161–170 of 340 posts
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Exactly. That's why questionable MBTI/socionics are useful to people and Big-5 is not. And either of them are not real, actual 6-σ science anyway.
Very little in biology reaches a high level of confidence, let alone in psychology.
Honestly, there will always be people who write stuff they have no idea about, or write stuff that are factually wrong.
But where does that leave me, and perhaps many other layman readers? I, as a layman in psychology/neuroscience/, do not have the academic qualifications or the time to go through and understand the latest/greatest scientific literature of the respective fields, nor am I equipped with the necessary "instincts" to tell the doubtful or suspicious claims apart. Most of the time, all I want is condensed information which is well, from the scientific literature, yet put in one place in a way that laymen in the fields have access to the subject. And to me atleast, books are the best way. But then I find the books I thought were right and did not doubt, had factual errors, or were written by someone who has a possibility of not knowing what they are saying... This is sad.
So let me ask the community: what heuristics do you employ when trying to decide whether you can trust a book on what it says or not? Especially if it's not your field of expertise?
I got this book as a Christmas present from my mom. Then I ran into the same argument about pseudoscience that we have each year...
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People liking something doesn't mean they are actually useful, though. Some folks like fake medicine because they feel like they are doing something useful - even when we can prove that no, "memory water" isn't curing your cold. People like horoscopes for your same reasons - because people are confusing and some sort of categorization is a way to make sense to them. It doesn't actually mean it is useful or even accur…
Sure but it's worth exploring why these are popular beyond simply writing it off as "people are dummies."
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Well, some/many Japanese believe that blood type determines a lot about your personality, and Americans believe in Myers-Briggs types, and I'm sure there are local equivalents everywhere else too, so I wouldn't worry about it too much.
I always thought of Myers-Briggs as being about identifying the things you are less comfortable with and learning to address them. It's about identification of tendencies, not blaming a Gremlin.
Naming various borders of your comfort zone is useful if you want to push them back. If M-B has a failing, it is that its advocates never seem to suggest that being dead center on all axes is an ideal to strive for.
I had never heard of this book, or color system before, but it makes me think of my time working in car sales. Our senior sales managers trained us to identify personalities, and they used similar groupings. There were four 'buckets' and they are very close to this color system. They are dominant driver, complacent, ego driven, and analytical. The idea is to, as quickly as possible, identify the customer's type, and…
Over all, when a good salesman closes a deal, with the knowledge of this approach that you have been taught, it does not say, that the approach works. A good salesman uses common sense and experience in talking with people and of course adapts to the customer, but that does not mean, that he uses this special theory. (Maybe, you did perform bad, because you used the theory )
I would say, if we did a study with a control group, one group has been taught the theory, you have been taught, and the control group is not (but maybe, we tell them, take notice of the other person and try to adapt to their character), and if we notice, that the theory trained salesmen actually perform better, then we can say this framework is of any use. We still don’t know, of course, if not a different form of training could outperform this framework. Until then, it is just anecdotal evidence.
Cant help to remember this:
Is it not the same for the current wave of anti-bias/discrimination/racism training? There is zero evidence that it has any effect. What few brave researchers have risked their careers exploring the effectiveness of the training have found that it does basically nothing. None of that stops companies from paying millions for it and good luck to the employee or executive that even dares suggest that perhaps there's bet…
Well, it's a good way for management to show they did ... something.
Racism, sexism, etc. are hard problems. You're talking about deeply embedded, pervasive messages. Of course they won't be solved by throwing a class at it. But shrugging your shoulders and saying, "Yeah, but we're not gonna do anything" becomes yet another one of those pervasive messages.
So it can't, and won't, fix the immediate problem. But it at least acknowledges the problem, rather than leaving it buried.
That's not to say it can't also be surrounded by cynicism, scamming, and bad faith. Those things are yet more indicators of the real underlying issues: people are willing to accept or ignore the racism, sexism, etc. that happen to other people because it's not important to them. Making the costs of it more visible doesn't reduce those costs, but it does provide a reason for people to start wanting to lower them.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, some/many Japanese believe that blood type determines a lot about your personality, and Americans believe in Myers-Briggs types, and I'm sure there are local equivalents everywhere else too, so I wouldn't worry about it too much.
I am an American who does not “believe” in Myers-Briggs types and I know plenty more of the same.
If it is useful in expanding your comfort zone, it's useful, full stop. If it's useful in helping to get along with people who are different from you, it's useful, full stop.
If it's not useful to you, that does not mean it is not useful to anybody else.