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

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

#121

Post by periheli0n »

fsloth wrote: post #112
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.

Myers-Briggs is pseudoscientific bs. The only reason it’s so famous is that it’s an easy snake oil to peddle by consultants. It was literally concocted by two persons without scientific method or context. It’s fiction. Some fiction mirrors life quite well, but that does not turn it into a scientific tool. The only time Myers-Briggs has some utility is as a facilitation tool when a consultant needs to convince a roomf…

lol this was precisely the context in which I was exposed to this test :D

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

#122

Post by david_allison »

justbored123 wrote: post #99
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.

That is a problem of interpretation by amateurs more than a problem with the test itself. Myers-Briggs gives you PERCENTAGES of every trait, then it uses 4 letter labels to make things simpler for people, but you are supposed to understand that a person that scored 49% introvert in the introvert-extrovert spectrum is going to be far similar to a person that scored extrovert with 51% than to a person that scored intro…

> you are supposed to understand that a person that scored 49% introvert in the introvert-extrovert spectrum is going to be far similar to a person that scored extrovert with 51% than to a person that scored introvert 10% because its a spectrum not an absolute value.

This doesn't fit well with my mental model of how Myers Briggs works (regardless of the veracity of Myers Briggs).

As I understand it: Myers Briggs maps to the Jungian cognitive functions[0] and the side that you fall on the J/P dichotomy will invert these.

An INTJ would be: Introverted Intuition, Extraverted Thinking, Introverted Feeling, Extraverted Sensing

An INTP would be: Introverted Thinking, Extraverted Intuition, Introverted Sensing, Extraverted Feeling

Getting near the 50% mark on the J/P aspect appears to show low confidence in any part of the model

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jungian_cognitive_functions

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

#124

Post by acituan »

vlovich123 wrote: post #100
anbende wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A major problem with humorism was that it did not have any empirical evidence to support it. Modern personality theory DOES. Personality theory uses a variety of techniques to show that a construct is internally consistent and related to real-world indicators. If independent people can view a video or a person and they reliably rate that entity similarly (inter-rater reliability), we can say with some certainty that…

My analogy to humorism was not to imply that there’s no empirical evidence at all here. Just that the field of psychology has continually struggled to actually develop testable hypotheses that lead to scientific theories. There’s a giant chasm between “I have a signal” and “here’s what that signal means”. You can’t start out with a data set, pick out some signals and then say what they mean. That’s scientific theory…

You seem to be conflating psychology the science vs psychotherapy the practice. The latter approximates engineering and producing real life results takes precedence over proving things from first principles. Just like with medicine, you don't categorically reject medications even though it can't always explain the mechanisms of action fully (yet). Big tech doesn't hold off on making billion dollar business decisions based on the same techniques either. Science has its place but it is not always above real life pragmatism.

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

#125

Post by mycologos »

kortex wrote: post #53
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.

Indeed. SAT is basically "how good are you at cramming a bunch of relatively arbitrary information into your brain and regurgitating it in a high pressure, timed scenario". That is a kind of intelligence, but there are very few occupations where that kind of intelligence is useful. Lawyers and doctors. Both the "intensely study something rather uninteresting" and "perform under high stress and time demand" are specif…

> cramming a bunch of relatively arbitrary information into your brain

What? Most of the SAT is evaluating high school-level math, writing, and reading skills. It's not like they're asking you to memorize historical dates or names or poems or formulas. Maybe the relatively narrow part of the test on vocabulary falls into this category, but even those words are almost entirely things you'll just pick up if you like reading books. And, now that I'm looking into it, only 10 out of 52 questions in the reading section are even about vocabulary [1]. You can skip 9 of them and still get a 700 on reading/writing [2]. Assuming you get an 800 on math, that's a 98th percentile total score and a 90th percentile on reading/writing alone [3], with almost no vocabulary prep.

I agree about the high pressure aspect, there doesn't seem to be a good way around that.

[1] https://www.kaptest.com/study/sat/whats-tested-on-the-sat-vo...

[2] https://blog.prepscholar.com/how-many-questions-can-you-skip...

[3] https://blog.prepscholar.com/sat-percentiles-and-score-ranki...

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

#126

Post by austincheney »

saiya-jin wrote: post #117
austincheney wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

well then it shouldn't be used as main point of your argument

I think you are confusing a relevant but worthless data point for something of value. I guess there are people that attach emotional significance to such things, but it’s just some number that made a valid argument.

If I don’t care and it’s my number why do you or anybody else care? Why should I not use this number to make a valid argument?

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

#127

Post by pseudalopex »

david_allison wrote: post #122
justbored123 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is a problem of interpretation by amateurs more than a problem with the test itself. Myers-Briggs gives you PERCENTAGES of every trait, then it uses 4 letter labels to make things simpler for people, but you are supposed to understand that a person that scored 49% introvert in the introvert-extrovert spectrum is going to be far similar to a person that scored extrovert with 51% than to a person that scored intro…

> you are supposed to understand that a person that scored 49% introvert in the introvert-extrovert spectrum is going to be far similar to a person that scored extrovert with 51% than to a person that scored introvert 10% because its a spectrum not an absolute value. This doesn't fit well with my mental model of how Myers Briggs works (regardless of the veracity of Myers Briggs). As I understand it: Myers Briggs maps…

Myers and Briggs were inspired by Jung. And some enthusiasts insist on interpreting it how you do. But basically every test treats the axes as continuous.

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

#128

Post by satellite2 »

greesil wrote: post #102
bryanrasmussen wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say yes, but do you want the job at the place that is giving you snake oil?

Maybe they pay really well

Or they control entire sectors of the economy.

https://www.pgcareers.com/assessment-overviews

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

#129

Post by m0llusk »

What may be more interesting are the correlations between personality types and occupations. For example, teachers tend to have a high level of empathy. That seems like it could be more interesting and rewarding to investigate. Similarly, pilots, cops, and soldiers all tend to have high levels of aggression. Arguably most interesting is the beer industry where brewers tend to be extremely open to a fault while distributors tend not to have much openness and score high on other factors.

Taken together this tends to indicate that the overall life outcome correlations are as usual as likely to mislead as inform. What makes more sense is to see how individuals match with roles and tasks and how diverse individuals can cooperate to make the most of each of their best talents.

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

#130

Post by agumonkey »

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.

I have yet to find any IQ test with any value whatsoever. Maybe the one I had in school, and the one on the web are bogus, but if it's not the case, finding small patterns and recognizing space transformed shapes are really the ground level of thinking. No multilinear or non linear relationship, no fractal / self similarity. That's not even HS abstraction levels.. I really don't get it.
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