I've cracked the code the magic word in East Asia is not please or thank you it's a four-letter mix that represents your personality called the mbti nbti has taken over East Asia the younger generation all know their mbti type celebrities on TV talk about it there's shows based on it and endless merch floods the streets it's not unheard of for people to choose their dates based on npti compatibility and you even have job postings straight up rejecting certain kinds of personalities well actually that last example is a pretty big controversy which we'll get into later but let's take a step back first what exactly is this mbti personality test and why is East Asia so crazy about it well to understand a personality test let's first Define what personality is according to the APA personality refers to the enduring characteristics and behavior of an individual which includes our values interests abilities and emotional patterns our personality is what makes us different from one another an ancient example of a personality assessment is astrology where you have a sign based on when you were born and that tells you traits about yourself the mbti test though is nowhere as ancient as horoscope reading although it does date back to the 1940s invented by mother daughter Duo Katherine cook Briggs and Isabelle Briggs Meers they created this test based on K yung's personality theory to sort women into the industrial Workforce after all the men had left to fight in the war the mbti works by putting you on opposite sides of four spectrums based on these dichotomies you end up with four letters to describe your person personality and there are 16 types in total once you complete the test you get all this information about who you are and these results can be very fascinating to read because you're seeing a third party dissecting your own strength and weaknesses who you should be with what kind of career you should do when technically you would know best about what you want and what you're good at as American psychologist Dan P McAdams puts it personality tests are the psychology of a stranger which is why we feel that sense of uncanny relatability when they nail us down yet personality tests are mostly regarded as pseudoscience by the scientific Community the tests that appear scientific but aren't really backed by science given its lack of credibility why do so many people still swear by it in the first part we're going to broadly examine the popularity of mbti in East Asia and ground this discussion by understanding the psychology Behind these tests in general it's super interesting stuff and it sets the foundation for what is to come because afterwards we'll need to talk about this [Music] mbti is huge but it has really achieved cult status with the younger demographics a 2022 survey by Albert Tong looked at South Korean job seekers in their 20s and reported that 97% of respondents had taken the mbti 97% that is insane 88% of the respondents then said they believed it captured their personality well to understand this further young people show for the NB bti I'll need to introduce two concepts the idea of ego identity and the BAM effect ego identity as defined by the APA is the experience of the self as a recognizable persistent entity in other words ego identity is the sense of knowing who we are research has shown that having weak ego identity can have adverse health effects on us both mentally and physically and Eric Ericson who formulated the concept of ego identity says it's especially important for adolescence given their emergence into adol Hood they may fall into an identity crisis if they don't have a strong sense of who they are since our ego identity is important for our development and mental and physical well-being what is something that can help us with strengthening it or what is something that can help us with getting to know ourselves better who would have thought personality tests Lee and park study on adolescence show those who participated in astrology counseling developing higher self-awareness than their counterparts who did not attend exposure to content that provides insight into us regardless of whether it's right or wrong can lead to more introspection personality tests therefore fulfill our need for a stronger ego identity and this is particularly important for adolescents now the other concept related to personality test is the BAM effect the BAM effect is a cognitive bias where people tend to see very vague descriptions as accurate reflections of themselves and was first linked to astrology the botam effect gets stronger if these vague descriptions are positive because that will trigger a flattery effect and a subjective validation effect I hate using terms to explain terms because this is like looking in a dictionary for a word and not knowing the word they're using to explain your word so bear with me for a second the flattery effect I think most of us can already guess it's when people are more willing to believe things that show them in a good light the subjective validation effect is when you personally relate to a fact or think it's true so then it must be true for everyone else because it was true for you all these factors and cognitive biases makes personality tests really alluring to us and also very convincing in fact Swan and Reed suggest that once we form certain perceptions of these readings people will try to justify them and make it a self-fulfilling prophecy which goes to show how much influence these tests can have on us though dabbling into personality tests can be fun provoke introspection and strengthen our ego identity sometimes this enthusiasm goes too far with the theory now out of the way from this point on we're full steam ahead into the mbti Takeover of East Asia this is the plan we're going to look at mbti for China and Korea and we're going to save Japan for later because they have their own test and we will need to talk about that as well starting off with China and Korea it's common for young people in China these days to introduce themselves and then bring up the phrase I'm an i person or I'm an e person on social media the mpti hashtag in China has over 4.2 billion views on WE the Chinese equivalent of Twitter even universities like beijing's Institute of technology have started to include questions on mbti to bring more compatible roommates together in Korea the mbti is even more love there as early as June 2020 the Korean population had taken more personality tests than Europe and the US combined a huk research survey taken that December found that over half of Koreans had taken the mbti test which is incredible and a bit scary at the same time why is it that East Asia seems to live and breathe mbti one important aspect of getting type that we haven't talked about yet is how personality tests sort you into a group given the cultural backdrop of East Asia this is a big deal because of the cultural emphasis on group Harmony and belonging knowing your type therefore is a quick way to establish in groupness to know where you belong and to be one of us but the perception of mbti being everywhere largely comes from how frequently it's brought up in social interactions like if you're meeting new people or if you're on a date and there's two reasons why mbti has become inevitable when you're meetings someone in East Asia the first is that mbti has become a social lubricant instead of going through that awkward phase of figuring out what you have in common by bringing up mbti you automatically speak the same language khaan who is 25 says the assessment not only makes a lot of sense but also saves me from Awkward silences when I have to socialize with strangers being an introvert at least I can ask that question of what their personality type is and get the conversation rolling obviously the strategy only works because everyone knows their type already and honestly I'm all for this if it means we don't have to do all for ice breakers anymore do you guys remember that like two truths one lie or tell us something interesting about yourself those were the most stressful moments ever because I always realized I have literally nothing interesting about me to share whil the person before me just talked about how they once dated a first gen K-pop Idol true story 25-year-old Soul uni student Ida hon elaborates on how the mbti helps I don't need to go on and talk about myself I can save time by saying I'm FP and they can understand what kind of person I am translators note enfps are known to be energetic and friendly Lee continues everyone knows one's type and the personality of that type nowadays so which type struggles with falling asleep the most because I often lie on my bed for ages unable to sleep since my brain will be racing with thoughts like how I can optimize a thumbnail or explain a paper I just read or remembering how when I was a kid I lost a competition started crying ran away in embarrassment and then tripped right in front of of everyone amazing what you think about when you're just trying to fall asleep but it wouldn't be fair of me to bring up this problem to you guys without a solution and that's where today's sponsor Manta sleep comes in they were very generous to send me two masks and I've been especially loving the Manta sleep mask sound I usually listen to Brown noise to fall asleep because it helps distract me from all that thinking so I've been really loving the sound feature of this mask it's Bluetooth so you can easily connect to your favorite playlist or whichever asml video you like and you can even adjust the position of of the headphones which is this blue tab over here of course the mask in itself is really lightweight and comfortable I don't feel anything sleeping on my side which is super important to me and it blocks out all the light the sound mask is my favorite but mantta has so many options like the silk mask the weighted mask a cool mask a steam mask there's something for everyone sleep is so important and we spend a third of our lives either sleeping or attempting to do so so I think investing for a higher quality of sleep is one of the best choices you can make for yourself if you don't have time to sleep more you can check out all their sleep masks with my link below and make sure to use my code I for 10% off your order thank you mantis sleep for sponsoring this video and now back to our discussion of mbti in social situations the second usage of bringing up mbti when you meet people is efficiency once you exchange types you technically should have an idea of what kind of person they are and what type of things they be into so the mbti becomes a filter for who you'd want to get to know better this sentiment is elaborated on by Yun a student who says I consider personal more important than appearances in a relationship so I don't think I'll try meeting someone whose type is not compatible with mine now it might be okay for individuals to do this using mbti as a filter but what about when businesses also reject certain personality types A Cafe in soul went viral in 2022 when they listed this job posting we hire people based on their mbti results entjs esfjs inps inps and injs are not allowed to apply most comments on social media were shocked that they listed out specific mbti that they would reject and thought this was taking mbti too far then you have ad n another Korean company recruiting for a marketer and thaning the candidates literally because they only wanted extroverts people with an mbti starting with e mbti bleeds into bigger corporations too Su Bank ask their applicants for the mbti and instead of asking the usual what are your strength or weaknesses they asked what strength or weaknesses do you think your mbti has and what job position do you think fits your mbti most seriously who are we really interviewing here should I change my CV headshot to one of these guys as well finally if companies asking for nbti went to shock enough personality types were also used in South Korea's presidential candidate elections as a way to sway the younger generation in 2022 South Korea's current president Jun sool typed himself as an ENFJ the same type as former US President Barack Obama if you're a bit shocked at how in graded the mbti is in the social and professional parts of life in East Asia well surprise there's another cultural element I suspect is related to it and this is the legitimacy of group affiliations which is how acceptable it is for people to judge someone based on their group identity in East Asia it's very acceptable to make assumptions of someone based on their family friends or nationality this keenness on associating people with groups means that the mbti can be very easily integrated into existing forms of thinking mpti is basically Christmas for us East Asians you get to neatly categorize people in groups and then you're also justified in making assumptions on that person based on what group they're in what more could you possibly ask for these factors are probably the biggest reasons why the mbti is everywhere in East Asia and when there's so much interest in something well you know what they say where there's an opportunity there's a capitalistic bird ready to sweep in and it brings with it mbti dooke Kei mbti beer mbti hats mbti K-pop out albums key Rings coffee cups personalized shopping icons anything you can think of can be mbti ified what if in the future instead of debating between two or three bathrooms we start seeing 16 by this point we've spoken a lot about mbti and its popularity in China and Korea the thing is the mbti was not the first personality test that took over East Asia in fact just a few decades ago the personal test that everyone knew about originated from Japan this test is still very wellknown in Japan today but it became quite problematic because this personality test became something you could actually fail this is Japan's blood [Music] test the blood test sorts People based on your blood type and it was proposed by psychologist Furukawa Taki in 1927 this whole typing people by Blood throw has a bit of a dark past in the 1900s Australian scientist Carl liner discovered the four blood types and since his Discovery blood types were used in the 19th century to push ideas of racial Supremacy Western scientists in particular used type B blood as proof that Asians were inferior since according to them most Asians had type B blood just like how most animals did obviously this claim is not true nonetheless blood types kind of got off to a bad start but 30 years later it's brought to the Public's attention again and this time like we said it's by fukawa fukawa proposed that blood types affect a person's temperament and he made a few observations people with type A blood are said to be well organized they like it when things are neat but they can also be stubborn sensitive and can get stressed easily people with type O blood are said to be optimistic and outgoing but they can also be insensitive and unpunctual people with type B blood are creative and curious but they may also be selfish and finally people with type A B blood are seen as complicated since having this blood type is rare they have quite the eccentric image to back up these observations Furukawa used a very convincing argument called trust me bir and that was the foundation of his thesis a study of temperament and blood groups despite academics coming out afterwards to challenge his findings his lack of empirical evidence and the fact that they couldn't replicate what he had found the blood type Theory had already taken off since blood typing was introduced as an academic Theory at first most people saw it as a scientific way of understanding people and gave it more credibility than other folk interpretations like palm reading but what really made this Theory sore in popularity and become common knowledge was actually some 40 years later later when journalist Nori masahiko published a book titled understanding Affinity by blood type Nori's book was built of huluk kawa's blood type Theory but instead of approaching it scientifically he adopted it to fit popular taste this was a very smart move as his books began flying off the shelves and talk of blood types was everywhere in Japanese media similar to how mbti is used in East Asia currently during the peak of blood type elase this test was also used as a way of socializing and getting to know someone better yamori Kia a professor at Kyoto University suggests a unique application of the blood type theory he claims that it had been adopted by the Japanese as a convenient tool for answering rather insignificant questions in everyday life for example one student might ask another why is Miss conis so strict about dress code at school and their friend might say because she's type A it's not like you're ever going to square up to the school principal and ask so you might as well come up with a neat little explanation for self-reassurance because of how integrated blood type theory is to Japanese people yamori emphasizes that it's social psychological significance meant that theory stayed widely accepted despite its dubious reliability blood typing at its peak was again like the mbti also integrated in the corporate sphere in the 1990s Mitsubishi Electronics hired a team mostly comprised of people with type A blood because type A BS were thought to be good planners blood types have also been used as a criteria for job Recruitment and even school entrance exams this led to the Japanese government eventually intervening to officially warn companies not to include blood type questions in applications but that didn't stop hiring managers from sneakily asking about your blood type in an interview regardless if you're able to show one type favoritism you're able to disfavor a type and in the case of Japan this was type B type B's as described by Nori were selfish they had an ego and they disliked social order every blood type had their pros and cons but the impression of type B is just grew to become overwhelmingly negative this description led to a social issue known as purahara short for blood harassment type B is known as the most disadvantaged blood type in Japan because of all these negative traits that are associated with the type the Discrimination for type bees sometimes gets so bad that you have closeted bees where people will lie about their blood type to avoid the stereotypes and I'm sure it doesn't help when in 2011 Japanese reconstruction Minister Mumu was forced to resign he blamed the problematic behavior on his blood type my blood type is type B which means I can be irritable and impulsive and my intentions don't always come across brilliant I'm sure all the type BS love that the public asked for one small step down for Moto and he decided to take one giant Le backwards for all of typ pe's this discrimination for type B's is believed to be strengthened by the population ratio in Japan roughly 40% of the population is type A 30% is Type O 20% is type B and 10% is type AB ABS don't actually get picked on that much despite their Rarity because they're so rare that people don't know if ABS actually fit The Stereotype but a few nasty experiences with a type B just reinforces that selfish uncooperative stereotype that's being spread we love a good confirmation bias now coming that highlights how your blood type can be weaponized in everyday situations with examples like being asked if you're type O if you opened a bag of candy too forcefully or if you're type A you might be scolded with you're not organized enough to be type A in the case of type B you don't even have to detail what expectation they've missed to inflict emotional damage you just have to say yep you're type B the popularity of blood typing and the usage of these stereotypes in everyday life saw the Japanese broadcasting ethics and program Improvement organization in 2004 sending requests to TV shows and media asking them to stop encouraging people to believe someone's personality was influenced by their blood type as a result the blood type personality theory is not as big now but many people still know about it and it's still relevant today our talk on blood type was very focused on Japan but this test did spread to other East Asian countries and gained a lot of popularity there too honestly there's a lot of similarities between the blood test and the mbti so I guess every generation experiences this kind of fascination with personality test as we reach the end of this video I just wanted to tie everything we talked about together we looked at two different but very popular personality tests being the nbti and the blood type Theory and the more I looked into it the more I felt like its use cases resembled horoscope readings now I'm not saying that they're the same thing I don't want to piss off two very passionate communities at the same time but a lot of the psychology behind hor horoscopes is found in personality tests and vice versa I know a lot of people hold the view that horoscopes and personality tests are mostly fake because they're not reliable or scientifically backed and I'm not here to debate that but I hope this video does allow you to understand what kind of purpose personality tests serve in East Asia because other than Sparky Mo introspection they also serve as an important socializing agent and are an easy way to categorize people into groups a mentality that is very familiar for East Asians all right this was a very chatty video asay let me know if you like to see more of these chattier lighter videos and for those of you who are wondering what my mbti is it's no fun if I tell you yes thank you for watching all the way until the end and please subscribe if you enjoyed maybe try out one of these personality tests if you haven't already and if you know your type put it down in the comments below I'm really curious to know what everyone is a big shout out and thank you as well to my patrons you guys are my first ever patrons um and I'm so grateful for your support so thank you so much again I also uploaded a bonus commentary looking into the rise of personality tests during periods of uncertainty and how the blood type Theory gained ground in Japan during a period of major social cultural change and you can hear all of this for free right now as a trial member if you want to check out my patreon I have it in the link below if you want to be alongside me whilst I work on the next video you can find me here thank you so much for watching until the end I really appreciate it and I'll see you in the next one sleep tight bye