Myers Briggs

In 1917, Katharine Cook Briggs met her future son-in-law and noticed that his personality was very different from her other family members' personalities. Consequently, she began to research personality types. Briggs developed a theory that there are four main personality types: meditative (or thoughtful), spontaneous, executive, and social. There was a great deal of interest in Briggs' work, and this allowed her to publish her book Psychological Types in 1923. Her daughter, Isabel Briggs Myers, discovered new information about personality types and joined her mother?s work. Myers learned test construction, scoring, and statistics, and this lead to the creation of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator in 1956. This test, with some updates and revisions, is still in use today. Many career counselors, teachers, life coaches, and marriage counselors use the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator to help clients learn more about their own unique personalities.