Subject:
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Re: Personality test vs. Religion
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Thu, 28 Oct 2004 13:14:18 GMT
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Viewed:
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2272 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, David Eaton wrote:
> I agree that "close" vs. "open" is an obvious pro/con, but so too would be
> "structure" vs. "meander", just in the other direction.
I still don't agree that "structure" and "meander" are reasonable opposites
except in some interpretive, poetic sense, and in this regard they forfeit their
use as scientific tools of assessment.
Looking at the Myers-Briggs test, I can't escape the awareness that most of the
pairings are arbitrary mismatches with no clear justification. To me, a more
reasonable pairing would be:
"structure and non-structure"
"meander and not-meander"
and it absolutely shouldn't be a binary choice, which is obviously inadequate
and forces a false dilemma upon the subject (as I mentioned in that old post.)
An even more useful metric would be something like this:
Consider each of these words as it applies to you, and rate it from 1 to 10,
with 1 being the least applicable and 10 being the most:
___ structure
___ meander
___ open
___ close
etc...
> If you put a negative
> spin on one side, but not the other, you're perfectly right-- who wouldn't opt
> for the positive?
*That's* why it's not a valid test. Any idiot can completely foul the results,
even inadvertantly, and there is no way to check validity (no paper trail, one
might say). The test is not a valid instrument of evaluation.
> And, as for the final result summary, as I said, each really IS applicable to
> almost everyone, only because people will read each description positively and
> attempt to identify with the positive, hence meaning that you're likely to
> accept many of the descriptions as accurate. The DIFFERENCE being that some
> *MORE* accruately describe your personality; so while one may be 75% correct for
> you, another may be 78% correct for you-- and it's difficult to make that
> distinction given their pretty awful wording on their summaries.
Whether or not one summary describes you more or less accurately is irrelevant.
The test purports (and is administered) to return information about an
individual test subject that can be applied in considerations of employment. If
the answers and summary cannot be conclusively correlated to a specific subject,
then the test has no validity (at least, no validity in terms of how it is
actually used). If you still want to treat the test like a dowsing rod, by all
means go ahead.
> However, the 2nd proposition you gave, which was to give everyone the summaries
> of all 16 categories, and letting them chose the one that most accurately
> represented themselves, would be a better test of Myers/Briggs, because all of a
> sudden people can compare for themselves how accurately the description came
> out.
Let me restate it, because we've veered somewhat from this original point:
Give a dozen people the test, and then give each one of them a copy of each of
the twelve results, and let them try to figure out which applies to them. How
many of the twelve do you think would correctly find their own specific results
(as yielded by the test)? If the answer is not statistically quite high (say,
at least 9 or 10 of the 12), then I submit that the answers are so non-specific
as to be useless for anything other than a diversion.
> I will point out that the real comparison that I think is being made is:
>
> "Jump-to-conclusions" vs. "Never decide anything"
> Mutually exclusive? Eh, sorta. But like I said, you don't have to be on either
> side; you could be in the middle. And where you are also depends on the
> situation. Some situations you may be more decisive than others.
For myself, I seldom "jump-to-conclusions," and neither is it true that I "never
decide anything." I weigh my decisions as carefully as I am able, and then I
act. Where does this fit on the binary pairing? If the test were an
intellectually honest instrument, it would at the very least include a box for
"this pairing does not apply to me" or maybe "I recognize this pairing to be
baloney."
You seem to be casually dismissive of what I identify as a fatal shortcoming of
this test. The binary pairing is a false construction and automatically
invalidates any answer wrung from it. If you had a thermometer that registered
hot and cold, but you had no relative indication of temperature, how useful
would it be? Would ice be cold or hot? Based upon what? What about liquid
nitrogen? What about boiling water? What about molten steel? The fact that
the instrument is limited to a simplistic yes/no demonstrates clearly that it is
a tool inadequate for the job assigned to it.
> > That's not sufficient, I'm afraid. Since the test is used as a tool of
> > evaluation and selection in both professional and government employment, it
> > *must* be held to a higher standard than "pretty right."
>
> Heh, you jumped the gun :) I'm not implying by any means that this should be
> used as a prerequisite for a job, or used at all for absolutely definitive
> science. It's interesting, and it's potentially useful for finding trends in
> psychology, but beyond that, I find its usefulness rather limited.
Well, my argument all along has been that it's useless as a predictive model,
yet that's how its used in the professional and governmental sectors. As I've
said, if you enjoy the test and find it useful, then you're welcome to play
around with it. But if you were to hold it up as an accurate measure of
personality, then that's when I take issue with it.
> Plus it doesn't prevent people from "fooling the test". I can remember looking
> at the test questions and figuring out exactly how some correllated to the
> types. If I were going in for a salesman position, I'd know much better how to
> lie on the test and get the job.
I took a similar test at a job (for 7-11, of all things) back in '92. Some of
the questions were (paraphrased as closely as I can recall):
Yes/No: It is sometimes okay to steal from your employer
Yes/No: Violence is an appropriate response to workplace conflict
Yes/No: I would commit a crime if I thought I could get away with it
and so on. What kind of idiot would answer "yes" to all three questions, when
it's clear that these would hurt one's prospects? Alternatively, a reasonable
tester must assume that the subject can spot the idiocy, so the subject's
answers must be assumed to be tainted. The test is invalid for exactly the same
reason that Myers-Briggs is invalid.
Along the same lines, but more amusingly (to me), my brother-in-law told me
about a similar test that he had to take once. Rather than a yes/no
formulation, it was a five-increment scale, from lowest to highest or least to
most. Two of the questions were:
"How do you feel when you see someone beating a horse?"
"How do you feel when you hold a loaded gun?"
He didn't tell me the full range of answers, but the two that he mentioned were
"very happy" about the horse and "powerful" about the gun. I don't think that
he chose those answers, and he got the job.
> I'm willing to believe it's generally right. Hence,
> for noticing trends, like being religious and how it relates to your
> personality? I'd be inclined to mildly trust the results. If it agrees with the
> theory, great, and if it doesn't, then oh well. But I'm not looking to suggest
> any law of psychiatry, here.
Again, although you're not suggesting such a law, the people who profit from the
test *are* claiming that it's an accurate, reliable indicator of individual
personality types and a useful predictor of future behaviors.
> And likewise, in the final summary, if you called someone "self-centered,
> guessing, cold-hearted, and closed-minded" instead of "Introverted, iNtuitive,
> Feeling, and Decisive", well guess what? They'd be insulted and would decry your
> test as a bunch of bull. (Actually, I'm not sure I'd correllate "introverted"
> with "self-centered", but you get the idea).
>
> If you include the negative, you're going to get a lot of bias. Hence, you've
> got to try and put as little positive/negative spin as possible, or balance each
> side as equally as possible.
No way! Not if they're going to sell the test as a reliable indicator, which
they do. If they make a profit from this test on the claim that it's a
scientific instrument, then they are guilty of fraud. An objective measure,
which is what a scientific instrument *must* be, would report the
negative/unflattering results as well as the positive/warm-fuzzy results.
I understand that your claim is that you perceive the test to be useful for
making general assessments about personality types, but that doesn't really
concern me. Honestly, I think you're mistaken; the test makes no useful
assessments in any verifiable way, but that's your business.
However, I've stated outright several times that people are *welcome* to use the
test for themselves, and I'm not very interested in that debate. Instead, I'm
arguing that, because the test is not a reliable instrument of prediction or
evaluation, it should not be used for making determinations re: professional or
governmental employment. That is how the test is marketed, and that is why I
object to its use.
Dave!
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: Personality test vs. Religion
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| Let's cut right to here: (...) Ok, that's fine. I think its a "pretty right" tool, you think it's 100% useless and wildly inaccurate, save for entertainment purposes. That's fine. But keep in mind that *neither* of us has proof either way, being (...) (20 years ago, 28-Oct-04, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Re: Personality test vs. Religion
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| (...) Ah, now there's where I'm concerned-- you added an extra qualifier to "decisive". Useful vs. Non-Useful (Dubya-esque). Each is still decisive, no? What's the 'decisive' element, minus the 'usefulness' qualification? (...) Hm. I guess that's (...) (20 years ago, 27-Oct-04, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
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