171–180 of 340 posts
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This is also very similar to the horoscope.
I believe that's the Barnum effect. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnum_effect
It is hard to figure out from this verbose article, whether it is just professional jealousy or a genuine need to debunk the theory of assigning colours to personality types, as described in the book titled Surrounded by idiots . The crux of the argument is that a professional psychologist, who is also a member Swedish Skeptics Society, is refuting the author's claim of being a 'behavioural scientist', yet he admits…
To read this purely as an attack on someone's credentials out of jealousy is to have missed the meat of the criticism.
How come dividing personality into introverted and extroverted (1 dimension) is generally accepted, but dividing personality into more dimensions (disc has 2, mbti has 4, big five has 5, etc), people tend to feel uneasy (e. g. "I am more than just this")? All traps aside (confirmation bias, overdoing it), I do believe these categorizations do make sense as a way to learn about behavior, especially for the general pub…
Big5 is the only one of them with any scientific backing, the others are just pseudo science.
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I didn't act like a jerk before the training, never mind after :) I had training called 'cultural awareness' or similar at another company which was basically very similar material, but without the bogus claims that it was rooted in science. It's the latter that I object to - if they are going to enforce behavioural standards just be honest about it, rather than gaslighting people with this arrant nonsense that we're…
The bullshit I've had to endure during my career includes "You're one of our best paid engineers, so don't share salary information with your colleagues.", "NDA means you can not take a job at a competing company for six months after your resignation." and "It is important that your back is towards me (the manager) so that I can see your monitor and ensure that you are working at all times." My point is that even if…
I'd argue the opposite actually - it's insidious, because any objection is liable to get you labelled a racist etc., and it's dangerous, because it's effectively telling you that no matter how hard you try you cannot escape being a racist (etc.). The latter is pretty much a textbook definition of gaslighting. I don't want my employer gaslighting me.
These types of things may not be science, but they are so popular and will always be popular because they are useful heuristics to make sense of the chaos of dealing with humans.
If these heuristics do not allow making useful predictions they are not useful. If any heuristic for splitting people into types was useful we could have stayed with zodiac signs or something. But yes, these will always be popular because people want simple solutions to complex problems and prefer simple solutions even when they don't actually work.
Couldn't help but check that it is rated 4.6/5 (113 reviews) in Amazon. https://www.amazon.com/Surrounded-Idiots-Behavior-Effectivel... Excerpt from one of the top review.. The book really helps you to understand why 'blues' ask 100 questions, want to problem solve all the time, always ask for more information, and can be cold and distant instead of being emotional creatures. Yellows on the other hand are always day…
Really bizarre that I now only see 26 ratings in the Amazon page, as opposed to 113 that I saw earlier. https://www.amazon.com/Surrounded-Idiots-Behaviour-Understan... Anyone know what is happening? Is that the sudden burst of traffic from HN triggered some kind of Amazon's fake review analysis and they took down bunch of reviews?
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They might be heuristics, but how can they ever be useful? They can neither be used in the analysis of a person nor are they predictive...
Managers like them as they try to make sense of how their reports behave and work together, people they know but not really. Sounds like some people like them as a way to make sense of issues with their personal relationships. People outside yourself make decisions that are frequently confusing, and people like this sort of categorization to make sense of them.
I skimmed the entire article and am still confused about how this guy managed to persuade the media and “large parts of the Swedish population” that he’s a behavioral scientist. I mean, especially for laypeople, the first question you should ask when someone claims to be an expert in a certain science is “does s/he have a Ph.D.?”. This guy did not disclose his academic background, which no Ph.D. holder would ever hid…
Reading the article, the various comments and the linked "Why We Sleep" criticism, I feel really disillusioned. 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 unde…