What's YOUR personality?

Discussion in 'Entertainment' started by Lea`Brooks, May 20, 2015.

  1. Lemex

    Lemex That's Lord Lemex to you. Contributor

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    I know plenty enough about fun. My chums and I often enjoy a good game of crib or cards while everyone else is out being silly with drink. I'm joking of course - but what is fun isn't always beneficial. What is boring isn't always enlightening, like (I'm sure) a lot of my comments.

    I'm sorry if your intention was to just make a fun thread - obviously I've misread this thread and my comments have no place here. But you also have to be aware that on a public forum people are going to share their opinions, especially if it doesn't agree with your own. This is, after all, the internet.
     
  2. 123456789

    123456789 Contributor Contributor

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    What's the personality type for someone who gets upset every single day, insists on blaming others for her unhappiness, is always miserable, and makes a big deal about everything , even on an Internet forum? I'm trying to find something more scientific sounding than drama queen.
     
  3. Wreybies

    Wreybies Thrice Retired Supporter Contributor

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    [​IMG]

    And this thread is headed towards the shitter, why?
     
  4. Lemex

    Lemex That's Lord Lemex to you. Contributor

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    My-Ex-Girlfrienditous?
     
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  5. NigeTheHat

    NigeTheHat Contributor Contributor

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    I'm not going to comment on the validity of the test - I'm not a psychologist*. The descriptions are definitely full of cold-reading stuff, but that's not necessarily a problem with the test itself. People who write this stuff want you to come back to their website and share it around, and you're more likely to do that if you feel like it accurately describes you.

    But that said, I don't think that's really a valid criticism. The headline result is presented as a set of 4 binaries, but each one is a spectrum, and most of these tests will show you where you fall on each scale. Your result is a single point in this 4-dimensional space, but something like INTJ is just the overall region of that space you occupy - it'll show you what you're inclined towards, rather than how you'll react in any situation.

    * - do we actually have a psychologist on the forum? Because they might have actual knowledge and facts and stuff.

    Nope. Some test told me it was an INTJ thing.
     
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  6. Lemex

    Lemex That's Lord Lemex to you. Contributor

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    Yeah - you are right, I just feel an instant suspicion of cold readings. I mean, I guess I just don't see the point (or fun) in them, to be blunt.

    Oh, and thanks for responding in a polite and reasonable manner. :) It appears I walked into quite the little warzone here.
     
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  7. Aaron Smith

    Aaron Smith Banned Contributor

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    It's inaccurate then. English is not my first language.
     
  8. 123456789

    123456789 Contributor Contributor

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    OK I am confused. @GingerCoffee was this test invented by a random person?

    I'm not the biggest fan of this test, but, objectively speaking, it did accurately predict my career and also a few other significant habits of mine. To be fair, a lot of the test is just regurgitating your own answers, but I think the test had one or two significant insights. Maybe luck?
     
    Last edited: May 25, 2015
  9. T.Trian

    T.Trian Overly Pompous Bastard Supporter Contributor

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    Folks, keep in mind this thread is in the Entertainment section, NOT in the Debate Room. That should be a pretty big clue nobody here is advocating choosing your career, who to marry, whether to start a nuclear war, or whatever of such magnitude based on these tests. Context.
     
  10. Masked Mole

    Masked Mole Senior Member

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    Shut up! You're obviously some sort of horrible personality on the test! ;)
     
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  11. Wreybies

    Wreybies Thrice Retired Supporter Contributor

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    What T said. ;)
     
  12. Masked Mole

    Masked Mole Senior Member

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    Whoa. I think a post might have just disappeared. *Gasp* It got Wreybies-blasted!
     
  13. NigeTheHat

    NigeTheHat Contributor Contributor

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    I am always polite and reasonable. I guess I don't Internet very well :D
     
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  14. Fullmetal Xeno

    Fullmetal Xeno Protector of Literature Contributor

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    Nothing wrong with English not being your second language, but it's just a test created by Man. No need to get all worked up over it.
     
  15. plothog

    plothog Contributor Contributor

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    I wonder if the supposed percentages in the population of each type are skewed towards certain types who are more receptive to doing personality tests.
     
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  16. JessAlways

    JessAlways Member

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    I got ESFJ-T.....
    Extraordinarily caring, social and popular people, always eager to help.
    Yeah, I suppose. :)
     
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  17. JessAlways

    JessAlways Member

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    Famous ESTJ-T's......
    Monica from "Friends" and Dean Winchester from "Supernatural" ....interesting...
     
  18. GingerCoffee

    GingerCoffee Web Surfer Girl Contributor

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    I see the fallacy in your wording of the analogy.

    Some people believe the M&B test accurately portrays their personality.
    Some people believe their horoscope/cold reading/and similar supposed descriptions accurately portray their personality.

    Therefore just believing the test has validity is not a good measure of whether or not the test has validity.

    Ones needs to look for other evidence of validation.

    I posted a link to a literature review of the M&B test. While the author found some internal consistency, (meaning you would likely get the same reading taking the test more than one time), there was insufficient evidence of any meaningful validity of the results. Here it is again:
    Perhaps you might read the analysis and the supporting citations and judge the validity of the criticism.
    Or, perhaps you have some evidence of the validity besides the authors' claims about their own tool and users' beliefs about the results matching their personalities.
    And finally, Dr Pittenger cautions:
    Dr Pittenger's credentials:
    If you want to assert the M&B test is "not a piece of shit" @daemon, some evidence to that effect would be helpful.
     
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  19. GingerCoffee

    GingerCoffee Web Surfer Girl Contributor

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    There are many valid personality assessments that have evidence supported validity.

    The MMPI-2-RF for example, is one such evidence based assessment but it is not designed to be fun.

    Here's my problem with the thread, the OP made some claims that I don't think are supportable with evidence. That's fine if it is clear the thread and test are only being promoted as something fun to do.

    That's not what the OP says, though. That wasn't made clear for several pages.

    If I think other people are going to believe the test is valid, as opposed to fun, I think they have a right to know many professionals think this test is harmful if used as a valid measure of personality.
     
  20. GingerCoffee

    GingerCoffee Web Surfer Girl Contributor

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    That's clear now and I find that a satisfactory end to my objections. But it was not clear from the OP. The Internet is a source for bad information to circulate as factual. This personality test circulates from time to time, and in doing so, more people are misled into thinking the test is valid.

    Being misled is very much like seeing someone being lied to, except not with the malice of a lie. But nonetheless, if you see people being potentially misled, there are times one's conscience urges one to speak up.
     
  21. Jack Asher

    Jack Asher Banned Contributor

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    Technically all people are random. But in this case the test was created by a mystery novelist, based in part on her mother's ideas about Jungian psychology. Instead of getting a degree in psychology, psychometrics, or any science at all, she started a consulting firm and lobbied companies into distributing the tests.
     
  22. daemon

    daemon Contributor Contributor

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    @GingerCoffee
    @Lemex

    I am not interested in defending MBTI in depth because it is not actually clear what I would need to defend. We could be talking specifically about the test published by CPP, or about the 16 profiles on myersbriggs.org, or some other test, or some other set of profiles, or the four dimensions of personality, or the idea that someone is permanently "one or the other" on each of those four dimensions, or the idea that there are 16 distinct personality types distinguished by different preference rankings among the cognitive functions described by Carl Jung. Whichever idea we choose, we could still be talking about any conceivable application of it -- maybe you expect me to convince you that it is internally consistent, or that it is a reliable way to describe people, or that it predicts people's behavior, or that it predicts job satisfaction, or that it predicts a well-balanced team, or...

    You get the point: the topic of this thread is not a singular, falsifiable scientific theory. It is a body of related ideas that countless people have contributed to over the years. And as far as I can tell, no one here is supporting any specific clinical or professional use of any specific personality test or assessment methodology. And I am having a hard time imaging any unwary reader misinterpreting any of these posts that way, as GingerCoffee is concerned about. If anything, it is a matter of self-identity. Some of us find it easy to identify with our types and we are interested in how other people identify themselves. If that is a "heap of shit", then so is any discussion about our own cultural identities, the ideologies that identify us, the fictional characters we identify with, etc.

    So, GingerCoffee, you have made your point: in the faint chance that someone reads this discussion and draws the conclusion that they should make decisions based on their Myers-Briggs type, then yes, they have the right to know that real psychologists recommend against that. Your conclusion that this body of ideas has no clinical value happens to be true. But the way you arrive at that conclusion (I am referring to your own argument, not to the arguments of people you cite) sets a seriously low intellectual standard for this thread, which is why I responded.

    So, regarding the comparison of MBTI to horoscopes:

    "Some people believe the M&B test accurately portrays their personality.
    Some people believe their horoscope/cold reading/and similar supposed descriptions accurately portray their personality.

    Therefore just believing the test has validity is not a good measure of whether or not the test has validity."

    First of all, cold reading is interactive -- the cold reader makes generalized educated guesses about the subject, the subject responds, and the reader uses this response to keep honing his guesses. The subject does not realize how much more attention he is giving to the true guesses than the false guesses, nor how much information he is giving to the reader to facilitate future guesses. It is really just glorified 20 questions. (That is actually a correction I meant to make in response to @NigeTheHat.) Therefore, it is based on a principle that has nothing to do with written profiles.

    Now, I will give you that your conclusion as quoted above is technically valid, if all you mean is: "if you think your profile describes you well, then that proves nothing about the assessment mechanism's success at distinguishing you from other people."

    But if, from this conclusion, you draw the conclusion that "just by reading the profiles, there is no way to determine whether the assessment mechanism actually measures anything or whether the profile actually describes anything", then you are missing the obvious. There are some easy experiments you can do:

    Comparison between profiles in a set

    Find a set of MBTI profiles (I recommend these). Read each of them. Rate each one from 1 to 10 for how well it describes you.

    Do the same thing for a set of profiles based on horoscopes.

    If MBTI is really as valid as horoscopes, then there will only be as much differentiation between the MBTI profiles as there is between the horoscope profiles.

    Sort the list of MBTI profiles and the list of horoscope profiles by how well they describe you. Keep these lists for later.

    Comparison between sets of profiles

    Do the same experiment on another set of MBTI profiles and another set of horoscope profiles. Compare the MBTI profile lists and compare the horoscope profile lists.

    If MBTI is really as valid as horoscopes, then the ordering of the MBTI profile lists will vary as much as the ordering of the horoscope profile lists vary.

    Comparison of assessment mechanisms

    Take an MBTI test, read your profile and the other profiles, and see how well your profile describes you compared to the others. (Is it the most accurate of the profiles? The second most accurate? etc.)

    Read a set of horoscope profiles and see how well your profile describes you compared to the others.

    If MBTI is really as valid as horoscopes, then your MBTI profile will describe you as well, compared to the others, as your horoscope profile describes you, compared to the others.
     
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  23. daemon

    daemon Contributor Contributor

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    @Lemex

    Remind you of anything else that is inexplicably popular? ;)
     
  24. GingerCoffee

    GingerCoffee Web Surfer Girl Contributor

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    It's hard to know where to start to answer your post, @daemon. But it appears my answer belongs in the debate forum, not here in entertainment.

    I will only say that the scientific process is the most successful method of understanding the Universe and alternatives are best left to fiction novels. If you want more than that, copy your post to a new thread in the debate forum and I'll be happy to more specifically answer your points.
     
  25. daemon

    daemon Contributor Contributor

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    @GingerCoffee

    Depends on what you want to debate about. Again, I am not interested in defending MBTI because there is no single position to defend. There is no single theory or system I believe in, but rather a vast body of ideas that interest me to varying degrees. There is no way (or need) for me to defend why things interest me.

    I will say that I cannot think of a way to defend any given formulation of these ideas (from Jung's original cognitive function theory to the official Myers-Briggs test to socionics) scientifically. Therefore, I have not claimed and will not claim that there is any scientific truth to them. And I am pretty sure I have not criticized the scientific method so far. So I am not sure why you are bringing science into this.

    My response to you was not intended to convince you that MBTI is scientifically valid. My intent was simply to expose how logically fallacious and unscientific your argument about MBTI and horoscopes is. (I simply enjoy exposing fallacies.) If you want to defend your argument, then feel free to make the same argument in a new thread and tag me. Unlike the topic of this thread, that is actually a position that it is possible to have a debate about.
     

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