Does the Indicator work cross-culturally – in other countries and with ethnic minorities in the U.S.?
A growing body of research supports the cross-cultural validity of type theory. In studies around the world, people find that type concepts and descriptions make sense and are useful to them. Type distributions for whole populations and for vocational subgroups in other countries are very similar to what has been found in the United States. The National Representative Sample, which was used to develop Form M, included African Americans and Hispanics; the type distributions of these samples can be found in Table 14.1 on p.379 of the MBTI Manual. However, although type appears to be universal, how it is expressed is influenced by cultural values. Practitioners need to be sensitive to this and also to cultural customs and issues around psychological testing and the relation of the individual to the group. Foreign language versions of the MBTI instrument cannot be simple translations but must be normed on the populations for which they are intended.
