Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Myers-Briggs in Japan

Interesting thought from a brief snippet of a radio programme I caught in the car yesterday afternoon. It was an interview with a woman who was tasked with translating the MBTI (Myers Briggs Type Indicator) personality questionnaire into Japanese.

She pointed out firstly that the Japanese have no concept of preference of one thing over another. They tend to know what it is right to say and consider it inappropriate to ever say the opposite. So, for instance, a question 'Do you have few or many friends?' It is clearly, in Japanese culture, desirable to have many friends. So nobody doing the MBTI in Japan would answer 'few.'

This presents some challenges for the question-poser. Fascinating.

I'm usually INTP by the way, with much flexibility over I/E and some over P/J but not the NT. I have few friends. If you didn't understand this try here.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Andrew Marr said:"A lot of bloggers seem to be socially inadequate, pimpled, single, slightly seedy, bald, cauliflower-nosed young men sitting in their mother's basements and ranting. They are very angry people."

sounds about right?

Steve Tilley said...

Er, no. Almost completely wrong.

Minnie said...

Myers-Briggs is designed to make all participants, whatever their category set, feel good about themselves. There's nothing whatsoever in there that might indicate any socially undesirable characteristics. It's quite interesting to try and take the test while adopting another character/playing a very different role ...!
It is much-favoured by exec recruitment specialists, which doubtless goes a long way to explain why there is such a prevalence of sociopaths among top management.
Er, INFJ.