The Rise Of The Myers-Briggs, Chapter 1: Katharine

<p><span>If you’re one of the 2 million people who take the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator every year, perhaps you thought Myers and Briggs are the two psychologists who designed the test. In reality, a mother-daughter team created the test essentially at their kitchen table. In this episode, we look at the unlikely origins of the Myers-Briggs, going all the way back to the late 1800s when Katharine Cook Briggs turned her living room into a “cosmic laboratory of baby training” and set out to raise the perfect child.</span></p> <p>In this three-part series, we uncover the strange history of the most popular personality test in the world, and how two women revolutionized personality testing—for better or for worse. </p> <h3>Guest: </h3> <p><a href="https://www.merveemre.com/"><span>Merve Emre </span></a><span>is a writer and English professor at the University of Oxford.</span></p> <h3>Footnotes &amp; Further Reading: </h3> <p><span>Read Merve Emre’s book, ​​</span><a href="https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780385541909"><em><span>The Personality Brokers: The Strange History of Myers-Briggs and the Birth of Personality Testing</span></em></a><span>.</span></p> <h3>Credits: </h3> <p><span>This episode was produced by Johanna Mayer, Chris Egusa, and Elah Feder. Our music was composed by Daniel Peterschmidt, who also mastered the episode. Fact checking by Danya AbdelHameid. <span>Archival audio was provided courtesy of Peter Geyer.</span> Nadja Oertelt is our Chief Content Officer. </span></p>