Are you more “diplomatic”, “enterprising” or “introverted”? On the internet, finding the answer has become easy and on the Twitter or Instagram accounts of the youngest, the acronyms “ISJF”, “INFP” or “ESJT” flourish in description. These mysterious letters refer to the result obtained from a popular personality test: the MBTI (for the name of its co-creator Myers Briggs and the terms Type Indicator).
Said test allows Internet users to assess, in less than 12 minutes, which category of people they belong to among the diplomatic, explorer, analyst and sentinel families. Once the category has been obtained, the dominant and auxiliary character traits of the Internet user are summarized in four letters. For example, the INFJ personality denotes “idealistic, calm, and mystical” people in diplomats.
And this test, like many other quizzes of the same ilk, is enjoying growing success. On social networks, in fact, followers of the tests in question feed photo and video analyzes of the results. On TikTok alone, the “mbtipersonality” hashtag alone reaches 3.6 billion views, while the “personality test” hashtag exceeds one billion views. Also on Instagram, this same tag has more than 124,000 publications.
So the simple cold questionnaire is over. Once their test has been completed online, the Internet user can join a community that corresponds to their result. “I don’t take these tests literally, but it allows me to get to know fictional characters who have similar reactions to mine and to identify with them,” says Sharow, 21, the mention “ESFJ” displayed. in his Twitter bio.
The young woman uses, for example, the personality-database.com forum which classifies celebrities, fictitious or real, according to the categories of the MBTI test. Above all, the application allows test enthusiasts to exchange with people who have obtained a result similar or compatible with theirs, with the aim of making “new friendships”, she says.
Launched in 2021, this application also offers subscriptions at 8 euros per month or 6 euros per week to obtain additional features. And other applications of the same type are riding the trend, such as Personality Match or Personality Trait Test. The latter, downloaded more than a million times on the Android Play Store, offers users the opportunity to answer a questionnaire in ten minutes to assess their potential and ideal career, based on “scientific research and theories “.
“These tests come to replace means of socialization such as the church or the neighborhood structures which played their role before”, remarks Anne-Laure Le Cunff, researcher in neuroscience and founder of Ness Labs. “The anxiety-provoking context provokes a need for belonging, normalization and self-affirmation, especially among young people,” adds Stéphanie Laporte, founder of the Otta agency.
Since the pandemic, this success can be associated with the emergence of the personal development market, which includes all activities aimed at getting to know and valuing oneself better. “This market is experiencing a boom and these personality tests are anchored in this movement”, confirms researcher Anne-Laure Cunff. According to GlobeNewswire, said personal development market, valued at nearly $41 billion worldwide in 2021, is expected to grow by 5.5% annually to reach $67 billion in 2030.
“This tendency becomes dangerous when it is used to make important decisions, such as career or life choices”, recalls however Anne-Laure Le Cunff. The neuroscience researcher deplores the use of these quizzes, used long before their success on the internet, by companies to sort their candidates. “These tests serve as a means of justifying human resources decisions, but it’s a shame because they are not scientifically reliable,” she continues.
Far from being ignored by recruiters, the specific market for personality tests is doing wonderfully. Estimated at 7 million dollars in 2021, it could reach 16 million in 2028 with growth of 12.1%, reports the site The Insight Partners. All that remains is to find out if, in the future, candidates will take care to specify the personality category to which they belong on their CV.
