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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

#151

Post by jcims »

orthoxerox wrote: post #90
sokoloff wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems a convenient shorthand. Intelligence is surely a multi-dimensional vector, but it’s convenient in a lot of circumstances to talk about its magnitude. “All models are wrong; some models are useful.”

> Intelligence is surely a multi-dimensional vector There's a single component responsible for almost half of the difference: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/G_factor_(psychometrics)

This is just another layer of aggregation, emphasis mine:

>It is a variable that summarizes positive correlations among different cognitive tasks, reflecting the fact that an individual's performance on one type of cognitive task tends to be comparable to that person's performance on other kinds of cognitive tasks.

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

#152

Post by jaredsohn »

tikhonj wrote: post #136
Nition wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Related to this, often I see a survey question along the lines of say, "which cup do you think would hold more water" with one that looks like it'd hold a lot more than the other. I'm never sure whether to answer with the meta-analysis of the fact that it's a survey question included in my answer. That is, if I saw the two cups in my example naturally I'd say the obvious one holds more water, but often there'd be no…

I don't know if this question is an example, but people intentionally include "obvious" questions in surveys to check whether people are actually paying attention to the survey. There's a name for these, I just don't recall it at the moment—which shows you I don't have any survey-design experience myself :).

According to a Google search, "Attention check questions" sounds like the right term

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

#154

Post by Icathian »

vmception wrote: post #150
ghaff wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or Myers–Briggs, which is a lot older. The main useful thing about this sort of thing, including the more modern Tilt 365 for example, is that it can be a useful exercise in helping people understand that the way they think about and approach the world differs from how others do. Years ago, I remember a book (Tog on Interface) that had a chapter which discussed how Apple engineers tested on MBTI versus the general po…

Myers Briggs is astrology for people that scoff at astrology I will code switch between star signs and personality acronyms to get in your pants and assign zero weight to either

"I will lie to manipulate you into fucking me, and also I think I'm smarter than everyone".

You charmer, you.

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

#155

Post by moksly »

mathrando wrote: post #43
jawns wrote: post #20

I think a lot of this analysis is tautological -- meaning that when you boil it down, you're just saying that things are as you have defined them to be. For instance, take a Big Five trait such as agreeableness. How do we know that a person is agreeable? Because we define agreeableness in a certain way and then measure the degree to which someone conforms to the definition. If that measurement includes questions such…

Articles like this answer the question, "what if 1920s eugenicists got hold of 1980s magazine relationship tests?" The scary thing is a lot of commercial "people analytics" systems marketed to HR departments, lenders, and government agencies are little more than dressed up relationship tests from 1980s magazines. https://www.cs.princeton.edu/~arvindn/talks/MIT-STS-AI-snake...

Unless a HR department is doing something wrong, the test results aren’t the point of the tests. It’s the conversation following, where possible employees are confronted with their answers and results that’s the point.

It’s just easier to get there when you use a disguised relationship tests from 1980ies magazines. Not only does it touch on relevant areas, most people that you’d use the HR resources on secretly love taking those things and then talking about themselves.

As with most things, it can obviously go wrong or get used in the wrong situations. HR is a department that’s there to help managers, but they really shouldn’t waste their resources testing people for a position as a software developer. If your company is doing that, something went wrong. Maybe HR found a way to keep themselves busy, or you’re not bolstering a management culture or people who can make hiring related decisions without consulting HR.

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

#156

Post by raspasov »

anbende wrote: post #62
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 massive…

I enjoyed reading your responses in this thread very much!

Do you have a “favorite set of constructs”?

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

#157

Post by planet-and-halo »

dr_dshiv wrote: post #80
jawns wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But isn't that just tautology with an intermediate step? You might have Personality Descriptive Adjective X that is found to cluster into what we call a Big Five trait. But Adjective X has its own definition, and it's likely that the tautology (at least insofar as these life satisfaction correlations are concerned) happens at that level.

I suppose they asked 1000s of different questions, each representing a different personality characteristic. After factor analysis, some arbitrary number of factors were found to account for most of the variance. Why did they settle for 5 vs 8 vs 12?

Other models actually did settle for higher numbers of factors, but higher numbers were usually found to have categories that could be reasonably collapsed into one of the Big 5.

Fwiw, my understanding is that most psychologists believe that with further study, these categories will map to actual functioning of the brain and nerve systems. For example, "Neuroticism" will somehow map to the excitability of certain nerve systems and "Agreeableness" will somehow map to functioning of our mirror and mentalizing systems. "Conscientiousness" will map to inhibiting functions, "Openness" will map to approach/flee type emotional functions, and "Extraversion" will map to systems like dopamine release on securing rewards for behavior.

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

#158

Post by Consultant32452 »

ZoomZoomZoom wrote: post #146
doggodaddo78 wrote: post #40

I need more emotional stability (inverse of neuroticism) and less conscientiousness. Fine-tune your agreeableness to suit income or popularity, as needed. I wonder what a rich, intelligent artist's traits look like. :)

>I wonder what a rich, intelligent artist's traits look like. :) Unfortunately, that's a "chose 2" situation. :)

Pretty much any sort of artist that has to consistently produce long term could fit this. Examples that come to mind are the writer for Garfield comics, the South Park guys, etc.

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

#159

Post by ZephyrBlu »

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 think general intelligence is about your ability to absorb and synthesize information.

Higher intelligence = fast learner + better at joining seemingly unrelated dots.

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

#160

Post by moksly »

hansvm wrote: post #60
mathrando wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Articles like this answer the question, "what if 1920s eugenicists got hold of 1980s magazine relationship tests?" The scary thing is a lot of commercial "people analytics" systems marketed to HR departments, lenders, and government agencies are little more than dressed up relationship tests from 1980s magazines. https://www.cs.princeton.edu/~arvindn/talks/MIT-STS-AI-snake...

If you know the tests are snake oil, is it ethical to give the "right" answers to get a job?

I think it’s perfectly ethical to game the tests, but it can be hard to tell what’s actually being tested.

One or ours was deliberately set up so that prospect hires applying for a leadership position would end up with very, very, little in their empathy score if they chose answers that sound like the “right” ones for a leadership position. It was done to catch people off guard in their next interview, and see how they handled getting shown a result they’d very likely not agree with.

HR departments know these things are bullshit. They know people game the systems, exactly like people practice for the coding interview. The test and the results are often extremely irrelevant to anyone getting hired, it’s how people handle their results that’s important.

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