Cognitive Inclusivity: Why Bodin Is Better Than MBTI

Most personality tests, like MBTI, try to put people into fixed boxes. They say you’re either a thinker or a feeler, an introvert or an extrovert. But what if you’re just slightly more logical than emotional? What happens to those people?

Imagine designing a website to be purple, but the system only recognizes red or blue—so it picks the closest one, even though it’s not accurate. Bodin fixes this problem by recognizing nuance—something that’s missing in many personality assessments.

The Front End: What People See

Think of personality like a website. The front end is what people see—it’s how you come across to the world. This is what others judge you on, just like people judge a website by how it looks, not by the code running in the background.

Just like in MBTI, no one is going to ask you what percentage of your thinking vs. feeling is in a given moment. They’re just going to look at what’s in front of them—how you act, how you express yourself. That’s how humans operate. We judge books by their covers, whether we like it or not.

But in those kinds of snap judgments, why would you only show two extreme categories? The gray area is missing. Bodin acknowledges that people exist somewhere in between, and that needs to be reflected.

This approach is more empathetic—not just to the person taking the test, but also to those interpreting their results. If you present a personality system that ignores nuance, you’re essentially insulting people’s intelligence by pretending the world is that simple.

It’s the same in politics. Some lifelong Republicans vote for Democrats because they don’t like Donald Trump—maybe they disagree with his policies, or maybe they just don’t like that he’s orange. But what does the world see? A Democrat. No one looks deeper to say, “Oh, they’re still a Republican, but in this case, they made a different decision.” People just see a label.

MBTI works the same way. It forces you into one category, even when you might actually be in the middle, making different choices based on context. That lack of nuance creates misunderstandings.

The Back End: How You Actually Think

Now, just like a website has back-end code running behind the scenes, personality has cognitive functions—the deeper mental processes that drive how you think and make decisions.

Bodin still keeps Carl Jung’s original eight cognitive functions, which were developed in 1921, because they already function dynamically. There is no need for an “in-between” label for cognitive functions because that in-between isn’t static—it’s constantly shifting.

Even if a test says you’re 51% thinking and 49% feeling, that’s not a fixed state. In reality, the balance between those two is always in motion. If someone is close to the middle, that should be reflected on the front end, because that’s what others see.

However, on the back end, the in-between doesn’t need to be shown—because it’s already understood that cognitive functions are fluid. Personality is not a fixed point; it’s an ongoing process. Bodin accounts for this by ensuring that only the front-end representation needs a middle ground, while the back-end remains dynamic.

A Personality Test That Respects Reality

Nobody asks about the code behind a website—they just judge what they see. The same applies to personality. MBTI forces an oversimplified label onto people, ignoring the gray areas that make them unique.

Bodin brings cognitive inclusivity by showing the full picture—recognizing where someone actually stands rather than forcing them into an extreme. It respects both the user and those interpreting the results. It acknowledges nuance, empathy, and real-life decision-making—because personality isn’t a fixed box, and it never was.

At this point, you’re probably wondering, WTF is Bodin?

Bodin is our new personality test. Take it now at bodin.ai.