Psychometric Evaluation of The Singer-Loomis Inventory of Personality

Since the introduction of Jung's theory of psychological types (Jung 1971), three inventories claiming to assess his typology have been developed. The earliest of these was the Gray-Wheelwright Jungian Type Survey (GW; Wheelwright et al. 1942). The GW has received relatively little attention from mainstream personality psychology and, at present, is primarily used by those with an exclusive interest in analytical psychology. The second to be developed was the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI; Myers 1962). The MBTI has been the focus of extensive examination and its psychometric properties are well known (Carlson 1985; Carlyn 1977; Myers and McCaulley 1985). Moreover, the MBTI has found common usage within many applied settings such as counselling (e.g., career, marital) and less often in clinical settings. However, despite its apparent success, the MBTI has been criticized by personality psychologists for three reasons. First, it is criticized for its conception and assessment of personality as discrete types as opposed to traits or other continuous variables (McCrae and Costa 1989; Mendelsohn et al. 1982; Wiggins 1989). Second, the MBTI is said to have distorted the Jungian concepts that underlie it (Coan 1978; Comrey 1983; Loomis and Singer 1980). Third, it relies on a theory of personality that the majority of mainstream psychology does not subscribe to (Wiggins 1989). Nevertheless, McCrae and Costa (1989) note that even the most serious critics