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idk. Could it be that the whole premise is simply wrong here? That in fact openness to experience is just not useful as a description of personality? When I ta

idk. Could it be that the whole premise is simply wrong here? That in fact openness to experience is just not useful as a description of personality? When I talk about openness to experience it means exactly what the author is complaining about, openness to try out new food, to try to take the train instead of flying, and yes, try some drugs, etc. For me—and a bet to most people—it has no further implications or generalizations about people’s personalities. And the fact that psychometrisians have—after decades—still failed to demonstrate convincingly any such implications or generalizations, might indicated that the general public is right, and the scientists are wrong. This isn’t nuanced they way that the author thinks it is. Say this is how I understand the term, but I bet that when a boss talks about it, they think of the willingness to take on new tasks and responsibilities within a company (hopefully without asking for a pay raise in return), and to an upper class art elite it can mean visiting an Escher gallery or a Mozart concert (though for me, seeing a no-name punk band is a sign of more openness then established brands). The nuance isn’t in the personality of the person believed to hold this trait, it is in the user of that term. And I think the confusion stems from believing this is some scientifically useful term, used to describe a trait of personality that might not even exist.

kragen 4y ago
> in fact openness to experience is just not useful as a description of personality? No, construct validity for the Big Five has been replicated by many researchers. > When I talk about openness to experience it means When Paula down the street talks about "utilitarianism," it means disregard for aesthetics. That doesn't have any implications for the validity of Bentham's philosophy or whether Peter Singer is likely to decorate his house well or poorly. She just doesn't know what Bentham and Singer mean by the term. > psychometrisians [sic] have—after decades—still failed to demonstrate convincingly They have not failed. You just haven't read their papers. > I bet that when a boss talks about [openness to experience], they think If a person doesn't understand the concepts they're talking about, that's not the fault of the concepts, unless they're incoherent. It's the fault of the person who hasn't bothered to learn about the concepts. > the confusion stems from believing this is some scientifically useful term The Big Five are among the very few results in psychology that are usefully predictive; most of psychology is pseudoscience just below the Ancient Astronauts folks. The confusion does not stem from believing O2E is a scientifically useful term; it is. At best it stems from a poorly chosen "improper noun"; if they had called it "Hamiha" or "splofth-zeels", this confusion wouldn't arise.
- runarberg 4y ago
  > The Big Five are among the very few results in psychology that are usefully predictive Predictive of what? Other test batteries within the field of psychometrics? I want personality traits to translate to actual behavior to consider them scientifically useful. And I want the predictive power to be greater then non-personality traits like religion, political affiliation, etc. Tell me of a research which demonstrates that convincingly. I certainly haven’t found it. Other psychological fields have no problem doing this. For example neuroscience show a remarkable behavioral difference of people with specific brain damage, cognitive science shows similarly stark difference in behavior if e.g. some people have been primed with a similar stimuli, and even behavioral scientist can demonstrate that animals will behave radically differently after a certain behavior has been reinforced etc. You may call this pseudo-science, but what I call pseudo-science is when scientists make up new terms, operationally define them, and then validate them by correlating them with each other, without showing any use for these terms out side of their narrow field.
  - kragen 4y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits#Effect_of_personality_traits_through_life https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits#Ef... I don't think neuroscientists would appreciate being called psychologists, and priming research has replicated poorly enough that I'm comfortable calling it pseudoscience. And, although some predictions of behaviorism have been borne out, behaviorist psychologists publishing unreplicable experiments were Feynman's specific target in Cargo Cult Science.
    - runarberg 4y ago
      How many neuroscientists do you know? I know a couple and they are very aware of the fact that their field is a study of human behavior and knowledgeable of their how much fields intersects with other fields of psychology. Most undergraduate degrees of psychology that I know indeed offer an introductory course to neuroscience, and I know many professors of neuroscience contribute to research in other fields of psychology and vice-versa. > priming research has replicated poorly enough that I'm comfortable calling it pseudoscience. You might be thinking of social priming which indeed is pseudo-science. Cognitive priming on the other hand is really easy to replicate, however the interpretations of the effect is often way out there (as is often with fresh discoveries in science [I mean just look at cosmology and all their wild interpretations of e.g. the dark matter discovery]). Given that I understand your skepticism, but the effect is there, it is easy to find, and has been replicated many times (I even did a short priming study during my undergraduates). > Effect of personality traits through life (Wikipedia link) If you read this section it proves my point well, earlier I said: > I want personality traits to translate to actual behavior to consider them scientifically useful. And this wikipedia article summarizes in the sub-section Scope of predictive power: > The predictive effects of the Big Five personality traits relate mostly to social functioning and rules-driven behavior and are not very specific for prediction of particular aspects of behavior. In other words: Personality traits are mainly predicting constructs within social psychology which are also measured with similar tools as those used to measure the traits in the first place. Most of the correlations are to self reported or other batteries from psychometrics. This quote from the Personality Disorders exemplifies my criticism: > Noticeably, FFM publications never compare their findings to temperament models even though temperament and mental disorders (especially personality disorders) are thought to be based on the same neurotransmitter imbalances, just to varying degrees. This looks like a scientific dead end to me. This is as if dark matter would only predict gravitational deviations and not e.g. the cosmic microwave background or gravitational lensing. Dark matter was discovered by exploring these deviations, and if it would have failed to predict anything outside of that narrow scope, it would be a pretty poor theory. This has been the status of Big-5 (and other personality traits) for about the same amount of time since the discovery of dark matter.
Bakary 4y ago
It makes more sense to see the OCEAN traits as a general strategy mix for a human being. Each trait will express differently depending on the context, and the traits will intermix with each other. Which is why it makes more sense to consider the individual as a whole instead of a trait in isolation and with regards to specific situations. Openness to experience means that the person in question will engage more often in idea-related activities. They'll be more likely to consider unusual ideas and courses of action as a result, and the unusuality of it will be relative to their environment. It's a strategy of higher activity and higher risk.

kragen 4y ago

> in fact openness to experience is just not useful as a description of personality? No, construct validity for the Big Five has been replicated by many researchers. > When I talk about openness to experience it means When Paula down the street talks about "utilitarianism," it means disregard for aesthetics. That doesn't have any implications for the validity of Bentham's philosophy or whether Peter Singer is likely to decorate his house well or poorly. She just doesn't know what Bentham and Singer mean by the term. > psychometrisians [sic] have—after decades—still failed to demonstrate convincingly They have not failed. You just haven't read their papers. > I bet that when a boss talks about [openness to experience], they think If a person doesn't understand the concepts they're talking about, that's not the fault of the concepts, unless they're incoherent. It's the fault of the person who hasn't bothered to learn about the concepts. > the confusion stems from believing this is some scientifically useful term The Big Five are among the very few results in psychology that are usefully predictive; most of psychology is pseudoscience just below the Ancient Astronauts folks. The confusion does not stem from believing O2E is a scientifically useful term; it is. At best it stems from a poorly chosen "improper noun"; if they had called it "Hamiha" or "splofth-zeels", this confusion wouldn't arise.

runarberg 4y ago
> The Big Five are among the very few results in psychology that are usefully predictive Predictive of what? Other test batteries within the field of psychometrics? I want personality traits to translate to actual behavior to consider them scientifically useful. And I want the predictive power to be greater then non-personality traits like religion, political affiliation, etc. Tell me of a research which demonstrates that convincingly. I certainly haven’t found it. Other psychological fields have no problem doing this. For example neuroscience show a remarkable behavioral difference of people with specific brain damage, cognitive science shows similarly stark difference in behavior if e.g. some people have been primed with a similar stimuli, and even behavioral scientist can demonstrate that animals will behave radically differently after a certain behavior has been reinforced etc. You may call this pseudo-science, but what I call pseudo-science is when scientists make up new terms, operationally define them, and then validate them by correlating them with each other, without showing any use for these terms out side of their narrow field.
- kragen 4y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits#Effect_of_personality_traits_through_life https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits#Ef... I don't think neuroscientists would appreciate being called psychologists, and priming research has replicated poorly enough that I'm comfortable calling it pseudoscience. And, although some predictions of behaviorism have been borne out, behaviorist psychologists publishing unreplicable experiments were Feynman's specific target in Cargo Cult Science.
  - runarberg 4y ago
    How many neuroscientists do you know? I know a couple and they are very aware of the fact that their field is a study of human behavior and knowledgeable of their how much fields intersects with other fields of psychology. Most undergraduate degrees of psychology that I know indeed offer an introductory course to neuroscience, and I know many professors of neuroscience contribute to research in other fields of psychology and vice-versa. > priming research has replicated poorly enough that I'm comfortable calling it pseudoscience. You might be thinking of social priming which indeed is pseudo-science. Cognitive priming on the other hand is really easy to replicate, however the interpretations of the effect is often way out there (as is often with fresh discoveries in science [I mean just look at cosmology and all their wild interpretations of e.g. the dark matter discovery]). Given that I understand your skepticism, but the effect is there, it is easy to find, and has been replicated many times (I even did a short priming study during my undergraduates). > Effect of personality traits through life (Wikipedia link) If you read this section it proves my point well, earlier I said: > I want personality traits to translate to actual behavior to consider them scientifically useful. And this wikipedia article summarizes in the sub-section Scope of predictive power: > The predictive effects of the Big Five personality traits relate mostly to social functioning and rules-driven behavior and are not very specific for prediction of particular aspects of behavior. In other words: Personality traits are mainly predicting constructs within social psychology which are also measured with similar tools as those used to measure the traits in the first place. Most of the correlations are to self reported or other batteries from psychometrics. This quote from the Personality Disorders exemplifies my criticism: > Noticeably, FFM publications never compare their findings to temperament models even though temperament and mental disorders (especially personality disorders) are thought to be based on the same neurotransmitter imbalances, just to varying degrees. This looks like a scientific dead end to me. This is as if dark matter would only predict gravitational deviations and not e.g. the cosmic microwave background or gravitational lensing. Dark matter was discovered by exploring these deviations, and if it would have failed to predict anything outside of that narrow scope, it would be a pretty poor theory. This has been the status of Big-5 (and other personality traits) for about the same amount of time since the discovery of dark matter.

Bakary 4y ago

It makes more sense to see the OCEAN traits as a general strategy mix for a human being. Each trait will express differently depending on the context, and the traits will intermix with each other. Which is why it makes more sense to consider the individual as a whole instead of a trait in isolation and with regards to specific situations. Openness to experience means that the person in question will engage more often in idea-related activities. They'll be more likely to consider unusual ideas and courses of action as a result, and the unusuality of it will be relative to their environment. It's a strategy of higher activity and higher risk.