The Myers-Briggs test is wildly popular in China. Is it a threat to labour rights?
- Magazine covering youth issues says some blindly believe the outcome of the personality test, following it like a superstition
When looking at a list of requirements for a part-time job in southern China, Shanghai woman Yu Yulin found one sentence in bold: “A preference for ENFP.”
“I happened to be an ENFP, so I applied for the job,” Yu said.
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Yu said the interviewer told her the post required massive communication with different people, and “ENFP [types] can recharge through social interactions, as opposed to the introverted, who are exhausted after all these social activities”.
For Yu, the screening made sense but she concedes that was, in part, because she matched with the criteria and did not feel the pain of an introvert having to lie to stay in the running for the job.
In recent years the MBTI test, or the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, has become popular among young people.
The test, a self-report questionnaire that claims to indicate differing personality types, produces 16 possible types that embody traits such as “introvert”, “intuitive” or “judging”.