The Next Step, Part One
April 24th, 2008(This post is part one of two on the MBTI Step II test. Part one provides a quick review of MBTI personality theory and my experience with taking the test. Part two will be an in-depth post on the test itself.)
It’s been awhile since I made a post on MBTI personality theory, and I always meant to do a follow-up. If you haven’t heard of MBTI before, or read that Wikipedia link (or my previous post), I recommend doing so now, since this post will be easier to understand if you know a bit about MBTI. For this post, there’s another, more in-depth personality test I wanted to cover called the MBTI Step II test, which I didn’t get to last time around. I finally got around to taking it so that I could do a proper writeup for the blog.
Quick review for the unfamiliar: MBTI stands for Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. It’s a personality theory developed by Katharine Briggs and her daughter, Isabel Myers. MBTI classifies people along 4 dimensions: Extroversion/Introversion (E/I), Sensing/iNtuition (S/N), Thinking/Feeling (T/F), and Judging/Perceiving (P/J). E/I and T/F are fairly easy to understand. Extroversion/Introversion is outgoing vs. reserved, Thinking/Feeling is head vs. heart. J/P simply refers to how much you like to plan in advance and the like: Judgers like to settle things, Perceivers keep their options open.
S/N is perhaps the hardest distinction to grasp. It’s concrete (Sensing) vs. abstract (iNtuition). Application vs. theory. Maybe even non-nerd vs. nerd. It is probably the hardest to understand, yet most fundamental, distinction between different personalities.
Anyway, after Myers and Briggs spelled out their theory, a man named David Keirsey came along and, using an MBTI framework, created temperament theory. The difference between Myers-Briggs and Keirsey’s work is that Keirsey is more based on behavior than theory, something I prefer generally. Additionally, Keirsey breaks down the 16 types into 4 temperaments: Artisans (SP), Guardians (SJ), Idealists (NF), and Rationals (NT). As I mentioned in my previous MBTI post, you can understand these four types through the Wizard of Oz: “The Cowardly Lion is the Artisan looking for courage, Dorothy is the Guardian looking to go home, the Tin Man is an Idealist looking for a heart, and the Scarecrow is a Rational looking for a brain. Whichever character you identify with most (if any) is probably your Keirsey temperament.” (For the record, I’m probably a Rational myself. “If I Only Had A Brain”…)
However, Keirsey only offers a basic “temperament sorter”, so if you want a more in-depth personality test, you’re out of luck. (You can find a summary of the differences betwen Myers-Briggs and Keirsey here.)
Enter the MBTI Step II test. Myers, up until she died, was working on a more in-depth version of her original MBTI test. She broke out each of the 4 dimensions of personality into 5 smaller parts, or subscales. Thus, instead of 8 there are 40 possible orientations of your personality. Sounds like a lot, right? Well, here’s a quick version of the Step II table I ripped off Wikipedia for reference:
(You can see that each of the 8 dimensions of personality is broken into 5 component factors.)
After Myers died, her family continued her work and eventually produced this MBTI Step II test. However, it’s never been very accessible. Because it’s an intensive, specific tool used for personal development, it’s hard to simply give the Step II test to someone online. You can easily take the MBTI Step I (short version) and Keirsey Temperament Sorter tests for free, but taking the Step II test will probably set you back to the tune of about 80 to 90 dollars.
On top of that, it’s a lot harder to find information about the Step II test. I’ve seen a Step II manual on Amazon, but it’s usually out of stock or prohibitively expensive. In lieu of that, the best I could do was check out a Step II sample report and the various websites that offer the test. Additional searches on the topic didn’t turn up much more than that.
Thus, I figured this was a good blogging opportunity to kind of fill in this informational gap and maybe to learn a bit more about myself. (One personal thing I learned right off the bat was that I didn’t mind spending 80 bucks on a personality test, which must seem a little crazy. Maybe I don’t have that brain quite yet!) Like most people taking the Step II test, I didn’t come into it with a clean slate. I’ve read “People Patterns“, “Please Understand Me II”, and all three books in the “Pygmalion Project” series (all books based on Keirsey’s version of MBTI), in addition to reams of material online.
That means I was already quite familiar with MBTI and the 16 types. But that also means I was quite familiar with the tests they use, especially since I’ve taken each of the free tests out there multiple times. (I almost always test INTJ - the Mastermind - these days, if you’re curious.) My previous experience would turn out to be a bit of a problem. More on that in a minute.
So I found a site I liked and proceeded to sign up for the Step II test. The whole process was fairly painless, except for the hit in the pocketbook. The test I took (which is probably the same one most people use) was 144 questions. It didn’t take me longer than 20-30 minutes to do the whole thing, even with double-checking all my answers. (What’s that, $3-$4 a minute? I’ll bet most adult hotlines are cheaper…) Overall, the test was pretty easy for a personality testing veteran such as myself.
The real problem was, as I mentioned, that I’d already read as much as I could about MBTI tests (as well as MBTI Step II) in addition to taking a bunch of them. So I had to engage in my usual “willful ignorance” of how the questions were worded. (As opposed to the “unintentional ignorance” I engage in all the time due to my aforementioned lack of brain.) Like many personality tests, if you’ve ever taken an MBTI test of any flavor, you’ll quickly see that the test is shoe-horning you into one of two possible answers, which are usually polar opposites of one another. And if you know anything about MBTI, it’s pretty obvious that the questions are all along E/I, S/N, T/F, and J/P lines. Again, I tried to put all that out of my brain (or lack thereof) and just answer the questions honestly and spontaneously, which is what the test suggests anyway.
After I finished the test, I got my results from my report administrator, but in an attempt to maintain some illusion of professionalism (for once), I won’t post my report here. But the format looks exactly like that sample report I linked to earlier, except with my egregiously long name slapped on it. (Feel free to use that sample report to follow along in part two.)
Another benefit to taking the test was that most of the sites out there offer a free email/instant message/phone consultation along with the Step II test. I think that’s pretty cool. However, since I didn’t want to explain to some random lady my need to blog about personality tests and types, I haven’t set up a consultation yet. Just as I think it might be a little extreme to directly post my results here, I also didn’t want to endorse and involve the lady that administered my test in this post without her consent. If, after my consultation, I feel like it’s appropriate to blog about the whole thing, I will.
However, I’d still like to use some of my test results to put the Step II test in perspective. And if you’ve read some of my other posts and know what sort of person I am (meaning the three of you out there reading besides my mother - hi guys!), I hope you can understand more about the Step II test based on what I say. (Especially since there really aren’t any other sources out here on the topic.) Thus, next time in part two I’ll go through the entire test in-depth. If you want to know how I scored and why, check back here for the second part next week. Will I finally find that brain? Find out then!
(This would be a good opportunity read up on some of the links I’ve posted, if you haven’t. For reference, they are here, here, here, and here. You’ll understand the Step II test a lot more if you have some background information to refer to.)
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April 26th, 2008 at 7:45 pm
There is a great FREE True Colors Personality Test at:
True Colors Test
Check it out!
May 25th, 2008 at 4:57 pm
[…] post is part two of two on the MBTI Step II test. Part one provided a quick review of MBTI personality theory and my experience with taking the test. Part two […]