A brightly-colored page sits in front of me, promising guidance on the path towards understanding my personality in less than 20 minutes. After finishing the quiz, my personality type emerges on the screen, accompanied by a geometric, pop-art-esque character. I read the description that accurately aligns with my perception of my personality, shocked that an online test seems to know me so well.

Personality tests like The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) often make test takers feel validated and seen through the descriptions of their type. This sense of affirmation is not always a positive influence. When I first took the MBTI test and discovered the similarities between myself and my personality type, my infatuation with the simple categorization led me to grow reliant on my label. The type can be especially harmful and detrimental if taken at face value because the test is based in pseudoscience.

The MBTI is one of the world’s most popular personality tests, with around 50 million test takers. It sorts you into one of 16 personality types using a four letter code: extroversion (E) or introversion (I), intuition (N) or sensing (S), feeling (F) or thinking (T) and judging (J) or perceiving (P).

Mother-daughter duo Katherine Briggs and Isabel Myers, the creators of the system, had no formal education in psychology when making their test. Although they studied the typology systems of Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung, they lacked the experience to implement his ideas into a reliable typology test because they did not attend any psychology institution.

According to 16Personalities, the most popular MBTI testing site, my type is ENFP, and based on the descriptions of the personality on the website, the categorization is spot-on. So if the test is not based on psychology, why did my designated type seem so accurate with my personality?

My naivety at the time I first took the test led me to believe that because this one description felt true to me, the test must be accurate. At first, I let the label define me, reducing my originality to a stereotype. Instead of trying to grow my character authentically, I tried to copy the personality description as much as possible because it felt like a concrete categorization of my identity, something I could hold on to. After more thorough exploration, though, I discovered the flaws in the system.

If I look at the description for ISTJ, the type that has supposedly opposite qualities to mine, I theoretically shouldn’t identify with the page. However, many of the points still apply to me. Just because I am emotional doesn’t mean I can’t be insensitive sometimes, and just because I’m forgetful doesn’t mean I’m not responsible. The same goes for every other type listed on the website.

“Consul personalities can become very defensive and hurt if someone, especially a person close to them, criticizes their habits, beliefs or traditions.”

“Logicians take pride in their knowledge and in sharing their ideas.”

“Opinions are opinions and facts are facts, and Logisticians are unlikely to respect people who disagree with those facts, or especially those who remain willfully ignorant of them.”

The reason why these statements might feel like they all apply to me is because of the Barnum Effect, which Encyclopedia Britannica describes as when people believe that generalized descriptions are personalized specifically for them. This phenomenon is especially successful when used with positive statements instead of critical negative statements. Almost every single page on the 16Personalities website is filled to the brim with these superficial observations. Although there are enough unique points in each description to distinguish the stereotypical personality types, the majority of them are Barnum statements.

My personal favorite is “Advocates aren’t exactly like everyone else – and that’s a wonderful thing.” The website presents these meaningless statements as some sort of deep, philosophical, life-changing information. 16Personalities is only one MBTI website, but others implement the same effect.

A little bit of pseudoscience may not seem that harmful on the surface — after all, most people don’t really believe a majority of online personality quizzes. At the end of the day, they’re just harmless fun. Yet because the MBTI is marketed as real science, its impact is stronger than the typical Buzzfeed quiz. I grew attached to the box I placed myself into, making it difficult to let go of the personality label.

MBTI has also extended beyond the casual setting. Workplaces are now using this test to identify which candidates would be best to hire or which employees should be grouped together for projects. A person’s livelihood can depend on a personality type which may not even present accurate information.

The MBTI test can turn a person’s personality into an algorithmic category, the model of efficiency and certainty that many of us crave. Nevertheless, the black-and-whiteness that comes with this systematic thinking can lead to a fixed mindset towards growth. If I kept believing that my entire personality laid in a singular four-letter code, I may have never been able to reach beyond my shallow categorization.

Upon reflection, while my type does describe some parts of me, it misses so much more. I might have many of the traits that the typical ENFP has, but my personality is much less one-dimensional and more complete. After all, four letters can only reveal so much about someone, a cursory and inadequate view that fails to tell the full story.