"Did you test MBTI?" Nowadays, in the youth social circle, the mysterious characters composed of four English letters are becoming a new topic "top stream" MBTI, type 9 personality, big five personality, disc and other topics related to personality testing have received high attention on platforms such as Tiktok, station B, and xiaohongshu. Why did the personality test suddenly explode?
Reporter: Wang Hanyi editor: Xu Ning
Measuring personality is a hot business
MBTI is a self-report personality assessment tool, which is often carried out in the form of questionnaire. Promoters believe that it can be used to measure and describe the psychological activity law and different personality types of individuals in obtaining information, making decisions and treating life.
Participants will be divided into extroversion "e" or introversion "I", real feeling "s" or intuition "n", thinking "t" or emotion "F", judgment "J" or perception "P" in a series of judgment questions. Finally, 16 characters are formed by the arrangement and combination of 4 letters. For example, "ENTP" represents a curious debater, "INTP" is an introverted and rational logician, etc.
At present, the personality test represented by MBTI has become a new traffic password. On Weibo, the most popular topics related to MBTI have been read by more than 2.4 billion and discussed by nearly one million. In Douban, 260000 netizens have participated in the "personality and temperament psychology" group. While discussing each other's personality types enthusiastically, young netizens ridiculed the attitudes of different personalities with joking expressions, and even extended to topics such as clothing, job hunting and mate selection.
Many platforms also take traffic free rides to provide users with various types of personality tests. The content of the question bank of each platform is different. No love experience version, college entrance examination professional choice version, scene evidence multiple verification personality version... The test questions with various names are dazzling. The number of questions in each version is as few as a dozen or as many as hundreds. Most platforms claim that the topic is developed by professional institutions and university professor teams. Testers can know which personality type they belong to by intuitively choosing their preferred options according to the content of the topic.
The website one psychology, whose main business is psychological testing and psychological services, shows that more than 300000 people have participated in the disc personality test. Before starting the test, the system interface will prompt that the test results are only open to members. Of course, if you want to see the complete analysis report, you can't avoid "krypton gold".
Some personality test promoters also "skillfully" associate the test results with the subject's career development and employment prospects, aiming at the psychological needs of young people who are generally eager for promotion and salary increase. They claim that they can help individuals give full play to their career advantages, break through personality constraints and realize "changing life against the sky" by analyzing the user's personality.
Some institutions or individuals also use this as a gimmick to set up relevant courses called "character password", which are often sold for thousands of yuan. These courses take "how to see and know people", "how to improve insight" and "how to avoid character weakness" as the themes, and some are also divided into first-order, second-order and high-order levels. The higher the level, the more expensive the course price.
In the interview, the person in charge of a relevant organization claimed that he had held more than 300 character password courses offline and had thousands of case analysis experience. "After class, you will get a magic key to open a brilliant life".
In foreign countries, personality testing has also become a hot business. For example, MBTI testers certified by specific institutions can provide testing and result analysis services for enterprise or individual customers, and then charge a lot of fees.
Finding the real me has become the ardent demand of today's youth
In the interview, some interviewees expressed their psychological reasons for their desire to accept the personality test: "there are many questions in life. I hope to have an answer to what my destiny is, what job I should do, and what kind of person I should marry." Some respondents also said that although labeling classification is unscientific, it helps social "break the ice", find commonalities and stimulate the sense of belonging and identity of the same type of groups.
Xiao en, a young netizen who has recently fallen in love with MBTI, said: "every sentence analysis comes to my heart. It seems that I know myself in one day." Xiao Qin, a college student, spent money on the in-depth analysis of the personality test. She said: "I feel that I can clearly see my strengths and weaknesses. I believe it will make me make progress faster." It can be said that behind the explosion of personality test, there is a life attitude of young people eager to find themselves, actively grow and solve problems.
In fact, many young people interviewed said that when they are struggling and the road ahead is rough and at a loss, if there is a tool that can help them guide their direction, it is like a life-saving straw. We are willing to choose a simple and confidential psychological test as a "psychological counseling, but we are willing to save too much money, but we are willing to use it as a" psychological counseling ". "The psychological test gave me positive psychological hints, and later things did develop in a good direction." Xiaoen said that this may be the charm of psychological testing.
According to the China national mental health development report (2019-2020), young people aged 18 to 34 are the most anxious. Alleviating psychological anxiety has become a hot demand of young people.
However, many netizens are only happy about the test results. "Accept what you approve and ignore what you don't approve." A young interviewee said, "it's more entertainment and I don't expect to rely on it to solve the problem."
Don't be superstitious. Don't let the test results imprison you
Dr. Wang Jianfang, founder of Mingbo psychological service platform and psychologist, said that personality tests such as MBTI are essentially a fast label classification, which is not scientific and rigorous as constellation division. "Everyone is unique and should not be bound by the results of 16 personality tests. Individuals can't infer their behavior, attitude, intelligence, ability, work performance, future misfortunes and fortunes."
In fact, many personality tests similar to MBTI will not be used clinically. The standard psychological test should have both reliability and validity, but MBTI test does not have reliability, consistency and stability in the measurement results. When the same subject takes part in the test at different times and in different mood, he will get different answers.
At the same time, the answers of personality tests such as MBTI are generally positive. If there are shy, sensitive, perfectionist, inferiority and other personality characteristics of "infp" personality, it is described as "healer", "visionary" or "philosopher" and other seemingly pleasant descriptions. This will imply that some young people who believe in the test results seem to be sure to succeed as long as they have such a personality advantage.
Experts said that the so-called "labeling" test results are just not conducive to individuals to show their personality and develop themselves. Young people should cherish their unique self and not solidify their self-awareness due to a single test result. At the same time, the society should pay more attention to the psychological needs of youth groups and provide them with scientific and effective mental health guidance.