Graduation success as a function of myers-briggs temperament indicators in mechanical engineering

Abstract

The distributions of Myers-Briggs Type Indicators, Preferences, and Temperaments for entering and graduating BSME students and the mechanical engineering faculty at the University of Houston are presented and compared. Based on long-term averages, the S-, T-, J-, SJ-, ESTJ- and ISTJ- preferring individuals appear to have some positive correlation with success in our mechanical engineering program. For example, individuals preferring “sensation” over “intuition”, “thinking” over “feeling”, and “judging over “perceiving”, (Myers-Briggs Preferences, S over N, T over F, and J over P, respectively) are about 50% more likely to graduate as those who prefer the opposite. A seven-year longitudinal study produced “entering” and “graduating” Myers-Briggs data for 118 students. A detailed analysis of this data determined that there was about a ten per cent net increase in individual E-, S-, T- and J-preferences which was the result of about a 15% actual change toward E-, S-, T-, and J-preferences and a 5% actual change toward I-, N-, F-, and P-preferences. Finally, the shift of the distribution of Myers-Briggs Type Indicators from the entering to the graduating students is seen to be moving toward the distribution exhibited by the faculty.