Recently my brother and I had a conversation about his company bringing all the executives and management together to take a personality test in the hopes that it would help each of them how to better understand what motivates their colleagues.  I started out my education in psychology — criminal/abnormal psychology, to be exact– and as soon as he mentioned what was transpiring in his offices I knew which test it was he had taken.  The Myers-Briggs / MBTI test is a fairly common personality assessment tool (and has gained popularity in the past decade).  He shared with me his results, and it had been so long since I had taken that test that I promised him I’d take it again.  I can’t say I’m shocked by the results, and my close friends and family would see these results as a,…. “Yeah…. so?  We knew this already…. NEXT!” kind of thing.  If you haven’t taken the test, you should give it a go.  I’ve taken the test once a week for about 6 weeks now, and only once I had varying results.  I’d say that makes them pretty secure conclusions.

I often threaten joke that I’m going to start handing out applications to people who want to interact with me in any way, and I think I might just need to make them take this test.  The logic behind groups taking it is that you can better understand the motivations, responses, and thought processes of the individuals who surround you.  It becomes a dangerous person, though, who understands how to use these bits of insight to their advantage.  Even scarier is a person who can discern the elements in this test that are present in other people by just being in a room with them for an hour.  Or 5 minutes…. Whatev.  Sometimes those people have to remind themselves to use their super powers for good.

…Just sayin’…

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  Update:  Apparently Jung is more terrifying than I remember. But look at it this way– Apparently I would make a fantastic Dictator.

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Tags: Machiavelli may have been a genius., Memes, Meyers-Briggs, motivation, My Superpowers, Psychology