The Personality Brokers

The Strange History of Myers-Briggs and the Birth of Personality Testing

By: Merve Emre

Narrated by: Ellen Archer

Length: 11 hrs and 30 mins

Publisher's summary

A New York Times critics' best book of 2018.

An Economist best book of 2018.

A Spectator best book of 2018.

A Mental Floss best book of 2018.

An unprecedented history of the personality test conceived a century ago by a mother and her daughter - fiction writers with no formal training in psychology - and how it insinuated itself into our boardrooms, classrooms, and beyond.

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator is the most popular personality test in the world. It is used regularly by Fortune 500 companies, universities, hospitals, churches, and the military. Its language of personality types - extraversion and introversion, sensing and intuiting, thinking and feeling, judging and perceiving - has inspired television shows, Online dating platforms, and Buzzfeed quizzes. Yet despite the test's widespread adoption, experts in the field of psychometric testing, a $2 billion industry, have struggled to validate its results - no less account for its success. How did Myers-Briggs, a homegrown multiple choice questionnaire, infiltrate our workplaces, our relationships, our Internet, our lives?

First conceived in the 1920s by the mother-daughter team of Katherine Briggs and Isabel Briggs Myers, a pair of devoted homemakers, novelists, and amateur psychoanalysts, Myers-Briggs was designed to bring the gospel of Carl Jung to the masses. But it would take on a life entirely its own, reaching from the smoke-filled boardrooms of mid-century New York to Berkeley, California, where it was administered to some of the 20th century's greatest creative minds. It would travel across the world to London, Zurich, Cape Town, Melbourne, and Tokyo, until it could be found just as easily in elementary schools, nunneries, and wellness retreats as in shadowy political consultancies and on social networks.

Drawing from original reporting and never-before-published documents, The Personality Brokers takes a critical look at the personality indicator that became a cultural icon. Along the way it examines nothing less than the definition of the self - our attempts to grasp, categorize, and quantify our personalities. Surprising and absorbing, the book, like the test at its heart, considers the timeless question: What makes you, you?

©2018 Merve Emre (P)2018 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

"In this riveting, far-reaching book [Emre] brings the skills of a detective, cultural critic, historian, scientist and biographer to bear on the MBTI and the two women who invented and promoted it.... She is never condescending to or dismissive of the people who find their four-dimensional profiles illuminating and helpful. That is why, when Ms. Emre describes her book as being 'for the skeptics, the true believers, and everyone in between,' she is absolutely right." (Wall Street Journal)

“Merve Emre’s new book begins like a true-crime thriller, with the tantalizing suggestion that a number of unsettling revelations are in store.... It takes a while to realize that Emre has gotten you hooked under arguably false pretenses, but what she finally pulls off is so inventive and beguiling you can hardly begrudge her for it. The revelations she uncovers are less scandalous than they are affecting and occasionally (and delightfully) bizarre.... The Personality Brokers is history that reads like biography that reads like a novel - a fluid narrative that defies expectations and plays against type.” (New York Times)

“[A] brilliant cultural history of the personality-assessment industry.” (The Economist)

great book that pitches past the W

well reported and written, the book tears apart the mbti, but makes too broad claims about personality testing. there are reputation based clinical and nonclinical tests that, unlike the mbti, have test-retest validity, convergent validity and are psychometrically sound. the underlying gender bias and racial bias and poor psychometric properties, make it unconscionable to use the mbti for selection, assignments or anything more serious than fortune telling. it would have been interesting hear from it's corporate or organizational psychology defenders

Insightful especially for practitioners

Very useful and even compulsory stuff for practitioners. Respectful, honest and critical! Sorry to hear the author had to experience a zelotic instructor. But that is what is meant by the 'believers'.
It is not a religion and it is from a scientfic point of view outdated. I know that and I tell it to all people who do the test. I will not call them my subjects. Still, it is more fun than astrology or the big five test. And since it so popular in the workplace and sports you need to understand what your dealing with... and what not. And that is why I liked the research. The story was sometimes difficult to follow when new characters were introduced and I couldn't grasp their significance.

Type This

If the obvious isn’t enough to make you question the validity of MB, this excellent book ought to seal it for you. The research is outstanding.

Loved Myers-Briggs Already - Wonderful Backstory

I've taken a life long interest in studying Personality Types. This book is a heart warmer, told romantically. A great choice for those who are attracted to the raising of children, homeschooling. This is the progression of Katharine Cook Briggs' natural interest in her family and children, observational learning of the neighborhood children, and keeping written accounts of all (not just her own). And it blew up from there. I was sympathetic to Briggs' inability to untie the apron strings to her adult daughter, Isabel Myers, yet she had raised her so well that the daughter was not desperate for her approval. I loved that no man could measure up to the ability of the matriarch of the 1900s to speak parenting so fluently as did Mother Briggs. The author portrayed both Katharine Briggs and Isabel Myers as a couple of intense ladies and I loved the depiction. Both of their husbands seemed largely supportive of them through their crazy journey. This book could make a great movie, with Carl Jung, Albert Einstein, Hitler, Jean Piaget, John F. Kennedy, Nixon and the BFF of Isabel in her senior years making their appearances in this story. I'm inspired by the lives of these two women. Narration is excellent.

A deep dive into the history of type indicators

Great book. Very historical and introspective look on type indicators, and their future in society.

INTJ says...

Oh, how sad to know that the Meyers-Briggs was invented by a religious nut case and her equally crazy daughter.

When I took the test when I was 17, it changed my life. I wasn't a circus freak! It's just that I was one percent of the population. It described me so well. And it hasn't changed over all these decades.

I'm not sure what to make of test now, considering all I learned in this book, which was really quite interesting and detailed.

I'm still a believer! Fascinating story!!

What an incredible story! Mother and daughter biography with American history and psychology all intertwined! a very good read/listen

A biography that reads like a novel.

The book’s title ‘Personality Brokers’ was likely designed to target the U.S. market. It goes by the understated ‘What’s Your Type’ in the U.K. One might glean from reading the various online articles that the book would be a scathing, condescending view of the women. That’s hardly the case. The author does an excellent job of SHOWING how this mother-daughter team paved the way for the people who downplayed or tried to diminish their contribution to typology.

A few notes and mild spoilers:
Methodology: Katherine’s so called ‘non-scientific’ methods were sound. The author describes the details of her ethnographic record-keeping and the painstaking process Isabel faced trying to validate the instrument using the psychometric methods demanded of her. Most research using the MBTI shows statistically significant correlations between the dichotomies versus the MBTI type. Not looking to debate this point or get into a diatribe about cognitive functions. I just find it interesting that for all of the stress they put her through, this fact wasn’t enough. The BIG 5/NEO are similar with the added element of conscientiousness. Makes me wonder what was REALLY up.

Racism: There were some racial overtones in the instrument’s’ development. There was (is) a perception (by some) that people of color (darker races) were all Se. This actually comes from some of Jung’s early work. One of the researchers (not Myers or Briggs) actually makes a comment in a study that occurred when they had the opportunity to test a large African American population. “I hope they are all sensors”. CAPT keeps their stats online which shows no one has a monopoly on the NT temperament. This was something that was later acknowledged by Jung, all types can be found in all races/cultures but there may be some values that are held in higher esteem and therefore fostered for the good of the group. Isabel also wrote a book where a group of family members entered a suicide pact when they are lead to believe they have ‘negro’ blood. Without reading it, I would not assume that she’s advocating that mindset. My guess is that she was exposing the level of hate it would take to commit suicide to prevent “spreading those genes.” The book is not in publication.

Sexism: They were the equivalent of women in STEM today but the mindset of their time. They persevered.

Mysticism: There were elements of religion interspersed in the theory and it’s held that the initial goal of Katherine was to help people find their rightful roles to produce a better society.

Classism: They were middle/upper middle class women of their time oblivious to the plights of the lower classes. However they had their own demons. Both women lost children, experienced marital problems and felt the pull of wanting to pursue creative endeavors yet meet societal expectations of women of the time.

The author (and narrator) keep you captivated to the end.

A great read on what could have been a dull subject

This biography reads like a novel and probably because it portrays with honesty the fallibility of human condition and even of those who dedicated their lives to help us capitalize on our strengths. Surprisingly, the author -and perhaps unintentionally- manages to somehow validate the relevance of the MBTI and not because of its scientific rigor, but because it opens the door to inquiry.

#biography #typology #TagsGiving #sweepstakes

Well-rounded view of MBTI

While the history Ellen Archer discloses does rightly cast doubt on the validity of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, she is also careful to point out positive features of it as well.

For someone whose stated opinion from the start of the book was to discredit and expose dangers of the MBTI, the pains to which she goes to point out counter points are helpful in really understanding the strengths as well as shortcomings of the MBTI. Given that it's likely to stick around to some extent whether we like it or not, this understanding of the inherent limits as well as the potential benefits and intent of MBTI is the real takeaway for me, though the history itself was definitely interesting.