Is Myers-Briggs a symptom of narcissism?
by Greg Krehbiel on 7 February 2013
Beware, this is a grumpy post.
Some people tell me that I’m supposed to learn everybody’s personality type and learning style and whatever other style so I can treat them appropriately. Like I’m Burger King or something.
If the person is introverted, approach with the left foot. If extroverted, turn the right hand slightly inward. If they are an auditory learner, emphasize the verbs.
I’m kidding of course, but all this stuff simply wears me out.
And where did it all come from? Why can’t we just treat people decently and let everybody learn to deal with their own problems? Why do people expect special treatment because they’re an ESTJ, or R2D2, or whatever?
It would never cross my mind to tell my boss that I need verbal instructions because I’m a … whatever … and when Mom said “clean your room” I don’t think “but you didn’t tell me the right way” is a valid excuse for not doing it.
I don’t want to keep card files on my friends and customize my evites by the recipient’s Myers-Briggs profile.
If I need to learn things a certain way, that’s my problem. If I don’t like crowds, I stay away from crowds, … or I cope.
This idea that everything should be customized seems incredibly self-centered, wrong-headed and socially dysfunctional to me.
But then again, maybe that’s just because I’m a 32OP7 whooop! 49 zing 8.
-- 2013-02-07 » Greg Krehbiel
7 February 2013 @ 1:19 pm
I half agree with you. But I think the point of these things is not so much to train everybody to treat everybody a certain way in casual interaction, but to enable people who want to really invest in a relationship, to do it right.
If I work with somebody, I expect that person to treat me appropriately, I will treat them appropriately, and the differences in personality style should roll off if we’re both doing that.
But if you have a close friend, or are married to someone, is it really asking too much that you seek to understand the way to relate to them, that is best for them? Isn’t that sort of what you’d call, you know, love?
7 February 2013 @ 1:20 pm
BTW, what I mean by “the differences in personality style should roll off” is that they might in fact rub one another the wrong way, but if they’re acting like adults, it shouldn’t really be an issue. So that’s where I agree with you.
7 February 2013 @ 1:25 pm
OTOH (sorry for the string of comments) I do agree that in common use, there’s narcissism going on. I’m not sure whether it’s a symptom of narcissism, or something that cultivates narcissism. Certainly the self-absorbed person can wave around their Myers-Briggs quotient and expect everyone to cater it. And people do act that way. Yet I think there is potential value in that stuff, in the right context.
And it might interest you to know that I’ve yet to take the Myers-Briggs for pretty much the reasons you give. I don’t really want something in my head that’s going to set up all kinds of expectations for myself, or others — I’d rather try to respond the best way I can to the things I deal with, and take a charitable approach to other people without worrying about whether they’re getting my profile right. But the introversion thing I posted on Facebook — that’s just my life.
7 February 2013 @ 1:32 pm
Yes, of course you want to learn more details about people you are close to, and how to relate to them.
But to me that argues against categorizing them by Myers-Briggs or anything else.
The category is a generalization that is — by necessity — less precise about any individual. Trying to treat an individual according to a generalization is moving in the wrong direction.
That is precisely what happened at a former workplace. We were all getting along just fine until some psych-consultant guy came in and put us all in little groups and told us how to get along. It ruined office interactions for months.
There are some general guidelines that can be helpful in some cases — e.g., Dad needs details before he can feel comfortable about the trip you want to go on — but my experience with this stuff has been almost universally negative.
7 February 2013 @ 1:52 pm
I don’t know, I think we categorize people in broad terms all the time, even if it’s not formalized.
Aren’t there certain people we think of as “emotional” and others as more “rational?” (Not in a pejorative way, but in how we can expect them to react in a given situation.) And to the extent that’s true, then they’re clearly not the opposite.
Broad strokes like that, don’t seem to be harmful. If a person IS an introvert, then she can’t be someone who’s classed an introvert but is actually extroverted. The two describe broad tendencies but admit for much individual variation. The intro/extro distinction seems to me to be something you can use to get a broad idea of how a person is going to relate to others, in a way that can be useful, but not something that purports to describe her personanlity in detail, a la the INTXYEJLOL stuff.
Broad categories can be useful guidelines but when you fine tune it, like Myers-Briggs does, then it just gets silly, because the fine-tuning has to be further fine-tuned for every individual, and unless/until you do that, then you’re going to misjudge them and misapply the “method” anyway. You haven’t gained much, and you’ve lost the ability to treat people as individuals rather than types.
9 February 2013 @ 10:54 am
You’re right about some things, but not others.
On the “learning styles” crap, teachers knew for 15 years what the social “scientists” took that long to figure out: It’s BS.
But when my wife tells me how she wants me to start dinner, and I’m trying to remember a multi-step process, then she changes the subject and talks about her conversation with her mother, or her visit with our daughter, or some other thing, there isn’t a snowball’s chance in Hell I’ll remember her instructions.
That’s my ADD. Simply ain”t gonna happen.