The Psychology of Money - An Investment Manager\'s Guide to Beating the Market

Self-Diagnosis 23

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CHAPTER

CHAPTER

4

Self-Diagnosis

It is not paradox to say that in our most theoretical moods we

may be nearest to our most practical applications.

—Alfred North Whitehead

Fortunately, there is a tool that can help in the process of attaining

complexity in thinking. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI),

which has been around for more than 50 years and has been taken

by more than 10 million people worldwide, measures these same

polarities in thinking. First conceived of by psychologist Carl Jung,

the MBTI was developed into the practical tool that we use today

by Katherine Briggs and her daughter, Isabel Myers.

The tool measures the way we prefer to use our minds. Similar

to left- and right-handedness, each of us has a preference for one

extreme of the polarities mentioned in Chapter 3. An example: Some

analysts prefer their offices to be neat and tidy, with a place for

everything; others live in the midst of huge paper piles. Neither

is correct, they are just different. Investors with each style have

succeeded.

Here are the four polarities that we’ve already discussed in

“investment” terms, presented in Myers-Briggs language.

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