THE MBTI
The MBTI is an instrument designed to evaluate people and provide descriptive profiles of their personality types. It classifies people into sixteen broad and distinctive personality types based on Carl Jung’s theory of perception and judgement. The MBTI model was developed by Katharine Cook Briggs and her daughter Isabel Briggs Meyers. The two women shared a passion for better understanding the human development. They believed that prediction of people’s patterns of behaviour and finding the keys that would enable each individual to reach full potential would make people happier and more productive in their work. The MBTI is by far the most widely used psychological test today, with over two million people a year completing the assessment instrument. The MBTI is adopted in organizational training, team building, leadership and management development.
The MBTI personality evaluation test begins with participants respond to questions that provide clues about their basic outlook or personal preferences. These responses are summarized to see where participants' preferences lie within four sets of attitudes (extroversion/introversion and judging/perceiving) that operate in conjunction with four functions (sensing/intuition and thinking/feeling).
The Extroversion/Introversion dichotomy deals with where people focus their attention. Extraverts are primarily orientated towards the outer world, whereas introverts towards the inner world.
The Sensing/Intuition dichotomy deals with how people prefer to take in and interpret information. One may rely primarily upon the process of sensing, which reports observable facts or happenings comprehended through five senses. Often considers practical minded people, who use common sense and try