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I've never understood people outside of a work context. They're just balls of emotion that to me appear to do illogical things for random reasons. In an effort

by czbond 4y ago

I've never understood people outside of a work context. They're just balls of emotion that to me appear to do illogical things for random reasons. In an effort to understand, about 10 years back I dove heavily into the traits of the individual "letters" and the types from MBTI. Even if it isn't perfect, it is a framework for me to arrive at a consistent typing systems for anyone. I can now accurately predict people, what they'll do in most circumstances, and then their likes/dislikes. 16 buckets gives you a small group of permutations to start with - and then to whittle a person into for refinement. The fallacy is to approach the test as an absolute, rather than for proclivities. Each person of a "type" will still have unique differences. Humans really aren't that unique, bell curve and all.... x of 100 groupings helped me understand that.

polyterative 4y ago
> Even if it isn't perfect, it is a framework for me to arrive at a consistent typing systems for anyone. I had the same exact experience.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
> Even if it isn't perfect, it is a framework for me to arrive at a consistent typing systems for anyone It's almost like all models are wrong, but some are useful.
blitzar 4y ago
If you use starsigns and the current alignment of the planets you will get similar results.
- meh8881 4y ago
  Star signs are the belief that you have a label which causes you have traits. A personality framework assigns you a label based on the traits you have. They’re basically the opposite of each other.
  - shahbazac 4y ago
    What a great way to say it!
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - wcedmisten 4y ago
    For me, the label is just as arbitrary. I've taken the (self reported) test about 3 different times throughout my life and gotten 3 different results. I agree with the other comment that assigning a binary classification to a unimodal distribution is pretty much worthless.
  - dandellion 4y ago
    It doesn't really matter if your model claims A->B or B->A and what makes more sense to you, if you don't provide any supporting data that shows that your model actually can predict reality.
    - meh8881 4y ago
      A personality framework is a descriptor of reality. Not a predictor. Your comment is nonsensical.
  - jbverschoor 4y ago
    What’s wrong with star signs? It can be easily explained: - people born after the start of the school year are a lot older when they go to school. That skews this a lot. You’re larger, stronger, more developed. That gives you a huge advantage. 6 months at that point is 10% of your life, maybe even more People born during the winter (I think) have more exposure to sunlight after the first few months of being inside/protected. With just these two influences you can explain quite some traits of star signs
    - meh8881 4y ago
      They are very poor predictors of things. Those factors are not significant effects on personality.
- czbond 4y ago
  Wholly disagree. 1/12 of the population born during a period having the same behaviors is easily testable in one's personal life and can reveal the lunacy. Example: 140M people born globally a year, so all 140/12M would be "X". MBTI says a person with "S" sensing abilities has these traits (x,y,z). No predictions, but observations of one's tendencies.
wccrawford 4y ago
I think most people do this by instinct, and have self-made buckets for people. It's really error-prone and not very accurate, and ends up leading to a lot of prejudice. And then they write articles claiming that things like the MBTI are useless because their self-made buckets are perfectly fine most of the time. And I'm a self-made bucket kind of person. I didn't get from the MBTI what you did, but I can at least see how it could be useful for some people. (Or maybe even all people, if they took the time to really understand it like you have.)
- czbond 4y ago
  > I think most people do this by instinct, and have self-made buckets for people. It's really error-prone and not very accurate, and ends up leading to a lot of prejudice. I agree with you. I noticed I held myself and others to a very high standard, and could not understand why (to me) their irrational decisions didn't let them meet my standards. Studying MBTI for me, helped give me some rational way to understand the proclivities and possible thinking of another to help me understand how people have different strengths/weaknesses and life journies.
chongli 4y ago
Each person of a "type" will still have unique differences The biggest problem with it is that there’s no validity to these “types”. Taking a unimodal normal distribution and just calling everyone below the mode one type and everyone above the mode another type, is not only completely arbitrary but just plain wrong from a statistical perspective. That is, it won’t yield predictions with any accuracy. In order to show that there actually are real types they need to show a bimodal (or multimodal) distribution. As far as I’m aware, no one has done that.
- runarberg 4y ago
  I think it is actually worse. I don’t know about Myers Briggs, but other personality tests actually adjust and standardize their metrics in order to find a bell curve. They believe there is something pristine or divine about the normal distribution, and if you find it you have found a holy truth. If you find something else, you should adjust your metrics until you do.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
jbotz 4y ago
The usefulness of typologies like MB lies entirely in opening one's eyes to the ways that people can be different without necessarily being "better" or "worse", which is good because it helps us to understand differences (including our own) without being judgemental about them. But in terms of predicting people's behavior or abilities, MB is more harmful than useful, as TFA said, and it should really be seen only as a very limited tool for self-knowledge and personal growth. Btw., I think in that regard the (just as unscientific) enneagram is a much better tool. It also mostly dispenses with the idea that you can "type" others... the enneagram is strictly for self-discovery. As the article says, Psychology now has some meassures of personality that are actually widely agreed on by researchers and which have some validated predictive power. There is the 5-factor model and also the 3 "dark traits". For more about the former I can recommend Daniel Nettle's book "Personality: What makes you the way you are".
- czbond 4y ago
  I believe a framework gives you consistency and can be used to predict or understand the weighted probability of a human's decisions. We want to believe we are all unique individuals. To the Nth DNA strand, we are & to our localized "social circle", we are. But in groups of 100, we are not. Society and individuals group themselves to a set of dominant behaviors & social norms - those are what MBTI looks to group.

by czbond 4y ago

polyterative 4y ago

> Even if it isn't perfect, it is a framework for me to arrive at a consistent typing systems for anyone. I had the same exact experience.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago

> Even if it isn't perfect, it is a framework for me to arrive at a consistent typing systems for anyone It's almost like all models are wrong, but some are useful.

blitzar 4y ago

If you use starsigns and the current alignment of the planets you will get similar results.

meh8881 4y ago
Star signs are the belief that you have a label which causes you have traits. A personality framework assigns you a label based on the traits you have. They’re basically the opposite of each other.
- shahbazac 4y ago
  What a great way to say it!
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- wcedmisten 4y ago
  For me, the label is just as arbitrary. I've taken the (self reported) test about 3 different times throughout my life and gotten 3 different results. I agree with the other comment that assigning a binary classification to a unimodal distribution is pretty much worthless.
- dandellion 4y ago
  It doesn't really matter if your model claims A->B or B->A and what makes more sense to you, if you don't provide any supporting data that shows that your model actually can predict reality.
  - meh8881 4y ago
    A personality framework is a descriptor of reality. Not a predictor. Your comment is nonsensical.
- jbverschoor 4y ago
  What’s wrong with star signs? It can be easily explained: - people born after the start of the school year are a lot older when they go to school. That skews this a lot. You’re larger, stronger, more developed. That gives you a huge advantage. 6 months at that point is 10% of your life, maybe even more People born during the winter (I think) have more exposure to sunlight after the first few months of being inside/protected. With just these two influences you can explain quite some traits of star signs
  - meh8881 4y ago
    They are very poor predictors of things. Those factors are not significant effects on personality.
czbond 4y ago
Wholly disagree. 1/12 of the population born during a period having the same behaviors is easily testable in one's personal life and can reveal the lunacy. Example: 140M people born globally a year, so all 140/12M would be "X". MBTI says a person with "S" sensing abilities has these traits (x,y,z). No predictions, but observations of one's tendencies.

wccrawford 4y ago

I think most people do this by instinct, and have self-made buckets for people. It's really error-prone and not very accurate, and ends up leading to a lot of prejudice. And then they write articles claiming that things like the MBTI are useless because their self-made buckets are perfectly fine most of the time. And I'm a self-made bucket kind of person. I didn't get from the MBTI what you did, but I can at least see how it could be useful for some people. (Or maybe even all people, if they took the time to really understand it like you have.)

czbond 4y ago
> I think most people do this by instinct, and have self-made buckets for people. It's really error-prone and not very accurate, and ends up leading to a lot of prejudice. I agree with you. I noticed I held myself and others to a very high standard, and could not understand why (to me) their irrational decisions didn't let them meet my standards. Studying MBTI for me, helped give me some rational way to understand the proclivities and possible thinking of another to help me understand how people have different strengths/weaknesses and life journies.

chongli 4y ago

Each person of a "type" will still have unique differences The biggest problem with it is that there’s no validity to these “types”. Taking a unimodal normal distribution and just calling everyone below the mode one type and everyone above the mode another type, is not only completely arbitrary but just plain wrong from a statistical perspective. That is, it won’t yield predictions with any accuracy. In order to show that there actually are real types they need to show a bimodal (or multimodal) distribution. As far as I’m aware, no one has done that.

runarberg 4y ago
I think it is actually worse. I don’t know about Myers Briggs, but other personality tests actually adjust and standardize their metrics in order to find a bell curve. They believe there is something pristine or divine about the normal distribution, and if you find it you have found a holy truth. If you find something else, you should adjust your metrics until you do.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

jbotz 4y ago

The usefulness of typologies like MB lies entirely in opening one's eyes to the ways that people can be different without necessarily being "better" or "worse", which is good because it helps us to understand differences (including our own) without being judgemental about them. But in terms of predicting people's behavior or abilities, MB is more harmful than useful, as TFA said, and it should really be seen only as a very limited tool for self-knowledge and personal growth. Btw., I think in that regard the (just as unscientific) enneagram is a much better tool. It also mostly dispenses with the idea that you can "type" others... the enneagram is strictly for self-discovery. As the article says, Psychology now has some meassures of personality that are actually widely agreed on by researchers and which have some validated predictive power. There is the 5-factor model and also the 3 "dark traits". For more about the former I can recommend Daniel Nettle's book "Personality: What makes you the way you are".

czbond 4y ago
I believe a framework gives you consistency and can be used to predict or understand the weighted probability of a human's decisions. We want to believe we are all unique individuals. To the Nth DNA strand, we are & to our localized "social circle", we are. But in groups of 100, we are not. Society and individuals group themselves to a set of dominant behaviors & social norms - those are what MBTI looks to group.