Myers-Briggs Type Indicator

Abstract

Eating disorders are a growing phenomenon in today's society, and adolescent women are prime candidates for this disorder. The present research study is designed to analyze bulimic behavior in college age women by administrating the Eating Disorder Inventory-2 (Gamer, 1991), specifically focusing on the bulimia sub scale of this self-reported inventory. The purpose of the study is to measure specialized temperamental characteristics of persons demonstrating bulimic behavior as analyzed using the MyersBriggs Type Indicator (Myers-Briggs & McCaulley, 1986). The researcher surveyed 221 women from psychology classes at a private Midwest university, and each woman completed both the Eating Disorder Inventory-2 and the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator.The researcher focused specifically on the Sensing and Judging functions of the MyersBriggs Type Indicator. The researcher hypothesized that the Myers-Briggs type function of Sensing and Judging would be represented with greater frequency among women who scored high on measures of bulimia, and the hypotheses were disconfirmed. The researcher found personality to be a relatively stable factor as opposed to a changing factor when predicting bulimic behavior in college age women.