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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

#51

Post by ghaff »

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...

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 population. He went to discuss implications for how it was easier for engineers to have mental models for how systems operated than users. Was this a correct explanation based on MBTI? Who knows. But it was a useful reminder in this case that your users may not be like you.

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

#52

Post by anbende »

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…

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 related to the way human beings describe each other and the way that instantiates in human language.

Source 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexical_hypothesis

Source 2: I'm a psychologist and did research in this area

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

#53

Post by kortex »

austincheney wrote: post #45
maxqin1 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For whom? The real problem is that not all valuable paths can come to the same bottleneck. Med student? Well, the SAT might be a good indicator of how successful you'll be at completing a medical program in the US. Same thing for law. Are you the creative type? Then the SAT probably won't be as indicative of your future success.

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 specific kinds of intelligence, and I happen to know many intelligent folks who are expressly bad at it. They don't "test well". Anecdotally, diligent study and fast-testing are anti-correlated in many of these smart folks.

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

#54

Post by clairity »

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.

it's claimed that myers-briggs is reliably repeatable, but my personal experience contradicts this, with a flip-flopping of 3 of the 4 attributes over time. it doesn't seem too reliable to me.

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

#55

Post by erikerikson »

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…

> "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.

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

#56

Post by anbende »

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's a good question, and your reaction to the Myers-Briggs is justified! It is not evidence-based and is roundly rejected by modern personality psychology. The work the author of this piece was describing on the other-hand is one of the most well-researched phenomena in the history of psychology.

It is based on a massive amount of research looking at clusters of personality adjectives found in dozens of languages that tend to cluster along five dimensions. And the same five clusters are found in virtually all languages (sometimes to include a 6th cluster often called "honesty/humility").

And to your point about types, this system doesn't assign types to people, but instead places them on a continuous dimension that is considered to be much more useful.

And to your point about complexity, the 5 dimensions are higher level structures. Within each dimension is a branching tree of complexity that is where the current work lies.

Further reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexical_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits

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

#57

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

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

#58

Post by jawns »

anbende wrote: post #52
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…

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…

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.

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

#60

Post by hansvm »

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...

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