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I don't know how/why people defend this test. 1. It's inaccurate. And that's not just "technically true", it's very rare that the test reproduces results. 2.

I don't know how/why people defend this test. 1. It's inaccurate. And that's not just "technically true", it's very rare that the test reproduces results. 2. Jung's theories (the ones used in the test) aren't just "controversial". They're wrong. He says it himself, in the same document they used to create the test. It is just a cash cow now. The _biggest_ problem with the test is it is harmful, not helpful. People believe the results are accurate _and permanent_ and so division is created where in reality there is more overlap than difference. It's also not good to tell people "these are good" followed up by "you have none of them and never will". By the way: This is true of a _lot_ of IQ tests too: We're still debating what IQ is, nevermind how to measure it. So we definitely shouldn't be telling people the results of their IQ tests, most of which are also not reproducible. But the data these tests collect is useful. We just shouldn't wield such aouthority about a theory with a lot of apparent leaks we can't explain. There's a better way Psychology is a young field. Lots of kinks to work out still

souprock 6y ago
The article covers reproducibility. The test does reliably reproduce results, at least if you don't quantize to boolean. Jung doesn't matter. Being a cash cow doesn't matter. There is nothing in the field of psychology with better support than IQ. If you aren't going to accept IQ, then you've entirely tossed out the field of psychology. There is nothing left.
- feanaro 6y ago
  > There is nothing in the field of psychology with better support than IQ. If you aren't going to accept IQ, then you've entirely tossed out the field of psychology. There is nothing left. Huh. That's quite a bold and incorrect claim. Are you a psychologist?
  - exfalso 6y ago
    Perhaps the word "psychometry" would have been better. There isn't any psychometric test more stable than IQ.
    - feanaro 6y ago
      That's a bit better, but confusing the statements "IQ is the most temporally stable psychometric construct" and "IQ is the only valid psychometric construct" is still egregious.
      - rcxdude 6y ago
        I don't read it that way, I think it's meant as 'if you reject IQ, you have raised your standards of evidence so high you must logically reject everything else in psychology/psychometry as well'. It's meant to highlight a contradiction.
        feanaro 6y ago
        Yes, if interpreted like that, I agree with it. What threw me off was "There's nothing left" part. I see now that I might've misinterpreted the meaning.
    - cannabis_sam 6y ago
      How do you define/consider “stable” this specific context?
  - mudita 6y ago
    Let's hear it from a psychologist: "If you don’t buy IQ research, you might as well throw out all the rest of psychology." (Jordan Peterson) https://youtu.be/D7Kn5p7TP_Y?t=2938 https://youtu.be/D7Kn5p7TP_Y?t=2938 For anybody interested in personality research, I warmly recommend this lecture series, by the way. These are the basics, which psychology students learn at university.
    - 0x737368 6y ago
      Ah yes, a comment about Jordan Peterson that immediately gets downvoted, despite Peterson being competent in the field and the people that are downvoting this are almost most certainly not. I've noticed this every time his name gets mentioned, and I always wondered why that is. Whenever I'd ask one of his "critics" about what's the issue with him I can't get a good answer. So what is it? Can someone maybe explain to me why is there such animosity towards him? Is it just because he's considered to be a "conservative" by hard leftists(despite mostly being a classic liberal). Have we really reached the point where people will automatically go against somebody just because he's "not one of us", and not even consider the ideas. If so we have a really dark road ahead of us. It is even more disappointing to see this on HN. I expect this sort of hivemind on Reddit and Twitter, but I used to have a higher opinion of the userbase on HN.
      - tsimionescu 6y ago
        For the record, I didn't downvote your original comment and I don't have any opinion on Jordan Peterson's expertise as a psychologist. But as a public speaker, he is not a "classical liberal" he is a reactionary conservative with a bent for sophism. His views on culture and on the left are simply wrong, obviously so, but they are presented with academic gravitas and conviction. He implies, though is careful to not outright state, that men are superior to women in intellect and rationality, as are white people when compared to black people (though Ashkenazi Jews are even smarter, so he's not racist!). He does often outright state that "Western" culture is superior to other cultures, that Marxism and post-modernism are not the products of "Western" culture, that Hitler was actually a leftist, and many other obvious falsehoods. he conflates marxism and post-modernism, two diametrically opposed views of history and culture (not to imply that they are the only possible ones, of course). In short, he is a conman who rides his (quite real, as far as I've heard!) academic and clinical credentials in Psychology to make it seem that he is an authority worth listening to on other topics; and he tries to sell damaging, reactionary falsehoods on those other topics.
  - feanaro 6y ago
    Thank you for the reactionary downvotes, but how about making an actual argument? (self-reply because I can no longer edit the comment)
- erhk 6y ago
  There are a lot of people who agree with throwing out the field as it is entirely already. Many of them are published in the field. Freud is a name that comes to mind when thinking of things to throw out
- wizzwizz4 6y ago
  > There is nothing in the field of psychology with better support than IQ. This is not true. See Wikipedia[0][1][2]. IQ actually holds little support, compared with (e.g.) bilateral sound recognition, or somatotopic arrangement on the postcentral gyrus. (Among psychologists, that is; IQ probably has more support amongst the general population, because it's pop-pseudoscience.) [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_race_and_intelligence_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_race_and_intell... [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient#IQ_testing_and_the_eugenics_movement_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient#IQ_testi... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient#Validity_as_a_measure_of_intelligence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient#Validity...
  - bjoli 6y ago
    What we can say about iq tests is that they test something, and those results remain consistent through life. The results are positively correlated to many things (such as academic success. The people scoring a 9, the maximum result, on the tests used in the Swedish conscription live longer, etc...). Had it been completely pop-pseudoscience it would not be used by, say, the Swedish school system as a tool to gauge whether someone has special needs that warrant another form of school with extra support. The tests used are however not the same as most people have done online, like WAIS (but for kids. Can't remember the name of it).
    - wizzwizz4 6y ago
      > The results are positively correlated to many things (such as academic success. They would be so correlated even if they were a bad metric. Imagine a score that multiplies academic success and the highest Tetris score obtained within 100 miles of your birthplace, then subtracts 50 points if you're a girl. That would also be positively correlated with academic success. IQ tests measure something, yes, but they're not magic. (See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law) I received a high-quality education including what amounts to IQ-test tuition (to pass an entrance exam); do you know of any studies that attempt to factor out this particular confounder?
- runarberg 6y ago
  IQ—or more accurately the theory of general intelligence—is highly controversial inside the field of psychology. In fact a part from developmental psychologists—which might use IQ tests to determine if a child requires special needs—I bet by far most psychologists go their entire career without ever touching an IQ test or citing a paper because of IQ results. It is true that the debate about general intelligence is huge. So you see a lot of papers written about it. But this is a subfield inside psychology (in fact a subfield of psychometrics which is a subfield of psychology; the whole field of psychometrics invoking skepticism among many scientist). I’m gonna do you a favor and list sub-fields of psychology that work regardless of the theory of general intelligence and therefor work just fine without IQ: * Cognitive psychology (and computational psychology) * Neuropsychology * Social psychology (and psychological sociology) * Pathological Psychology and Psychiatry * Developmental psychology (although they might use IQ tests; but for different reason as psychometricians do) * Psychological first aid (not a science but a method; similar to paramedics but for trauma victims) And here are some generic theories inside psychology which have nothing to do with—and might reject—the theory of general intelligence. * Behaviorism * Neurological determinism * Evolutionary psychology * Psychoanalysis Even inside psychometrics (which is the believe that any psychological effect that exists is measurable; and that operational definition is a legitimate way to describe psychological effect) I bet there are people that reject the theory of general intelligence on the grounds that IQ is not measuring general intelligence, but something else.
pseudalopex 6y ago
Getting different results is pretty common. But getting the same results isn't very rare. The article points to studies showing MBTI and Big 5 repeatability are comparable. It was inspired by Jung's theories. It doesn't rely on them. MBTI related literature stresses it measures preferences not abilities. It says no type is better than any other. And it tends to encourage developing what doesn't come naturally.
- fsloth 6y ago
  You can bin people in any number of arbitrary ways. Just the fact you can bin people does not make the binning usefull. Meyers-Squid is equally valid as any other fiction driven binning process. Like dividing people into Hogswarts houses. Stability alone is useless if the predictive qualities do not extend beyond the binning process. Being INTJ only predicts the next time you do the test (if the scoring is stable) you might be more likely to score INTJ again. It does not predict the tested persons’ life outcomes or performance at work, in personal OR statistical sense. The scores don’t predict anything of value outside of the test framework. This is what it means to be useless pseudoscience. It can be a fun party game and thus be usable as a facilitation tool, but beyond that it’s useless (or harmfull if someone tries to use the scores for something like ’creating balanced teams’).
  - concordDance 6y ago
    Are you really saying that testing as intj (for example) doesn't correlate with anything? Because that seems incredibly unlikely. E.g. three years ago Slate Star Codex readers were surveyed and found to be 10 times more likely to be INTJ/INTP than the general population.
    - Twisol 6y ago
      Not particularly having a horse in this race, if a theory can't reliably make useful predictions, it's not a very useful theory. There's certainly something to be said about identifying correlations, but it isn't yet clear to me whether we can draw inferences based on those correlations to make useful predictions. In the SSC example, I wouldn't be especially shocked if there are no useful inferences in either direction, but rather a confounding variable that makes it more likely for SSC readers to answer MBTI answers in a particular way. MBTI itself wouldn't necessarily have a lot to say about this factor. (And given the intellectual, self-aware content of SSC, it seems pretty likely to me that this is the case.)
KuzMenachem 6y ago
I agree with your points re. Myers-Briggs, however modern IQ tests are generally regarded as pretty reproducible and an individual’s score remains quite stable over long periods of time. Confidence intervals are about 10 points for decent tests. [1] They are not perfect of course, but it’s a little unfair to compare MB with IQ tests in this manner. I know you caveated your comment by saying that not all IQ Tests are like this, which is certainly true. However, I see no statistical reason not to tell people the result of a high-quality IQ test. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient#Reliability https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient#Reliabil...
austincheney 6y ago
> 1. It's inaccurate. Reproducibility is most directly correlated against certain identifiers. For example no matter where or how I take a MB assessment I am always INTP. This indicates that for some persons, as associated to certain scored identifiers, this test is always reproducible. That is less a flaw in this test than the test subjects and further suggests MB becomes more valid when correlated with other tests that measure self-awareness and objectivity. The same persons that score poorly on objectivity are the ones less likely (less capable) to accept that suggestiveness and sensitivity are greater culprits in their measures.
- xvector 6y ago
  Same here. I have taken the test multiple times throughout my life and I get INTP every single time. The description is completely accurate too, down to the individual nuances describing an INTP. It’s frighteningly accurate. I wonder if less common MBTI types are more accurately defined.
  - austincheney 6y ago
    I don’t think it’s a matter of either assessment description or population percentage but rather a measure of confidence on questions where a persons may, outside of testing, otherwise defer to social reinforcement.
  - IndySun 6y ago
    > I have taken the test multiple times throughout my life and I get INTP every single time. Are you aware of Hobson's Choice?
  - Smaug123 6y ago
    You are aware of the Barnum effect, I presume? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnum_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnum_effect)
    - Isinlor 6y ago
      I'm aware of this effect and I never cared for horoscopes, Harry Potter houses and what not. But INTP description is very specific. > Chief among Logicians’ interests is exploring and building models for underlying principles and ideas, even going so far as to find these concepts, in their own way, beautiful – this makes them natural mathematicians, systems analysts, and career scientists, especially in more abstract fields such as physics. Maybe 5% of population would identify with this? > Logicians are known for their brilliant theories and unrelenting logic – in fact, they are considered the most logically precise of all the personality types. They love patterns, and spotting discrepancies between statements could almost be described as a hobby, making it a bad idea to lie to a Logician. Maybe 20% of population would identify with this? [0] https://www.16personalities.com/intp-personality https://www.16personalities.com/intp-personality
IndySun 6y ago
Agree, the test has been dismissed enough times. People are far too complex. It has recently been renamed and represented by Jordan Peterson. Unfortunately, the JP readers I've met who mention his version were unaware of the MB version. The critical history of MB should serve as a warning. They are not eureka moments, but smaller steps.
- dfn43589 6y ago
  >It has recently been renamed and represented by Jordan Peterson. You've been downvoted because the OCEAN/Big Five model is not Myers Briggs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers-Briggs_Type_Indicator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers-Briggs_Type_Indicator
  - IndySun 6y ago
    Ok. Thank you. My reply would be... By any other name. Another way of how 'not' to understand the world, but a way to simplify it, for both benign and nefarious reasons. Control is in there somewhere. And it is more than mildly concerning that people here understand something that is considered deeply complicated by most, computers, and yet seem convinced humans can be pigeon-holed into a few 'types'.
singingfish 6y ago
You have good points there. From reading the article, the inaccuracy is by inappropriately classifying people into groups, and the groupings lack sensitivity. As you also point out the underlying theoretical framework is also wrong. The article does point out that the Myers Briggs does correlate reasonably well with four of the big 5 though. Having said that I would definitely discourage use of the Myers-Briggs. The original author has a good point about the naming of the big 5 factors though. Two things I take issue with though - IQ is reasonably well understood in that we know it measures something reliably and accurately. Exactly what that thing is though, is not really understood - and probably can't be. And how it relates to the real world is also somewhat poorly understood, and may not be possible to fully understand. But it does have good ecological and construct validity. I'm talking about good IQ tests here - any less validation than the huge amount that the Wescheler scales go through and the validation is questionable. I'm aware of the racial biases in IQ testing which is a significant problem. Psychology isn't a particular young science - big chunks of modern statistical analysis have their roots in 19th and early 20th century psychology. So psychology is a young science in the same sense that modern statistics is. Back when I was studying psychology 20 to 30 years ago, a lot of what is now called "neuroscience" was then called "cognitive science" or more rarely "cognitive neuroscience". Neuroscience sounds sexier though. I do have a massive issue how many social scientists abuse psychometric techniques in inappropriate ways. Management research is particularly guilty here, and I've been pressured into doing this kind of inappropriate analysis in the past.
- enkid 6y ago
  So IQ measures something, but we don't know what and we don't know how it impacts the real world. How can we meaningfully say it measures something then?
  - Twisol 6y ago
    Without having a horse in a race, it's probably the idea that the results persist between multiple tests and vary by who's taking the test. Persistence seems like a decent lower standard to say that there's _something_ present, even if you're not quite sure what it is.
heliodor 6y ago
What surprises me about Myers Briggs is that people are placed on each dimension either on one side or on the other. Three no center for each dimension. Yet these traits are normally distributed so most people would fall in the center. Telling most people they are average would not sell well. So yeah, this test is unnecessarily polarizing.
- criddell 6y ago
  I never thought about the lack of a neutral trait, but you are right. However I don't think there's any reason to expect these traits to have a normal distribution. Humans have plenty of bimodal-ish traits.
  - todd8 6y ago
    The Central Limit Theorem is one big reason to expect that traits have a normal distribution. Wikipedia has a good explanation. [1] and [2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_limit_theorem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_limit_theorem [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Moivre–Laplace_theorem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Moivre–Laplace_theorem
    - criddell 6y ago
      How would the central limit theorem apply to seemingly bimodal distributions like left vs right handedness?
      - todd8 6y ago
        With respect to personality, I believe that there are likely a number of independent factors, perhaps hundreds, that affect in some way where one’s position lies on each of the axes of personality. These factors could be particular childhood traumas, birth order, parent’s behavior/addiction, childhood friends, and genetic factors. Even if each of these numerous random variable is binomial the central limit theorem applies.
centrinoblue 6y ago
Do you have a link where Jung said his theories are wrong?
patentatt 6y ago
Anecdotally I’ve taken an ‘official’ MBTI a few times over a couple decades, and always came out with the same results. I don’t think it’s magic or anything, but I also don’t think it hurts to reflect on how you interact with the world and those around you, and how those around you interact with you in return, and then try to identify some themes in those interactions to think about. I wouldn’t go making any grandiose proclamations from it, but as a conduit to some potentially beneficial reflection I see no harm in it either.
mancerayder 6y ago
>2. Jung's theories (the ones used in the test) aren't just "controversial". They're wrong. He says it himself, in the same document they used to create the test. Not a Jungian, but the "wrong" claim is a bold one, in reference to Jung's theories. Are they even falsifiable ? Psychology isn't a hard science. For example, how could you falsify something like the idea of archetypes?
- NoOneNew 6y ago
  Not trying to be an ass, but i think "hard science" is a bad term. Psychology is a young, very complex science. Real psychology really started with Freud, and yes he was inaccurate. Way better than the understanding of human behavior at the time (wandering womb, look it up), way off the mark these days. We're talking about less than 100 years of real research in the field. Electricity, physics, chemistry and even modern atomic theory (1803) have plenty more time in comparison. Freud had to escape the Nazis, just so you have a general timeline. We dont look back to the 1800s at all the cats that made atomic models and go, "what a bunch of fuck ups". They were building up on knowledge. In some respects, they weren't necessarily wrong, just insufficient. I dont understand the pop culture enjoyment of trashing psychology turn. Every real psychologist in practice and in research are the first to admit how little we know, how incredibly complex it is (meaning we still dont even know all the moving parts involved) and the fact we are still at the starting line. The fact is, we're trying to understand the human mind with millions of broken examples. Learning to rebuild a car using old, junk, crashed, broken, pillaged and uncooperatively hostile junkyard cars isnt an easy feat especially if you dont know what a functional car looks like. Though, Myers Briggs was just a cash grab with some cliff notes on Jung. Its an intelligentsia zodiac horoscope. Cute, fun, dont take it seriously.

souprock 6y ago

The article covers reproducibility. The test does reliably reproduce results, at least if you don't quantize to boolean. Jung doesn't matter. Being a cash cow doesn't matter. There is nothing in the field of psychology with better support than IQ. If you aren't going to accept IQ, then you've entirely tossed out the field of psychology. There is nothing left.

feanaro 6y ago
> There is nothing in the field of psychology with better support than IQ. If you aren't going to accept IQ, then you've entirely tossed out the field of psychology. There is nothing left. Huh. That's quite a bold and incorrect claim. Are you a psychologist?
- exfalso 6y ago
  Perhaps the word "psychometry" would have been better. There isn't any psychometric test more stable than IQ.
  - feanaro 6y ago
    That's a bit better, but confusing the statements "IQ is the most temporally stable psychometric construct" and "IQ is the only valid psychometric construct" is still egregious.
    - rcxdude 6y ago
      I don't read it that way, I think it's meant as 'if you reject IQ, you have raised your standards of evidence so high you must logically reject everything else in psychology/psychometry as well'. It's meant to highlight a contradiction.
      - feanaro 6y ago
        Yes, if interpreted like that, I agree with it. What threw me off was "There's nothing left" part. I see now that I might've misinterpreted the meaning.
  - cannabis_sam 6y ago
    How do you define/consider “stable” this specific context?
- mudita 6y ago
  Let's hear it from a psychologist: "If you don’t buy IQ research, you might as well throw out all the rest of psychology." (Jordan Peterson) https://youtu.be/D7Kn5p7TP_Y?t=2938 https://youtu.be/D7Kn5p7TP_Y?t=2938 For anybody interested in personality research, I warmly recommend this lecture series, by the way. These are the basics, which psychology students learn at university.
  - 0x737368 6y ago
    Ah yes, a comment about Jordan Peterson that immediately gets downvoted, despite Peterson being competent in the field and the people that are downvoting this are almost most certainly not. I've noticed this every time his name gets mentioned, and I always wondered why that is. Whenever I'd ask one of his "critics" about what's the issue with him I can't get a good answer. So what is it? Can someone maybe explain to me why is there such animosity towards him? Is it just because he's considered to be a "conservative" by hard leftists(despite mostly being a classic liberal). Have we really reached the point where people will automatically go against somebody just because he's "not one of us", and not even consider the ideas. If so we have a really dark road ahead of us. It is even more disappointing to see this on HN. I expect this sort of hivemind on Reddit and Twitter, but I used to have a higher opinion of the userbase on HN.
    - tsimionescu 6y ago
      For the record, I didn't downvote your original comment and I don't have any opinion on Jordan Peterson's expertise as a psychologist. But as a public speaker, he is not a "classical liberal" he is a reactionary conservative with a bent for sophism. His views on culture and on the left are simply wrong, obviously so, but they are presented with academic gravitas and conviction. He implies, though is careful to not outright state, that men are superior to women in intellect and rationality, as are white people when compared to black people (though Ashkenazi Jews are even smarter, so he's not racist!). He does often outright state that "Western" culture is superior to other cultures, that Marxism and post-modernism are not the products of "Western" culture, that Hitler was actually a leftist, and many other obvious falsehoods. he conflates marxism and post-modernism, two diametrically opposed views of history and culture (not to imply that they are the only possible ones, of course). In short, he is a conman who rides his (quite real, as far as I've heard!) academic and clinical credentials in Psychology to make it seem that he is an authority worth listening to on other topics; and he tries to sell damaging, reactionary falsehoods on those other topics.
- feanaro 6y ago
  Thank you for the reactionary downvotes, but how about making an actual argument? (self-reply because I can no longer edit the comment)
erhk 6y ago
There are a lot of people who agree with throwing out the field as it is entirely already. Many of them are published in the field. Freud is a name that comes to mind when thinking of things to throw out
wizzwizz4 6y ago
> There is nothing in the field of psychology with better support than IQ. This is not true. See Wikipedia[0][1][2]. IQ actually holds little support, compared with (e.g.) bilateral sound recognition, or somatotopic arrangement on the postcentral gyrus. (Among psychologists, that is; IQ probably has more support amongst the general population, because it's pop-pseudoscience.) [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_race_and_intelligence_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_race_and_intell... [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient#IQ_testing_and_the_eugenics_movement_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient#IQ_testi... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient#Validity_as_a_measure_of_intelligence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient#Validity...
- bjoli 6y ago
  What we can say about iq tests is that they test something, and those results remain consistent through life. The results are positively correlated to many things (such as academic success. The people scoring a 9, the maximum result, on the tests used in the Swedish conscription live longer, etc...). Had it been completely pop-pseudoscience it would not be used by, say, the Swedish school system as a tool to gauge whether someone has special needs that warrant another form of school with extra support. The tests used are however not the same as most people have done online, like WAIS (but for kids. Can't remember the name of it).
  - wizzwizz4 6y ago
    > The results are positively correlated to many things (such as academic success. They would be so correlated even if they were a bad metric. Imagine a score that multiplies academic success and the highest Tetris score obtained within 100 miles of your birthplace, then subtracts 50 points if you're a girl. That would also be positively correlated with academic success. IQ tests measure something, yes, but they're not magic. (See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law) I received a high-quality education including what amounts to IQ-test tuition (to pass an entrance exam); do you know of any studies that attempt to factor out this particular confounder?
runarberg 6y ago
IQ—or more accurately the theory of general intelligence—is highly controversial inside the field of psychology. In fact a part from developmental psychologists—which might use IQ tests to determine if a child requires special needs—I bet by far most psychologists go their entire career without ever touching an IQ test or citing a paper because of IQ results. It is true that the debate about general intelligence is huge. So you see a lot of papers written about it. But this is a subfield inside psychology (in fact a subfield of psychometrics which is a subfield of psychology; the whole field of psychometrics invoking skepticism among many scientist). I’m gonna do you a favor and list sub-fields of psychology that work regardless of the theory of general intelligence and therefor work just fine without IQ: * Cognitive psychology (and computational psychology) * Neuropsychology * Social psychology (and psychological sociology) * Pathological Psychology and Psychiatry * Developmental psychology (although they might use IQ tests; but for different reason as psychometricians do) * Psychological first aid (not a science but a method; similar to paramedics but for trauma victims) And here are some generic theories inside psychology which have nothing to do with—and might reject—the theory of general intelligence. * Behaviorism * Neurological determinism * Evolutionary psychology * Psychoanalysis Even inside psychometrics (which is the believe that any psychological effect that exists is measurable; and that operational definition is a legitimate way to describe psychological effect) I bet there are people that reject the theory of general intelligence on the grounds that IQ is not measuring general intelligence, but something else.

pseudalopex 6y ago

Getting different results is pretty common. But getting the same results isn't very rare. The article points to studies showing MBTI and Big 5 repeatability are comparable. It was inspired by Jung's theories. It doesn't rely on them. MBTI related literature stresses it measures preferences not abilities. It says no type is better than any other. And it tends to encourage developing what doesn't come naturally.

fsloth 6y ago
You can bin people in any number of arbitrary ways. Just the fact you can bin people does not make the binning usefull. Meyers-Squid is equally valid as any other fiction driven binning process. Like dividing people into Hogswarts houses. Stability alone is useless if the predictive qualities do not extend beyond the binning process. Being INTJ only predicts the next time you do the test (if the scoring is stable) you might be more likely to score INTJ again. It does not predict the tested persons’ life outcomes or performance at work, in personal OR statistical sense. The scores don’t predict anything of value outside of the test framework. This is what it means to be useless pseudoscience. It can be a fun party game and thus be usable as a facilitation tool, but beyond that it’s useless (or harmfull if someone tries to use the scores for something like ’creating balanced teams’).
- concordDance 6y ago
  Are you really saying that testing as intj (for example) doesn't correlate with anything? Because that seems incredibly unlikely. E.g. three years ago Slate Star Codex readers were surveyed and found to be 10 times more likely to be INTJ/INTP than the general population.
  - Twisol 6y ago
    Not particularly having a horse in this race, if a theory can't reliably make useful predictions, it's not a very useful theory. There's certainly something to be said about identifying correlations, but it isn't yet clear to me whether we can draw inferences based on those correlations to make useful predictions. In the SSC example, I wouldn't be especially shocked if there are no useful inferences in either direction, but rather a confounding variable that makes it more likely for SSC readers to answer MBTI answers in a particular way. MBTI itself wouldn't necessarily have a lot to say about this factor. (And given the intellectual, self-aware content of SSC, it seems pretty likely to me that this is the case.)

KuzMenachem 6y ago

I agree with your points re. Myers-Briggs, however modern IQ tests are generally regarded as pretty reproducible and an individual’s score remains quite stable over long periods of time. Confidence intervals are about 10 points for decent tests. [1] They are not perfect of course, but it’s a little unfair to compare MB with IQ tests in this manner. I know you caveated your comment by saying that not all IQ Tests are like this, which is certainly true. However, I see no statistical reason not to tell people the result of a high-quality IQ test. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient#Reliability https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient#Reliabil...

austincheney 6y ago

> 1. It's inaccurate. Reproducibility is most directly correlated against certain identifiers. For example no matter where or how I take a MB assessment I am always INTP. This indicates that for some persons, as associated to certain scored identifiers, this test is always reproducible. That is less a flaw in this test than the test subjects and further suggests MB becomes more valid when correlated with other tests that measure self-awareness and objectivity. The same persons that score poorly on objectivity are the ones less likely (less capable) to accept that suggestiveness and sensitivity are greater culprits in their measures.

xvector 6y ago
Same here. I have taken the test multiple times throughout my life and I get INTP every single time. The description is completely accurate too, down to the individual nuances describing an INTP. It’s frighteningly accurate. I wonder if less common MBTI types are more accurately defined.
- austincheney 6y ago
  I don’t think it’s a matter of either assessment description or population percentage but rather a measure of confidence on questions where a persons may, outside of testing, otherwise defer to social reinforcement.
- IndySun 6y ago
  > I have taken the test multiple times throughout my life and I get INTP every single time. Are you aware of Hobson's Choice?
- Smaug123 6y ago
  You are aware of the Barnum effect, I presume? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnum_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnum_effect)
  - Isinlor 6y ago
    I'm aware of this effect and I never cared for horoscopes, Harry Potter houses and what not. But INTP description is very specific. > Chief among Logicians’ interests is exploring and building models for underlying principles and ideas, even going so far as to find these concepts, in their own way, beautiful – this makes them natural mathematicians, systems analysts, and career scientists, especially in more abstract fields such as physics. Maybe 5% of population would identify with this? > Logicians are known for their brilliant theories and unrelenting logic – in fact, they are considered the most logically precise of all the personality types. They love patterns, and spotting discrepancies between statements could almost be described as a hobby, making it a bad idea to lie to a Logician. Maybe 20% of population would identify with this? [0] https://www.16personalities.com/intp-personality https://www.16personalities.com/intp-personality

IndySun 6y ago

Agree, the test has been dismissed enough times. People are far too complex. It has recently been renamed and represented by Jordan Peterson. Unfortunately, the JP readers I've met who mention his version were unaware of the MB version. The critical history of MB should serve as a warning. They are not eureka moments, but smaller steps.

dfn43589 6y ago
>It has recently been renamed and represented by Jordan Peterson. You've been downvoted because the OCEAN/Big Five model is not Myers Briggs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers-Briggs_Type_Indicator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers-Briggs_Type_Indicator
- IndySun 6y ago
  Ok. Thank you. My reply would be... By any other name. Another way of how 'not' to understand the world, but a way to simplify it, for both benign and nefarious reasons. Control is in there somewhere. And it is more than mildly concerning that people here understand something that is considered deeply complicated by most, computers, and yet seem convinced humans can be pigeon-holed into a few 'types'.

singingfish 6y ago

You have good points there. From reading the article, the inaccuracy is by inappropriately classifying people into groups, and the groupings lack sensitivity. As you also point out the underlying theoretical framework is also wrong. The article does point out that the Myers Briggs does correlate reasonably well with four of the big 5 though. Having said that I would definitely discourage use of the Myers-Briggs. The original author has a good point about the naming of the big 5 factors though. Two things I take issue with though - IQ is reasonably well understood in that we know it measures something reliably and accurately. Exactly what that thing is though, is not really understood - and probably can't be. And how it relates to the real world is also somewhat poorly understood, and may not be possible to fully understand. But it does have good ecological and construct validity. I'm talking about good IQ tests here - any less validation than the huge amount that the Wescheler scales go through and the validation is questionable. I'm aware of the racial biases in IQ testing which is a significant problem. Psychology isn't a particular young science - big chunks of modern statistical analysis have their roots in 19th and early 20th century psychology. So psychology is a young science in the same sense that modern statistics is. Back when I was studying psychology 20 to 30 years ago, a lot of what is now called "neuroscience" was then called "cognitive science" or more rarely "cognitive neuroscience". Neuroscience sounds sexier though. I do have a massive issue how many social scientists abuse psychometric techniques in inappropriate ways. Management research is particularly guilty here, and I've been pressured into doing this kind of inappropriate analysis in the past.

enkid 6y ago
So IQ measures something, but we don't know what and we don't know how it impacts the real world. How can we meaningfully say it measures something then?
- Twisol 6y ago
  Without having a horse in a race, it's probably the idea that the results persist between multiple tests and vary by who's taking the test. Persistence seems like a decent lower standard to say that there's _something_ present, even if you're not quite sure what it is.

heliodor 6y ago

What surprises me about Myers Briggs is that people are placed on each dimension either on one side or on the other. Three no center for each dimension. Yet these traits are normally distributed so most people would fall in the center. Telling most people they are average would not sell well. So yeah, this test is unnecessarily polarizing.

criddell 6y ago
I never thought about the lack of a neutral trait, but you are right. However I don't think there's any reason to expect these traits to have a normal distribution. Humans have plenty of bimodal-ish traits.
- todd8 6y ago
  The Central Limit Theorem is one big reason to expect that traits have a normal distribution. Wikipedia has a good explanation. [1] and [2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_limit_theorem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_limit_theorem [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Moivre–Laplace_theorem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Moivre–Laplace_theorem
  - criddell 6y ago
    How would the central limit theorem apply to seemingly bimodal distributions like left vs right handedness?
    - todd8 6y ago
      With respect to personality, I believe that there are likely a number of independent factors, perhaps hundreds, that affect in some way where one’s position lies on each of the axes of personality. These factors could be particular childhood traumas, birth order, parent’s behavior/addiction, childhood friends, and genetic factors. Even if each of these numerous random variable is binomial the central limit theorem applies.

centrinoblue 6y ago

Do you have a link where Jung said his theories are wrong?

patentatt 6y ago

Anecdotally I’ve taken an ‘official’ MBTI a few times over a couple decades, and always came out with the same results. I don’t think it’s magic or anything, but I also don’t think it hurts to reflect on how you interact with the world and those around you, and how those around you interact with you in return, and then try to identify some themes in those interactions to think about. I wouldn’t go making any grandiose proclamations from it, but as a conduit to some potentially beneficial reflection I see no harm in it either.

mancerayder 6y ago

>2. Jung's theories (the ones used in the test) aren't just "controversial". They're wrong. He says it himself, in the same document they used to create the test. Not a Jungian, but the "wrong" claim is a bold one, in reference to Jung's theories. Are they even falsifiable ? Psychology isn't a hard science. For example, how could you falsify something like the idea of archetypes?

NoOneNew 6y ago
Not trying to be an ass, but i think "hard science" is a bad term. Psychology is a young, very complex science. Real psychology really started with Freud, and yes he was inaccurate. Way better than the understanding of human behavior at the time (wandering womb, look it up), way off the mark these days. We're talking about less than 100 years of real research in the field. Electricity, physics, chemistry and even modern atomic theory (1803) have plenty more time in comparison. Freud had to escape the Nazis, just so you have a general timeline. We dont look back to the 1800s at all the cats that made atomic models and go, "what a bunch of fuck ups". They were building up on knowledge. In some respects, they weren't necessarily wrong, just insufficient. I dont understand the pop culture enjoyment of trashing psychology turn. Every real psychologist in practice and in research are the first to admit how little we know, how incredibly complex it is (meaning we still dont even know all the moving parts involved) and the fact we are still at the starting line. The fact is, we're trying to understand the human mind with millions of broken examples. Learning to rebuild a car using old, junk, crashed, broken, pillaged and uncooperatively hostile junkyard cars isnt an easy feat especially if you dont know what a functional car looks like. Though, Myers Briggs was just a cash grab with some cliff notes on Jung. Its an intelligentsia zodiac horoscope. Cute, fun, dont take it seriously.