[Journalism Internship] Integrate four letters into their daily lives MBTI

While there are mixed feelings about MBTI results and their accuracy, some say that unveiling their personality types through the popular test has helped them improve their relations with others.

The MBTI test is especially popular among Korea’s youth, who post their MBTI test results on social media, then influencing their friends to do the same and causing many people to jump on the bandwagon. Many who participate in this trend just do it for fun, but some rely on these test results when choosing their daily activities, such as interacting with people or dating.

MBTI, short for Myers Briggs Type Indicator, has been around for many decades. Isabel Briggs Myers, a psychologist, and her mother Catherine Cook Briggs, an educator, devised the MBTI test as a tool to display patterns of human behavior in 1942.

MBTI

Each letter of an MBTI result describes a different personality trait: The first letter indicates one’s relationship with their surroundings and people around them; the second letter describes the way one takes in information; the third describes how one makes decisions and copes with emotions; and the fourth stands for how one plans.

The MBTI’s four categories are based on these standards, and each is divided into two traits: extroverted (E) and introverted (I); sensing (S) and intuitive (I); thinking (T) and feeling (F); and prospecting (P) and judging (J). In this way, anyone who takes the MBTI test can figure out what his or her personality type is among a total of 16 combinations.

“I think it does help develop better your relationships, because just by knowing someone’s MBTI result you can understand a lot about their personality and get to know the person relatively quicker and more in depth,” said Elyor Mikhidinov, 23, from Uzbekistan.

Kim Myeong-jong, 22, shared a specific situation in which the MBTI helped in communication.

“Before I had conversation with a certain friend, I was expecting that he would be a shy introvert,” said Kim. “But it turned out that she is very talkative and has a big mouth. The fact that her personality was different from what I expected made us have more things to talk about and I think it also helped us to facilitate our communication. But I think it helps a lot when you and the other person have a similar MBTI. If theirs is a lot different, it may not facilitate good communication.”

Kim Eun-jin, 21, who says she’s an ISFJ, said that “sharing MBTI results helps us to understand others and get ideas, to some extent, of how to treat others.”

Even though everyone has different perspectives on how the MBTI can be used in a conversation, everyone agrees that the MBTI can help us understand one another better.

BY YANG SEUNG-JOO, NAM JEONG-HYUN AND MUHAMMAD AL AMIN SUHARWOTO [wwssya3@gmail.com, may5073152@gmail.com, u1373279@umail.utah.edu]