[twerkinggumby]

More inane pseudoscience about the moronic introvert/extrovert dichotomy. A two week study with 130 students and we’re supposed to learn something? Change our behavior? This is just astrology for people who love Ted talks.

[coldtea]

>A two week study with 130 students and we’re supposed to learn something?

Of course not. Merely a study, done by professionals, and involving 130 students?

As everybody knows the real way to learn something needs a snark layman comment with a facile dismissal!

[solinent]

It's not pseudoscience if there has been an empirical study, almost by definition. You're right that the value of self-reports is pretty low, but there have been plenty of studies done similar to this, this is not a new concept.

[pavel_lishin]

> the moronic introvert/extrovert dichotomy

Why is that dichotomy moronic?

[watwut]

Because most people are somewhere in the middle in almost any way you define it. Most people need both time with other people and time alone. Most get tired when being with people all the time and their mental health goes down when being isolated.

Whether you derive energy from other people or whether they are draining is also dependent a lot on who those other people are and whether you have have social skills currently (e.g. how much effort it takes to you to figure out what to say).

[tokai]

There is no scientific foundation for it. Jung dreamt it up with an extremely literary approach. Then the swindlers Briggs and Myers popularised it with their 20th century astrology.

[thaumasiotes]

The introversion-extraversion personality axis is the only part of the MBTI that modern psychometrics accepts basically without reservation. It lives on as the introversion-extraversion factor of the Big 5 Personality Model.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits

I find it interesting that the rest of the MBTI is so thoroughly rejected -- in particular, I read in work that accepts the MBTI (uh-oh, red flag!) that males tend to split 75% T / 25% F and females do the reverse, 75% F / 25% T.

It seems to me that this very large difference in responses should be sufficient to show that the T / F axis is capturing something. If the T / F distinction were meaningless, it wouldn't be able to predict anything, but it clearly can predict the respondent's sex.

[tokai]

It is capturing something right. But it is flatting down a much more complex reality.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers%E2%80%93Briggs_Type_Indi...

[DenisM]

To add to watwut's comment - replacing a dynamically changing behavior with a permanent personality trait is detrimental to any attempts at changing things.

[RedBeetDeadpool]

I completely agree with you and think introversion/extraversion introvert/extrovert is complete crap. But the author is actually arguing that its not as strong a divide as people make it out to be.