October 01, 2009 Why Myers Briggs was slow to catch on in Japan

My colleague William Erb has written an interesting article on why the Myers Briggs Type Indicator personality assessment took a while to catch on in Japan.

His comments fit with a perception I have had for a while now (dating back to an intense experience when I joined the choir club at Hiroshima University) that Japanese people feel less uncomfortable about adjusting their behaviour, personality even, according to the group they find themselves in, and less bothered about expressing “the real me” and being consistent in behaviour all the time than many Westerners are. There is more (in Japanese) about MBTI in Japan on this website.