the person leading it, if they're good at what they do, which this person was, is always, you know, it's always kind of a fun person and cracking jokes and they don't take it too seriously. None of us took it too seriously and we all had a good time and it did. It was very much like a team building thing.

[Josh Clark]

Right. So as long as there's like a wink, wink, nudge, nudge kind of thing and that the people who take it, actually take it seriously are taken off to the side by their HR rep to say like, no, this is a little less serious than you're taking it, then it's fine. But yes, once you start deciding people's fate based on that this, then you have real problems. Because as just about anybody will tell you, the Myers Briggs Type Inventory is based at best on some shaky science, if at all. If you go back to the very beginning, it's based on the theories of Carl Jung, which have never been based on science. They were basically personal observations by Jung. And the psychology community has disavowed Jung in large part. So therefore anything based on his teachings and theories is by proxy disavowed as well. But if that weren't enough, psychology as a field loves going after the Myers Briggs type Inventory. Just loves it as totally baseless scientifically.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right, so we've got shouldn't use it to hire and fire in corporations or give promotions. We have not based on real science and science and scientific data.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

These four dichotomies are problematic in and of themselves because everyone is on a spectrum. You can't say like, you know, you answered these 10 questions, so you're either this or you're that.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

And when one of the rebuttals, because I think Ed interviewed someone from cpp. Right?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

One of the rebuttals about being a non repeatable experiment of sorts is like, hey, yesterday I was an ENFP and today I'm this. They'll say, well, you know what, if you had different answers that means you were sort of on the cusp right there in that center line on Some of these questions and you might have just leapt over to that other side, which means you're basically kind of down the center. Yet they don't have a categorization for down the center.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Because depending on, as Ed puts it, you could answer all 24 questions on the feeling side, and you're going to get the same result as somebody who answered 11 questions for thinking and 13 questions for feeling.

[Sponsor Voice]

Right.

[Narrator/Promo Voice]

Same thing.

[Josh Clark]

You're still both an F in that respect. And I saw elsewhere it put like, if the Myers Briggs test measured height, you would either be tall or short.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

You could say, well, actually I'm right there in the middle. And they'd be like, well, that's short. Right. Or for you, it's short for the guy who is the same exact height. They're tall.

[Sponsor Voice]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

And trust me, nobody that's five' ten likes to be considered short.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

I can say that from experience because you're not.

[Josh Clark]

You're average.

[Chuck Bryant]

I'm average.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

I like being average.

[Josh Clark]

The fact that there isn't a spectrum is one thing that really makes it in stark contrast of other much more widely accepted psychometric instruments.

[Chuck Bryant]

For sure. Ed also points out to the Grabster that they're. The construction of the instrument itself is problematic because one, like we talked about, it's self reporting. Anytime you're self reporting, there's going to be some weird bias in there.

[Josh Clark]

Sure.

[Chuck Bryant]

Just almost impossible to avoid. 100%.

[Josh Clark]

That's right.

[Chuck Bryant]

And the other one is that he says a couple of these dichotomies are entangled, which I never really thought about that, but that's a pretty good point.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

So judging perceiving scale are correlated with answers on the sensing intuition scale. And if you like, those should be separated out. For sure.

[Josh Clark]

For sure.

[Chuck Bryant]

I don't know why they don't.

[Josh Clark]

I don't either. Because they've really put a lot of work into this.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. I mean, it's not baked in stone from the 1940s and 50s and 60s, is it?

[Josh Clark]

No, it's not. And even while they were creating. It was an ongoing exhaustive process that Mrs. Briggs and Mrs. Meyers engaged in.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. We don't want to give. They spent decades on this.

[Josh Clark]

Yes.

[Chuck Bryant]

It wasn't like something they threw together.

[Josh Clark]

No. The problem is they did it backwards. They came up with the personality types and then set about creating the test that would detect these personality types. Rather than going out and testing people, seeing what personality types emerge and then figuring out a test to find that in other people, they did it. Backwards.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's a good point.

[Josh Clark]

It was based on Jung, but it was not for lack of trying. Like, as a matter of fact, one of the first things they did after they started to really establish the tests was they managed to administer it to like 5,000 George Washington University medical students. And they took those results and tracked the students to see what fields of medicine they went in. They really worked on this. I read an article in the Washington Post where I think Isabel Myers son remembers their vacations were basically like fact finding missions all around the country. Like they would go administer tests, like everything was about this test. And they worked on it for decades. So yeah, the problem is it's just not based on science. They didn't follow the scientific method.

[Narrator/Promo Voice]

So.

[Josh Clark]

So science kind of poo poos the mbti. But wait, wait, wait, get back here. Because a lot of these criticisms fall just as easily on every other psychometric test around.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, yeah, and that's one of the things that I can't remember who was interviewed in here, but in one of those other articles you sent one of the Myers, I don't know if it was, or maybe it was a Rorschach defender, right. Said, you know, like everyone. Yeah, it was Rorschach. Like everyone's always picking on Rorschach.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

When all of these psychological tests are, you know, subject to criticism, they are.

[Josh Clark]

You know, I think it's really easy for to tee off on Rorschach as well because I mean, we're talking ink plots, man. It is the epitome of subjective self reporting. You're saying, let's see, in this one I see Mom's boobs. Yeah, Mom's boobs in that one too.

[Chuck Bryant]

Dad's boobs.

[Josh Clark]

Right, exactly. And then from that it was strictly up to initially Rorschach, who I think came up with this test in 1915. 1917.

[Chuck Bryant]

What's his name?

[Josh Clark]

Herman, I think so he's a Swiss psychiatrist.

[Chuck Bryant]

Herman Rorschach.

[Josh Clark]

It was initially up to him and then later on his followers to interpret this, which is basically like interpreting dreams.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

So subjective, totally subjective from beginning to end. And then In I think 1975, a guy at Bowling Green State University, which is right outside of Toledo, came up with this, a really exhaustive interpretive test that sought to quantify Rorschach answers.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, John Exner. And it was a test called the comprehensive system, 140 components. And in this article you sent, they said that Rorschach was probably going away had it not been for Exner's accompaniment with this other process.

[Narrator/Promo Voice]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

And even today, he's got an institute in Asheville that's dedicated to the Rorschach test. Right. So one thing I've noticed from researching this is each of these personality inventories has, like, its adherence and its detractors. And just judging from the outside, it looks a lot like cults gathered around their various idols. Right. There's, like, the original figurehead who came up with it. Everybody worships them. And he's attacked by these other followers who have a very similar figurehead. They came up with something very similar, but it's. It's just different enough that there's a huge chasm between the two, and there's a lot of dogma surrounding it. But the Rorschach test in particular is apparently well known to give wildly inaccurate results.

[Chuck Bryant]

I took one today.

[Josh Clark]

Did you?

[Chuck Bryant]

Online.

[Josh Clark]

How'd you do?

[Chuck Bryant]

I got two out of 10, which means I was only two away, whatever that means, from being labeled a psychotic.

[Josh Clark]

So, yeah, there's a.

[Chuck Bryant]

You get four out of 10.

[Josh Clark]

I think there's a. Oh, really?

[Chuck Bryant]

I think that's what it said.

[Sponsor Voice]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Wow, that's close.

[Chuck Bryant]

I mean, this is an online test. I don't know if it's, like, how true it was to the original.

[Josh Clark]

I gotcha.

[Chuck Bryant]

Or it may be the original.

[Narrator/Promo Voice]

Who knows?

[Josh Clark]

Could be. And then they have an algorithm that runs the analysis.

[Chuck Bryant]

I kept seeing all kinds of things when I looked at it, and I've never done an inkblot test. I would say, oh, that looks like a bat. And then I was like, no, it's like two bunnies. And then, no, it looks like a cool Mardi Gras mask.

[Josh Clark]

Did they move to you? Did you see colors?

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, some of them were colored.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, okay.

[Chuck Bryant]

Most of them were black. And they had a. The one I took had a one and a two. Like, what do you see? And what's, like, a secondary thing that you see?

[Josh Clark]

Right. So, you know, supposedly people who are supporters of the Rorschach test say, no, man. We don't know how it's working. But if you see movement in the Rorschach inkblots, it's suggestive of depression or something like that. And they say statistically it's correlated. But like I was saying, it's also notorious for giving incorrect results.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Like saying you have a mental illness.

[Josh Clark]

Right. Okay. So there was this study in 2000 that was given to, like, 100 mentally sound elementary school kids, and some, like, high percentage of them came back as borderline psychotic. Because of the Rorschach test. Right. And it's hilarious to hear stories like that. Like, I'm laughing inside right now. But the problem is, is you're at the very least being labeled as psychotic.

[Chuck Bryant]

Sure.

[Josh Clark]

Not a label you want in soc.

[Sponsor Legal/Disclaimer Voice]

No.

[Josh Clark]

And it was because of this inkblot test that's 100 years old. And then secondly, these tests are also being submitted and accepted as evidence in criminal trials.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's the biggest part.

[Josh Clark]

Child custody cases.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. I mean, civil cases, they're still given real weight and like lives are changed and ruined based on looking at 100 year old inkblots.

[Josh Clark]

Yes.

[Chuck Bryant]

And a person's subjective analysis of that, that's not okay. No. This Howard Garb, in this one article you sent, he's a co author of what's Wrong with a Rorschach? And he is head of Psycho, or at least at the time of this article, he may still be head of psychological testing for the Air Force. He said that even with Exner's comprehensive system, he said only 10% of his system even meets the most basic scientific standards. And they did examine data of over 30 different Rorschach studies. And he said they all have a tendency to label healthy people mentally ill.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

And if you're trying to get custody of your kid or if you are on trial as a criminal, like, it's just. That's the last thing you need is somebody's subjective opinion of, is it a bunny or is it a bat?

[Josh Clark]

Oh, he said a bat. Take that kid.

[Chuck Bryant]

You know, quick. The kid's like, I like bunnies.

[Josh Clark]

Another one that we have to talk about is the MMPI. Now the MMPI 2, I think as of 2012, they revised it dramatically.

[Sponsor Voice]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Does this one? Is that right? It has over 500 questions.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Narrator/Promo Voice]

Wow.

[Josh Clark]

Some of them originally were about like your bowel movements. Okay. Really nutso questions that supposedly really got to the heart of whether you were mentally disturbed or not. Right?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yes.

[Josh Clark]

And it was created at the University of Minnesota in the 40s by a psychiatrist and a neurologist, I believe. And they hit upon a pretty clever idea. They said, we're not going to interpret the results. Right. And say, you know, oh, this person said that they do feel like smashing something sometimes. And that means this. Instead, we're going to come up with this test of like 504 questions, and we're going to give it to the patient or the family and staff of a mental hospital who we're sure are sane, and we're going to take their answers and they're going to become our control group, our baseline.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

So then anybody who takes this test, we're going to compare the test taker's answers to the sane control group's answers. And you know, depending on how it relates to the same control group, they're either mentally ill or not.

[Chuck Bryant]

You better have gotten that control group. Right.

[Josh Clark]

Well that's the thing to begin with. So a group of like family and friends in Minnesota is the picture of sanity throughout the world is the basis of this test. That's a huge problem with it to begin with.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

But apparently a lot of people say like, no, it does a pretty good job of sussing out mental illness.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

It's also really good at detecting faker faking one way or the other. But it's too invasive. And when companies use it for hiring and firing, it's way too invasive. And apparently lawsuits have been filed against companies for using it.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, I think that most people are far more troubled than they ever let on in life.

[Josh Clark]

Sure.

[Chuck Bryant]

And part of success in life comes down to how good you are at covering that up or hiding it or dealing with it and processing it.

[Narrator/Promo Voice]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's to terms with it. It's just to find a core group that are quote unquote sane, normal people.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

It's just you're starting off with a problem if you ask me.

[Josh Clark]

A faulty premise. Right. Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

It just there's no way like everyone has their issues, their deep dark.

[Sponsor Voice]

Things.

[Chuck Bryant]

At their brain that they don't want anyone to know. Sometimes even the people closest to them don't even know.

[Narrator/Promo Voice]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

And actually you, you're in agreement with this sociologist named William White who criticized the MMPI as a tool that help to create and perpetuate the oppressive group. Think of mid century organization, man.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Where it's basically like here's what we think is normal. Anything outside of that is abnormal. And we're not going to hire you because you don't fit into this picture of normalcy, which is basically white crew cut, Minnesota from the 40s.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

That's the picture of normalcy. That's highly debatable.

[Chuck Bryant]

The other thing I thought was interesting is a lot of skeptics and critics point to things like the MBTI and saying this is just like astrology is really no different than reading your horoscope because it's all positive psychology. At the end of a Myers Briggs Non test, no one walks away feeling bad. Usually it's all sort of positive wording and like this is what you are. You're just this. So kind of don't worry about it. The same way you read your horoscope in a given day. I mean, how many horoscopes say, like today you will be prone to depression and wonder what it's all about?

[Narrator/Promo Voice]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

Maybe you should work on your core character because people don't like being around you that much. You don't hear that kind of stuff. No, but that taps into what's called the Forer effect. F O R E R. There is a psychiatrist named Bertram Forrer.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, this is so interesting.

[Narrator/Promo Voice]

He.

[Josh Clark]

Well, take it. It's pretty interesting stuff.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, I mean, basically, didn't he give the same. He had people take these tests and then gave all of the people the exact same assessment, but telling everyone it was tailored for them, their own personality assessment. And I think the people who just thought it was favorable were like, this is great.

[Narrator/Promo Voice]

Well, it was favorable.

[Josh Clark]

He actually culled it from daily horoscopes.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, yeah, but what were they responding positively to? Well, it was whether or not they wanted to feel that way about themselves.

[Josh Clark]

No, it was a positive assessment. There was nothing negative in there. So it was all positive stuff, like you have a lot of unused potential. That kind of stuff. Stuff people wanted to identify with.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

So the more flattering it was, the more likely the people were to say, this is an accurate assessment of me.

[Sponsor Voice]

Oh, okay.

[Josh Clark]

So despite the fact that it was the same one given to the entire class, he took their answers and threw them out and said, here's your assessment. Same one for everybody.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's about right.

[Josh Clark]

It got like an 85% accuracy from the class as a whole.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, that's what I wondered. It was about the 15%. Were those people just super honest?

[Josh Clark]

Maybe.

[Chuck Bryant]

And like. No, this really.

[Josh Clark]

No. People actually don't like being around me. I'm using all of my potential and they still don't like me.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, that's what I couldn't figure out. But I guess that makes sense. There are people out there that are. I think I would be one of those that would be like, this isn't right. Yeah, I'm not like that.

[Josh Clark]

Sure.

[Chuck Bryant]

You got anything else?

[Josh Clark]

I think not.

[Chuck Bryant]

This is a good one. We've been wanting to do this for a while.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. This is a special request by me and others. If you want to know more about personality tests. Well, you can go take them online. They're kind of huge right now. Find out what kind of hobbit you are. I don't know.

[Chuck Bryant]

What box do you live in?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And in the Meantime, you can type personality tests in the search bar housestofworks.com and since I said that, it's time for listener mail.

[Chuck Bryant]

The only thing that should live in a box is temporary housing for a pet frog.

[Josh Clark]

That's not bad. Or the stuff you find in a tree hole that Boo Radley left for you.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, that can live in the box. Hey guys, feel compelled to write you today to tell you how grateful I am for your show and praise your good work. Recently became a listener and I'm working my way through the entire archive. I think a lot of folks might be able to relate to this until until recently I found out I found it really hard to relax and suffer with anxiety. Two months ago I read an article basically pointing out how our obsession with being productive and associated guilt is a modern phenomenon. I think that for sure you know.

[Josh Clark]

Yep.

[Chuck Bryant]

Although I had heard this before, something really clicked in my head. So I decided to abandon guilt and embrace relaxation, taking control of my own stress levels. You guys have been a big part of this. I have taken the time to slowly potter around my flat, go for walks while listening and learning to your fascinating podcasts, and they've lifted my mood. I feel mentally healthier than I ever have before.

[Josh Clark]

Nice.

[Chuck Bryant]

Although the content of what you discuss might not always be positive, the way in which you explain them and your own views personally revive my hope in humanity.

[Josh Clark]

That is ridiculously flattering.

[Chuck Bryant]

Isn't that nice? Yeah, I guess. I should also mention that a big part of my tackling anxiety levels has been to abandon watching television and fistfuls of psychotropic drugs. I would be really interested to know if there's been any research conducted into the effect TV has upon our lives. Oh, I'm sure there has been.

[Josh Clark]

Sure.

[Chuck Bryant]

I haven't owned a TV for many years, but my partner has since subscribed to an online provider and I realized how watching TV has not helped my anxiety. I also remember reading that after TVs became mainstream in Bhutan, their crime rate went up something like 700%. My prove an interesting topic for a future show.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Anyway, sincerely grateful. Keep it up. I'm now recommending your shows to as many people as I can. Big love from the uk, Mac.

[Josh Clark]

Thanks a lot Mac. That was great. We hear from a lot of people actually who say that we help them with their anxiety. No idea how, but it doesn't matter. So thank you.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yep.

[Josh Clark]

Yep. If you want to get in touch with us like Mac did, you can send us an email to stuff [e-mail].

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