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The Myers-Briggs Personality Test Is Pretty Much Meaningless

smithsonianmag.com

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Re: The Myers-Briggs Personality Test Is Pretty Much Meaningless

#331

Post by gnaritas »

nonbel wrote: post #283
gnaritas wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have no doubt there is some correlation between astrological sign and personality. There's no evidence of this, so you should have doubts.

Sure there is, I found thousands of papers on it with one simple search: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=season+of+birth EG: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27310922 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25132151 I don't know much about astrology, but your "sign" is determined by the birthday right? From my understanding, it is basically a wa…

No, you didn't anything relevant there about personality types; personality disorders are a vastly different subject.

> I don't know much about astrology,

Now we agree.

Re: The Myers-Briggs Personality Test Is Pretty Much Meaningless

#332

Post by nonbel »

Mz wrote: post #314
nonbel wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure there is, I found thousands of papers on it with one simple search: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=season+of+birth EG: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27310922 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25132151 I don't know much about astrology, but your "sign" is determined by the birthday right? From my understanding, it is basically a wa…

I don't know much about astrology, Then please kindly don't defend it. but your "sign" is determined by the birthday right? I have actually studied astrology. Serious astrologers loathe sun sign astrology.

I wasn't defending astrology, I was attacking the pseudoscientific thought process being used to attack astrology.

Re: The Myers-Briggs Personality Test Is Pretty Much Meaningless

#333

Post by nonbel »

gnaritas wrote: post #331
nonbel wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure there is, I found thousands of papers on it with one simple search: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=season+of+birth EG: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27310922 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25132151 I don't know much about astrology, but your "sign" is determined by the birthday right? From my understanding, it is basically a wa…

No, you didn't anything relevant there about personality types; personality disorders are a vastly different subject. > I don't know much about astrology, Now we agree.

Well, I tried searching "Myers Briggs season", etc. I didn't find any data on it all. It is one of those topics... too many low quality (unscholarly: not citing references , etc) sources popped up so I won't waste any further time on it.

I assure you with large enough sample size you will find some correlations though.

Re: The Myers-Briggs Personality Test Is Pretty Much Meaningless

#334

Post by lucisferre »

Is any personality test really meaningful? I mean the entire field of psychology apparently doesn't care much about correctness or falsifiability? Why bother to hold MBTI to a higher standard? [1]

[1]: http://www.nature.com/news/smart-software-spots-statistical-...

Re: The Myers-Briggs Personality Test Is Pretty Much Meaningless

#335

Post by dragonwriter »

lucisferre wrote: post #334

Is any personality test really meaningful? I mean the entire field of psychology apparently doesn't care much about correctness or falsifiability? Why bother to hold MBTI to a higher standard? [1] [1]: http://www.nature.com/news/smart-software-spots-statistical-...

Yes, there are models of personality that, unlike MBTI, have a scientific basis for the selection of their dimensions.

That there are widespread problems with psychological research does not mean that there is no reason to apply standards when evaluating proposed models in the field (in fact, it's a good reason to be particularly careful in doing so.)

Re: The Myers-Briggs Personality Test Is Pretty Much Meaningless

#336

Post by dragonwriter »

SomeStupidPoint wrote: post #141
ivan_gammel wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about considering other starting points and comparing the added value of them with MBTI? How differs "So, you are INFJ, let's talk about your personality" from "So, you are Captain America/Hobbit/Sith Lord, according to this online test. Let's talk about your personality"?

I expect you get about the same utility out of any 4-dimensional, 16-choice bucketing strategy. The MBTI is mostly just useful in that it's one of the few things that actually sorts humans in a hyperdimensional way, which is really how we're best categorized. We're all slight wobbles (well, statistically speaking) around the center of a like 20-100 dimension distribution. MBTI is basically just PCA on that space in t…

MBTI is not that. It is marketed as if it was, but it's an a priori model not based on analysis of actual data. EPQ, Big Five, HEXACO, etc. are closer to what you present MBTI as being.

Re: The Myers-Briggs Personality Test Is Pretty Much Meaningless

#337

Post by [deleted] »

nonbel wrote: post #332
Mz wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know much about astrology, Then please kindly don't defend it. but your "sign" is determined by the birthday right? I have actually studied astrology. Serious astrologers loathe sun sign astrology.

I wasn't defending astrology, I was attacking the pseudoscientific thought process being used to attack astrology.

[deleted]

Re: The Myers-Briggs Personality Test Is Pretty Much Meaningless

#338

Post by gnaritas »

nonbel wrote: post #333
gnaritas wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, you didn't anything relevant there about personality types; personality disorders are a vastly different subject. > I don't know much about astrology, Now we agree.

Well, I tried searching "Myers Briggs season", etc. I didn't find any data on it all. It is one of those topics... too many low quality (unscholarly: not citing references , etc) sources popped up so I won't waste any further time on it. I assure you with large enough sample size you will find some correlations though.

> I assure you with large enough sample size you will find some correlations though.

I can correlations the drop in pirates with a rise in global temperature, so what... correlations don't mean a damn thing by themselves, that's just data-mining bias.

Re: The Myers-Briggs Personality Test Is Pretty Much Meaningless

#339

Post by btilly »

nonbel wrote: post #325
btilly wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are indeed measured weak correlations between seasons and personality. Things like your odds of being bipolar are higher if you were born in late winter, and lower for summer/early fall. (The same correlations exist in the Southern hemisphere, but with the obvious 6 month shift.) However there aren't correlations between those known correlations and the traits that astrology says that you should have. Therefore…

It all depends on the sample size. If sufficient money is put towards it you will find the correlation. People have also done studies on this for around 50 years, everything is correlated with everything else: 'The author once had occasion to use 700 subjects in a study of publie opinion. After a factor analysis of the results, the factors were correlated with individual-difference variables such as amount of educati…

Yeah, everything is correlated with everything, and a principal component analysis will quickly sort out the source.

For example what songs you like is tied to what media you watch which is tied to what politics you have. And most of that is tied to how liberal vs conservative you are.

It doesn't take many principal components to make most of the remaining correlations very small.

But correlations between astrological descriptions and personality start off small. So small that astrology is not a useful starting point to understanding people.

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