What’s Your Type?: The Story of the Myers-Briggs | and How Personality Testing Took Over the World

A SPECTATOR BOOK OF THE YEAR‘History that reads like biography that reads like a novel – a fluid narrative that defies expectations and plays against type’ New York Times‘Brilliant and savage’ Philip HensherAn 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 has been harnessed by Fortune 100 companies | universities | hospitals | churches | and the military. Its language – of extraversion vs. introversion | thinking vs. feeling – has inspired online dating platforms and Buzzfeed quizzes alike. And yet despite the test's widespread adoption | experts in the field of psychometric testing | a $500 million industry | struggle to account for its success – no less validate its results. How did the Myers-Briggs insinuate itself into our jobs | 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 aspiring novelists and devoted homemakers | the Myers-Briggs was designed to bring the gospel of Carl Jung to the masses. But it would take on a life of its own | reaching from the smoke-filled boardrooms of mid-century New York to Berkeley | California | where it was honed against some of the 20th century's greatest creative minds. It would travel across the world to London | Zurich | Cape Town | Melbourne | and Tokyo; to elementary schools | nunneries | wellness retreats | and the closed-door corporate training sessions of today.Drawing from original reporting and never-before-published documents | What’s Your Type? examines nothing less than the definition of the self – our attempts to grasp | categorise and quantify our personalities. Surprising and absorbing | the book | like the test at its heart | considers the timeless question: What makes you you?