It’s no secret I’m a big fan of Myers-Briggs®. I’ll defend it against people who say it’s useless, write and re-write posts trying to come up with the simplest introduction to function stacks ever, and spend my time musing about how type influences both real people and fictional characters. But as much as I like the Myers-Briggs® system of personality types, I also know there are things it’s not meant to do.

In fact, applying Myers-Briggs® wrongly is one of the biggest reasons it has come under so much criticism. For example, you can find quite a few articles online that argue Myers-Briggs® is basically useless in a work environment. They’ll tell you it’s not a good indicator of job performance nor is it all that useful for screening potential employees. But that shouldn’t come as a surprise, considering those aren’t the test’s purpose. And it’s unfair to dismiss a test for not doing something it wasn’t meant to do in the first place.

Here's What Your Myers-Briggs Type Can and Can't Tell You | marissabaker.wordpress.com — Photo credit: Brodie Vissers via StockSnap

So what is the Myers-Briggs® test supposed to tell you? And just how much can we apply what we learn from finding our type to real life?

This Is Your Brain On Decision Making

The Myers-Briggs® test is designed to measure how people’s minds work. It describes their preferred mental processes or “cognitive functions” (to use the technical term). Contrary to what so many critics of the test think, it doesn’t force people into dichotomies. Rather, each type has a “stack” of preferred functions. So an ENFJ type isn’t someone who’s 100% extroverted, intuitive, feeling, and judging. They’re a type that prefers making decisions with Extroverted Feeling, learning new things with Introverted Intuition, and then also uses Extroverted Sensing and Introverted Thinking to a lesser extent (click here to learn how we get from the four letter type to the functions).

These characteristics of Myers-Briggs® theory means that taking the test can help you: Read more →

Most of us have a working definition of what life is. We can tell that a couch is non-living and that the cat sleeping on its cushions is alive without thinking about it much at all. But ask the question, “What is life?” and we have a little more trouble answering. We might fall back on a biology textbook definition and list properties of life like organization, metabolism, homeostasis, growth, and response. Or maybe we’ll go with a more philosophical approach and discuss the meaning or purpose of life. Either way, you’ll find there isn’t a single consensus on how we should define and think about life.

This Is Why The Way We Think About Life Matters | marissabaker.wordpress.com — Photo credit: Pearl via Lightstock

As people who believe in a creator God, Christians have another factor to consider when coming up with a definition of life. We have God as the starting point for all life, and so our definition could add a phrase such as, “Life is something given and sustained by a creator.” And more philosophically, we can talk about human life as distinct from animal or plant life because we have a chance at eternal life. Read more →

Month: August 2017

Here’s What Your Myers-Briggs® Type Can and Can’t Tell You

This Is Your Brain On Decision Making

This Is Why The Way We Think About Life Matters