Personality Brokers: A Point of View

Personality Research Matters and How You Can Help

My Time magazine arrived today and on page 8 the heading asks, “Who are you?”  The short piece is a summary of recent research on personality.  Arriving at my door, the article serves as a kind of cornerstone moment in a week when fifty colleagues sent me links from different newspapers reporting the same research finding: there are four personality types.  And this is on top of two weeks of a cascade of articles and emails on a new book about the history and use of the MBTI.  This entry is for all of my friends and colleagues who follow the personality research and publication saga that I’ve been part of for the last 40 years.  

First, I will soon post a review of the new book, The Personality Brokers. I’m still checking some facts and leads before I respond to that book. Second, and the primary reason for this note is that a new research report that has been widely published about claims that “scientists” have proven the presence of four types of personalities: self-centered, reserved, role model, and “average”.  Third, I’m asking you to facilitate some data gathering.

I decided to go to the original research article to see in fact what the nature of the research was and how they came to their conclusions.  After spending the first section of their research article damning psychological type and associated tools (e.g. MBTI), they proudly note that data collected on the five-factor model from 1.5 million people is the basis of their analysis; they are able to say that, indeed there are true, latent, psychological types. For those who might need to be reminded, the five-factor model (FFM) posits the following traits make up personality: neuroticism, extraversion, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness. 

These researchers made no reference to the research showing a very close correlation between MBTI scales and FFM scales—Extraversion/Introversion with Extraversion, Sensing/Intuiting with Openness, Thinking/Feeling with Agreeableness, and Judging/Perceiving with Conscientiousness.  There is no neuroticism element in the MBTI model. Using the robust correlations between the two assessments, we can make some estimations from the Five Factor Model data.  FFM and MBTI scales have some shared meaning leading to the following estimations.   The current article reports two levels of analysis, showing Overcontrolled Personalities which share the ISTJ pattern, Resilient Personalities share the ENFJ pattern, and Undercontrolled Personalities share the ISTP pattern. Those of us who have researched with type and other tools could have easily predicted those patterns.  The main difference, psychological type has no need to lend a pejorative clinical term to the pattern.

In the second analysis of their data, the relationships based on their graphs are easily identified as follows:  Average Personalities with ESFJs, Reserved Personalities with ISFPs, Role Model Personalities ENFJ, and Self-Centered Personalities with ESTP.

Of course, we are looking at trends and patterns.  And most importantly, we are looking at unverified self-report data which is among the most unreliable data that can be collected.  The researchers review their statistical methods and proudly define the latent personality types as well founded and on the rigorous statistical ground. Really? And of course, while criticizing type, they make no effort to critique the IRT basis of the current version of the MBTI. (And for statistically minded folks, failure to critique item response theory analysis on which the MBTI is based is, well, kind of disingenuous.)  While these findings make a “crack” in the door of researchers proposing that there is a potential typological pattern, these researchers are quick to declare these patterns have nothing to do with Jung or personality type tools.  Fortunately, unless all our senses have left us when it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, looks like a duck, and smells like a duck, it probably is a damn duck.

There are a couple of reasons why this matters. Rightly or wrongly, a lot of decisions are made based on personality assessment results.  We have a vested interest in good, thorough, even-handed research. If psychological type is a ruse, we owe millions of people an apology.  If an assessment is useless and invalid as proposed, then all professionals (and the general public) should be profoundly aware of a bankrupt model. 

A fair-minded analysis of all personality assessments reveals they share the same issues in reliability and validity measurement.  There is no escaping the reality that all personality assessments have measurement error.  A true attempt at analyzing the frameworks put forth about personality should look at a full range of studies, identify the pros and cons of such studies, and offer considered propositions about the data presented in these studies.  

It simply isn’t sufficient to declare that a tool is not accurate because other people have criticized the tool, and make no effort to look at collected and published data.  I follow research on personality and on personality trait and type, and I have yet to see any researcher acknowledge and review the item response analysis (IRT) on which the newest version of the MBTI is based.  Again, for the uninitiated, item response analysis is widely considered to be among the most powerful scientific look at response patterns in an instrument that is available.  And if you are going to boldly declare that an assessment is completely worthless and without value, you should at least show that the IRT analysis sucks.  No one has done this.

Let me restate: the FFM assessments, MBTI and other type assessments, have issues.  We have protocols by which to measure and estimate the reasonable practical value of these tools.  It is our responsibility to look at and review the evidence to consider the appropriateness of a tool for the work we do.    

I want to address one of the missing gaps in all of this research: failure to compare observed behaviors rather than just self-reported behaviors.  My request to you is as follows.  I would like to collect a sample 100,000 people who have taken either a five-factor model (NEO, WorkPlace Big 5, or similar tool) or a personality type tool like the MBTI, Pearman, Majors PT, or Golden Type Profiler, Matrix Insights Type Discovery, and who is willing to have multi-rater data collected with Type360.  This will COST NOTHING. If you or people you know have taken an FFM tool or MBTI (or MBTI-like) assessment, and are willing to have some observers rate their behavior, do the following.  Send an email to typestudy@leadership-systems.com with the statement as follows:

“I am willing to participate in the type study by submitting my type or five-factor model scores and having a set of observers I select rate my behavior.  These ratings are confidential and only I will receive a report on the results.  My results will be aggregated with others so confidentiality will be maintained. I understand this study is designed to look at the connection between observed behavior and self-reported behavior as scored on other personality tools.  My type is  __ __ __ __ (e.g. ENFJ, ISTP, etc) or my Five Factor scores are N:__, E: __, O:__, A:__, C:__.”

As soon as this email is received, instructions will be sent on next steps for gathering rater observations from a web-enabled multi-rater tool.

If you have a group of people who might participate, send a note to typestudy@leadership-systems.com and I’ll arrange for your group to take Type360 and get their individual reports. No fees involved.

When I get this email, I will send instructions for how to do the rater tool, Type360.  At the end of the study, a paper will be presented to all participants.  My plan is to have multiple independent parties look at the data collected and complete an analysis of the link between what is observed and what is self-reported.  If psychological type exists, it will be observed.