Merve Emre

Literary critic Dr Merve Emre looks at the history of the personality test, how it worked its way into the world’s boardrooms, military, universities, churches and classrooms, and how we define ourselves.

The world’s most popular personality test was conceived by a mother-daughter team of aspiring novelists, Katherine Briggs and Isabel Briggs Mayers. Emre explains how it took on a life of its own and was adopted across business and public organisations and inspired dating platforms. Despite this, experts in the field of psychometric testing struggle to explain its success or validate its results. Emre looks at attempts to examine the self and asks the ultimate question: What makes you you?

Emre is associate professor in the Faculty of English at the University of Oxford specialising in 20th-century American literature. She is also author of Paraliterary: The Making of Bad Readers in Postwar America.

In association with MIT Press