How The Myers-Briggs Personality Test Began In A Mother's Living Room Lab

When Katharine Briggs — a mother and homemaker — began what she called a "cosmic laboratory of baby training" in her Michigan living room in the early 1900s, she didn't know she was laying the groundwork for what would one day become a multi-million dollar industry. Briggs was just 14 years old when she went to college, and ended up graduating first in her class, explains author Merve Emre. She married the man who graduated just behind her at No. 2 — and while he became a scientist, she was expected to take care of the home.

"This incredibly educated woman — who was never expected to do anything but be a wife and a mother — she wanted to figure out how to take those roles and professionalize them," Emre says. "She wanted to figure out how she could do something in her home that would be as rigorous and as important