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