I always find it fascinating when scientists argue the Myers-Briggs test is unscientific because it was based on intuition rather than empirical data (so was Einstein’s Theory of Relativity!), because personality is continuous rather than discrete (so are many of our constructs, like “young” and “old”, that doesn’t mean they are useless) and because it is incomplete missing the neuroticism dimension from the Big 5 (which is true, but what is also true that neuroticism is not a personality dimension universally found in human populations!)
I often admire Steven Pinker’s insights, but I don’t do that here (not even his own research, just repeating the commonplace mantra):
I have developed a model of the evolution of personality according to our ancestral mode of subsistence:
Most human populations are mixed, except for populations who practice one of those subsistence economies. In that case the Big 5 fails, as usually only two factors can be found: a provisioning (mostly male) and a caregiving (mostly female) profile.
If my theory is correct, MBTI type frequencies should somewhat correspond to a genetic map of Europe, i.e. more SJ types should be found in Southern Europe (in particular in Sardinia) and more N and SP types should be found in Northern Europe.
These ideas are certainly testable. The following graphic provides the possible evolutionary origins for each MBTI dimension:
As most people are somewhat mixed it is not surprising that many people do get varying results, especially when they are somewhere in the middle of a dimension.
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