4 ms·

There is a link to "Yale survey: Are you a natural social psychologist?" at the end of the article. https://yalesurvey.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_1XOUyQ4Ux6deFB

There is a link to "Yale survey: Are you a natural social psychologist?" at the end of the article. https://yalesurvey.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_1XOUyQ4Ux6deFBH https://yalesurvey.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_1XOUyQ4Ux6deFBH I took it and got a 36/40. I have taken one intro to social psych course after taking gen psych. "Fantastic! Your score was better than approximately 99.5% of other people's scores. You have the ability to accurately infer how most people feel, think, and behave in social context without a background or little background in social psychology. In a way, you seem to be very good at capturing human's 'social nature'. This skill, which we call social psychological skill, has been linked to intelligence, a willingness to engage in complex thinking, melancholy, and introversion." I think some of the questions I remember learning about in psych 101, like the bystander effect, but the ones I was surprised that I had intuition for were the questions that asked about how other people deal with strong negative emotions and what works for coping. I think it's interesting that the article frame this skill as something that people in positions of power need but at the same time being introverted to begin with means people are less likely to try to attain those kinds of positions. I wonder if it'll continue to be a weakness of current governance long term because people prefer extroverts in those positions. I also think it's worth mentioning the book How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie as a way to become better at some of the things people in the comment section are bringing up as an area that needs improvement for them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Win_Friends_and_Influence_People https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Win_Friends_and_Influen...

gauravjain13 5y ago
This is somewhat paradoxical, but I think leadership requires some level of delusion. If one truly sees things as they are, it’s hard to create narratives and mythologies requires to motivate/lead people. Steve Jobs’ “reality distortion field” comes to mind.
- knaik94 5y ago
  I don't think delusion is the best word for it. Delusion implies that the vision of people in leadership roles are unrealistic in some way. I think resiliently optimistic is probably a better term. I don't think most people are motivated by myth, they're motivated by good support.
  - gauravjain13 5y ago
    That's fair – I wasn't being particularly rigorous when I implied "delusion". Resiliently optimistic is better. Reminds of me of the Stockdale Paradox: "You must maintain unwavering faith that you can and will prevail in the end, regardless of the difficulties, and at the same time, have the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Stockdale#The_Stockdale_Paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Stockdale#The_Stockdale_...
- ianai 5y ago
  I’ve thought it’s easier to figure a social situation out as an independent third party than to figure out a situation in the first person. That might be related to Jobs’ “reality distortion field”. But at the same time, people are finite and of course always going to be blind to the total context around them - in anything suitably complicated. So I wouldn’t put a lot into this.
chadcmulligan 5y ago
I scored 34, but I just used the rule of thumb - people are stupid, particularly in groups.
- antman 5y ago
  Exactly the same score and strategy.
- dusted 5y ago
  I also scored 34, and I applied the same logic.. "whenever there's a possibility to do something stupid and selfish, that's what people will do" and it worked.. I'm also sad and lonely, I wonder why... :-D Before reading the article, I'll speculate that the reason people are sad and lonely is because they understand how terrible humans generally are, but haven't found any way to benefit from this knowledge.
  - chadcmulligan 5y ago
    I do wonder if its a glass is half full / half empty thing, sure there are a lot of dumb/stupid things and covid has revealed a lot more than I thought possible. But, there are also a lot of fantastic things - one of the reasons I look at HN to see the latest science. There are, probably, a lot fewer people who are struggling towards the light, but the effect they generate overwhelms the negative, imho, choose that and the other stuff disappears.
tux3 5y ago
Having had no psychology course, books, or other education, I get a 35/40 (97.3%). Most of these sundry facts I suspect I learned by osmosis after spending too much time on the internet — but I would never have called myself a natural psychologist, so I don't know how much predictive power this study really has =)
fighterpilot 5y ago
The bystander effect question that you mention was worded pretty poorly. The first sentence implied that the total probability is lower when there's more bystanders (which is definitely false in sufficiently large numbers), then in the second sentence their wording switches to marginal probability, which is correct. I of course knew what they meant, and answered correctly. But there were a handful of somewhat ambiguous questions like that. A handful I legitimately didn't know, such as whether people remember the last argument the best. 34/40.
- deleted 5y ago
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paavohtl 5y ago
I got a pretty good score too (31/40, better than 81.9%). Though admittedly, while I have not studied university level social psychology I have read Dan Ariely's book Predictably Irrational [1], which covered many of the experiments presented in the quiz. It's an interesting and entertaining book, but it was a bit formulaic for my tastes, as every chapter tends to follow exactly the same structure. The experiments are presented well and are probably the best part of the book. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predictably_Irrational https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predictably_Irrational
crazydoggers 5y ago
Also scored 36, 99.5% After finishing I couldn’t believe it. I thought maybe it was part of a larger experiment telling you what you want to hear. So I took the test again answering randomly and got a horrible score and 20th percentile. (ie it’s a real score) So much of this seems so incredibly obvious to me! I mean I guess it make sense when you think about it. If it was obvious to most people, then most people would make better (less selfish, less bias) decisions which we see they don’t do. Some that particularly struck me were the ones about group think. Like passing someone in the gutter, in-group validation, group enhancement of extremism etc. I always have an almost knee jerk reaction to go against the group in lots of situations (if there’s a large group of people walking in a certain direction; I’ll assume they’re all lost and make my own way for instance) Explains a lot! Thanks for the link. And here’s a fun experiment. If I call out how much of downvoting and upvoting on sites like here on HN are about group think, other biases, rather than based on the individual comment, I bet it’ll get downvoted (because of those same reasons)!
- nearbuy 5y ago
  Like seemingly everyone else in this thread, it told me I scored better than 99.5% of people (37). By my count, of the commenters who posted a score so far, 5/13 (~40%) scored better than 99.5% of people and all of them scored better than 80% of people. HN readers is obviously not an unbiased sample, nor is the subset that choose to reveal their scores. Still, I wouldn't put too much stock in this internet survey. They can be notoriously unreliable. (As an aside, a number of questions are obvious because they're phrased as "True or false: X can never happen" (answer is false). The true ones don't use an absolute qualifier like "never". The use qualifiers like "usually" or "mostly".)
jodoherty 5y ago
38/40 I feel like I spent an entire decade mostly in contemplative reflection and observation as I searched for intrinsic meaning and purpose. I imagine many others who score well have some similar period they've been through where it almost feels like they spent more time observing themselves and others living than actually living.
- okokwhatever 5y ago
  Your comment touched my heart so deeply it hurt! I feel exactly the same.
raynr 5y ago
After the first few questions in that link, I decided to choose the most cynical answer instead of the one I thought was "correct". Apart from one or two, most had answers that I could classify as more cynical than the rest. 32/40. I'm not sure what this says about me or the survey.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- Gunax 5y ago
  I was writing something else, but I think you nailed it. If you give a quiz where the cynical answers are correct, then (gasp!) cynical people do well. Of course I understand their point that social psychology is cynical, but I hope it isn't all cynical. I think there might be a publication bias here--studies which find that people act predictably and rationally don't become famous. No one would have heard of the Milgram experiment if everyone refused to shock the man. Many of the questions are directly out of famous experiments where if you have read/heard about it, you know the correct answer. I do question if perhaps bored introverts just spend a lot of time reading books and articles instead of possessing some sort of innate insight into humanity.
  - callesgg 5y ago
    That is basicly the norm in social psychology. Most research has large gaping holes and make big assumptions in the interpretation of the gathered data. This hole is then “resolved” in the discussion part of the paper by acknowledging that the experiment could have been done in a better way.
deleted 5y ago
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rogual 5y ago
After spending that long answering their survey, the least they could do is tell me which ones I got wrong.
Twisol 5y ago
...Is the question corpus randomized? Why is nobody talking about this completely incomprehensible grapefruit question? > Bob experiences numerous positive things when surrounded by a grapefruit. He wins a little money at the lottery, listens to his favorite music, and eats his favorite meal. Is it possible that Bob infers that he likes this particular grapefruit more than other grapefruits, because he has experienced all these positive feelings around this grapefruit? I can kind of understand what it's asking, but this is worse on my brain than "colorless green ideas sleep furiously". It feels like I've stepped into a surrealist novella.
- Mordisquitos 5y ago
  I also got confused by the grapefruit question. I was particularly confused by the “Bob infers that he likes this particular grapefruit more than other grapefruits” bit and had to read the question a few times to be sure I was parsing it right. If instead it said “Bob infers that the he likes grapefruits more than other fruits” it would make much more sense to me (as a question, not as a way to decide personal food preferences).
- knaik94 5y ago
  I had that question as well, I imagine only the order is randomized. I took that question to be asking about tbe effects of positive mood and positive luck on the enjoyment of the grapefruit. If he had instead had bad luck, had a flat tire, and got an annoying ad jingle stuck in his head, would he feel he disliked that particular grapefruit more than other grapefruit? I personally said yes. I agree though, some questions were very awkward in wording and I wonder what the optional questions about the symmetric vs asymmetric shape groupings was about.
- 00deadbeef 5y ago
  I read it as meaning Bob is superstitious and might consider that specific grapefruit to be his lucky grapefruit
99_00 5y ago
36 I'm naturally interested in psychology and pay attention to any media that discusses it stuff including popular books.
initplus 5y ago
Like the other commenters here, I scored >90% and have no education in psychology. I would be more interested to hear from commenters who got a poor score on the test.
paperoli 5y ago
36/40 never studied psych but have read a couple of books. This test seems too easy, though I'm a natural test taker and can usually tell what answers most tests want.
nearbuy 5y ago
Did anyone else do the optional survey at the end? It contains the following question: > If you wanted to create a company that is fair in terms of hiring practices, what percent of each of the following groups of people would you hire? [...] Please make sure the amounts you enter add about to approximately 100%. (The groups are Hispanic, White, Asian, and Black.) What are they trying to learn from this, and how are you supposed to answer it? 1. You can't intentionally hire percentages of employees by race because that's illegal. 2. How do I make the amounts add up to approximately 100%? They left out some of the larger demographics (indigenous, and arab/Middle-Eastern are both larger populations than Black or Hispanic in my country).
- Baeocystin 5y ago
  I answered that I fundamentally reject the premise. It didn't throw an error. For all we know, they could actually be testing to see if people follow along with a contentious prompt or not.
loopz 5y ago
Not learned formally, and take with grains of uncertainty: 38/40 (which is also ~99.5% percentile). Some of the questions had very unclear framing though, so just picked the most likely choice to get through it fast. I guess the solitary type likes deeper thoughts and ponderings, rather than standard tests.
xtiansimon 5y ago
Obviously I earned the grade I made in social psy course 30 years ago. Still not meeting the expectations. On another note I passed a particularly bizarre question about x and y random groups and wanted to go back. Can’t do this, so I ended up taking the quiz over again and screen shot a few of my (least) favorite questions. And I noticed complete willingness to answer differently on some questions and confidently the same on others. I wonder if I’m more concerned about this grapefruit that’s missing from my fruit bowl.
00deadbeef 5y ago
I got 29 which apparently is better than 71.4% of people. I expected to score far lower because I’m on the autistic spectrum.
rajnathani 5y ago
31/40 (81.9% percentile) here. Just for another data point. No background for me in psychology academically, but out of passion a little bit (eg: did read Thinking Fast and Slow).

gauravjain13 5y ago

This is somewhat paradoxical, but I think leadership requires some level of delusion. If one truly sees things as they are, it’s hard to create narratives and mythologies requires to motivate/lead people. Steve Jobs’ “reality distortion field” comes to mind.

knaik94 5y ago
I don't think delusion is the best word for it. Delusion implies that the vision of people in leadership roles are unrealistic in some way. I think resiliently optimistic is probably a better term. I don't think most people are motivated by myth, they're motivated by good support.
- gauravjain13 5y ago
  That's fair – I wasn't being particularly rigorous when I implied "delusion". Resiliently optimistic is better. Reminds of me of the Stockdale Paradox: "You must maintain unwavering faith that you can and will prevail in the end, regardless of the difficulties, and at the same time, have the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Stockdale#The_Stockdale_Paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Stockdale#The_Stockdale_...
ianai 5y ago
I’ve thought it’s easier to figure a social situation out as an independent third party than to figure out a situation in the first person. That might be related to Jobs’ “reality distortion field”. But at the same time, people are finite and of course always going to be blind to the total context around them - in anything suitably complicated. So I wouldn’t put a lot into this.

chadcmulligan 5y ago

I scored 34, but I just used the rule of thumb - people are stupid, particularly in groups.

antman 5y ago
Exactly the same score and strategy.
dusted 5y ago
I also scored 34, and I applied the same logic.. "whenever there's a possibility to do something stupid and selfish, that's what people will do" and it worked.. I'm also sad and lonely, I wonder why... :-D Before reading the article, I'll speculate that the reason people are sad and lonely is because they understand how terrible humans generally are, but haven't found any way to benefit from this knowledge.
- chadcmulligan 5y ago
  I do wonder if its a glass is half full / half empty thing, sure there are a lot of dumb/stupid things and covid has revealed a lot more than I thought possible. But, there are also a lot of fantastic things - one of the reasons I look at HN to see the latest science. There are, probably, a lot fewer people who are struggling towards the light, but the effect they generate overwhelms the negative, imho, choose that and the other stuff disappears.

tux3 5y ago

Having had no psychology course, books, or other education, I get a 35/40 (97.3%). Most of these sundry facts I suspect I learned by osmosis after spending too much time on the internet — but I would never have called myself a natural psychologist, so I don't know how much predictive power this study really has =)

fighterpilot 5y ago

The bystander effect question that you mention was worded pretty poorly. The first sentence implied that the total probability is lower when there's more bystanders (which is definitely false in sufficiently large numbers), then in the second sentence their wording switches to marginal probability, which is correct. I of course knew what they meant, and answered correctly. But there were a handful of somewhat ambiguous questions like that. A handful I legitimately didn't know, such as whether people remember the last argument the best. 34/40.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

paavohtl 5y ago

I got a pretty good score too (31/40, better than 81.9%). Though admittedly, while I have not studied university level social psychology I have read Dan Ariely's book Predictably Irrational [1], which covered many of the experiments presented in the quiz. It's an interesting and entertaining book, but it was a bit formulaic for my tastes, as every chapter tends to follow exactly the same structure. The experiments are presented well and are probably the best part of the book. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predictably_Irrational https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predictably_Irrational

crazydoggers 5y ago

Also scored 36, 99.5% After finishing I couldn’t believe it. I thought maybe it was part of a larger experiment telling you what you want to hear. So I took the test again answering randomly and got a horrible score and 20th percentile. (ie it’s a real score) So much of this seems so incredibly obvious to me! I mean I guess it make sense when you think about it. If it was obvious to most people, then most people would make better (less selfish, less bias) decisions which we see they don’t do. Some that particularly struck me were the ones about group think. Like passing someone in the gutter, in-group validation, group enhancement of extremism etc. I always have an almost knee jerk reaction to go against the group in lots of situations (if there’s a large group of people walking in a certain direction; I’ll assume they’re all lost and make my own way for instance) Explains a lot! Thanks for the link. And here’s a fun experiment. If I call out how much of downvoting and upvoting on sites like here on HN are about group think, other biases, rather than based on the individual comment, I bet it’ll get downvoted (because of those same reasons)!

nearbuy 5y ago
Like seemingly everyone else in this thread, it told me I scored better than 99.5% of people (37). By my count, of the commenters who posted a score so far, 5/13 (~40%) scored better than 99.5% of people and all of them scored better than 80% of people. HN readers is obviously not an unbiased sample, nor is the subset that choose to reveal their scores. Still, I wouldn't put too much stock in this internet survey. They can be notoriously unreliable. (As an aside, a number of questions are obvious because they're phrased as "True or false: X can never happen" (answer is false). The true ones don't use an absolute qualifier like "never". The use qualifiers like "usually" or "mostly".)

jodoherty 5y ago

38/40 I feel like I spent an entire decade mostly in contemplative reflection and observation as I searched for intrinsic meaning and purpose. I imagine many others who score well have some similar period they've been through where it almost feels like they spent more time observing themselves and others living than actually living.

okokwhatever 5y ago
Your comment touched my heart so deeply it hurt! I feel exactly the same.

raynr 5y ago

After the first few questions in that link, I decided to choose the most cynical answer instead of the one I thought was "correct". Apart from one or two, most had answers that I could classify as more cynical than the rest. 32/40. I'm not sure what this says about me or the survey.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
Gunax 5y ago
I was writing something else, but I think you nailed it. If you give a quiz where the cynical answers are correct, then (gasp!) cynical people do well. Of course I understand their point that social psychology is cynical, but I hope it isn't all cynical. I think there might be a publication bias here--studies which find that people act predictably and rationally don't become famous. No one would have heard of the Milgram experiment if everyone refused to shock the man. Many of the questions are directly out of famous experiments where if you have read/heard about it, you know the correct answer. I do question if perhaps bored introverts just spend a lot of time reading books and articles instead of possessing some sort of innate insight into humanity.
- callesgg 5y ago
  That is basicly the norm in social psychology. Most research has large gaping holes and make big assumptions in the interpretation of the gathered data. This hole is then “resolved” in the discussion part of the paper by acknowledging that the experiment could have been done in a better way.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

rogual 5y ago

After spending that long answering their survey, the least they could do is tell me which ones I got wrong.

Twisol 5y ago

...Is the question corpus randomized? Why is nobody talking about this completely incomprehensible grapefruit question? > Bob experiences numerous positive things when surrounded by a grapefruit. He wins a little money at the lottery, listens to his favorite music, and eats his favorite meal. Is it possible that Bob infers that he likes this particular grapefruit more than other grapefruits, because he has experienced all these positive feelings around this grapefruit? I can kind of understand what it's asking, but this is worse on my brain than "colorless green ideas sleep furiously". It feels like I've stepped into a surrealist novella.

Mordisquitos 5y ago
I also got confused by the grapefruit question. I was particularly confused by the “Bob infers that he likes this particular grapefruit more than other grapefruits” bit and had to read the question a few times to be sure I was parsing it right. If instead it said “Bob infers that the he likes grapefruits more than other fruits” it would make much more sense to me (as a question, not as a way to decide personal food preferences).
knaik94 5y ago
I had that question as well, I imagine only the order is randomized. I took that question to be asking about tbe effects of positive mood and positive luck on the enjoyment of the grapefruit. If he had instead had bad luck, had a flat tire, and got an annoying ad jingle stuck in his head, would he feel he disliked that particular grapefruit more than other grapefruit? I personally said yes. I agree though, some questions were very awkward in wording and I wonder what the optional questions about the symmetric vs asymmetric shape groupings was about.
00deadbeef 5y ago
I read it as meaning Bob is superstitious and might consider that specific grapefruit to be his lucky grapefruit

99_00 5y ago

36 I'm naturally interested in psychology and pay attention to any media that discusses it stuff including popular books.

initplus 5y ago

Like the other commenters here, I scored >90% and have no education in psychology. I would be more interested to hear from commenters who got a poor score on the test.

paperoli 5y ago

36/40 never studied psych but have read a couple of books. This test seems too easy, though I'm a natural test taker and can usually tell what answers most tests want.

nearbuy 5y ago

Did anyone else do the optional survey at the end? It contains the following question: > If you wanted to create a company that is fair in terms of hiring practices, what percent of each of the following groups of people would you hire? [...] Please make sure the amounts you enter add about to approximately 100%. (The groups are Hispanic, White, Asian, and Black.) What are they trying to learn from this, and how are you supposed to answer it? 1. You can't intentionally hire percentages of employees by race because that's illegal. 2. How do I make the amounts add up to approximately 100%? They left out some of the larger demographics (indigenous, and arab/Middle-Eastern are both larger populations than Black or Hispanic in my country).

Baeocystin 5y ago
I answered that I fundamentally reject the premise. It didn't throw an error. For all we know, they could actually be testing to see if people follow along with a contentious prompt or not.

loopz 5y ago

Not learned formally, and take with grains of uncertainty: 38/40 (which is also ~99.5% percentile). Some of the questions had very unclear framing though, so just picked the most likely choice to get through it fast. I guess the solitary type likes deeper thoughts and ponderings, rather than standard tests.

xtiansimon 5y ago

Obviously I earned the grade I made in social psy course 30 years ago. Still not meeting the expectations. On another note I passed a particularly bizarre question about x and y random groups and wanted to go back. Can’t do this, so I ended up taking the quiz over again and screen shot a few of my (least) favorite questions. And I noticed complete willingness to answer differently on some questions and confidently the same on others. I wonder if I’m more concerned about this grapefruit that’s missing from my fruit bowl.

00deadbeef 5y ago

I got 29 which apparently is better than 71.4% of people. I expected to score far lower because I’m on the autistic spectrum.

rajnathani 5y ago

31/40 (81.9% percentile) here. Just for another data point. No background for me in psychology academically, but out of passion a little bit (eg: did read Thinking Fast and Slow).