The Dark Side of the MBTI: Psychological Type and Interpersonal Derailers

Adrian Furnham, John Crump

1Research Department of Clinical, Educational and Health Psychology, University College London, London, UK 2BI Norwegian Business School, Oslo, Norway.
Research Department of Clinical, Educational and Health Psychology, University College London, London, UK.

DOI: 10.4236/psych.2014.52026                

Abstract

Over 4000 British adults completed the Hogan Development Survey (HDS) (Hogan & Hogan, 1997) which measures eleven potential derailment behaviours (“dark side” traits) based on the personality disorders and the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (Briggs & Myers, 1987) a famous measure of “normal” personality functioning. In all, five of the eleven “dark side” traits were correlated with the Extraversion-Introversion dimensions, none with Sensing-Intuition, seven with Thinking-Feeling and four with the Judging-Perceiving scale. Correlations were modest. Regressions with the four MBTI scales as criterion variables showed nine of the HDS factors were related to the T-F scale and accounted for 12% of the variance. Thinking types tended to be Sceptical, Reserved and Diligent. Overall correlations were low suggesting the MBTI assesses some aspects of dark side traits.

Keywords

MBTI; Psychological Type; Derailers; Personality Disorders

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

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