Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A review of correlations between big five personality types and life outcomes

dynomight.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 261 posts

Re: A review of correlations between big five personality types and life outcomes

#61

Post by rkk3 »

paulpauper wrote: post #19
austincheney wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there data on that? Perceptions of intelligence are variable to practice and preparation if the measure is nonrandomized convergent standardized tests, which is not IQ but is the more accepted assessment of intelligence. IQ only seems to matter up to 135 after which other factors become more dominant in determining success.

https://www.vox.com/2016/5/25/11683192/iq-testing-intelligen... I look at it like this, for creative, intellectually demanding work IQ is a necessary but perhaps insufficient condition. You need to be smart to achieve success cause you are competing with other people, so smarter people will have an edge. Google is not hiring people with 90-110 iqs. So having a high IQ is needed to at least be sufficiently proficient…

Google hires no one within 1SD of the Avg IQ? This I find hard to believe.

Re: A review of correlations between big five personality types and life outcomes

#62

Post by anbende »

Wronnay wrote: post #28

I can't read a text based on the Big Five seriously. My personality changed in many ways over the years. It's kinda like your political position changes over the years. Someone fresh from college might be introverted and on the left political spectrum because he has no money, but to be successful he might get extroverted and when he has much money, he might get more on the right political spectrum. How can something…

Hi there, psychologist here who has done research in personality including looking at the Big Five. It's not my personal favorite set of constructs, but I have great respect for the body of work supporting it.

Modern personality theory in no way assumes that personality doesn't change over time. It finds instead that personality tends to be "somewhat stable over time" which means that personality doesn't vary massively from week to week or month to month but can definitely shift across the lifespan. In fact, here's a large study looking at exactly that (though cross-sectional which means that many effects could be a function of age cohorts rather than actual change).

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2562318/

Regarding your hypothetical introverted recent college grad, these kinds of shifts can and do happen, but massive shifts in personality appear to be quite rare. What's more, modern work in the area has found that "within-person" variability is much greater than "between-persons" variability meaning that as individuals we express a wide range of behaviors. For example, I might be more extraverted at work and more introverted among friends or vice versa, showing internal variation. That said, we can talk about a person's average level of a trait like extraversion and that average is meaningful and predictive.

As to your point, both kinds of change can and do happen, but changing our behavioral approach to life tends to be gradual and slow for most people.

Re: A review of correlations between big five personality types and life outcomes

#63

Post by pishpash »

colechristensen wrote: post #31

The question behind all of these theories of personality is "Does the measured quantity have any underlying form?" That is, are you measuring something "real" or just coming up with arbitrary classifications. "How you answer this survey correlates this well to outcomes" is perhaps useful, but binning answers into personality types with common names is questionable. It all seems to be a little bit too far down the roa…

To the extent that PCA of survey results exhibit dimensionality, that is real. The underlying basis might be modes of social dynamics or clusters in genetics or language. It would be surprising to find that totally unconstrained random processes generated patterns like this.

Re: A review of correlations between big five personality types and life outcomes

#64

Post by austincheney »

maxqin1 wrote: post #48
austincheney wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have around a 148 IQ but scored only 1060 on the SAT. Clearly those two measures are not linked. This has not prevented me from earning a 4 year degree or becoming a software developer. I find writing software to be easy while many of my peers seem to struggle. In reflection personality and practice are all that have mattered. IQ isn’t a significant consideration of comfort/confidence in writing software, a skill.

> I have around a 148 That's rather impressive, but I would double-check those numbers. For example, which IQ test? Was it recently updated? IQ tests are adjusted by as many as 10 points every 10 years [1]. Have you double verified with another test? How did you prepare for each? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect

I am not that concerned. The number is as important to me as my exceedingly unimpressive SAT score.

Re: A review of correlations between big five personality types and life outcomes

#65

Post by wombatmobile »

erikerikson wrote: post #55
wombatmobile wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If IQ is important, maybe it's just that intelligent people know how to take personality tests. What even is intelligence? I know that IQ is what IQ tests measure, but what is intelligence? People say my dog is intelligent, but only in response to her displays of obedience to my commands, I've noticed. I silently translate their comment about intelligence to mean "your dog is obedient." Does an IQ test measure what…

> "What even is intelligence?" I've found the following a fairly good definition: Efficient cross-domain optimization In less coded language: the ability to gain more benefit across many areas of value from the same or fewer resources.

> the ability to gain more benefit across many areas of value from the same or fewer resources.

Your use of the term "more benefit" is clever because it avoids definition, and cannot be disproven.

If you'd said "more money" or "more power" or "more calories" or "more resources" the notion of benefit could be directly assessed, although different people would assess each proposition differently, some positively, and others negatively, because the value of "more" of anything is circumstantial and a matter of taste.

Sometimes less is more.

Re: A review of correlations between big five personality types and life outcomes

#66

Post by akomtu »

maxqin1 wrote: post #48
austincheney wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have around a 148 IQ but scored only 1060 on the SAT. Clearly those two measures are not linked. This has not prevented me from earning a 4 year degree or becoming a software developer. I find writing software to be easy while many of my peers seem to struggle. In reflection personality and practice are all that have mattered. IQ isn’t a significant consideration of comfort/confidence in writing software, a skill.

> I have around a 148 That's rather impressive, but I would double-check those numbers. For example, which IQ test? Was it recently updated? IQ tests are adjusted by as many as 10 points every 10 years [1]. Have you double verified with another test? How did you prepare for each? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect

I think a good IQ test would be finding isomorphic graphs. A typical question would be: here's a graph with 7 nodes, tell which of the 4 graphs below it matches.

Re: A review of correlations between big five personality types and life outcomes

#67

Post by anbende »

Reimersholme wrote: post #4

I guess “emotional stability” is an inverted rebranding of neuroticism as it’s usually known?

Psychologist here. Yes, that is correct. Without the inversion, it is sometimes also referred to as "emotionality" or even "negative emotionality". "Neuroticism" sounds pejorative to many.

Re: A review of correlations between big five personality types and life outcomes

#68

Post by mettamage »

periheli0n wrote: post #41

Are these personality types really scientifically grounded? I once was sort of compelled to take a Myers-Briggs test and I found it utterly flawed. So much of one’s personality depends on the contact and environment, yet Myers-Briggs wants to force you into one type. Making things way too simple. But maybe simple is what was sought here rather than really resolving personality.

See [1]. It's a lot, I don't fully understand it myself. I find it convincing enough to say it's scientifically grounded, in the linguistic sense at least. I wouldn't say this research is grounded in the biological sense (not the five factor model anyway, perhaps the concept of "personality" is though).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits#Hi...

Re: A review of correlations between big five personality types and life outcomes

#69

Post by DangitBobby »

sokoloff wrote: post #33
the-dude wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Perhaps their abilities are "unlocked" to the fullest My impression is conscientious people work within the system and don't toe the line. edit: disclosure, I am highly unconscientious, didn't finish uni etc.

“Toe the line” is pretty much a synonym to work within the system.

My understanding of the phrase "toe the line" was to express that someone is technically within limits but is intentionally testing the boundaries of their limits, but apparently this is not accurate. TIL.

Re: A review of correlations between big five personality types and life outcomes

#70

Post by paulpauper »

wombatmobile wrote: post #38
analog31 wrote: post #17

Granted this isn't a peer reviewed paper, but still, a blog that gives personality scores for historical people like presidents can't be based on data. If IQ is important, maybe it's just that intelligent people know how to take personality tests.

> If IQ is important, maybe it's just that intelligent people know how to take personality tests. What even is intelligence? I know that IQ is what IQ tests measure, but what is intelligence? People say my dog is intelligent, but only in response to her displays of obedience to my commands, I've noticed. I silently translate their comment about intelligence to mean "your dog is obedient." Does an IQ test measure what…

I am sure someone with an IQ of 130 probably has better luck understanding coding than someone with an IQ of 100. To say that IQ is ill-defined and of no predictive power, is wrong.
Post reply on HN