"Are you an I person or an E person?" This question has increasingly become an opening line for many people when they want to know more about another person they just met. Hu Xiaofan is no exception. In the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), a system that categorizes people based on their traits, tendencies and other characteristics, Hu is an INFJ. On the official website 16personalities.com, where MBTI is explained in detail, INFJ persons are described as "quiet and mystical, yet very inspiring and tireless idealists."

After reading the detailed explainer of the type, Hu believes the testing described her perfectly. "The assessment not only makes a lot of sense, but also saves me from awkward silences when I have to socialize with strangers," the 25-year-old Beijing master's degree candidate told Beijing Review. "Being an introvert, at least I can ask that question about being I or E and get the conversation rolling."

On Weibo, a major microblogging platform in China, hashtag "MBTI" has attracted more than 3.5 billion views and 800,000 netizens have joined related discussions. The type indicator offers people not only a topic of discussion when socializing, but also a tool to learn more about themselves and reflect on their life choices.

A trending topic

Recognized as one of the most popular personality assessments, the MBTI was created by Katharine Briggs and her daughter Isabel Briggs Myers in the United States in the early-mid 20th century. Inspired by the book Psychological Types by Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung, the MBTI testing system was first published in 1962. The test features of over 90 questions and, based on the results, the test-takers' psychological traits are sorted into four opposite pairs: introversion (I) or extroversion (E), sensing (S) or intuition (N), thinking (T) or feeling (F), and judging (J) or perceiving (P). One letter from each pair is taken to produce a four-letter test result, leading to 16 possible psychological types, such as INFJ or ENFP.

Before the assessment became popular in China, two young people who met for the first time had mainly judged whether they were in sync based on topics such as interests and zodiac signs. Now, they are increasingly shifting their attention to the four capital letters that sum up their personalities.

Introversion and extroversion are the traits most commonly discussed by young Chinese. They also shared self-mocking personality-themed videos online. In April, a video titled "When a group of I people who don't know each other are crammed into a KTV" went viral online. In the video, several introverts gathered in a noisy KTV room. To avoid embarrassment, some of them had to "transform" into cheerful and outgoing E people, actively bringing up topics and chatting with others. Many netizens said they could totally relate to the social embarrassment.

"I would behave just like the people in the video who become livelier to avoid awkwardness," Hu said. "Some of the MBTI analyses of my personality is very accurate, but I don't think it's completely scientific or reliable. It's a self-exploration tool."

The MBTI is used not only by individuals, but also on a larger scale. Like in the West, the tool has been widely used in recruitment and management by large enterprises in China. The Washington Post in 2012 published a piece that read the Myers-Briggs Company, formerly CPP, Inc., the official and exclusive publisher of the MBTI assessment and associated products, brought in roughly $20 million a year from the test and its 800 other products, such as coaching guides.

"We use the result of MBTI and other personality testing instruments as a reference, rather than criteria, to better know about job seekers. It's a very efficient way for choosing the one we want among a large number of candidates within a short time," Wang Xi, a human resources staff member of an online company in Shanghai, told Beijing Review.

Many netizens have shared their experience of being asked by human resources staff what type they are at job interviews. Some said they were stopped from getting into further rounds of interviews because "their personality is not compatible with the post."

Also, the questionnaire for 2023 freshmen at the Beijing Institute of Technology included a question about MBTI type to help them spot more compatible roommates.

Moreover, in the report on summer travel this year, released by China's leading online travel agency Trip.com Group in late August, a section analyzed people's travel preference based on the types. It found E people tended to gather a group of friends and go to concerts, P people tended to go on spontaneous trips without much pre-planning and stay in hotels they booked the day they needed accommodation, whereas J people would book hotels 30 days beforehand.

A label?

Why has the MBTI assessment become a hot topic? "The popularity of the test indicates that people have a psychological need to understand and explore themselves," psychologist Xu Pingting told newspaper Hunan Daily.

According to Xu, most of the traits described by the MBTI personality type are about our advantages and are ambiguous and general, leading to a possible bias as described by the Barnum effect. The Barnum effect refers to a psychological phenomenon in which people easily accept general and ambiguous personality interpretations and believe they accurately express their unique characteristics.

"People are eager to be lovable and beautiful. If they get too caught up in this desire, they will fall into the trap of thinking that that's the way they are, when, in reality, it is just the way they want to be," Xu said.

"Neither zodiac signs nor MBTI are comprehensive enough to directly define everyone's personality," Yuan Yonggui, Director of the Department of Psychology at Zhongda Hospital, affiliated to the Southeast University in Nanjing, capital of Jiangsu Province, told newspaper Yangtze Evening News.

But Xu believes that although the MBTI personality test may not be accurate, it can help people adopt positive habits. "The positive feedback is helpful to the testees. When you focus on your positive side, you will strive in that direction."

"People are diverse. The 8 billion people around the world should not be defined by 16 labels," Hu concluded.

(Print Edition Title: Tracing Traits)

Copyedited by G.P. Wilson

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