4 ms·

I'm clueless about type theory, and outside school/university I've rearely used math on complicated stuff (mainly geometry in from-scratch GUIs) because creatin

by raducu 11y ago

I'm clueless about type theory, and outside school/university I've rearely used math on complicated stuff (mainly geometry in from-scratch GUIs) because creating mathematical models of real-world systems is very hard (in my opinion). So I would say that modeling human personality would be an incredibly complex/non-liniar sort of thing. I am quite fond of the Myers–Briggs Type Indicator, but I know it's controversial, and it only has 4 variables, I imagine a more comprehensive model would have many more variables.

jacques_chester 11y ago
MBTI isn't controversial at all. Those who make money from it, or who have been sold on it, think it's great. Those who do actual psychometrics research ignore it.
- backpropagated 11y ago
  The MBTI and Big 5 are simply rotations of one another. They explain most of the same variance. This was demonstrated by McCrae & Costa, who created the Big 5, in the 80s.
  - jacques_chester 11y ago
    > The MBTI and Big 5 are simply rotations of one another. They explain most of the same variance. They are not and do no such thing. > This was demonstrated by McCrae & Costa, who created the Big 5, in the 80s. You're seizing on the same single article every single MBTI booster seizes on: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2709300 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2709300 Particularly the abstract, in which the magic words "However, correlational analyses showed that the four MBTI indices did measure aspects of four of the five major dimensions of normal personality." appear. The thing is that of the correlations found, the strongest is between the 5-factor introversion-extraversion and the MBTI introversion-extraversion (.74 for men, .69 for women). This is hardly ground-breaking stuff. The next best is intuition and openness (.72 for men, .69 for women). So on two axes, MBTI stumbles into something. Jung was a pretty smart guy who interview a lot of folk, so it figures he'd have noticed the surface features that anyone can notice (some people are introverted! some people are more conscientious!) But all of this is by the by. It doesn't matter that MBTI is sometimes right. It matters that it is more wrong than right. If it is demonstrably wrong, most of the time, on most of its types, then it is dangerous and foolish to use it. You might as well argue that "some people get better from eating bread with mould". Sure, that's true, but I'd rather take antibiotics.
    - backpropagated 11y ago
      "The five-factor model provides an alternative basis for interpreting MBTI findings within a broader, more commonly shared conceptual framework." That's the definition of a rotation. QED
      - jacques_chester 11y ago
        I feel like I'm wandering into a Monty Python sketch.
theoh 11y ago
Actually, one of the more credible models uses just five factors: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits Even more simplistic than the MBTI is the DISC profile: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DISC_assessment https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DISC_assessment It was invented by the man who came up with Wonder Woman...

by raducu 11y ago

jacques_chester 11y ago

MBTI isn't controversial at all. Those who make money from it, or who have been sold on it, think it's great. Those who do actual psychometrics research ignore it.

backpropagated 11y ago
The MBTI and Big 5 are simply rotations of one another. They explain most of the same variance. This was demonstrated by McCrae & Costa, who created the Big 5, in the 80s.
- jacques_chester 11y ago
  > The MBTI and Big 5 are simply rotations of one another. They explain most of the same variance. They are not and do no such thing. > This was demonstrated by McCrae & Costa, who created the Big 5, in the 80s. You're seizing on the same single article every single MBTI booster seizes on: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2709300 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2709300 Particularly the abstract, in which the magic words "However, correlational analyses showed that the four MBTI indices did measure aspects of four of the five major dimensions of normal personality." appear. The thing is that of the correlations found, the strongest is between the 5-factor introversion-extraversion and the MBTI introversion-extraversion (.74 for men, .69 for women). This is hardly ground-breaking stuff. The next best is intuition and openness (.72 for men, .69 for women). So on two axes, MBTI stumbles into something. Jung was a pretty smart guy who interview a lot of folk, so it figures he'd have noticed the surface features that anyone can notice (some people are introverted! some people are more conscientious!) But all of this is by the by. It doesn't matter that MBTI is sometimes right. It matters that it is more wrong than right. If it is demonstrably wrong, most of the time, on most of its types, then it is dangerous and foolish to use it. You might as well argue that "some people get better from eating bread with mould". Sure, that's true, but I'd rather take antibiotics.
  - backpropagated 11y ago
    "The five-factor model provides an alternative basis for interpreting MBTI findings within a broader, more commonly shared conceptual framework." That's the definition of a rotation. QED
    - jacques_chester 11y ago
      I feel like I'm wandering into a Monty Python sketch.

theoh 11y ago

Actually, one of the more credible models uses just five factors: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits Even more simplistic than the MBTI is the DISC profile: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DISC_assessment https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DISC_assessment It was invented by the man who came up with Wonder Woman...