[nicoburns]

I don't think Myers-briggs is fundamentally non-empirical. Empirical evidence is certainly lacking for it, but I think there's a good argument to be made that this is due to poor experimental design (for example applying the categorisations to persons rather than to mental processes) and a general difficulty in empirically measuring internal mental processes (it's notable that more mainstream competitors to the Myers-Briggs like the five-factor model don't even attempt this).

I would also point out that I was replying to a comment that was an empirical observation. My comment highlighted that their empirical observation corresponds to the pre-existing Myers-Briggs theory (which suggests that other people have previously had similar observations).

[sethrin]

No, Meyers-Briggs is fundamentally non-empirical, it has no empirical validity, nor was it derived from any empirical process. If you have a personal faith in its validity then I'm sure I don't mean to disrespect that.

[nl]

While the Myers-Briggs test is pretty weak, it is inaccurate to say that it has absolutely no empirical validity.

Test have shown that MBTI results do correlate with Big Five personality traits[1] which are generally regarded as valid.

See https://web.archive.org/web/20121011195955/http://leadu-libr...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits

[nicoburns]

If you're talking about the testing instrument itself, then sure I don't think it's great. But if you're talking about the underlying theory (and that's much more interesting - when we discuss physics we talk about the theory of relativity not the tools we use to measure it) then I would like to point out that the theory (lets call it Jungian Type Theory - JTT) was derived from an empirical process. Specifically it was derived from Jung's observations as a clinician over several decades. That's not a controlled experiment, but it's certainly empirical.

Regarding my personal experience with it: I have personally found it highly useful as a predictive model of behaviour. It's the only thing I've found that allows me to explain the aspects of people's personalities that aren't easily explained by their environment or life experiences. And by combining with JTT with an understanding of someone's life experience and environment I've found that I can pretty much always find a satisfying explanation for someone's behaviour in a way that I am not able to do with either one individually.

Regarding its validity:

- Firstly, there's no need to tiptoe around the subject if you think it's bullshit. I won't be offended, and I can totally understand why might be skeptical given the experimental evidence that exists so far.

- Having said that, I would like to challenge to idea that we ought to expect JTT to be experimentally validated given how limited our current ability to inspect the brain is. Specifically (and unlike other models of personality) the theory's primary claims are that there are certain internal thinking processes, which of course we currently have no way of observing directly, and which will not necessarily correspond straightforwardly or 1:1 with observable behaviours (environmental and life experience factors being huge confounders).

- Given this I find it entirely unsurprising that experimental designs which rely on numerical scorings of observed behaviours fail to find an effect

- I think it no coincidence that this theory came out of clinical psychology, because you need to be able to control for the environmental and life-experience factors in order to be able to see the other pattern that is (well ok, might be) sitting there beneath them. And therapeutic relationships which continue over a number of years are one of the only scenarios where that context is available outside of close personal relationships.