281–290 of 340 posts
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I completely agree with you. HR seems to aggregate all the people that you wouldn't allow anywhere near the actual business of the company.
HR's primary existence is prevent lawsuits between the company and the employees.
Provocative title. More accurate, but less surprising would be "A significant portion of a population were fooled by a charlatan offering simple answers to complex questions". That wouldn't be as salacious though. But I'm very happen with what VoF did. The book has still been a huge annoyance for years though, and I've seen personally workplace accomodations based on its idiocy. But if I'm allowed to generalize a bit…
On a happy note, people smarter than you may make even worse mistakes.
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If you reduce your standard from a Ph.D. to a 4 year degree from an accredited university, how well does the filter work? If someone is speaking physics and has a B.S. in physics, while it isn't as good a check as a Ph.D., they are fare more likely to know what they are talking about than someone without any degree in physics. I would also add another standard of career experience at applying knowledge, though I migh…
I’m a physicist so I can say for certain that a typical college graduate majoring in physics but not looking into a Ph.D. isn’t equipped to discuss any advanced topic (say, quantum field theory). They are usually fifty to a hundred years behind frontier research. That doesn’t necessarily translate to psychology, which I have no idea.
To go with a more practical example, say a news report comes out that some new exercise called joopies are better than burpees. Then say someone with a B.S. in Exercise Science says the article is wrong and says burpees are better than joopies. Without either peer reviewed research nor an expert with a Ph.D. (or other doctorate) to weigh in on the issue, would you think that joopies are better, that burpees are better, or that you don't have enough evidence to decide either are better.
And if you would recommend the third option as a matter of course, would the same hold true if we replace joopies with staring at a clock?
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He also points out that the theory has no evidence behind it, that it appears to be based on an older theory, also completely unevidenced, and that that older theory draws on discredited Jungian archetypes. To read this purely as an attack on someone's credentials out of jealousy is to have missed the meat of the criticism.
I stated quite clearly, that it is hard to work out the intention of the article. The professional psychologist in question seems to be spending an awful amount of energy dispelling a theory that has been already discredited. There is an unhealthy fixation on the circulation and sales of the book, throughout the article. It is now a futile exercise to convince the readership if it is drivel and providing the book wit…
"Despite the use of colours, it turned out that the “Surrounded by …” books were not based on Myers-Brigg. Instead, they built on another personality theory, the so-called DiSC model. The most noteworthy outcome of a search through the academic literature on this model was that, despite the fact that the test had been around for fifty years, there was in principle no research on whether or not it worked."
"According to Sune Gellberg, the owner of IPU, the organisation in Sweden which sell the DiSC test, no qualifications are required to carry out personality tests. “I don’t know what education our consultants have because it doesn’t matter”, he told us, “It is a computer program that does the personality analysis and gives the consultant a report which he can go through with the respondent.”
Not even the representative for the test thinks that knowledge of psychology is important! Personality consultants have no education in test methodology and no knowledge of personality theory. They just feed in numbers to a computer and have no idea what the results mean or what their scientific value is. It is very possible that Erikson believes that the test has scientific grounds and, given his lack of education, it is very likely that he has no idea what it actually says. "
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I am an American who does not “believe” in Myers-Briggs types and I know plenty more of the same.
There is nothing to "believe". 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.
> · Red: dominant, driven, solution focussed. > · Blue: analytic, careful, meticulous > · Green: patient, considerate, nice > · Yellow: extroverted, creative, verbal Damn. I spent so much of my time and energy pushing back exactly on this bullshit when I was young. That's part of the curriculum of mandatory courses I had to take during an apprenticeship in Switzerland. Expensive and mandatory courses paid by students…
While its uses in a corporate environment can be bogus, there are indeed a few discreet types of people, and most anybody that has worked/lived with/watched people in the wild can attest to that.
I don't see many people being "analytic, careful, meticulous" in one day and "let's just go at it / throw caution to the wind" the next.
At best, an "analytic, careful, meticulous" will have some rare breaks when those qualities will break down (e.g. when they fall in love or some addiction or some breaking point in their life/career).
But usually people tend to stick to some modes of behavior -- which might not be the ones in the color groups above, but they do exist and are quite consistent.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you reduce your standard from a Ph.D. to a 4 year degree from an accredited university, how well does the filter work? If someone is speaking physics and has a B.S. in physics, while it isn't as good a check as a Ph.D., they are fare more likely to know what they are talking about than someone without any degree in physics. I would also add another standard of career experience at applying knowledge, though I migh…
I’m a physicist so I can say for certain that a typical college graduate majoring in physics but not looking into a Ph.D. isn’t equipped to discuss any advanced topic (say, quantum field theory). They are usually fifty to a hundred years behind frontier research. That doesn’t necessarily translate to psychology, which I have no idea.
> isn’t equipped to discuss any advanced topic (say, quantum field theory). They are usually fifty to a hundred years behind frontier research.
I don't disagree, but I do wish in the future we have an easier way to visualize all of known information, so one can see what one knows and what one is in the dark about, and "see the frontier".
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…
Yes. People are less "unique" than they think, and some scientists (or non scientists) can come up with useful pattern matching/abstractions over people types (like in the book), while others study subtlety and small differences at another level, and are sometimes deluded that higher level personality types don't exist.
That doesn't mean that this or that theory of types is fool-proof and always applicable. But it also doesn't have to be, to be scientific (which just needs it to be falsifiable, empirical based on observation, testable, and useful for predictions).
A scientific theory != a law of nature. The former doesn't have to always hold. It could still create very useful models for predicting people behavior with success.
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…
It depends on what you mean. About 25 years ago in Sweden the leading party the Social Democrats instituted a policy championed by feminists that meant that every other elected position should be occupied by a woman. Research has shown that that policy has led to more qualified candidates across the political spectrum. There is also evidence from Sweden that attitudes towards rape and sexual assault has changed due t…
If it leads to more qualified employees, which I assume would correlates with their suitability, it would save money and reduce mistakes in key areas like healthcare which then would result in saved lives. A national policy would be a win-win for everyone.
A while back I looked if any municipality had a general hireing policy in order to combat gender segregation. So far I have yet to find one that even mention gender segregation as something to consider when hiring new people. There does not even seem to be one that something as vague as a goal to reduce gender segregation.
As a swede this is a bit embarrassing to me. I have a few friends who's bought into this completely, and of course bought the book. All without even a hint of critical thinking. It is hard to tell your friends they've been conned. I can understand it to some extent. Here's someone, who claims he is a behavioral expert and scientist, and who offers a seemingly plausible simple method to understand yourself and other p…
If something as blatant as these colors was legitimately an inherent part of human psychology, how would it be that they were only discovered in the past decades? Wouldn't philosophers have noticed it thousands and thousands of years ago?