1 · ORIGINS
From a mother's reading project to a type inventory
1917
Briggs starts reading biographiesAfter meeting her daughter's boyfriend Clarence Myers, Katharine Briggs studied personality at the Library of Congress, mostly through biographies.1
before 1923
Her own four temperamentsMeditative (thoughtful), spontaneous, executive and social.3
1923
Jung in EnglishPsychological Types appeared in English translation; Briggs judged Jung's framework superior and destroyed her own research.1
WWII
The first versionBuilt by Briggs and Myers; Isabel thought Jung too complex for the general public and organized his functions to make them accessible.3
1945
First assessment runGiven to George Washington Medical School students, with Lyman Briggs's help.5
1950s–60s
Myers develops the MBTIThe foundation describes the original assessment and theory as Myers's work of the 1950s and 60s.4
Note on dates: sources place Katharine Briggs's first interest in personality in 1915 or 1917. The site timeline dates the inventory to 1944; the sources consulted here say only that the original version was built during World War II and first formally administered in 1945.1,3,5,12
2 · THE AUTHORS AND THEIR CREDENTIALS
Not psychologists — and that became part of the argument
Katharine Cook Briggs1875–1968 · writerA bachelor's degree with honors in agriculture from Michigan Agricultural College, now Michigan State.6
Isabel Briggs Myersdied 1980 · novelistA bachelor's degree with honors in political science from Swarthmore College.6
The criticismcredentialsCritics note neither author had scientific, medical, psychiatric or psychological qualifications.2
3 · FROM RESEARCH TOOL TO COMMERCIAL PRODUCT
ETS, then Consulting Psychologists Press
1962Educational Testing ServiceETS publishes an updated form with a manual, for research purposes only.6
1962ETS evaluationStricker & Ross publish "A description and evaluation of the MBTI" as an ETS research bulletin.8
1975Consulting Psychologists PressMyers transfers publication rights; CPP first publishes it for practical use, and later renames itself The Myers-Briggs Company.7
1975CAPT foundedMyers and Mary McCaulley found the Center for Applications of Psychological Type as a research laboratory.7
4 · THE RELIABILITY AND VALIDITY DEBATE
Critics, defenders and the Big Five
CRITICPittenger (2005)Test-retest reliability varies widely; some scales show values as low as r = .48.8
CLOSE CALLSSalter, Evans & Forney (1997)Retested after 20 months, type labels were not stable: dominant thinking and dominant sensing retested markedly worse than intuition and feeling.13
DEFENDERSPublisher and later studiesFour manual editions report reliability and validity evidence; a later study and a 2002 meta-analysis found strong test-retest reliability.9
TRAITSMcCrae & CostaMBTI dimensions correlate with four of the Big Five traits: E/I with Extraversion, S/N with Openness, T/F with Agreeableness, J/P with Conscientiousness.11
5 · WHY A TYPE CAN FLIP
Four sliders, one letter each
Set how strongly a person leans on each dimension, then "retest" them. Each retest adds a little random measurement noise. Leanings near the middle flip letters easily — the pattern at the centre of the reliability debate.
E · ExtraversionE 4Introversion · I
S · SensingN 12Intuition · N
T · ThinkingT 2Feeling · F
J · JudgingJ 18Perceiving · P
TRUE LEANINGENTJRETEST RESULTSPress retest.Simulation only: invented noise model, no MBTI items or scoring. Published retest rates vary widely by study.
6 · REFERENCES
Sources cited on this page
- [1]Quantifying Jung: The origin and development of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. ResearchGate.researchgate.net
- [2]Barbuto, J. E. (1997). A Critique of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and its Operationalization of Carl Jung's Psychological Types. Psychological Reports, 80(2), 611-625.doi.org
- [3]Wikipedia contributors. Myers–Briggs Type Indicator (accessed 29 Sept 2026).en.wikipedia.org
- [4]The Myers & Briggs Foundation. Evolving the MBTI legacy (2023).myersbriggs.org
- [5]Wikipedia contributors. Katharine Cook Briggs (accessed 29 Sept 2026).en.wikipedia.org
- [6]The Myers-Briggs Company. MBTI facts & common criticisms (publisher statement).themyersbriggs.com
- [7]Myers Briggs Type Indicator (encyclopedia chapter, 2020). ResearchGate.researchgate.net
- [8]Pittenger, D. J. (2005). Cautionary comments regarding the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research, 57(3), 210-221.doi.org
- [9]In defense of the Myers-Briggs. Psychology Today (2020).psychologytoday.com
- [10]The Myers-Briggs Company. MBTI facts (publisher statement on manual editions).ap.themyersbriggs.com
- [11]BlossomPsy: A user-centric AI system for adaptive MBTI assessments (2026), §2.2 on psychometric considerations. arXiv:2607.06149.arxiv.org
- [12]The history of MBTI. JobCannon blog (2026) — secondary; used only for the alternative 1915 date.jobcannon.io
- [13]Salter, D. W., Evans, N. J., & Forney, D. S. (1997). Test-Retest of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator: An Examination of Dominant Functioning. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 57(4), 590-597.doi.org
HOW TO CITE THIS PAGE
What's Your IQ. (2026). Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). In Historical IQ Tests Archive. Retrieved September 29, 2026, from /en/historical-iq-tests/myers-briggs-1944
EDITORIAL RECORD
First published2026
Last reviewed29 September 2026
Sources12 cited, each matched to a visible search result (two publisher statements, one blog flagged)
Open questionExact year of the first form (site timeline: 1944)
Canonical URLwhats-your-iq.com/en/historical-iq-tests/myers-briggs-1944
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