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In Defense of Myers Briggs (2020)

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Re: In Defense of Myers Briggs (2020)

#141

Post by esperent »

mudita wrote: post #130
esperent wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with these results is not that they're inaccurate, it's that people think they measure a permanent aspect of themselves. In truth, people's personalities are malleable - if you spend all your time working on a computer, you become more introverted - or at least, you start to express your introverted tendencies more strongly. If you switch jobs and have to spend all your days talking to people, you'll beco…

This is a nice, very readable article by a psychologist specialising in lifespan personality development: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/06/30/4840534... "while personality traits are relatively stable over time, they can and often do gradually change across the life span. What's more, those changes are usually for the better. Many studies, including some of my own, show that most adults become more a…

The important word there is "tend". For most people their personality slowly shifts over decades. However, that doesn't mean faster change is impossible. People's personalities can change quickly, either due to life changing events or to intentional effort to change - for example, nearly anyone who is neurotic, depressed, anxious, easily angered, or similar who practices mindfulness daily for 6 months will experience a reduction in those aspects of their personality. Combine that with CBT, new hobbies, changing to a less stressful career, choosing better friends, more exercise, better diet, better sleep, and so on, and you'll experience even faster change. However, most people don't do this, especially when they are older, and hence the statistics show that changes tend to be slow.

Re: In Defense of Myers Briggs (2020)

#143

Post by IndySun »

xvector wrote: post #131
austincheney wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1. It's inaccurate. Reproducibility is most directly correlated against certain identifiers. For example no matter where or how I take a MB assessment I am always INTP. This indicates that for some persons, as associated to certain scored identifiers, this test is always reproducible. That is less a flaw in this test than the test subjects and further suggests MB becomes more valid when correlated with other tests…

Same here. I have taken the test multiple times throughout my life and I get INTP every single time. The description is completely accurate too, down to the individual nuances describing an INTP. It’s frighteningly accurate. I wonder if less common MBTI types are more accurately defined.

> I have taken the test multiple times throughout my life and I get INTP every single time.

Are you aware of Hobson's Choice?

Re: In Defense of Myers Briggs (2020)

#144

Post by yarcob »

esperent wrote: post #141
mudita wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a nice, very readable article by a psychologist specialising in lifespan personality development: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/06/30/4840534... "while personality traits are relatively stable over time, they can and often do gradually change across the life span. What's more, those changes are usually for the better. Many studies, including some of my own, show that most adults become more a…

The important word there is "tend". For most people their personality slowly shifts over decades. However, that doesn't mean faster change is impossible. People's personalities can change quickly, either due to life changing events or to intentional effort to change - for example, nearly anyone who is neurotic, depressed, anxious, easily angered, or similar who practices mindfulness daily for 6 months will experience…

Your argument sounds like it's taken out of a motivational book.

You can do it! You can become a better person! You just need to change every single detail of your life and you will be a better person!

Re: In Defense of Myers Briggs (2020)

#145

Post by singingfish »

smokey_circles wrote: post #75

I don't know how/why people defend this test. 1. It's inaccurate. And that's not just "technically true", it's very rare that the test reproduces results. 2. Jung's theories (the ones used in the test) aren't just "controversial". They're wrong. He says it himself, in the same document they used to create the test. It is just a cash cow now. The _biggest_ problem with the test is it is harmful, not helpful. People be…

You have good points there. From reading the article, the inaccuracy is by inappropriately classifying people into groups, and the groupings lack sensitivity. As you also point out the underlying theoretical framework is also wrong. The article does point out that the Myers Briggs does correlate reasonably well with four of the big 5 though. Having said that I would definitely discourage use of the Myers-Briggs.

The original author has a good point about the naming of the big 5 factors though.

Two things I take issue with though - IQ is reasonably well understood in that we know it measures something reliably and accurately. Exactly what that thing is though, is not really understood - and probably can't be. And how it relates to the real world is also somewhat poorly understood, and may not be possible to fully understand. But it does have good ecological and construct validity. I'm talking about good IQ tests here - any less validation than the huge amount that the Wescheler scales go through and the validation is questionable. I'm aware of the racial biases in IQ testing which is a significant problem.

Psychology isn't a particular young science - big chunks of modern statistical analysis have their roots in 19th and early 20th century psychology. So psychology is a young science in the same sense that modern statistics is. Back when I was studying psychology 20 to 30 years ago, a lot of what is now called "neuroscience" was then called "cognitive science" or more rarely "cognitive neuroscience". Neuroscience sounds sexier though.

I do have a massive issue how many social scientists abuse psychometric techniques in inappropriate ways. Management research is particularly guilty here, and I've been pressured into doing this kind of inappropriate analysis in the past.

Re: In Defense of Myers Briggs (2020)

#146

Post by 0x737368 »

mudita wrote: post #121
feanaro wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is nothing in the field of psychology with better support than IQ. If you aren't going to accept IQ, then you've entirely tossed out the field of psychology. There is nothing left. Huh. That's quite a bold and incorrect claim. Are you a psychologist?

Let's hear it from a psychologist: "If you don’t buy IQ research, you might as well throw out all the rest of psychology." (Jordan Peterson) https://youtu.be/D7Kn5p7TP_Y?t=2938 For anybody interested in personality research, I warmly recommend this lecture series, by the way. These are the basics, which psychology students learn at university.

[flagged]

Re: In Defense of Myers Briggs (2020)

#148

Post by heliodor »

smokey_circles wrote: post #75

I don't know how/why people defend this test. 1. It's inaccurate. And that's not just "technically true", it's very rare that the test reproduces results. 2. Jung's theories (the ones used in the test) aren't just "controversial". They're wrong. He says it himself, in the same document they used to create the test. It is just a cash cow now. The _biggest_ problem with the test is it is harmful, not helpful. People be…

What surprises me about Myers Briggs is that people are placed on each dimension either on one side or on the other. Three no center for each dimension. Yet these traits are normally distributed so most people would fall in the center. Telling most people they are average would not sell well. So yeah, this test is unnecessarily polarizing.

Re: In Defense of Myers Briggs (2020)

#149

Post by concordDance »

fsloth wrote: post #137
pseudalopex wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Getting different results is pretty common. But getting the same results isn't very rare. The article points to studies showing MBTI and Big 5 repeatability are comparable. It was inspired by Jung's theories. It doesn't rely on them. MBTI related literature stresses it measures preferences not abilities. It says no type is better than any other. And it tends to encourage developing what doesn't come naturally.

You can bin people in any number of arbitrary ways. Just the fact you can bin people does not make the binning usefull. Meyers-Squid is equally valid as any other fiction driven binning process. Like dividing people into Hogswarts houses. Stability alone is useless if the predictive qualities do not extend beyond the binning process. Being INTJ only predicts the next time you do the test (if the scoring is stable) yo…

Are you really saying that testing as intj (for example) doesn't correlate with anything? Because that seems incredibly unlikely. E.g. three years ago Slate Star Codex readers were surveyed and found to be 10 times more likely to be INTJ/INTP than the general population.

Re: In Defense of Myers Briggs (2020)

#150

Post by esperent »

yarcob wrote: post #144
esperent wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The important word there is "tend". For most people their personality slowly shifts over decades. However, that doesn't mean faster change is impossible. People's personalities can change quickly, either due to life changing events or to intentional effort to change - for example, nearly anyone who is neurotic, depressed, anxious, easily angered, or similar who practices mindfulness daily for 6 months will experience…

Your argument sounds like it's taken out of a motivational book. You can do it! You can become a better person! You just need to change every single detail of your life and you will be a better person!

Well, I was trying to phrase it positively because the original example I came up with was that if your entire family dies in a car crash, it's likely to cause an instant, long lasting negative change in your personality. Guess I swung it too far in the other direction haha.

But changes can be negative in a less drastic way too. For example, I'm sure the forced isolation of the past year has brought out depressive tendencies in a lot of people. In the face of that, we do need to be reminded that we can take charge and make positive changes in ourselves and that there are tools like meditation or CBT to help us (although it's certainly not so easy or works so universally as suggested in certain motivational books).

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