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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

#171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Turns out that the big 5 have predictive power. Hard to call it "tea leaves" if it has broad correlates with human behavior that are replicable across cultures and predict forward-looking behavior.

That's the argument usually presented for intelligence testing.

So?

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

#172

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.

When I first learned about Myers-Briggs, about 15 years ago, I took the test and I got I wanna say INTJ. About a week later, I took it again and got INTF. A week after that, I took it again and got ENTP. That's when I stopped trusting it, and I can't take it seriously whenever anybody brings it up. Let alone the fact that it was designed by two housewives in the 1910s, based on books by Carl Jung he disavowed himself.

As I've grown older, I've developed a theory about why people like the zodiac sign, Myers-Briggs, blood type personalities and all that other crap: * Sense of belonging - wanting to belong to an in-group * Understanding oneself - these categorizations let you explain your personality really quickly, if not really in depth * Avoiding responsibility for themselves - instead of recognizing your flaws, it's easier to say "well I'm a Libra, what did you expect?"

I can understand the need for the first two, but that last point always makes me angry.

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

#173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You decided to read that I dont lie about my astrology signs or myer briggs result I judge which one will likely help create an intimate consensual scenario and judge when to avoid criticizing either school of thought as disagreement is usually counterproductive to a consensual reproductive scenario Pick your battles wisely Out of even more adaptive curiosity, how do you read that as lying?

I dunno. “I didn’t say the things I thought you wouldn’t like so that we could have sex” somehow strikes me as disingenuous. Even though that’s just being considerate by a different name.

I guess it comes from the goal you are trying to achieve.

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

#174
post #62

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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”?

Thank you. My more recent work has focused more on mental health constructs used to track clinical progress over time. The parts I like the most are more concerned with the activation of emotion systems than behavioral tendencies or personality.

I really like the Jaak Panksepp's affective neuroscience view of emotion systems and Paul Gilbert's work on social safeness as an often overlooked emotion system.

Interestingly, emotions can be measured and viewed very similarly to personality traits (really the propensity to experience a particular emotion) and in fact positive emotionality forms a subcomponent (sometimes called an 'aspect') of extroversion and negative emotionality more or less IS neuroticism.

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

#175
post #155

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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…

Why wouldn't HR be testing software engineering candidates?

Well because it's hard for them to come up with question and judge responses.

But I guess this means HR shouldnt skill-test anyone. We d all agree they shouldn't test a racecar driver, a CEO, a mathematician.

But the guy saying that probably doesnt work: HR never test anyone. They handle the process. He may be confusing it with wrong job posting that people attribute to HR (like N years xp in N-5 years old tech) which are usually the product of idiotic managers, not HR who doesnt give a fig what your team needs as long as you express it to them.

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

#176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If those studies don’t separate preparation from raw performance they only suggest a self-reinforcing bias different from capability. Any correlation then is purely anecdotal.

The high correlation suggests that both preparation/study and raw intelligence are important in getting a high SAT score. If you sacrifice one of those two things, you'll get a low SAT score. If you have both, you'll get a high score.

Which of those is more important and by how much though? If both are important factors it would necessary to determine that weighted measure before falsely drawing a correlation that is incomplete or biased.

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

#177
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…

Sure, there are some that seem roughly tautological (like "Popularity" and "Extraversion") but who cares – there's a bunch here that's interesting.

For example, that conscientiousness (aka diligence/organization) correlates more positively than extraversion with Job Income but less positively with Life Satisfaction and negatively with Popularity.

Agreeableness having a light negative correlation with Income and Intelligence is also thought-provoking and not at all tautological.

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

#178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe they pay really well

Or they control entire sectors of the economy. https://www.pgcareers.com/assessment-overviews

Usually there's some correlation here

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

#179
post #51

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...

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…

I def found myres Briggs to be helpful, for your exact reasons. I know it gets a lot of hate here in HN, but as someone who was introduced to it in my first job right out of school, It made me more self aware of how I naturally process information and get energized, and how that can differ from others, and that bit of knowledge has absolutely helped me at times in my career. To me it was never sold as a “this is the only mold you fit in and it will define your role”, it was more to understand ways one might naturally process information, vs. ways one might need to actively work to process information differently.

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

#180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It’s remarkable how similar this is to the argument that an acupuncturist will make is. The modern pharmaceutical industry in many instances has the same issues by the way. Lots of drugs that have questionable efficacy at best.

Yes, my dad, a pharmacist, told me a drug just have to be a little bit more efficient than a placebo to pass certification, and he sells homeopathy all day as well (while calling it a scam), because it does relieve people of their pain...

Acupuncture, which is having someone dancing around you while touching you, is like everything: find something cheaper and more efficient to solve the same problems and we wont see it anymore.

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