Many of the challenges facing the accounting profession involve personality characteristics of accountants. Personality theories have generated a rich research stream outside accounting and are widely applied in other disciplines and professions. Yet little research using these theories has been done in accounting. To redress this imbalance, this paper examines Jungian personality‐type psychology—one of the main personality theories—and the major psychometric instrument that has arisen from it—the Myers‐Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). The MBTI has been extensively tested for reliability and validity, and used in a large number of basic and education research studies. Results from reliability and validity testing indicate that the MBTI reliably measures personality characteristics predicted by Jungian theory. A small amount of published research has been conducted in accounting using the MBTI. These 16 articles are reviewed, with suggestions for additional research.

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