Hello MIT Community. I am here today as an anonymous guest author on the world-famous Adam Deng website. I am an MBTI and personality psychology enthusiast, and current senior at MIT. Today, I am going to help break down the results from the recent personality survey. We are grateful to have had over 400 respondents. Now before I discuss the results, I would like to write about opinions on MBTI, personality psychology, and provide a lens through which to understand the results.
How Do We Define Personality?
According to the APA, personality is "the enduring characteristics and behavior that comprise a person’s unique adjustment to life, including major traits, interests, drives, values, self-concept, abilities, and emotional patterns. Various theories explain the structure and development of personality in different ways, but all agree that personality helps determine behavior." This definition will be key in how I further narrow down the definition of “personality”. I believe the most important word in this definition is “enduring”. One common problem with the MBTI is that people take the test one day and receive different results the next day. Therefore, it is hard to believe the MBTI is mapping something objective. No one’s core personality changes day to day.
Additionally, I believe action is downstream from personality. You are not extraverted because you talk to many people. You talk to many people because you are extraverted. Personality is also independent of action, but action is not independent of personality. Someone who is extraverted may go through a period of behaving more timidly and reserved due to a depression. While their actions have changed, their core personality, which is their natural propensity towards extraversion, has not. Likewise, a natural introvert may learn to display extraverted behavior since society tends to reward certain extraverted behaviors. This makes action only a moderately good heuristic for personality, and not the end all be all.
I believe traits, interests, and values, although used in the APA definition, are also downstream of personality. Life experience can change your values, behavioral traits can be externally modified, and values can largely depend on upbringing. One’s environment has a large impact on these things. For personality to be “enduring”, it must not be affected much by the environment. It must be “nature” rather than “nurture”.