Arvind Narayanan wrote:
People have a natural craving to "belong"; they want to be accepted into whatever social group they see themselves as part of. By deliberately ambiguous wording, the test lets you answer questions in such a way that you can deceive yourself into finding external confirmation of your perception of yourself. That's the lure.
Strangely, though, the test I took tells me that I'm "ESTP", promoter, even though the description of it sounds distasteful to me. On the other hand, pseudoscience or not, it can't be denied that I "have no hesitation at all in approaching strangers and persuading them to do something". Even something as ridiculous as writing an entire encyclopedia from scratch and just *giving it away*!
I just can't wait to hear from the MBTI people -- they already complain to me every few months about our article in the encyclopedia.
For the record, I do agree that MBTI is pseudoscience, but I also think it's interesting and fun as a parlor game.
--Jimbo