3 ms·

The only model of personality taken seriously by academics at present is the five factor model [1]. It's well researched, the traits were not 'designed', rathe

The only model of personality taken seriously by academics at present is the five factor model [1]. It's well researched, the traits were not 'designed', rather the traits popped out of linguistic analysis and statistics, and it's stable across different populations and over most of a person's lifetime. There is an open test called the IPIP Neo which has either 120 or 300 questions, which you can take online [2]. If you're really interested in what is being taught these days about the theory, this is a good set of lectures take takes you from the early theory of personality through to what is considered science today [3]. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits [2] http://www.personal.psu.edu/~j5j/IPIP/ http://www.personal.psu.edu/~j5j/IPIP/ [3] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL22J3VaeABQAhrMCQUa6sde_Y9DVbLYRv https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL22J3VaeABQAhrMCQUa6s...

jfoutz 12y ago
That's such a Virgo thing to say.
- ryan-allen 12y ago
  It's based on solid science you sniping twerp. Feel free to not 'believe' in statistics if you like. There's a club down the road for anti-vaxxers while you're at it.
  - Anastasiasdfh 12y ago
    Whoosh! By the way, the MBTI has been shown to correlate strongly with the NEO/big5 so your very negative comment is exposed as one of those typical HN negative comments. MBTI is still the most used personality system even though it isn't empirically keyed. The main issue with this research, however, is that the MBTI tests are often subpar. I won't trust these results unless they tell which test they administered.
    - ryan-allen 12y ago
      So negativity is fine on HN as long as it's 'passive agressive' and 'sarcastic', got it! EDIT: By the way I wasn't talking about the MBTI, if you care to read the thread. Try reading instead of skimming next time.
      - jfoutz 12y ago
        You're getting beat up and i feel at least partly responsible. I agree with you wholeheartedly MBTI is as much psychology as Mentos in Diet Coke is chemistry. It's a child's toy, a fun afternoon pastime. Perhaps it will inspire a few to actually go learn things, but this use is bordering on dangerous. For a long time I had no respect for economics. Or psychology for that matter. The more I learn, the more i see how fabulously difficult it is to tease information out of data. Psychology has got to be the worst. There are a zillion reasons, but right off the bat, people lie. People lie for so many reasons. With computers, I can almost always tease out a crisp yes or no answer to any question i wish. I'm sure the vast majority of HN users default to this kind of thinking, that if i just look hard enough, I'll get that crisp yes or no. And obviously, you don't have crisp yes or no's because you're not looking hard enough. There's an xkcd about everything is just physics. I believe that's true, all of chemistry is just physics, all of biology is just chemistry, all of psychology is just biology. People fail to appreciate psychology is a better indicator of what can be known. I can't know physics. Quantum Mechanics is famously hard and non intuitive. In every field it's harder and harder to push that edge of knowledge out, because reality at the edges isn't what you think it is. no one "knows" the millions of lines of code that compose the linux kernel. It's too complex. We can dig in and poke around, and some people have fantastically deep understandings, but, 15M is too much. we just can't do it. Anyway, i missed the deleted comment, i'm sure it was horrible. It wasn't my intention to derail your point. edit Oh, it was flagged. Oh, it was you. Ah well, point still stands.
  - analog31 12y ago
    Granted, I have practically no background in academic psychology research. I am willing to believe that there is a kernel of science in psychology. And I 'believe' in statistics, which is just math after all. This is notwithstanding the apparent fact that the social and life sciences seem to be in a state of panic right now due to issues regarding the use of statistics. At best, it means that a few reports should be discarded. At worst, I have to anticipate that there may be entire fields or subfields that are "science," but that have produced no reliable scientific knowledge base as of yet. But for a layperson like myself, my only likely contact with psychology is at least a couple steps removed from academic science: 1. Does the application of scientific methodology actually produce useful scientific knowledge in all fields at the present state of the art? 2. Are people who claim to apply psychological knowledge in ways that affect me, likely to use that knowledge in an unbiased and ethical fashion? In my life, we are talking about people such as educators (of my kids), HR managers, journalists, and little consultants. Should I trust these people to tell me anything that I don't already know about myself or through general common sense? This is how it can come to pass that something is both "science" and "bullshit" when viewed from opposite ends of a pipeline from basic research to practical application.
    - ryan-allen 12y ago
      Let's assume that when I say statistics I'm talking about the scientific application of statistics and not Fox New's use of statistics, now to your questions: 1. Not always, but that is the nature of scientific research and you should know this. 2. I would say that they would, if you found yourself or a member of your family and/or friends were affected by a mental illness. Which, by the way, is very, very likely. In regards to common sense, you can't always rely on it, and there is research to prove this. As for your utilitarian measurement of what is useful to you or bullshit, great! You sound like you'd make a great engineer, as opposed to a research scientist. Though don't hate on the researchers, they discovered some of the things you take for granted in your day to day application of what is 'not bullshit'.
      - analog31 12y ago
        My education is in physics, and I work in industry. I would at least admit that I would not be very happy trying to do research in the social sciences. As for being diagnosed with a mental illness, rumors that practitioners follow diagnostic fads and over-prescribe meds, would prevent me from even seeking a diagnosis unless my suffering were really profound, which it isn't.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
nostrademons 12y ago
The interesting thing to me is that people say that the MBTI is junk pseudoscience, that the Big-5 (OCEAN) model is the only scientifically valid personality test...but then take a look at the correlation coefficients between the MBTI and 4 out of the 5 dimensions of the OCEAN model: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers%E2%80%93Briggs_Type_Indicator#Big_Five http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers%E2%80%93Briggs_Type_Indic... A correlation of 0.7+ is huge in the social sciences - it's significantly more than the correlation between say intelligence and genetics. If I look at the numbers, my interpretation is that the MBTI is largely measuring 4 out of the 5 dimensions of the OCEAN model, but leaves Neuroticism out of the model.
- astrange 12y ago
  It's pretty hard to market a test that's going to call you neurotic, nor could you write nice positive analyses for it like all the other letters have. Are there MBTI tests accurate enough to report numbers along each scale instead of just picking a letter at each end? The way it only gives extremes when most people are presumably normal really makes it look bad.
jacobsimon 12y ago
I bet you're an INTJ ;)
- ryan-allen 12y ago
  Nope, INFP according to MBTI.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

jfoutz 12y ago

That's such a Virgo thing to say.

ryan-allen 12y ago
It's based on solid science you sniping twerp. Feel free to not 'believe' in statistics if you like. There's a club down the road for anti-vaxxers while you're at it.
- Anastasiasdfh 12y ago
  Whoosh! By the way, the MBTI has been shown to correlate strongly with the NEO/big5 so your very negative comment is exposed as one of those typical HN negative comments. MBTI is still the most used personality system even though it isn't empirically keyed. The main issue with this research, however, is that the MBTI tests are often subpar. I won't trust these results unless they tell which test they administered.
  - ryan-allen 12y ago
    So negativity is fine on HN as long as it's 'passive agressive' and 'sarcastic', got it! EDIT: By the way I wasn't talking about the MBTI, if you care to read the thread. Try reading instead of skimming next time.
    - jfoutz 12y ago
      You're getting beat up and i feel at least partly responsible. I agree with you wholeheartedly MBTI is as much psychology as Mentos in Diet Coke is chemistry. It's a child's toy, a fun afternoon pastime. Perhaps it will inspire a few to actually go learn things, but this use is bordering on dangerous. For a long time I had no respect for economics. Or psychology for that matter. The more I learn, the more i see how fabulously difficult it is to tease information out of data. Psychology has got to be the worst. There are a zillion reasons, but right off the bat, people lie. People lie for so many reasons. With computers, I can almost always tease out a crisp yes or no answer to any question i wish. I'm sure the vast majority of HN users default to this kind of thinking, that if i just look hard enough, I'll get that crisp yes or no. And obviously, you don't have crisp yes or no's because you're not looking hard enough. There's an xkcd about everything is just physics. I believe that's true, all of chemistry is just physics, all of biology is just chemistry, all of psychology is just biology. People fail to appreciate psychology is a better indicator of what can be known. I can't know physics. Quantum Mechanics is famously hard and non intuitive. In every field it's harder and harder to push that edge of knowledge out, because reality at the edges isn't what you think it is. no one "knows" the millions of lines of code that compose the linux kernel. It's too complex. We can dig in and poke around, and some people have fantastically deep understandings, but, 15M is too much. we just can't do it. Anyway, i missed the deleted comment, i'm sure it was horrible. It wasn't my intention to derail your point. edit Oh, it was flagged. Oh, it was you. Ah well, point still stands.
- analog31 12y ago
  Granted, I have practically no background in academic psychology research. I am willing to believe that there is a kernel of science in psychology. And I 'believe' in statistics, which is just math after all. This is notwithstanding the apparent fact that the social and life sciences seem to be in a state of panic right now due to issues regarding the use of statistics. At best, it means that a few reports should be discarded. At worst, I have to anticipate that there may be entire fields or subfields that are "science," but that have produced no reliable scientific knowledge base as of yet. But for a layperson like myself, my only likely contact with psychology is at least a couple steps removed from academic science: 1. Does the application of scientific methodology actually produce useful scientific knowledge in all fields at the present state of the art? 2. Are people who claim to apply psychological knowledge in ways that affect me, likely to use that knowledge in an unbiased and ethical fashion? In my life, we are talking about people such as educators (of my kids), HR managers, journalists, and little consultants. Should I trust these people to tell me anything that I don't already know about myself or through general common sense? This is how it can come to pass that something is both "science" and "bullshit" when viewed from opposite ends of a pipeline from basic research to practical application.
  - ryan-allen 12y ago
    Let's assume that when I say statistics I'm talking about the scientific application of statistics and not Fox New's use of statistics, now to your questions: 1. Not always, but that is the nature of scientific research and you should know this. 2. I would say that they would, if you found yourself or a member of your family and/or friends were affected by a mental illness. Which, by the way, is very, very likely. In regards to common sense, you can't always rely on it, and there is research to prove this. As for your utilitarian measurement of what is useful to you or bullshit, great! You sound like you'd make a great engineer, as opposed to a research scientist. Though don't hate on the researchers, they discovered some of the things you take for granted in your day to day application of what is 'not bullshit'.
    - analog31 12y ago
      My education is in physics, and I work in industry. I would at least admit that I would not be very happy trying to do research in the social sciences. As for being diagnosed with a mental illness, rumors that practitioners follow diagnostic fads and over-prescribe meds, would prevent me from even seeking a diagnosis unless my suffering were really profound, which it isn't.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

nostrademons 12y ago

The interesting thing to me is that people say that the MBTI is junk pseudoscience, that the Big-5 (OCEAN) model is the only scientifically valid personality test...but then take a look at the correlation coefficients between the MBTI and 4 out of the 5 dimensions of the OCEAN model: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers%E2%80%93Briggs_Type_Indicator#Big_Five http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers%E2%80%93Briggs_Type_Indic... A correlation of 0.7+ is huge in the social sciences - it's significantly more than the correlation between say intelligence and genetics. If I look at the numbers, my interpretation is that the MBTI is largely measuring 4 out of the 5 dimensions of the OCEAN model, but leaves Neuroticism out of the model.

astrange 12y ago
It's pretty hard to market a test that's going to call you neurotic, nor could you write nice positive analyses for it like all the other letters have. Are there MBTI tests accurate enough to report numbers along each scale instead of just picking a letter at each end? The way it only gives extremes when most people are presumably normal really makes it look bad.

jacobsimon 12y ago

I bet you're an INTJ ;)

ryan-allen 12y ago
Nope, INFP according to MBTI.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]