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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

#101

Post by CompelTechnic »

vlovich123 wrote: post #85
anbende wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While this is true for a lot of common psychological constructs, the Big Five were not defined according to agreement or consensus. The definitions were driven by the lexical hypothesis whereby the wide variety of personality descriptive adjectives in human language were factor analyzed and found to cluster into 5 distinct factors. So this isn't tautological in the way that you've described, though it is certainly re…

Humorism was a field of academic study for two millennia before germ theory demonstrated how laughable the entire field was. It’s always important to remember that doing research in a field doesn’t necessarily mean that the field itself is on a solid foundation that maps to reality. Psychology and psychiatry really do struggle to demonstrate statistically meaningful results behind most therapies (CBT is perhaps a not…

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.

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

#102

Post by greesil »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #81
hansvm wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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

Maybe they pay really well

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

#103

Post by periheli0n »

namenotrequired wrote: post #98
periheli0n wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for this deep answer, and for confirming my impression of Myers-Briggs! I can see how a continuous scale can already fix a few issues. However, isn’t it still too simplistic to say “personality feature X correlates with real-life success measure Y?” Take for example “Openness”. It’s not hard to imagine how the very same person can be very open with one group of people, but act totally differently in another…

> Take for example “Openness”. It’s not hard to imagine how the very same person can be very open with one group of people Lest this be misunderstood, note that "Openness" in this context is not about being honest. It is short for "Openness to Experience". Roughly, it's about creativity and curiosity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Openness_to_experience

Good point. Still, a person that radiates creativity and curiosity in an environment that they find inspiring could be the exact opposite in another environment that they find less suitable. Hence my point that this personality trait stuff is at least as much dependent on context as on personal traits.

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

#104

Post by anbende »

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?

There are a number of metrics that are commonly used to settle on a number of factors to extract. There's some judgment in it to be sure, but you are looking at data-driven phenomena as well like percentage of variance explained, a precipitous drop in new added value, and etc.

Essentially you come to a point where extracting another value isn't explaining much more variance or producing a factor that's meaningful (e.g., two items of conscientiousness with negative wording are the entire new "factor" and only take variance explained from 80% to 82%).

https://www.theanalysisfactor.com/factor-analysis-how-many-f...

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

#106

Post by anbende »

mettamage wrote: post #71
anbende wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What do you think about psilocybin's effect on openness? Are there other studies that produce such marked changes in personality?

That's a very interesting question, but unfortunately it's not really my area.

If you'll permit me to speculate a bit:

I do clinical work as well, and I'd say that therapy produces some personality change if done long enough, but it's not a massive shift in most cases, though even small changes can make a big difference over time.

Unfortunately, trauma and hardship can also have a big impact on people's personality and average behavior. Going to war or prison or suffering great loss can have a big impact.

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

#107

Post by erikerikson »

wombatmobile wrote: post #65
erikerikson wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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 o…

Indeed, sometimes less is more. More benefit stands in for the more technical term "utilitons" or units of value or utility. Less is more is adding description to what contingently has a higher expected or observed utiliton value. Between explaining all that or using "more benefit", I opted for less ;D

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

#108

Post by massysett »

"Broadly speaking, they are more happy, successful, intelligent, creative, and popular."

This reads like an extrovert's life wish list - particularly "popular," but even "happy" and "creative." I disagree that someone who exhibits these characteristics is somehow "better" or is living a better life.

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

#109

Post by mcguire »

CompelTechnic wrote: post #101
vlovich123 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humorism was a field of academic study for two millennia before germ theory demonstrated how laughable the entire field was. It’s always important to remember that doing research in a field doesn’t necessarily mean that the field itself is on a solid foundation that maps to reality. Psychology and psychiatry really do struggle to demonstrate statistically meaningful results behind most therapies (CBT is perhaps a not…

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.

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

#110

Post by taberiand »

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?

Yes, of course it is. Working out how to work with people is the core competency of most jobs. In this case, if you've worked out how to give the 'correct' answers on such a test, then you've got a good start on knowing how to navigate the corporate machine - and get your real job done despite corporate garbage (which in my opinion is what makes it ethically ok).
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