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A study on human behavior has identified four basic personality types
- desireco42 10y agoI am checking to see if this is a joke :) This is not the first time for psychologists to come up with divisions like this. Not really sure how relevant this is, thoughts?
- sridca 10y agoIt is not the categorization itself that particularly caught my attention so much as the observation that many people would rather be envious than, say, optimistic: > the latter of the four types, Envious, is the most common, with 30% compared to 20% for each of the other groups. See also: Why are Adults so busy? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12494999 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12494999
- tpeo 10y agoWell, these guys aren't psychologists: they are physics PhDs doing (judging from the name of their group, Grupo Interdisciplinar de Sistemas Complejos) some work with agent-based modelling and game theory. They seem more like econophysicists (or economists) than psychologists. I don't think this categorization is gonna get popular enough to hit the tabloids (you won't be filling up quizzes to see whether your significant other is 'Envious' or not), but it might be relevant to social science.
- triplesec 10y agoThis looks about as useful and sophsticated as the MBTI (ie, not very): 'A study on human behavior has revealed that 90% of the population can be classified into four basic personality types: Optimistic, Pessimistic, Trusting and Envious.' I can't see how this contingent typing, apparently done for the purposes of being able to group people to do game theory experiments, can have much external validity, especially as there will be so many edge cases and double- or even triple-class members. This just doesn't look worthwhile, from this article.
- mbil 10y agoClassic Pessimistic
- StillHocus 10y agosee this is the type of gold we lose thanks to HN's brutal anti-humor policy.
- throwanem 10y agoPyrite.
- Zikes 10y agoThe MBTI was developed in an era of psychology when lobotomies were still performed, so I never gave it any weight. But that's probably just the INTJ in me talking.
- triplesec 10y agoFunny, and true. This is a huge aside to the article topic, but, as the joke goes. MBTI is astrology for geeks. As used by lots of businesspeople and in popular media, MBTI is bunk. No professional psychologist worth their salt uses it in the way that it is misused, and most who are academically up to date look at things like Big 5 as having much more utility.
- tpeo 10y agoWell, all things have to start somewhere. Right now, it's just some curiosity thing, but maybe it will turn out useful. It could already be for making simulations using agent based models with "realistic" hypotheses by feeding in the strategies and the frequencies corresponding to these personalities into the model. Could be useful to social science research already. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent-based_model https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent-based_model
- triplesec 10y ago
- jordanlev 10y agoI look at these things more like "check out our classification scheme which is broken down into 4 categories", as opposed to "there are 4 different kinds of people" (which the headline kinda sorta implies).
- ASpring 10y agoIf your sample is representative and your classification is supported by your sample, what is the real difference?
- ianai 10y agoYou can't use the same data to come up with and test a hypothesis.
- saulrh 10y agoDepends on what your methods are for finding your classifications. For example, if all you're doing is recording a bunch of data over some feature set and then throwing it at an unsupervised clustering algorithm like DBSCAN or single-linkage clustering, It's not unlikely that you can say that your data can be partitioned into N distinct clusters. Granted, that depends heavily on your features and your data set. It's just as easy to end up with one big undifferentiated blob, even after running PCA.
- StillHocus 10y agoI mean, that's still "who cares"? It just sounds fancier. "It's not unlikely that you can say that your data can be partitioned into N distinct clusters." Of course not...that's tautological. You can say it because that's what it means. DBSCAN isn't some wizardry that peers into the nature of the universe...its just a clump finder. Whether those clumps have any connection to anything interesting is a coincidence. You could roll a six sided die six times and run dbscan on the results and be like "holy shit! I've discovered how to partition the natural numbers 1 2 3 4 5 and 6!!"
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- watermoose 10y agoAs a correction to the title, they said four, but then said, "There is a fifth, undefined group, representing 10%, which the algorithm is unable to classify in relation to a clear type of behavior. The researchers argue that this allows them to infer the existence of a wide range of subgroups made up of individuals who do not respond in a determined way to any of the outlined models." So based on the study: http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/2/8/e1600451.full http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/2/8/e1600451.full and looking at the results in: http://d3a5ak6v9sb99l.cloudfront.net/content/advances/2/8/e1600451/F2.large.jpg http://d3a5ak6v9sb99l.cloudfront.net/content/advances/2/8/e1... the summarization of "Undefined" as "Decides randomly" seems a little wrong- there's an obvious tendency in PD (Prisoner's Dilemma) for some results: http://d3a5ak6v9sb99l.cloudfront.net/content/advances/2/8/e1600451/F3.large.jpg http://d3a5ak6v9sb99l.cloudfront.net/content/advances/2/8/e1... Also, I can't help but wonder whether there is bias effect, as humans seem to tend to use a small number of groups or factors for personalities. For example, in literature, J.K. Rowling's sorting hat chose between Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, and Slytherin, and Veronica Roth had citizens of Chicago choose between Abnegation, Amity, Candor, Dauntless, and Erudite. Even though there is a mix between races in humans, we tend to categorize- like in the U.S., typically you must choose from Caucausian, Asian-american, African-american, Pacific-islander, or Hispanic, even though color and genetic makeup vary. Then MBTI has four factors (E/I, S/N, T/F, J/P). Friedman and Rosenman came up with A and B types then later Denollet added the D type. We tend to categorize like this. Also, they chose just four games for the study. That could have affected the outcome.
- gohrt 10y ago> Abnegation, Amity, Candor, Dauntless, and Erudite. She tried so hard for ABCDE, but couldn't find the word "Benevolence" ?
- brhsiao 10y agoA friend of mine who's quite into philosophy once told me that a good number of philosophers did little but try to categorize things. Rather than draw meaningful insights, say, or squeeze every drop out of some experience, they'd simply say, here's nature, here's a grid I've drawn, let's see what falls into what square. Ok, good job; but what have you actually accomplished? (So my friend said.) I don't know if this is true of the history of philosophy (or if it's a meaningful indictment of these philosophers), but I can't help but be reminded of it when I see strenuous efforts being made to bucket various phenomena, and human ones at that. What are we going to do with these categories? Not to put too fine a point on it, these things are complex. Any differentiating scheme simple enough will be insufficient to be the basis of any important decision, and any sophisticated enough won't be neat enough for us to be talking about it like this. I say this as someone who spent more years than I'd care to admit obsessed with MBTI. Wow, look, there are all these different people with their strengths and weaknesses. I even get a cool framework—a stack—to aid me in psychoanalysis. And then of course you have Socionics, which shamelessly tries, using just sixteen categories, to produce a catalog of human interaction. I am not saying it isn't fun. Actually, MBTI did help me in one way: by showing me how diverse humans are. In my most advanced, intelligent state, I'm still not going to get along with or be compelling to all of them. That was an important idea for me growing up, and still is. But beyond that, and running the risk of sounding unsophisticated: who cares?
- withdavidli 10y agoI was a psychology major. My first job as a recruiter, there was a training on personality types. It was taught to better help us with client interactions. Some people said it was actually helpful. I didn't care, I did fall under the logical bucket (usually wanting convincing data vs how it makes people feel, or how it would reflect on me as an employee). Lucky that I work for a company that's data focused for arguments. And if I didn't, lucky enough to be financially stable to leave a company that's overly political.
- chillacy 10y ago> Scientists identify 4 basic heights: super tall, tall, short, and very short One of the big problems with bucketing is that personality is almost certainly continuous and probably gaussian as opposed to bimodal.
- macawfish 10y agoI remember looking at the distributions for Meyers-Briggs quizzes on OKCupid... They were not Gaussian distributions :)
- kazinator 10y agoSounds like bunk. Optimistic<--->pessimistic is obviously a complete axis, which can have envious and trusting people on it all over the place.
- Hoasi 10y agoNot to mention these may change upon circumstances.
- tokenadult 10y agoWrong. My hand is in a splint after arthritis surgery, so I can't type much here, but see any reliable online source about the "Big Five" theory of human personality to find out better information.
- ChuckMcM 10y ago"There is a fifth, undefined group, representing 10%, which the algorithm is unable to classify in relation to a clear type of behavior." They are divergent :-). I found the characterization of "Envious" as people who always want to win a bit more charged than "Competitive" would have been.
- BIair 10y ago"Optimistic, Pessimistic, Trusting and Envious" in case you missed the obvious like myself.
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- BIair 10y ago"Optimistic, Pessimistic, Trusting and Envious" in case you missed the obvious like myself.
- reduxive 10y ago1. The Envious (anything to get ahead of everyone) 2. The Optimists (everyone else is basically good, have faith) 3. The Pessimists (most others are evil, favor the lesser of evils) 4. Trusting Collaborators (will go along with anything to just be included) 5. Unclassifiable (no common archtype correlating decisions, strategic decision making demonstrates conflicting tendencies)
- gohrt 10y ago4 simplistic patterns, and one group of creative thoughtful people. I wonder how well "Unclassifiables" are represented among the most accomplished and powerful people in society.
- sunstone 10y agoMeyers-Briggs are gonna be suing these guys for sure.
- max_ 10y agoHow is the image related to the article?
- dash2 10y agoThe article's description of the research is unhelpful, and almost certainly wrong. This doesn't sound like an attempt to identify four basic personality types. It's an attempt to categorise behaviour in a single, very precisely defined economic experiment. We already know the five basic dimensions of personality: openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness and neuroticism (OCEAN). It's sad that there is so much good social/psychological science out there, but people know so little about it and fall for this kind of ignorant reporting.
- amelius 10y ago> We already know the five basic dimensions of personality What is wrong with questioning existing knowledge, or proposing a completely different approach?
- j1o1h1n 10y agoI don't know why anyone tries to improve on Hippocrates. Who needs to know more than that we are a balance of sanguine, choleric, melancholic and phlegmatic? And that this balance is cause by precious bodily fluids, blood, the two biles and phlegm. Bonus feature! You can fix any persons imbalances by simply letting the relevant fluids.
- dash2 10y agoGood point but that is not the issue. I have no beef with the research. The problem is that it is being misdescribed. The article claims this is a new way to categorise all human personalities. It's not. It's just a new way to categorise play in a very specific game. I very much doubt whether the researchers would claim they have found new basic dimensions of human personality.
- fsloth 10y ago" We already know the five basic dimensions of personality" That model present five dimensions, to which the personality traits are mapped. It does not mean they are the basic dimensions of personality. Similarly I can map the world into 2 dimensions as in a photograph. But I cannot say I've mapped the world to it's basic dimensions. I've lost quite a lot of data already - I'm missing 4 dimensions of data. The 3.rd coordinate, and 3 for momentum.
- Qantourisc 10y agoSounds like 5 personality types IN game theory. Not in personality ? It mean it doesn't include how nervous / relaxed the person is. Which impacts a lot.
- d--b 10y agoBased on 541 interviews of Spanish people living in Barcelona, a study is able to classify 7bn human beings into 4 very distinct categories, and guess what, most of them fall in the 'bastards' category.
- reacweb 10y agoI have found another one with 6 which seems far less crude and has also statistic "proofs": http://www.comcolors.com/en/ http://www.comcolors.com/en/
- YeGoblynQueenne 10y agoOh, come off it. Of course the study "identified four basic personality types". They set out to identify four personality types to begin with: After carrying out this kind of social experiment, the researchers developed a computer algorithm which set out to classify people according to their behavior. The computer algorith organized 90% of people into four groups: It's not magic, innit. If you choose a bunch of features and run some classifier on them you'll get some grouping accoring to the distribution of values of those features in your sample. If you choose a different bunch of features, you'll get a different grouping. What did you learn? That your features have a distribution- well done. Trying to clasisfy peoples' personalities is futile: what constitutes "behaviour" or "personality attributes" is very, very arbitrary and there's nothing to say it's not all in the eye of the beholder to begin with.
- SnacksOnAPlane 10y agoOooh, I can break it down to just 2 personality types: men and women!