[HN Gopher] A review of correlations between big five personalit...
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A review of correlations between big five personality types and
life outcomes
Author : dynm
Score : 213 points
Date : 2021-05-09 17:00 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (dynomight.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (dynomight.net)
| de_keyboard wrote:
| Anyone done a correlation analysis of Big-5 traits and favourite
| programming languages?
| thinkingemote wrote:
| Or Emacs and Vim users....
| hyko wrote:
| _we can infer that we're at an equilibrium point with no real
| advantage either way_
|
| We can do no such damn thing! This analysis completely conflates
| natural selection and sexual selection, and ignores the role of
| genetic drift.
| jawns wrote:
| I think a lot of this analysis is tautological -- meaning that
| when you boil it down, you're just saying that things are as you
| have defined them to be.
|
| For instance, take a Big Five trait such as agreeableness. How do
| we know that a person is agreeable? Because we define
| agreeableness in a certain way and then measure the degree to
| which someone conforms to the definition. If that measurement
| includes questions such as, "Do others find you easy to get along
| with?" then of course there's going to be a negative correlation
| with loneliness, because you've essentially defined it that way.
|
| I am the author of Correlated.org, which commits many different
| types of statistical errors for humor's sake, so this leaps out
| at me. By the way, for a surprisingly vast number of things,
| agreeableness is quite predictive. Food preferences, public
| policy positions, and even willingness to answer poll questions
| :)
| anbende wrote:
| While this is true for a lot of common psychological
| constructs, the Big Five were not defined according to
| agreement or consensus. The definitions were driven by the
| lexical hypothesis whereby the wide variety of personality
| descriptive adjectives in human language were factor analyzed
| and found to cluster into 5 distinct factors.
|
| So this isn't tautological in the way that you've described,
| though it is certainly related to the way human beings describe
| each other and the way that instantiates in human language.
|
| Source 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexical_hypothesis
|
| Source 2: I'm a psychologist and did research in this area
| vlovich123 wrote:
| Humorism was a field of academic study for two millennia
| before germ theory demonstrated how laughable the entire
| field was. It's always important to remember that doing
| research in a field doesn't necessarily mean that the field
| itself is on a solid foundation that maps to reality.
| Psychology and psychiatry really do struggle to demonstrate
| statistically meaningful results behind most therapies (CBT
| is perhaps a notable exception, although even there results
| can be mixed). Analyses like the big 5 are squarely in the
| "let me read your tea leaves" camp of "science" IMO. They
| basically play a trick of "sure, the other personality
| theories were bogus but this time we did stumble upon a good
| way of characterizing it" while taking at face value that the
| entire endeavor as valid. Neuroscience has a bit more behind
| it because it's actually rooted in quantifiable measurements
| somewhat and even there it's difficult. It's like trying to
| reverse-engineer a modern CPU from X-ray lithography. If you
| know the theory underpinning everything, you can start to
| make educated guesses. Without that you're not going to get
| anywhere close to what's going on let alone root cause if
| something is broken.
| anbende wrote:
| A major problem with humorism was that it did not have any
| empirical evidence to support it.
|
| Modern personality theory DOES. Personality theory uses a
| variety of techniques to show that a construct is
| internally consistent and related to real-world indicators.
| If independent people can view a video or a person and they
| reliably rate that entity similarly (inter-rater
| reliability), we can say with some certainty that there is
| something there. Relating a construct like this to a
| variety of real-world outcomes allows us to ascertain its
| relationship to the world. This evidence is messy and not
| nearly as solid as what's found in the harder sciences, but
| your dismissal of the modern statistics of questionnaire-
| based measurement does a very well-researched field of
| inquiry a huge disservice.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| My analogy to humorism was not to imply that there's no
| empirical evidence at all here. Just that the field of
| psychology has continually struggled to actually develop
| testable hypotheses that lead to scientific theories.
|
| There's a giant chasm between "I have a signal" and
| "here's what that signal means". You can't start out with
| a data set, pick out some signals and then say what they
| mean. That's scientific theory 101. You build a
| hypothetical model and then design experiments to test
| those theories. It's not me doing the field a disservice.
| The practitioners have consistently and repeatedly done
| bad science and statistics. I'll be more supportive once
| the field actually starts producing falsifiable theories
| that are supported by evidence and the practitioners are
| better at calling out their peers.
| acituan wrote:
| You seem to be conflating psychology the science vs
| psychotherapy the practice. The latter approximates
| engineering and producing real life results takes
| precedence over proving things from first principles.
| Just like with medicine, you don't categorically reject
| medications even though it can't always explain the
| mechanisms of action fully (yet). Big tech doesn't hold
| off on making billion dollar business decisions based on
| the same techniques either. Science has its place but it
| is not always above real life pragmatism.
| tikhonj wrote:
| > _Big tech doesn 't hold off on making billion dollar
| business decisions based on the same techniques either._
|
| I've seen how large companies make [?]$X0 million
| decisions and probably $X00 million decisions and I
| suspect $ billion decisions aren't treated fundamentally
| differently. I wouldn't use that as evidence for how to
| make decisions well.
|
| My current theory is that companies are successful not
| because they consistently make specific tactical or even
| strategic decisions well but because (through design or
| evolution) they are resilient systems that can weather
| surprisingly poor decision making at all levels.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| It's remarkable how similar this is to the argument that
| an acupuncturist will make is. The modern pharmaceutical
| industry in many instances has the same issues by the
| way. Lots of drugs that have questionable efficacy at
| best.
| CompelTechnic wrote:
| Turns out that the big 5 have predictive power. Hard to
| call it "tea leaves" if it has broad correlates with human
| behavior that are replicable across cultures and predict
| forward-looking behavior.
| mcguire wrote:
| That's the argument usually presented for intelligence
| testing.
| jawns wrote:
| But isn't that just tautology with an intermediate step?
|
| You might have Personality Descriptive Adjective X that is
| found to cluster into what we call a Big Five trait.
|
| But Adjective X has its own definition, and it's likely that
| the tautology (at least insofar as these life satisfaction
| correlations are concerned) happens at that level.
| anbende wrote:
| Tautology implies that the definition we give is redundant,
| but none of these things were defined in this way. This is
| because none of the research relies on this kind of
| dictionary definition.
|
| Instead, they literally ask people hundreds of questions of
| the type:
|
| "To what extent would you consider yourself to be
| [adjective]?" (0 - 'not at all' to 5 - 'complete')
|
| Then they factor analyze the results to see which
| adjectives tend to be highly related to each other. Factor
| analysis builds on correlation to find shared variation
| among large groups of indicator variables.
|
| So it is related to how people think of the adjectives and
| what they mean, but it is not the case that we are just
| lumping definitions together or "saying the same thing in
| different words" in the way of a tautology. Instead, what
| we're saying is that "Most of these personality adjectives
| mostly mean the same thing. Here's the thing they all
| mostly mean. If humans in all languages have tons of words
| that mostly mean this common thing, maybe this common thing
| is significant and worthy of study."
|
| Regarding life satisfaction, the sense that one finds their
| life satisfactory and "would change nothing" (one of the
| items in the Satisfaction with Life Scale that was most
| likely used to measure it) doesn't show up in those other
| traits in any major way. In fact, to the extent that a
| description of the self is related to a world-view, belief
| or other external factor, it will never be a tautology,
| because a self-view and other-view or world-view will never
| share a common definition or tautology by virtue of the
| self-other distinction.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| I suppose they asked 1000s of different questions, each
| representing a different personality characteristic. After
| factor analysis, some arbitrary number of factors were
| found to account for most of the variance. Why did they
| settle for 5 vs 8 vs 12?
| anbende wrote:
| There are a number of metrics that are commonly used to
| settle on a number of factors to extract. There's some
| judgment in it to be sure, but you are looking at data-
| driven phenomena as well like percentage of variance
| explained, a precipitous drop in new added value, and
| etc.
|
| Essentially you come to a point where extracting another
| value isn't explaining much more variance or producing a
| factor that's meaningful (e.g., two items of
| conscientiousness with negative wording are the entire
| new "factor" and only take variance explained from 80% to
| 82%).
|
| https://www.theanalysisfactor.com/factor-analysis-how-
| many-f...
| planet-and-halo wrote:
| Other models actually did settle for higher numbers of
| factors, but higher numbers were usually found to have
| categories that could be reasonably collapsed into one of
| the Big 5.
|
| Fwiw, my understanding is that most psychologists believe
| that with further study, these categories will map to
| actual functioning of the brain and nerve systems. For
| example, "Neuroticism" will somehow map to the
| excitability of certain nerve systems and "Agreeableness"
| will somehow map to functioning of our mirror and
| mentalizing systems. "Conscientiousness" will map to
| inhibiting functions, "Openness" will map to
| approach/flee type emotional functions, and
| "Extraversion" will map to systems like dopamine release
| on securing rewards for behavior.
| analog31 wrote:
| Given that the definitions of words and phrases are possibly
| subjective, I've often wondered if the personality test
| largely measures how people interpret the questions.
| mathrando wrote:
| Articles like this answer the question, "what if 1920s
| eugenicists got hold of 1980s magazine relationship tests?"
|
| The scary thing is a lot of commercial "people analytics"
| systems marketed to HR departments, lenders, and government
| agencies are little more than dressed up relationship tests
| from 1980s magazines.
|
| https://www.cs.princeton.edu/~arvindn/talks/MIT-STS-AI-snake...
| hansvm wrote:
| If you know the tests are snake oil, is it ethical to give
| the "right" answers to get a job?
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| I would say yes, but do you want the job at the place that
| is giving you snake oil?
| vkou wrote:
| I _want_ a job at a place where I can noodle around with
| <my hipster technology of choice> all day, but I'll
| settle for one that asks me to actually ship stuff, and
| pays the bills.
|
| Whether or not their HR department is ran by a licensed
| phrenologist is a distant second concern.
| greesil wrote:
| Maybe they pay really well
| satellite2 wrote:
| Or they control entire sectors of the economy.
|
| https://www.pgcareers.com/assessment-overviews
| moksly wrote:
| I think it's perfectly ethical to game the tests, but it
| can be hard to tell what's actually being tested.
|
| One or ours was deliberately set up so that prospect hires
| applying for a leadership position would end up with very,
| very, little in their empathy score if they chose answers
| that sound like the "right" ones for a leadership position.
| It was done to catch people off guard in their next
| interview, and see how they handled getting shown a result
| they'd very likely not agree with.
|
| HR departments know these things are bullshit. They know
| people game the systems, exactly like people practice for
| the coding interview. The test and the results are often
| extremely irrelevant to anyone getting hired, it's how
| people handle their results that's important.
| taberiand wrote:
| Yes, of course it is. Working out how to work with people
| is the core competency of most jobs. In this case, if
| you've worked out how to give the 'correct' answers on such
| a test, then you've got a good start on knowing how to
| navigate the corporate machine - and get your real job done
| despite corporate garbage (which in my opinion is what
| makes it ethically ok).
| Nition wrote:
| Related to this, often I see a survey question along the
| lines of say, "which cup do you think would hold more
| water" with one that looks like it'd hold a lot more than
| the other. I'm never sure whether to answer with the meta-
| analysis of the fact that it's a survey question included
| in my answer.
|
| That is, if I saw the two cups in my example naturally I'd
| say the obvious one holds more water, but often there'd be
| no point in putting it as a survey question if the obvious
| answer was the case. Therefore I'm almost sure the correct
| answer is the seemingly wrong one.
|
| So I put that as the answer and get it right. But for
| whoever's running the survey, I'm probably messing up their
| results by meta-analysing the questions.
| tikhonj wrote:
| I don't know if this question is an example, but people
| intentionally include "obvious" questions in surveys to
| check whether people are actually paying attention to the
| survey. There's a name for these, I just don't recall it
| at the moment--which shows you I don't have any survey-
| design experience myself :).
| jaredsohn wrote:
| According to a Google search, "Attention check questions"
| sounds like the right term
| analog31 wrote:
| Is it ethical to give the "right" answer to a regular
| interview question? An interview might be a stressful
| situation for some people, who often suffer from a bias of
| downgrading themselves compared to others. So a calibrated
| interpretation of the questions may be necessary to provide
| a faithful result in the first place.
| moksly wrote:
| Unless a HR department is doing something wrong, the test
| results aren't the point of the tests. It's the conversation
| following, where possible employees are confronted with their
| answers and results that's the point.
|
| It's just easier to get there when you use a disguised
| relationship tests from 1980ies magazines. Not only does it
| touch on relevant areas, most people that you'd use the HR
| resources on secretly love taking those things and then
| talking about themselves.
|
| As with most things, it can obviously go wrong or get used in
| the wrong situations. HR is a department that's there to help
| managers, but they really shouldn't waste their resources
| testing people for a position as a software developer. If
| your company is doing that, something went wrong. Maybe HR
| found a way to keep themselves busy, or you're not bolstering
| a management culture or people who can make hiring related
| decisions without consulting HR.
| ghaff wrote:
| Or Myers-Briggs, which is a lot older.
|
| The main useful thing about this sort of thing, including the
| more modern Tilt 365 for example, is that it can be a useful
| exercise in helping people understand that the way they think
| about and approach the world differs from how others do.
|
| Years ago, I remember a book (Tog on Interface) that had a
| chapter which discussed how Apple engineers tested on MBTI
| versus the general population. He went to discuss
| implications for how it was easier for engineers to have
| mental models for how systems operated than users. Was this a
| correct explanation _based on MBTI_? Who knows. But it was a
| useful reminder in this case that your users may not be like
| you.
| vmception wrote:
| Myers Briggs is astrology for people that scoff at
| astrology
|
| I will code switch between star signs and personality
| acronyms to get in your pants and assign zero weight to
| either
| Icathian wrote:
| "I will lie to manipulate you into fucking me, and also I
| think I'm smarter than everyone".
|
| You charmer, you.
| vmception wrote:
| You decided to read that
|
| I dont lie about my astrology signs or myer briggs result
|
| I judge which one will likely help create an intimate
| consensual scenario and judge when to avoid criticizing
| either school of thought as disagreement is usually
| counterproductive to a consensual reproductive scenario
|
| Pick your battles wisely
|
| Out of even more adaptive curiosity, how do you read that
| as lying?
| jokoon wrote:
| I'm often skeptical about those things, because they try to
| measure, but those measure are based on a definition of
| vocabulary, which is difficult to define.
|
| Personality is vague. It's pretty common knowledge that the
| brain is a complex machine and it's quite difficult to
| distillate some sort of evaluation, metric or measure for
| something that obviously has a million or billions ways to be
| measured.
|
| It's already hard or difficult to treat psychiatric illness, so
| evaluating personality seems like an odd quest.
| HPsquared wrote:
| My (lay) understanding is that personality data tend to be
| clustered such that it's best explained by five factors, with
| the names of the factors (Openness, Conscientiousness, etc.)
| having been added later.
| infogulch wrote:
| Wikipedia states it pretty well, "When factor analysis (a
| statistical technique) is applied to personality survey data,
| it reveals semantic associations: some words used to describe
| aspects of personality are often applied to the same person."
| [1]
|
| The Big Five are a statistically-derived groupings of phrases
| that are reasonably stable when measured from different
| angles. I think it would be fair to call it a "modest initial
| result" if compared to the physical sciences, or "wildly
| successful" if compared to basically anything prior that came
| out of the social sciences. There are some quite reasonable
| critiques listed on the wikipedia page, such as a lack of
| modeling theory, or only accounting for a portion of
| personality differences, or arguments for a slightly
| different number of factors, etc. That said, it seems to be
| one of the first actually solid findings that ever came out
| of the social sciences. It's like the whole field has been
| flailing around, swept down a river in the dark, and for the
| first time we found a stone that has a bit of purchase, even
| if it's covered with moss and slippery.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits
| toast0 wrote:
| > If that measurement includes questions such as, "Do others
| find you easy to get along with?" then of course there's going
| to be a negative correlation with loneliness, because you've
| essentially defined it that way.
|
| Lack of agreeableness may drive others away, but if disageeable
| people also want less socialization, they might not be more
| lonely than agreeable people.
|
| I personal think I'm pretty agreeable, but it would take a lot
| for me to feel lonely, so even if I were very disagreeable, I
| imagine I'd still have enough people around to suit me.
| eCa wrote:
| Quite a leap from "I'm agreeable but prefers to be alone" to
| "disagreeable people prefers to be more alone than agreeable
| people".
| tikhonj wrote:
| My understanding is that the point of the Big Five model is
| that the design was the other way around--we _started_ by
| looking at how answers to personality-related questions
| naturally clustered, then we gave names to those clusters. We
| define "agreeableness" because a particular set of
| answers/preferences/etc were correlated and could be
| _interpreted_ as "agreeableness".
|
| Of course, there are limitations to this kind of approach and
| there's been a lot of research and refining done on top of this
| --not being an expert, I'm not familiar with it--but the core
| of the Big Five model is observational, not tautological.
| paulpauper wrote:
| not personality trait obviously, but in terms of success IQ
| probably matters more than big 5. I think personality can be
| improved or changed though effort but intelligence cannot.
| Someone who is introverted can make an effort to be extroverted
| in situations where it matters.
| [deleted]
| austincheney wrote:
| Is there data on that?
|
| Perceptions of intelligence are variable to practice and
| preparation if the measure is nonrandomized convergent
| standardized tests, which is not IQ but is the more accepted
| assessment of intelligence. IQ only seems to matter up to 135
| after which other factors become more dominant in determining
| success.
| paulpauper wrote:
| https://www.vox.com/2016/5/25/11683192/iq-testing-
| intelligen...
|
| I look at it like this, for creative, intellectually
| demanding work IQ is a necessary but perhaps insufficient
| condition. You need to be smart to achieve success cause you
| are competing with other people, so smarter people will have
| an edge. Google is not hiring people with 90-110 iqs. So
| having a high IQ is needed to at least be sufficiently
| proficient in coding, to be considered for a good paying job,
| but not guarantee you will be hired, but being smart sure
| helps.
| the_dune_13 wrote:
| > high IQ is needed to at least be sufficiently proficient
| in coding,
|
| Should I even bother on what's the source of this claim?
| rkk3 wrote:
| Google hires no one within 1SD of the Avg IQ? This I find
| hard to believe.
| paulpauper wrote:
| for technical postitions, i am sure IQs cluser around
| 125-140
| rkk3 wrote:
| Top 2-3% of IQ seems very high... Remember everyone with
| IQ above 100 is above average and like you said in your
| other post, it is for the most part a
| threshold/satisfying criteria.
| austincheney wrote:
| I find it interesting that people are willing to invent
| data on the spot to qualify a bias.
| im3w1l wrote:
| Here's a thought. When you reach IQ 135 you start becoming
| "io-bound". But this is a function of the complexity of our
| society. As our society and technology gets more complicated
| the "skillcap" will shift upwards, and a higher IQ will be
| needed for full performance.
| epivosism wrote:
| Check out SMPY - here's an image of their results showing
| that academic output, patents, tenure, income continues to
| increase well beyond IQ 135. Details in the later links.
|
| https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-4b8ThyfDgzs/U29nQEBAQTI/AAAAAAAA
| E...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Study_of_Mathematically_Preco
| c...
|
| https://my.vanderbilt.edu/smpy/
|
| The obvious question is, if IQ (or whatever SAT is
| measuring) is irrelevant, why is it so predictive of
| lifetime academic output?
|
| Also, people try to attack the SAT as nothing more than
| test prep - but I don't think that argument works well
| because it supposes you can produce kids who score 700 on
| the math SAT before age 13; such a training program has
| never been observed.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Some amount of test prep is surely helpful in terms of
| understanding the test format and strategies, but it does
| seem (almost?) obvious that the SAT is actually measuring
| _something_ other than test prep.
|
| NB: SMPY qualifications for at least the early cohorts of
| the study are "before 13" (so, 12 or younger).
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| michaelcampbell wrote:
| Many recent studies related to "grit", determination, practice
| and effort vs "talent" seem to refute this entirely.
|
| They could just be out to sell books though, too; I don't have
| a strong opinion either way.
| dandanua wrote:
| I would say it's the opposite - intellect can be trained by
| practice and hard work, tough it's unlikely that you'll become
| a genius. But changing your personal temperament looks
| impossible to me. It's like changing software vs hardware, the
| latter is obviously harder.
|
| Sure, a smart introvert can learn how to act like an extrovert.
| But this will never be natural to him and will cause an
| additional cognitive load.
| jcims wrote:
| I'm just amazed that we're still happy to condense one of the
| most complex phenomena, if not *the* most complex phenomenon
| that we were aware of into a single scalar performance value.
| sokoloff wrote:
| It seems a convenient shorthand. Intelligence is surely a
| multi-dimensional vector, but it's convenient in a lot of
| circumstances to talk about its magnitude.
|
| "All models are wrong; some models are useful."
| orthoxerox wrote:
| > Intelligence is surely a multi-dimensional vector
|
| There's a single component responsible for almost half of
| the difference:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/G_factor_(psychometrics)
| jcims wrote:
| This is just another layer of aggregation, emphasis mine:
|
| >It is a variable that _summarizes_ positive correlations
| among different cognitive tasks, reflecting the fact that
| an individual 's performance on one type of cognitive
| task _tends to_ be comparable to that person 's
| performance on other kinds of cognitive tasks.
| fighterpilot wrote:
| IQ tests don't do that. They give you different scores for
| verbal etc.
|
| It's useful to put it into one dimension though because all
| those different scores are quite correlated. A well
| functioning brain is usually generally just good at many
| different things.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Money is another scalar value which matters a lot.
| Reimersholme wrote:
| I guess "emotional stability" is an inverted rebranding of
| neuroticism as it's usually known?
| anbende wrote:
| Psychologist here. Yes, that is correct. Without the inversion,
| it is sometimes also referred to as "emotionality" or even
| "negative emotionality". "Neuroticism" sounds pejorative to
| many.
| doggodaddo78 wrote:
| I need more emotional stability (inverse of neuroticism) and less
| conscientiousness.
|
| Fine-tune your agreeableness to suit income or popularity, as
| needed.
|
| I wonder what a rich, intelligent artist's traits look like. :)
| ZoomZoomZoom wrote:
| >I wonder what a rich, intelligent artist's traits look like.
| :)
|
| Unfortunately, that's a "chose 2" situation. :)
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| Pretty much any sort of artist that has to consistently
| produce long term could fit this. Examples that come to mind
| are the writer for Garfield comics, the South Park guys, etc.
| massysett wrote:
| "Broadly speaking, they are more happy, successful, intelligent,
| creative, and popular."
|
| This reads like an extrovert's life wish list - particularly
| "popular," but even "happy" and "creative." I disagree that
| someone who exhibits these characteristics is somehow "better" or
| is living a better life.
| periheli0n wrote:
| Are these personality types really scientifically grounded?
|
| I once was sort of compelled to take a Myers-Briggs test and I
| found it utterly flawed. So much of one's personality depends on
| the contact and environment, yet Myers-Briggs wants to force you
| into one type.
|
| Making things way too simple. But maybe simple is what was sought
| here rather than really resolving personality.
| clairity wrote:
| it's claimed that myers-briggs is reliably repeatable, but my
| personal experience contradicts this, with a flip-flopping of 3
| of the 4 attributes over time. it doesn't seem too reliable to
| me.
| periheli0n wrote:
| Yes, my experience exactly. I could imagine myself in
| different situations suiting different answers, and therefore
| having different personalities.
|
| That might even make sense but then it's not a description of
| personality, but of context-dependent behaviour. Only useful
| within a defined context.
| anbende wrote:
| That's a good question, and your reaction to the Myers-Briggs
| is justified! It is not evidence-based and is roundly rejected
| by modern personality psychology. The work the author of this
| piece was describing on the other-hand is one of the most well-
| researched phenomena in the history of psychology.
|
| It is based on a massive amount of research looking at clusters
| of personality adjectives found in dozens of languages that
| tend to cluster along five dimensions. And the same five
| clusters are found in virtually all languages (sometimes to
| include a 6th cluster often called "honesty/humility").
|
| And to your point about types, this system doesn't assign types
| to people, but instead places them on a continuous dimension
| that is considered to be much more useful.
|
| And to your point about complexity, the 5 dimensions are higher
| level structures. Within each dimension is a branching tree of
| complexity that is where the current work lies.
|
| Further reading:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexical_hypothesis
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits
| periheli0n wrote:
| Thank you for this deep answer, and for confirming my
| impression of Myers-Briggs!
|
| I can see how a continuous scale can already fix a few
| issues. However, isn't it still too simplistic to say
| "personality feature X correlates with real-life success
| measure Y?"
|
| Take for example "Openness". It's not hard to imagine how the
| very same person can be very open with one group of people,
| but act totally differently in another group.
|
| Is Openness then really a feature of personality? Or maybe
| rather a description of the social behaviour of one person in
| a specific context?
| anbende wrote:
| >Is Openness then really a feature of personality? Or maybe
| rather a description of the social behaviour of one person
| in a specific context?
|
| This is a great question! And it touches on what's call the
| "person-situation" debate, first popularized by Walter
| Michel[1]. Essentially there was a major debate about
| whether traits were a thing or we should just be focused on
| context-specific behavior. Mischel believed that traits
| weren't useful, and situations ruled.
|
| In many ways this debate has been resolved by the "person
| as a density distribution" [2]. People do vary a lot
| within, and that variation is vitally important. However,
| their average or "set point" upon which they vary is also
| important and predictive.
|
| When we talk about the correlation between a trait and some
| external marker, we are only looking at correlations with
| averages or set-points, which as you mention is only a
| limited picture of that person, but it is still useful and
| valuable to look at. For example, I'm a fairly open person.
| This means that on average I'm more open in more
| situations. And this is predictive. It's also important to
| note that this only loosely predicts what I'll do in any
| particular situation or at any particular timepoint.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Person%E2%80%93situation_
| debat...
|
| [2] https://personality-
| project.org/revelle/syllabi/classreading...
| periheli0n wrote:
| Excellent--that sounds almost like a Bayesian approach,
| where personality corresponds to the prior, the context
| in which the person behaves is the likelihood, and the
| posterior is a distribution of behaviours.
|
| I guess a personal goal should then be to seek the
| context in which one's strengths match best the demands.
|
| I would suggest an MCMC approach but I guess the
| evaluation of individual outcomes is too costly to make
| this practical ;)
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| I think it's more "a personality is a function over the
| continuous domain of situations".
| periheli0n wrote:
| Not a contradiction! Bayesian inference is fully
| compatible with this definition.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| I don't see how you could get a prior over this without
| some really dubious assumptions. Plus, it's not what GGP
| described.
| namenotrequired wrote:
| > Take for example "Openness". It's not hard to imagine how
| the very same person can be very open with one group of
| people
|
| Lest this be misunderstood, note that "Openness" in this
| context is not about being honest. It is short for
| "Openness to Experience". Roughly, it's about creativity
| and curiosity.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Openness_to_experience
| periheli0n wrote:
| Good point. Still, a person that radiates creativity and
| curiosity in an environment that they find inspiring
| could be the exact opposite in another environment that
| they find less suitable. Hence my point that this
| personality trait stuff is at least as much dependent on
| context as on personal traits.
| planet-and-halo wrote:
| That's widely accepted as part of personality theory. The
| idea is that you have some "base setting," not that you
| will literally try anything (or refuse to try anything).
| It should also be noted that personality is one aspect of
| your psychology. It doesn't absolutely determine how you
| will behave under a given set of circumstances. Example:
| you might be very open to experience, but as a child you
| were bit by a dog. Next time you see a dog, your
| experience-based fear could easily overwhelm your natural
| curiosity.
| mycologos wrote:
| The author of the featured article has also written a defense
| of the Myers-Briggs system that argues against several of
| your points: https://dynomight.net/in-defense-of-myers-
| briggs.html
|
| (I'm not particularly invested in either model, but it is
| somewhat cute that the author of both pieces is the same.)
| [deleted]
| fsloth wrote:
| Myers-Briggs is pseudoscientific bs. The only reason it's so
| famous is that it's an easy snake oil to peddle by consultants.
|
| It was literally concocted by two persons without scientific
| method or context. It's fiction. Some fiction mirrors life
| quite well, but that does not turn it into a scientific tool.
|
| The only time Myers-Briggs has some utility is as a
| facilitation tool when a consultant needs to convince a
| roomfull of people that diverse teams are good, and that
| cognitive diversity is an asset and what it might look like.
| I.e. it's a usefull proxy for a scientific measure when we've
| been brainwashed to trust only high-modernist fantasies and
| have no space for actual humanist rumination.
| periheli0n wrote:
| lol this was _precisely_ the context in which I was exposed
| to this test :D
| danaris wrote:
| The Big 5 Personality Inventory is pretty much the gold
| standard in the field of psychology. The traits it measures are
| reasonably (though not completely) stable over a person's
| lifetime, have decent predictive power, and have been tested
| and studied rigorously for decades now. They have nearly
| nothing in common with Meyers-Briggs.
|
| In particular, each of the traits is measured on a separate
| spectrum--none of them are treated as binary the way M-B does,
| and they don't seek to pigeonhole you based on your levels of
| the different traits into some oversimplified bucket.
| minikites wrote:
| Myers-Briggs is astrology for office workers. You can read
| anything into it, helpful or unhelpful.
| mettamage wrote:
| See [1]. It's a lot, I don't fully understand it myself. I find
| it convincing enough to say it's scientifically grounded, in
| the linguistic sense at least. I wouldn't say this research is
| grounded in the biological sense (not the five factor model
| anyway, perhaps the concept of "personality" is though).
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits#Hi...
| periheli0n wrote:
| Thanks for the link. So if I read this correctly, these
| personality traits refer to how one is perceived by others.
| OK, I guess that makes sense.
|
| But it would be total nonsense to conclude about personality
| traits from a self-taken test.
| justbored123 wrote:
| That is a problem of interpretation by amateurs more than a
| problem with the test itself. Myers-Briggs gives you
| PERCENTAGES of every trait, then it uses 4 letter labels to
| make things simpler for people, but you are supposed to
| understand that a person that scored 49% introvert in the
| introvert-extrovert spectrum is going to be far similar to a
| person that scored extrovert with 51% than to a person that
| scored introvert 10% because its a spectrum not an absolute
| value.
|
| That is the reason that modern tests like Big Five did away
| with the labels, because people were incapable to reason beyond
| them and kept making dumb assumptions like "He scored introvert
| so he must hate parties or I scored introvert the first time
| but extrovert the second (a potential 1% difference between the
| labels without the percentages associated to them) so the test
| is crap".
| david_allison wrote:
| > you are supposed to understand that a person that scored
| 49% introvert in the introvert-extrovert spectrum is going to
| be far similar to a person that scored extrovert with 51%
| than to a person that scored introvert 10% because its a
| spectrum not an absolute value.
|
| This doesn't fit well with my mental model of how Myers
| Briggs works (regardless of the veracity of Myers Briggs).
|
| As I understand it: Myers Briggs maps to the Jungian
| cognitive functions[0] and the side that you fall on the J/P
| dichotomy will invert these.
|
| An INTJ would be: Introverted Intuition, Extraverted
| Thinking, Introverted Feeling, Extraverted Sensing
|
| An INTP would be: Introverted Thinking, Extraverted
| Intuition, Introverted Sensing, Extraverted Feeling
|
| Getting near the 50% mark on the J/P aspect appears to show
| low confidence in any part of the model
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jungian_cognitive_functions
| pseudalopex wrote:
| Myers and Briggs were inspired by Jung. And some
| enthusiasts insist on interpreting it how you do. But
| basically every test treats the axes as continuous.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| guerrilla wrote:
| It's impossible to take this seriously when it's using profiles
| of random famous people as if that means anything. If that wasn't
| done by actually interviewing them, then however it was done, the
| methodology diverges and is already invalid but even worse, it
| was just third-person subjective nonsense.
|
| Edit: Why would Reimersholme's comment be buried? Neuroticism is
| what it's usually called in Big Five. [1][2]
|
| 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroticism
|
| 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits
| kijin wrote:
| They probably inverted the neuroticism scale in order to make
| it consistent with the other four traits, most of which have
| positive connotations unlike neuroticism. One might argue about
| the labels, but there's nothing wrong with inverting a scale
| for convenience of presentation.
|
| The personality traits of famous historical people are well
| established and widely available online. I have no idea how
| accurate they are, but they do fulfill their role as easily
| recognizable stereotypes. In any case the author probably used
| a publicly available dataset and didn't just make it up.
| stephc_int13 wrote:
| I have a really hard time taking this kind of "analysis"
| seriously.
|
| It does not seems rigorous or scientific at all, and I don't
| understand how it can be visible here on HN, to be honest...
| emdubbelyou wrote:
| If you're going to post a comment of skepticism, please try to
| support your argument with actual criticism. Currently, all I
| have is your opinion on the article, which is in contrast to
| the # of people who upvoted the post.
|
| I can easily say that I DO think the article is rigorous and
| scientific but then we'd disagree without any insight into what
| we disagree on.
| stephc_int13 wrote:
| I did that on purpose, simply to voice my opinion.
|
| Let's say I vote to see less article like this one on HN.
|
| This is merely annoying, not enough to warrant a full debunk.
| johnwheeler wrote:
| i suspect this is horseshit off the top of this guy's head.
| hawthornio wrote:
| The premise of this article is ridiculous. Your personality
| doesn't cause you to be autistic. The personality traits are
| almost certainly caused by the "outcomes" the author is
| assessing, or both are caused by some other hidden variables.
| Personality tests are just reading the tea leaves of self-
| reported questionnaires.
| michaelcampbell wrote:
| I thought the article was quite clear it was about
| correllations, not causation.
| planet-and-halo wrote:
| The book "Personality" by Nettle gives the best layman's summary
| of the Big 5 model I've found. What I particularly like about it,
| beyond the summary of each aspect, is the way he frames it in
| terms of evolution and why being on one end of the scale for a
| trait is not "better." Agreeableness is probably the easiest one
| to understand from an evolutionary perspective. If you worry a
| lot about other people's needs, you're more likely to make them
| happy and reap the benefits of reciprocity, but you're also less
| likely to directly pursue your own needs. So it goes with the
| other traits too: being on different parts of the spectrum come
| with advantages and disadvantages from a reproductive standpoint.
| Conscientiousness and Neuroticism are the two traits most
| correlated with financial success in the modern world, but they
| had downsides in an ancestral environment and even in our modern
| world can have negative effects e.g. on personal happiness and
| wellbeing.
| [deleted]
| justnotworthit wrote:
| Author claims ENFJ is opposite of ISTP in MB. I thought it was
| the groupings (first two, second two, and/or/? combination) that
| formed opposites, not the individual letters.
| Wronnay wrote:
| I can't read a text based on the Big Five seriously. My
| personality changed in many ways over the years. It's kinda like
| your political position changes over the years.
|
| Someone fresh from college might be introverted and on the left
| political spectrum because he has no money, but to be successful
| he might get extroverted and when he has much money, he might get
| more on the right political spectrum.
|
| How can something which basically assumes that people don't
| change get so popular?! People change all the time, personality
| changes all the time.
| anbende wrote:
| Hi there, psychologist here who has done research in
| personality including looking at the Big Five. It's not my
| personal favorite set of constructs, but I have great respect
| for the body of work supporting it.
|
| Modern personality theory in no way assumes that personality
| doesn't change over time. It finds instead that personality
| tends to be "somewhat stable over time" which means that
| personality doesn't vary massively from week to week or month
| to month but can definitely shift across the lifespan. In fact,
| here's a large study looking at exactly that (though cross-
| sectional which means that many effects could be a function of
| age cohorts rather than actual change).
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2562318/
|
| Regarding your hypothetical introverted recent college grad,
| these kinds of shifts can and do happen, but massive shifts in
| personality appear to be quite rare. What's more, modern work
| in the area has found that "within-person" variability is much
| greater than "between-persons" variability meaning that as
| individuals we express a wide range of behaviors. For example,
| I might be more extraverted at work and more introverted among
| friends or vice versa, showing internal variation. That said,
| we can talk about a person's average level of a trait like
| extraversion and that average is meaningful and predictive.
|
| As to your point, both kinds of change can and do happen, but
| changing our behavioral approach to life tends to be gradual
| and slow for most people.
| mettamage wrote:
| What do you think about psilocybin's effect on openness? Are
| there other studies that produce such marked changes in
| personality?
| anbende wrote:
| That's a very interesting question, but unfortunately it's
| not really my area.
|
| If you'll permit me to speculate a bit:
|
| I do clinical work as well, and I'd say that therapy
| produces some personality change if done long enough, but
| it's not a massive shift in most cases, though even small
| changes can make a big difference over time.
|
| Unfortunately, trauma and hardship can also have a big
| impact on people's personality and average behavior. Going
| to war or prison or suffering great loss can have a big
| impact.
| raspasov wrote:
| I enjoyed reading your responses in this thread very much!
|
| Do you have a "favorite set of constructs"?
| pishpash wrote:
| Side note, maybe as technology removes barriers to access to
| resources that used to be gated by social graces, extroversion
| and agreeableness are changing in importance. In other words, in
| a world where machines outcompete humans, what used to be
| successful traits among humans aren't going to be always the
| fittest in the new environment.
| colechristensen wrote:
| The question behind all of these theories of personality is "Does
| the measured quantity have any underlying form?" That is, are you
| measuring something "real" or just coming up with arbitrary
| classifications.
|
| "How you answer this survey correlates this well to outcomes" is
| perhaps useful, but binning answers into personality types with
| common names is questionable.
|
| It all seems to be a little bit too far down the road of
| searching for things to name and classify.
| pishpash wrote:
| To the extent that PCA of survey results exhibit
| dimensionality, that is real. The underlying basis might be
| modes of social dynamics or clusters in genetics or language.
| It would be surprising to find that totally unconstrained
| random processes generated patterns like this.
| m0llusk wrote:
| What may be more interesting are the correlations between
| personality types and occupations. For example, teachers tend to
| have a high level of empathy. That seems like it could be more
| interesting and rewarding to investigate. Similarly, pilots,
| cops, and soldiers all tend to have high levels of aggression.
| Arguably most interesting is the beer industry where brewers tend
| to be extremely open to a fault while distributors tend not to
| have much openness and score high on other factors.
|
| Taken together this tends to indicate that the overall life
| outcome correlations are as usual as likely to mislead as inform.
| What makes more sense is to see how individuals match with roles
| and tasks and how diverse individuals can cooperate to make the
| most of each of their best talents.
| analog31 wrote:
| Granted this isn't a peer reviewed paper, but still, a blog that
| gives personality scores for historical people like presidents
| can't be based on data.
|
| If IQ is important, maybe it's just that intelligent people know
| how to take personality tests.
| wombatmobile wrote:
| > If IQ is important, maybe it's just that intelligent people
| know how to take personality tests.
|
| What even is intelligence?
|
| I know that IQ is what IQ tests measure, but what is
| intelligence?
|
| People say my dog is intelligent, but only in response to her
| displays of obedience to my commands, I've noticed. I silently
| translate their comment about intelligence to mean "your dog is
| obedient."
|
| Does an IQ test measure what makes good employees?
|
| Does an IQ test measure what makes good employers?
|
| Does an IQ test measure what makes good entertainers?
|
| Does an IQ test measure what makes good leaders?
|
| Does an IQ test measure what makes good entrepreneurs?
|
| Does an IQ test measure what makes good spouses?
|
| Does an IQ test measure what makes good neighbours?
|
| Does an IQ test measure what makes good friends?
|
| If an IQ test could measure some factor that leads to
| happiness, I might consider that factor to be "intelligence".
| But the things that make people happy vary on an individual
| basis, as well as over time and circumstances, so how could
| that be encapsulated in one static test for everybody?
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| I think general intelligence is about your ability to absorb
| and synthesize information.
|
| Higher intelligence = fast learner + better at joining
| seemingly unrelated dots.
| erikerikson wrote:
| > "What even is intelligence?"
|
| I've found the following a fairly good definition:
|
| Efficient cross-domain optimization
|
| In less coded language: the ability to gain more benefit
| across many areas of value from the same or fewer resources.
| wombatmobile wrote:
| > the ability to gain more benefit across many areas of
| value from the same or fewer resources.
|
| Your use of the term "more benefit" is clever because it
| avoids definition, and cannot be disproven.
|
| If you'd said "more money" or "more power" or "more
| calories" or "more resources" the notion of benefit could
| be directly assessed, although different people would
| assess each proposition differently, some positively, and
| others negatively, because the value of "more" of anything
| is circumstantial and a matter of taste.
|
| Sometimes less is more.
| erikerikson wrote:
| Indeed, sometimes less is more. More benefit stands in
| for the more technical term "utilitons" or units of value
| or utility. Less is more is adding description to what
| contingently has a higher expected or observed utiliton
| value. Between explaining all that or using "more
| benefit", I opted for less ;D
| paulpauper wrote:
| I am sure someone with an IQ of 130 probably has better luck
| understanding coding than someone with an IQ of 100. To say
| that IQ is ill-defined and of no predictive power, is wrong.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| That's just it, does IQ denote ability to rationally think?
| Can you be highly irrational and also have a high IQ,
| because if so then I'd argue that the 130 IQ person would
| struggle more than the 100 IQ person if the latter were
| better able to think rationally.
|
| We might assume that IQ translates directly to ability to
| reason through a problem, but that may not be the case. An
| 8 lane highway is useless if you're riding a skateboard.
| clairity wrote:
| > "What even is intelligence?"
|
| to me, intelligence is simply the ability to discern (useful)
| connections between phenomena, basically being able to
| accurately inter-/extra-polate from observation through time
| and space, or alternatively, the ability to predict the
| future (for relatively finite values of future). it's kinda
| like the derivative of knowledge, and wit is the derivative
| of intelligence.
|
| an IQ test measures a very narrow slice of that. it doesn't
| encompass humor, art, or sports/dance (dynamic/kinetic
| ability) for instance.
|
| with dogs (or other pets), the intelligent part is their
| ability to parse your alien communications into desired
| responses, similar to learning a foreign language without an
| instructor, an interpreter, or a reference available.
| doggodaddo78 wrote:
| IQ is good if it doesn't exceed other people's by more than
| about 2 std devs, then people resent you.
|
| (IQ is a fuzzy, poorly-measured "quality" that doesn't have a
| whole lot of meaning other than some interpretation of taking a
| particular test.)
| anotha1 wrote:
| > maybe it's just that intelligent people know how to take
| personality tests
|
| Also why ADHD meds, prescribed legally, are rampant on college
| campuses.
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| While it seems that we're not in a position to discuss this
| issue, I am extremely interested (and worried) about the rise
| of prescription stimulants _specifically_ as it relates to
| meritocracy and credentialing.
| agumonkey wrote:
| I have yet to find any IQ test with any value whatsoever. Maybe
| the one I had in school, and the one on the web are bogus, but
| if it's not the case, finding small patterns and recognizing
| space transformed shapes are really the ground level of
| thinking. No multilinear or non linear relationship, no fractal
| / self similarity. That's not even HS abstraction levels.. I
| really don't get it.
| nbardy wrote:
| I'd lay the blame on the increasingly narrow and industrialized
| education system.
| austincheney wrote:
| Conscientiousness is by far the least popular but has the highest
| income. That is not at all surprising. Objectivity, right and
| wrong as reflected by a balance of measures, is a rare and
| unpopular innate personality trait that allows for making micro-
| decisions many people might find abhorrent, more typically based
| upon evidence.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| Conscientiousness isn't a measure of objectivity, it's a
| measure of reliability, the capacity to work diligently and
| adhere to rules. It correlates with income well because we're
| living in a very institutionalized society that rewards people
| who adhere to rules and follow expectations.
|
| In the US it's basically what upper middle-class WASP culture
| is and it sustains a large share of income because it's very
| good at reproducing itself and managing organisations, it's all
| the lawyers, and bureaucrats, politicians and administrators
| and so on, it's all the people who're really good at making
| schedules.
| kijin wrote:
| According to the same chart, conscientious people also seem to
| perform significantly better in college than everyone else. In
| the modern world, better GPAs are usually correlated with
| higher income.
|
| Interestingly, those people don't seem to do particularly well
| in the SAT. Perhaps their abilities are "unlocked" to the
| fullest only after they get into college and get a chance to
| make independent decisions.
| jollybean wrote:
| Getting good grades is a grind.
|
| Being 'sufficiently smart' - plus - being organized,
| diligent, applying yourself consistently, will probably get
| you better grades than being a disorganized genius.
|
| If everyone had the same IQ, then University grades would be
| actually a really, really good measure of raw
| conscientiousness.
| paulpauper wrote:
| but some courses are easier than others though
| fallingknife wrote:
| Grades are shockingly dependent on completing busywork on
| time, so I am not at all surprised that conscientiousness
| beats intelligence there.
| the-dude wrote:
| > Perhaps their abilities are "unlocked" to the fullest
|
| My impression is conscientious people work within the system
| and don't toe the line.
|
| edit: disclosure, I am highly unconscientious, didn't finish
| uni etc.
| sokoloff wrote:
| "Toe the line" is pretty much a synonym to work within the
| system.
| the-dude wrote:
| Ah, right! Not a native speaker, got that wrong-way-round
| and double-up.
|
| Thanks.
| sokoloff wrote:
| No problem. I am a native speaker and it seems a weird
| expression to me as well (so much that I had to look it
| up to be sure). I'd expect it to mean what your original
| usage was.
|
| Don't get me started on "flammable vs inflammable" vs
| "accurate vs inaccurate" ;)
| the-dude wrote:
| Just for the record : I would put my toe over the line. A
| bit.
| DangitBobby wrote:
| My understanding of the phrase "toe the line" was to
| express that someone is technically within limits but is
| intentionally testing the boundaries of their limits, but
| apparently this is not accurate. TIL.
| Judgmentality wrote:
| > Interestingly, those people don't seem to do particularly
| well in the SAT. Perhaps their abilities are "unlocked" to
| the fullest only after they get into college and get a chance
| to make independent decisions.
|
| Or maybe the SAT is just a shitty test.
| maxqin1 wrote:
| For whom?
|
| The real problem is that not all valuable paths can come to
| the same bottleneck.
|
| Med student? Well, the SAT might be a good indicator of how
| successful you'll be at completing a medical program in the
| US. Same thing for law.
|
| Are you the creative type? Then the SAT probably won't be
| as indicative of your future success.
| austincheney wrote:
| I have around a 148 IQ but scored only 1060 on the SAT.
| Clearly those two measures are not linked. This has not
| prevented me from earning a 4 year degree or becoming a
| software developer. I find writing software to be easy
| while many of my peers seem to struggle. In reflection
| personality and practice are all that have mattered. IQ
| isn't a significant consideration of comfort/confidence
| in writing software, a skill.
| kortex wrote:
| Indeed. SAT is basically "how good are you at cramming a
| bunch of relatively arbitrary information into your brain
| and regurgitating it in a high pressure, timed scenario".
| That is _a_ kind of intelligence, but there are very few
| occupations where that kind of intelligence is useful.
| Lawyers and doctors.
|
| Both the "intensely study something rather uninteresting"
| and "perform under high stress and time demand" are
| specific kinds of intelligence, and I happen to know many
| intelligent folks who are expressly bad at it. They don't
| "test well". Anecdotally, diligent study and fast-testing
| are anti-correlated in many of these smart folks.
| fighterpilot wrote:
| But they are linked. Studies have shown a very high
| correlation. One outlier doesn't change the high
| correlation.
| austincheney wrote:
| If those studies don't separate preparation from raw
| performance they only suggest a self-reinforcing bias
| different from capability. Any correlation then is purely
| anecdotal.
| fighterpilot wrote:
| The high correlation suggests that both preparation/study
| and raw intelligence are important in getting a high SAT
| score. If you sacrifice one of those two things, you'll
| get a low SAT score. If you have both, you'll get a high
| score.
| mycologos wrote:
| > cramming a bunch of relatively arbitrary information
| into your brain
|
| What? Most of the SAT is evaluating high school-level
| math, writing, and reading skills. It's not like they're
| asking you to memorize historical dates or names or poems
| or formulas. Maybe the relatively narrow part of the test
| on vocabulary falls into this category, but even those
| words are almost entirely things you'll just pick up if
| you like reading books. And, now that I'm looking into
| it, only 10 out of 52 questions in the reading section
| are even about vocabulary [1]. You can skip 9 of them and
| still get a 700 on reading/writing [2]. Assuming you get
| an 800 on math, that's a 98th percentile total score and
| a 90th percentile on reading/writing alone [3], with
| almost no vocabulary prep.
|
| I agree about the high pressure aspect, there doesn't
| seem to be a good way around that.
|
| [1] https://www.kaptest.com/study/sat/whats-tested-on-
| the-sat-vo...
|
| [2] https://blog.prepscholar.com/how-many-questions-can-
| you-skip...
|
| [3] https://blog.prepscholar.com/sat-percentiles-and-
| score-ranki...
| ex_amazon_sde wrote:
| SAT is more "how good AND MOTIVATED are you at cramming a
| bunch of relatively arbitrary information into your
| brain"
| LudwigNagasena wrote:
| SAT and IQ are strongly correlated, you are an outlier.
| [deleted]
| lr4444lr wrote:
| IQ strongly correlates with SAT score, IIRC. If you have
| a 148 IQ, I bet a capable tutor could train you to score
| a good deal higher than 1060.
| austincheney wrote:
| A good tutor and sufficient preparation time should be
| enough to transform anybody into an SAT expert. If that
| is the case and this indicates a person with low IQ can
| score high on the test then potentially everybody is
| potentially an outlier, which then isn't an outlier at
| all.
| maxqin1 wrote:
| > I have around a 148
|
| That's rather impressive, but I would double-check those
| numbers.
|
| For example, which IQ test? Was it recently updated? IQ
| tests are adjusted by as many as 10 points every 10 years
| [1]. Have you double verified with another test? How did
| you prepare for each?
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect
| austincheney wrote:
| I am not that concerned. The number is as important to me
| as my exceedingly unimpressive SAT score.
| saiya-jin wrote:
| well then it shouldn't be used as main point of your
| argument
| austincheney wrote:
| I think you are confusing a relevant but worthless data
| point for something of value. I guess there are people
| that attach emotional significance to such things, but
| it's just some number that made a valid argument.
|
| If I don't care and it's my number why do you or anybody
| else care? Why should I not use this number to make a
| valid argument?
| [deleted]
| akomtu wrote:
| I think a good IQ test would be finding isomorphic
| graphs. A typical question would be: here's a graph with
| 7 nodes, tell which of the 4 graphs below it matches.
| paulpauper wrote:
| they are positively correlated. your outlier does not
| invalidate the relation between the variables.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Perhaps the SAT is more like an IQ test (where a "quick wit"
| is advantageous), and college grades are based more on
| sustained performance, planning, meeting deadlines etc. These
| are very different things.
| jollybean wrote:
| I would say that's almost more disagreeable than conscientious.
|
| Conscientious can almost be better described as 'consistent',
| 'doing what you say you're gong to do', 'being responsible'.
|
| I think you might be hinting at the right thing ...
|
| .. but 'weighing evidence in a very highly deliberative,
| judicial fashion' - might not be the best example of that.
|
| _Extolling_ the Judgment, might even land on the disagreeable
| side. For example, the Judge who finds a supposed murderer
| 'not guilty' even with the mobs of people chanting 'guilty'
| outside the courthouse.
|
| I don't think 'disagreeableness' is necessarily even the right
| word, it's more like 'will have their own opinion even if it
| makes them unpopular'.
|
| I almost think that those Big 5 could be reoriented in a way
| that divides people as those inclined towards populist outcomes
| vs. those inclined towards judicial, principled, truthful ones.
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