Recently, I have discovered that people like to use MBTI to label themselves: for example, when introducing themselves, they say, I am a Sagittarius and I have an INTP personality. When getting to know others, you also ask: What is your zodiac sign? What personality type is it?

Then why do people like to use certain attributes to define themselves?

1. Barnum Effect

The Barnum Effect means that people easily believe in an abstract general personality description and think that it is particularly suitable for them and accurately reveals it. Your own personality traits, even if the content is empty.

This psychological effect will be applied to any personality test, especially when users have done most of the questions, they will be more inclined to approve the answers after doing the questions, because the users have paid the cost and time. .

MBTI also uses this method. It will ask you to do a lot of questions, most of which are more than 100. After completing the questions, you will be given a reference. Compared with zodiac signs, MBTI will let you do questions. , which is relatively high in credibility.

2. It is really easy to use

Whether the theory is rigorous and whether it is easy to use are two different things.

MBTI is really metaphysics, but I can’t stand it. It’s so easy to understand and so easy to use. No one in the market can beat us as a popular scale in psychology. Get over this thing.

There are many more reliable psychological tests than it, but it is much more reliable than other weird superstitions such as zodiac signs, faces, birth dates, etc. So we only need to take a small test. You can learn about your own personality traits and so on.

3. Create social currency

One of the reasons why MBTI has become so popular is that it has created a social currency, which is conversation capital. After MBTI became popular, a large number of users were talking about their own personality labels. For example, what type of people is ENFP suitable for? What is the personality of an INTJ person? And produced a large number of emoticons and some jokes. At the same time, there are other derived creative directions, such as ENFJ’s clothing, food hobbies, etc. These are the reasons why MBTI continues to spread.

4. Quickly classify people

In fact, we all know that everyone’s personality is different due to the influence of many factors. Each of us is unique. . So why do people still use zodiac signs or MBTI to define themselves or others? This can actually be explained from two points in psychology.

1. Limited cognitive resources

Limited cognitive resources refer to the limitation of mental energy when people perform cognitive processing activities such as classifying and identifying stimulus information. Using MBTI is similar to astrology. It can be used to define others or ourselves, which can help us understand this person quickly and quickly, saving cognitive resources.

2. The need to belong

We are all individuals in social groups. When we come into contact with a certain type of people, we will attribute them to a certain category because of their similarities. , or belong to a certain category to gain social recognition and self-identity. Such as southerners and northerners.

After MBTI became popular, many people found similar people in the name of personality, found the uniqueness in each other’s self-explanations, and became more intentional about getting closer to the described characteristics.

As a topic and communication method in today’s society, it may help you quickly establish communication relationships with others, but to what extent it can be used to guide your life, my suggestion is: for reference only