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

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.