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The Myers-Briggs type indicator is fun and the fact that it’s so well-known is an advantage, but it has a drawback.
There are four categories:
E vs I, S vs N, T vs F, J vs P.
The problem is that most people fall somewhere in between. It’s a bell-shaped curve where only a few people are clearly E or clearly I. That’s not really what you want in a personality sorter, where you instead would want people who are mostly one or the other and where true neutral is the rarest result.
You’re likely to have one or two clear letters and a couple of less strongly defining ones.
For example, y’all know I’m a lovable weirdo but the only one of the MBTI letters where I have a clear result is J. I’m judgme… uh, let’s call it “discerning”.
The MBTI can still be a shorthand for stock characters, a writer’s tool, but so can Zodiac signs and blood types and those are wrong, too.
It’s actually kind of good that the MBTI has this flaw. Something like the Big Five personality traits that’s more scientific is also more heartbreaking because if you’re like me unhappy with where you’re at on there, it’s much more difficult to change and grow. Not that that journey isn’t worthwhile, it’s just a harsher sorting than the loosey–goosey–somewhere-in-between–y MBTI.