Not Our Type

In order to prepare for our seminary internship program we were required to take the Myers-Briggs personality inventory -- not some little ten-question social media quiz but a significantly longer and more detailed questionnaire that was supposed to have substantially more science behind it. A few months earlier, I had taken a different but similarly detailed questionnaire that also determined my "personality type" as a part of my ordination process.

I don't remember what my type was from either test, or even if they produced the same result. I do remember that my score was neutral on two of the four scales. The counselor who helped me review that result and a few others suggested it was because my "go-to" type was probably one way, but the demands of my previous job had shifted me in the other direction. It made as much sense as anything else about the whole process did. I also remember that the student life office kicked around the idea of yet a third required Myers-Briggs questionnaire for some non-classroom degree requirement but eventually decided not to do it. I don't know if that's because some unnamed students started asking if we were going to replace our toilet stall doors with a Myers-Briggs-activated portal so that you would have to assess your personality before entering. I think it's more likely that some cooler heads wondered if we were buying into the fad a little too much.

In any event, my inability to remember my results has never given me any trouble. And according to organizational psychologist Benjamin Hardy, it shouldn't. Neither Ye Olde MB nor some of its modern fad successors, like the Enneagram, have much solid science at their base. They're also far too often applied rigidly, so that even actual personality traits a person may learn about themselves via such a test are thought of as hardline predictive rather than generally descriptive.

These days, if asked my "personality type," I have a variety of responses. My most common has been "IDKAIDC," or "I don't know and I don't care." There are certainly other letter combos available, but they don't seem fitting for a personality in my profession.