As various people have implied, this also suggests that one could instead read the various descriptions and look for facts that justify accepting or refuting those descriptions, without taking the test itself.
In fact, it’s probably a good idea to do that prior to taking the test, to protect yourself from anchoring on the test’s result, unless you are confident that the result of the test is reliable enough that anchoring on it is a net win.
But it leaves me wondering: in your experience, is taking (for example) the MBTI and accepting/rejecting bits of the result more valuable than, say, starting with the hypothesis that you are just like some fictional character and accepting/rejecting bits of that description?
is taking (for example) the MBTI and accepting/rejecting bits of the result more valuable than, say, starting with the hypothesis that you are just like some fictional character and accepting/rejecting bits of that description?
Hmmm… I haven’t tried the “fictional character” one, so “experience” isn’t what I’m applying here. It sounds vaguely promising, except that fictional characters are not optimized in their traits or presentations to be informative in this way (being instead devised for story delivery, possibly unreliably narrated, presented in only specific situations and not at randomly selected moments, etc.), and the MBTI results at least make an attempt at being useful for this sort of exercise.
I do this exercise often, with a wide range of descriptions: fictional characters, real-life characters, actual people I know, personality inventories, horoscopes, etc. I find it more-than-zero useful as a self-knowledge exercise, but I have no idea how one source compares to another… I’ve never really tried to compare the results for utility.
As various people have implied, this also suggests that one could instead read the various descriptions and look for facts that justify accepting or refuting those descriptions, without taking the test itself.
In fact, it’s probably a good idea to do that prior to taking the test, to protect yourself from anchoring on the test’s result, unless you are confident that the result of the test is reliable enough that anchoring on it is a net win.
But it leaves me wondering: in your experience, is taking (for example) the MBTI and accepting/rejecting bits of the result more valuable than, say, starting with the hypothesis that you are just like some fictional character and accepting/rejecting bits of that description?
Hmmm… I haven’t tried the “fictional character” one, so “experience” isn’t what I’m applying here. It sounds vaguely promising, except that fictional characters are not optimized in their traits or presentations to be informative in this way (being instead devised for story delivery, possibly unreliably narrated, presented in only specific situations and not at randomly selected moments, etc.), and the MBTI results at least make an attempt at being useful for this sort of exercise.
(nods) Makes sense.
I do this exercise often, with a wide range of descriptions: fictional characters, real-life characters, actual people I know, personality inventories, horoscopes, etc. I find it more-than-zero useful as a self-knowledge exercise, but I have no idea how one source compares to another… I’ve never really tried to compare the results for utility.