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How Personality Tests Work · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from how Stuff Works
0:04
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
0:13
Speaker 1: There's Charles W Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry over there, and
0:17
Speaker 1: this is Stuff you Should Know. Yeah, a couple of
0:22
Speaker 1: I T J. This is I don't remember what I am.
0:27
Speaker 1: We've taken it before. How Stuff Works hosted it years back.
0:31
Speaker 1: Do you remember. Yeah, we had, like many companies do,
0:34
Speaker 1: as you'll see, we had when we were under Discoveries
0:38
Speaker 1: tender Wing. They paid for someone to come to our
0:41
Speaker 1: office and administer the Myers Briggs personality tests at gunpoint. Yeah,
0:48
Speaker 1: I don't remember, but I'm pretty sure I was in
0:50
Speaker 1: E n F P. I. I don't remember what I was.
0:55
Speaker 1: I'll probably say like three different things as we go
0:57
Speaker 1: through this one, like just looking at it again, pretty
1:00
Speaker 1: sure I was an E n F B. Can he
1:03
Speaker 1: stands for pisces right? Or pooper? Yeah, let's see extroverted intuitive? Okay,
1:16
Speaker 1: what is the F stand for feeling? Is a spoiler? Yeah,
1:20
Speaker 1: feeling pooper? So we're what we're talking about where it
1:23
Speaker 1: sounds like we're saying strings of letters, They actually do
1:26
Speaker 1: make sense if you're familiar with what Chuck just said,
1:28
Speaker 1: the Myers Briggs type inventory, which if you are in
1:33
Speaker 1: corporate America and have been a part of corporate America
1:37
Speaker 1: for more than probably three years, there's probably a pretty
1:41
Speaker 1: good likelihood that you've taken the Myers Briggs type inventory
1:46
Speaker 1: for sure. Like it's really widespread. I love it. I
1:50
Speaker 1: saw something like percent of companies in America use it.
1:55
Speaker 1: It's a lot. Yeah, it was eighty nine of the
1:58
Speaker 1: Fortune one use it, right, And then I saw another
2:02
Speaker 1: status It was from two thousand one though, so I'm
2:05
Speaker 1: not sure how current it is, right, but they said that, um,
2:11
Speaker 1: the the I think British companies somewhere between ten and
2:18
Speaker 1: of British companies use them. So I mean it's who knows.
2:22
Speaker 1: It's pretty wild. Guess that sounds like. But once they
2:26
Speaker 1: have their own. No, the Myers Briggs test, they don't
2:31
Speaker 1: call it a test, as we'll see, but the the
2:33
Speaker 1: test um is, it's worldwide, it's translated into tons of
2:39
Speaker 1: different languages. They and no, it's it's the Myers Briggs test.
2:43
Speaker 1: And there's tons of knockoffs. There's tons of personality tests
2:46
Speaker 1: in general, which really is the larger umbrella the Myers
2:50
Speaker 1: Briggs test falls under, but it's probably the most famous
2:53
Speaker 1: of all time, at least as far as pop culture goes. Yeah,
2:56
Speaker 1: we're gonna hit on everything from ror Shack to the
2:59
Speaker 1: Myers Briggs, but we're gonna hit on them. But the
3:03
Speaker 1: m B T I definitely UM is more of the
3:05
Speaker 1: focus of this one because of its ubiquity, right, because
3:09
Speaker 1: most people know it, and because it's uh one of
3:12
Speaker 1: the overlooked past times in the United States to take
3:17
Speaker 1: pot shots at the Myers Briggs type inventory. Sure, it's fun.
3:23
Speaker 1: Uh So categorizing one's personality is nothing new. Uh, and
3:29
Speaker 1: that's what these tests aim to do. Um for various
3:32
Speaker 1: reasons which will go over later. But um, going back,
3:36
Speaker 1: and this was a Grabster article, correct, that's right, so
3:39
Speaker 1: you know it's good. Yeah, and Grabster was just our
3:42
Speaker 1: show in Toronto. Yeah he was for the second time
3:46
Speaker 1: he stood up and like did that victory shake? Did
3:49
Speaker 1: he do that? No, he did. I'm a big fan
3:52
Speaker 1: of that. That's old school. Oh it is. It's a
3:54
Speaker 1: good way to go. It looks like you should be
3:56
Speaker 1: wearing those dolphins shorts and just having crossed the finish
3:59
Speaker 1: line and then you're doing that. Um. So Yeah, it's
4:03
Speaker 1: nothing new trying to categorize personalities. Um, way back in
4:06
Speaker 1: the day, Uh, I know, on our Grave Robbing Live
4:10
Speaker 1: Grave Robbing episode, we talked about the four humors, and
4:13
Speaker 1: we've talked about them before, um, before medical science was
4:17
Speaker 1: kind of a real thing. Um, it was an early attempt.
4:22
Speaker 1: They talked about the four fluids, the four humors black bio,
4:26
Speaker 1: yellow bile, phlegm, and blood. Uh and and imbalance in
4:31
Speaker 1: those will cause disease. But they were also this is
4:34
Speaker 1: something I didn't know, These are also linked to uh,
4:38
Speaker 1: corresponding personality types. Yeah. So like the word melancholy in English,
4:44
Speaker 1: it's an adaptation of the Greek words I believe for
4:49
Speaker 1: black bile. There it is and and melancholy personalities were
4:54
Speaker 1: associated with an overabundance of black bile. And Um, basically
4:59
Speaker 1: you're alancholi, you're you're a depressed person, or you're very
5:02
Speaker 1: reserved or quiet. And for thousands of years people thought
5:07
Speaker 1: guy's got a lot of black bile. Yeah, that explains
5:10
Speaker 1: his personality. The other ones are pretty pretty um interesting too,
5:14
Speaker 1: like flag matic, uh flegmatic, I've seen flag I've heard
5:20
Speaker 1: flag magic. I've seen it too. So like when you
5:23
Speaker 1: cough something up, you call it flag him. Sometimes it
5:27
Speaker 1: depends if it had like a lot of extra chunks
5:30
Speaker 1: in it. It's flags But flam plegmatic, I say, flegmatic.
5:35
Speaker 1: That's very laid back. Did you know that? Well, yeah,
5:38
Speaker 1: because I looked all these up, um, because sanguine is
5:41
Speaker 1: one of my favorite words. Um. And that's this is Hippocrates,
5:45
Speaker 1: by the way. He kind of further refined these concepts
5:48
Speaker 1: of the temperament. So melancholic, flegmatic, sanguine, and what is
5:53
Speaker 1: it caleric? Yeah, choleric, yeah, caleric. Caleric is like irritable
6:01
Speaker 1: and short and terse and curt Yeah. But the thing is,
6:05
Speaker 1: there's something weird here, right if you are a thinking
6:10
Speaker 1: human being who is not in a vegetative state right now,
6:14
Speaker 1: and for all we know at this point in medical science,
6:18
Speaker 1: maybe even if you are in a vegetative state, you're
6:21
Speaker 1: probably thinking, Uh, it doesn't seem like anyone I've ever
6:25
Speaker 1: met is just flagmatic or just choleric, or just sanguine
6:31
Speaker 1: or just melancholy. Sometimes I'm all four of those things.
6:35
Speaker 1: Sometimes I go through those things all four in a day,
6:39
Speaker 1: depending on how weird the day is. Sometimes I go
6:41
Speaker 1: through all four of those within the course of one
6:43
Speaker 1: happy hour. Sure, okay, right, And and that's kind of
6:48
Speaker 1: the point here, and it's also the basis of any
6:50
Speaker 1: criticism from this moment in the podcast here on out,
6:54
Speaker 1: is that this whole thing that started back with the
6:57
Speaker 1: four Humors and continues on to this in the guise
7:00
Speaker 1: of personality tests, is an attempt to take a human
7:05
Speaker 1: personality and say you're this, you're this one type, You're
7:10
Speaker 1: this type, this is your type, this is what you're like, right,
7:14
Speaker 1: And the human personality just too complex, too squishy, too
7:17
Speaker 1: jelly like to be boxed into one thing like that. Yeah,
7:22
Speaker 1: And we'll get into all the criticisms. So that definitely
7:24
Speaker 1: is the leading criticism that is, Ah, well, we'll say that, Um,
7:30
Speaker 1: that was a tease. It was good tease, because a
7:33
Speaker 1: flagmatic one. All these classifications though, um, that we talked
7:38
Speaker 1: about now are or most of them at least or
7:41
Speaker 1: drive late at the feet of one man when called
7:44
Speaker 1: young Yeah, who wrote a book called psychological types. How
7:49
Speaker 1: do you say it? Though? In in German? I don't know.
7:52
Speaker 1: It's um, oh, where is it? Let me see there
7:55
Speaker 1: it is. I I can't even begin to do it. Uh,
8:00
Speaker 1: psycho psycho sorry, psychologic is yes, psychological type. That's not fair.
8:09
Speaker 1: It's so tiny. That was the problem because you, oh yeah,
8:11
Speaker 1: I do ten point well you know me, you do
8:15
Speaker 1: like sixteen point times new Roman paper, and I don't
8:21
Speaker 1: want to waste it, but I also have to do
8:22
Speaker 1: my job. Maybe I should go double sided, but then
8:26
Speaker 1: my highlighter gets in the way. Oh yeah, it would
8:29
Speaker 1: be a problem. Everything would be highlighted. You might as
8:32
Speaker 1: well just dip the whole page and yellow ink or
8:34
Speaker 1: something exactly. Um. So, anyway, Young wrote this book, that
8:38
Speaker 1: book uh German, and had it translated to English a
8:43
Speaker 1: couple of years later, and he created these four categories
8:48
Speaker 1: uh sensation, intuition, thinking, and feeling. So those were his
8:55
Speaker 1: four that kind of most of these modern tests are
8:58
Speaker 1: based on in somewhere or another. Yeah, and um, it's
9:02
Speaker 1: really almost impossible that I guess we could just save
9:06
Speaker 1: all the criticisms for the end and just pile them on.
9:09
Speaker 1: But it's it's really tough to talk about the stuff
9:12
Speaker 1: and not like, as you present one fact, talk about
9:15
Speaker 1: the problem with that fact as it relates to modern incarnation.
9:19
Speaker 1: What do you think we should do? Should we just
9:20
Speaker 1: save them like you say, because I can buy my time,
9:24
Speaker 1: let's save the okay, and then you can just like
9:26
Speaker 1: I'm not even trying, like I'm not I'm not going
9:29
Speaker 1: crop circle here. I'm just saying like there's just there's
9:31
Speaker 1: just a lot wrong with this. But um, even before
9:34
Speaker 1: Young who created these the concept of the modern concept,
9:39
Speaker 1: i should say, of personality types, and he created the
9:42
Speaker 1: idea of introvert and extrovert, which say what you will
9:45
Speaker 1: about you And and a lot of psychologists have a
9:47
Speaker 1: lot to say about him, not necessarily the nicest things
9:50
Speaker 1: to say, but introversion and extra extra version is so
9:55
Speaker 1: widely accepted inside and out of the field of psychology
10:00
Speaker 1: that I mean, if that were his only contribution to
10:03
Speaker 1: the field, that's that's enough to to engrave it on
10:06
Speaker 1: your tombstone for sure. Yeah. And each of those um
10:09
Speaker 1: for psychological types he was talking about or modified by
10:14
Speaker 1: whether or not you're introverted or extroverted, they all kind
10:17
Speaker 1: of work together too. That was like the right, that
10:20
Speaker 1: was the main thing is how you how you approach
10:22
Speaker 1: life is introverted extrovert, and everything else is like a
10:25
Speaker 1: sub it's kind of a sub section of that or something. Yeah,
10:29
Speaker 1: And and one of the issues with this, and I
10:31
Speaker 1: don't think this is part of the criticism, but I
10:33
Speaker 1: was gonna say I thought we were saving he was.
10:36
Speaker 1: This was based on his ideas. It wasn't like he
10:41
Speaker 1: had all this research and all this data. He was
10:45
Speaker 1: a deep thinker and he sat around and and thoughts
10:48
Speaker 1: of these things, right exactly, and then he wrote entire
10:51
Speaker 1: books based on him. Yeah. But he's a very well
10:53
Speaker 1: respected psychoanalysts, and he was part of the early movement
10:58
Speaker 1: for psycho and elysis with Freud, they were they were
11:01
Speaker 1: colleagues or young was much younger, um. But they eventually
11:06
Speaker 1: said I don't like you anymore. Were parting ways. Um.
11:10
Speaker 1: But as as all as psychoanalysis was really kind of
11:14
Speaker 1: establishing itself, And if you want to know more about
11:17
Speaker 1: that background in the origins psychoanalysis, go listen to her
11:20
Speaker 1: how pr works the live show. We talked a lot
11:23
Speaker 1: about that. Um. But as this was going on and
11:26
Speaker 1: it was starting to kind of dominate the field of psychology,
11:30
Speaker 1: there was a whole other movement, a parallel movement that said,
11:34
Speaker 1: you know what, we think all that's a little mushy.
11:36
Speaker 1: We like the idea of being able to quantify psychology.
11:41
Speaker 1: And so even before Young there were guys like Alfred Bennet,
11:45
Speaker 1: who was one of the indirect fathers of the Intelligence
11:49
Speaker 1: test i Q test UM, a pair of researchers named
11:53
Speaker 1: Gray and wheel right um, and plenty of others who
11:56
Speaker 1: wanted to say no, no, no, no, you can study psychology.
12:00
Speaker 1: You can study things like the human personality, and you
12:03
Speaker 1: can type of fire, and you can add numbers. You
12:05
Speaker 1: can quantify this stuff, and in doing so, we will
12:10
Speaker 1: prove psychology as a science as well. So this, this
12:13
Speaker 1: whole movement to typify people and put them into convenient, um,
12:20
Speaker 1: almost numerical categories, came out of this urgent need to
12:26
Speaker 1: science to establish a scientific basis for psychology. Yeah, and
12:30
Speaker 1: Young Uh, he's kind of laid the table for this.
12:33
Speaker 1: And many years later, although not that many, um, there
12:37
Speaker 1: was a woman named Katherine Cook Briggs uh and she
12:41
Speaker 1: was working on this with her daughter, one Isabelle Briggs Myers.
12:47
Speaker 1: Think you see where this is going. Uh. This is
12:50
Speaker 1: post World War two when they women were kind of
12:53
Speaker 1: for the first time really going into the workforce in
12:56
Speaker 1: full uh and on mass and so they thought, well,
12:59
Speaker 1: maybe we can put together some personality types to find out, um,
13:03
Speaker 1: what kind of jobs these women might be suited for,
13:05
Speaker 1: what types of jobs they might enjoy. Um. So they
13:09
Speaker 1: started working together on this and um, as legend has it,
13:14
Speaker 1: the mom Catherine Briggs Cook Briggs, she was doing her
13:20
Speaker 1: thing and then saw Young's works and said, I gotta
13:24
Speaker 1: start over. This is this is the stuff. She had
13:26
Speaker 1: already been working on a personality test, but apparently, according
13:30
Speaker 1: to the legend, through her work into the fire I said,
13:34
Speaker 1: I'm starting from scratch because she's dramatic. She was a
13:37
Speaker 1: voracious reader, especially of um the psychology, the new psychology
13:43
Speaker 1: books that were coming out of Europe. She didn't read Young.
13:46
Speaker 1: She did well eventually, but yeah, and then it seems
13:49
Speaker 1: like it kind of came along later. Well, so, yeah,
13:51
Speaker 1: there's a there's kind of a weird discrepancy in the history.
13:55
Speaker 1: And I don't know if it's just it hasn't been
13:56
Speaker 1: covered right or if there is a weird discrepancy. But
13:59
Speaker 1: supposedly she initiated it, and so it would have been
14:03
Speaker 1: contemporary or shortly after Young's Psychology or Personality Types was
14:09
Speaker 1: translated into English in n So. But it was her
14:13
Speaker 1: daughter Isabelle who really took it and ran with it
14:17
Speaker 1: because of World War Two in the need for women
14:20
Speaker 1: in the workplace. Uh So they you know, kind of
14:25
Speaker 1: kept some of young stuff built on that kind of
14:28
Speaker 1: stripped some of it away, most notably a lot of
14:31
Speaker 1: the unconscious stuff. They might have thought that was a
14:34
Speaker 1: little too weird for you know, the modern American workforce.
14:38
Speaker 1: Uh So, what they ended up coming up with was
14:41
Speaker 1: the the m B t I Myers Briggs Type Indicator, right,
14:45
Speaker 1: very famously. Yeah, and they had they had a publishing
14:48
Speaker 1: arrangement with one group, I can't remember what they were called,
14:50
Speaker 1: but they thought it didn't do very well, and then
14:52
Speaker 1: in they went with another publishers C P P. And
14:57
Speaker 1: they're the current publishers of the Myers Briggs Type Indicator.
15:01
Speaker 1: And since then, that's when it's ubiquity, like just really spread,
15:06
Speaker 1: was starting in the seventies and and now it's just
15:10
Speaker 1: it's basically married to corporate America. Should we take a break, Sure,
15:14
Speaker 1: go get married to corporate America. As if we aren't already.
15:18
Speaker 1: All right, we'll come back and we'll talk a little
15:19
Speaker 1: bit about personality tests in general, and then focus in
15:23
Speaker 1: a little more on the m B T I S
15:28
Speaker 1: K a good shouldn't all right, So UM personality tests
15:52
Speaker 1: is just there are many many ways you can get
15:55
Speaker 1: evaluated psychologically by a professional. This is just one way,
15:59
Speaker 1: and you get your head measured with calipers and back
16:02
Speaker 1: in the day they didn't give you a bunch of
16:04
Speaker 1: jugs and see what you do. There's a lot of ways.
16:08
Speaker 1: But these tests generally, UM, as grabs her points out,
16:10
Speaker 1: falls into a couple of types, projective and objective. Projective
16:16
Speaker 1: tests or things like the roar check test where you're
16:19
Speaker 1: shown something some kind of stimulus and it's open to
16:24
Speaker 1: interpretation and you tell them what you think about it,
16:27
Speaker 1: and someone sits back very quietly and taps on a
16:29
Speaker 1: pad of paper and makes an evaluation. And then objective
16:34
Speaker 1: are more like these personality tests, their standardized assessments that
16:39
Speaker 1: people use UM and while it's subjective what you put down,
16:43
Speaker 1: they are then evaluated again by a professional. Right. But
16:48
Speaker 1: ultimately that objective name is a bit of misnomer because
16:52
Speaker 1: on the end of it it's still interpreted by a person,
16:56
Speaker 1: which is therefore makes it subjective, right, and which, depending
17:01
Speaker 1: on who you ask, is the fatal flaw of all
17:03
Speaker 1: personality tests. It should be the like a good songs
17:06
Speaker 1: from the seventies had a little parenthetical at the end
17:08
Speaker 1: of the title. Should just say subjective also in parentheses? Baby.
17:16
Speaker 1: Um So the Big five are and and this is
17:21
Speaker 1: the Big five. I get the feeling or the psychological
17:24
Speaker 1: tests that that legit psychologists are more in favor of
17:29
Speaker 1: over something like the m b t I that right. Yeah,
17:32
Speaker 1: it's not just there's tests to suss out the Big five,
17:34
Speaker 1: the Big five or the personality types of the field
17:37
Speaker 1: as psychology has come up with that. Yeah, but the
17:39
Speaker 1: tests that that you utilize, that right, they kind of
17:42
Speaker 1: think are more legit than the m b t I. Yeah,
17:44
Speaker 1: there's not a psychologist alive who uses the m b
17:48
Speaker 1: t I and their regular practice. There are not not
17:52
Speaker 1: not that not that are speaking up. I guarantee there's
17:55
Speaker 1: someone out there. Sure it's a freewheel and type. Where's she?
18:02
Speaker 1: Uh So? The Big five are extra version, agreeableness, openness
18:06
Speaker 1: to experience, conscientiousness, and neuroticism. Right. It sounds like it
18:12
Speaker 1: could be like a dating site thing that you fill out.
18:14
Speaker 1: It's funny every time I see or hear the word neuroticism,
18:18
Speaker 1: a bell goes off in my head, like thing just
18:22
Speaker 1: a silent bell. Yeah, I don't know what that means.
18:26
Speaker 1: I don't either, but it draws my attention to UM.
18:30
Speaker 1: So some of these tests, uh, I mean it depends
18:33
Speaker 1: on what it is that. They might not all call
18:35
Speaker 1: them by those exact words, but they're generally using they
18:38
Speaker 1: call them, you know, like I said, the Big Five. Yeah,
18:40
Speaker 1: and I was, I was looking into that Big five
18:42
Speaker 1: and um, this this site, I can't remember what it
18:46
Speaker 1: was called, but they were basically they're going over it
18:48
Speaker 1: like extra version is again just part of the scientific
18:52
Speaker 1: literature at this point. Um. Agreeableness is like whether you're
18:56
Speaker 1: how sympathetic or kind or affectionate you are? Concientiousness is
19:00
Speaker 1: are your organized? Are your thorough? You're the type who
19:03
Speaker 1: shows up on time? That kind of thing. Um neuroticism,
19:06
Speaker 1: which is some kind of sometimes called emotional stability. Um,
19:10
Speaker 1: how tense are you? How moody? How anxious? Uh? And
19:15
Speaker 1: then like openness to experience? Right, they sometimes call that
19:19
Speaker 1: intellect slash imagination? Do you have wide interests? Are you
19:22
Speaker 1: an imaginative person? Are you insightful? And this this site
19:26
Speaker 1: really went to a lot of pains to point out
19:29
Speaker 1: that what you would call these things. The big five
19:32
Speaker 1: personality traits are, as far as the psychologist is concerned,
19:37
Speaker 1: just one dimension of you, the human being, and that
19:42
Speaker 1: to get a clearer picture of you, they would also
19:44
Speaker 1: need to study your motivations, your emotions, your attitudes, your abilities,
19:48
Speaker 1: your self concepts, your social roles, autobiographical memories, your life stories,
19:53
Speaker 1: and if you're starting to put all these things together,
19:55
Speaker 1: then you can start to kind of approximate the person's personality.
20:00
Speaker 1: But it would just it takes a lot of study
20:03
Speaker 1: of an individual and these different components that make up
20:06
Speaker 1: their personality to get a clear picture. So I don't
20:09
Speaker 1: think there are any psychologists walking around saying the big
20:12
Speaker 1: five personality types are like the beginning and end of
20:15
Speaker 1: a personality. It's just if you put them together, you have, uh,
20:19
Speaker 1: just a sketch of somebody's personality, and you you should
20:22
Speaker 1: go much deeper if you're analyzing someone. Yeah, I think
20:25
Speaker 1: I used to think this stuff was a lot neater
20:28
Speaker 1: when I was younger, and now it kind of gives
20:30
Speaker 1: me a little anxiety. Oh yeah, yeah, Like I just
20:34
Speaker 1: I don't know as far as doing this to myself,
20:36
Speaker 1: and I still enjoy therapy, Like that's different, But I
20:39
Speaker 1: don't know, because every single one of these, Like my
20:42
Speaker 1: answer would be, well, it depends well, I think, I
20:44
Speaker 1: think also though um, and I don't mean to speak
20:47
Speaker 1: for you, but one of the issues that's that comes
20:50
Speaker 1: up for me is if somebody goes to you and says,
20:53
Speaker 1: you know you you you rate pretty high on the
20:56
Speaker 1: spectrum of neuroticism, Like that's obviously you're gonna obsess about
21:02
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff, especially if they're right. It can
21:04
Speaker 1: make you neurotic. But yeah, it's it's it's a boundary
21:07
Speaker 1: that somebody has just established for you that you may
21:10
Speaker 1: need feel the need to stay in because that's the
21:14
Speaker 1: boundary that you're bound by, whether you are or not,
21:17
Speaker 1: like this is my box, live in it. That would
21:20
Speaker 1: be the reason it raises anxiety for me. Yeah. My
21:23
Speaker 1: whole thing, like I said, though, is just depends every
21:25
Speaker 1: single question that I would get asked. Well, not everyone.
21:29
Speaker 1: Sometimes I'm pretty like set on something, but usually it's say,
21:33
Speaker 1: I don't know. It depends on the scenario. Am I
21:36
Speaker 1: more prone in a crowd to do X or Y?
21:39
Speaker 1: Maybe maybe not? Depends on my mood. So one one
21:44
Speaker 1: with these other personality tests and in the whole field
21:47
Speaker 1: in psychology of um studying traits personality traits in a
21:54
Speaker 1: quantitative way is called psychometrics. So with these tests, the
21:59
Speaker 1: more sophisticated ones, if they had a test taker like you,
22:03
Speaker 1: they're designed to get around that. So they're gonna ask
22:07
Speaker 1: a bunch of different questions about the same thing, but
22:10
Speaker 1: in different ways, coming from different directions, so that eventually,
22:13
Speaker 1: if you put all of them together and run them
22:16
Speaker 1: through statistical analysis, they're actually going to come up with
22:19
Speaker 1: your genuine answer, which is kind of one way or another.
22:22
Speaker 1: The other way they get around this um, that kind
22:25
Speaker 1: of hemming and hawing, I guess is um. By placing
22:31
Speaker 1: it on a spectrum, you're not being lumped into one
22:34
Speaker 1: category or another. It's here's one end of the spectrum,
22:38
Speaker 1: here's the other end of the spectrum, and based on
22:40
Speaker 1: your answers, you fall somewhere around the middle, like almost
22:42
Speaker 1: everybody does. If you look at psychometric tests, a legitimate
22:47
Speaker 1: psychometric test is going to basically look like a bell
22:50
Speaker 1: curve where most people are going to be distributed toward
22:53
Speaker 1: the middle. I think, what, that's why gives me anxiety?
22:56
Speaker 1: It's like, what's the point? Don't box me in it's
22:59
Speaker 1: a great question. UM. Well, I think the second half
23:03
Speaker 1: of this is a lot of what's the point, you know, Uh,
23:06
Speaker 1: so looking speaking on these tests to see if it's
23:10
Speaker 1: actually if there is a point, if it's a valid
23:13
Speaker 1: thing to do. Uh. There are a couple of measures
23:17
Speaker 1: that one must look at and that psychologists do look at.
23:20
Speaker 1: UM is it valid and is it reliable? Valid in
23:23
Speaker 1: the sense that it really is a pretty good reflection
23:26
Speaker 1: of Josh or Chuck or whoever. And is it reliable?
23:29
Speaker 1: So if we take this test tomorrow or a different
23:32
Speaker 1: test that's UM just you know, maybe different questions, will
23:37
Speaker 1: it reprove reproduce the same result? And that's a big deal.
23:41
Speaker 1: Like you're talking science and you're trying to have a
23:45
Speaker 1: foundation that says, no, this is science. It's not just
23:47
Speaker 1: a bunch of questions and hippie dippy questions that we're asking.
23:52
Speaker 1: If you really want real data and science behind it,
23:54
Speaker 1: you have to be able to reproduce it. Um. One
23:58
Speaker 1: of the other things too, that these tests are designed
24:01
Speaker 1: to do is to weed out fakers. We'll talk a
24:05
Speaker 1: lot more about the Minnesota Multi Phasic Personality Inventory UM,
24:11
Speaker 1: which is one of the big ones, probably the most
24:14
Speaker 1: taken personality test in the world. Um, and it has
24:19
Speaker 1: a lot of built in mechanisms, and apparently it's really
24:23
Speaker 1: good at detecting people who are faking they're faking a
24:26
Speaker 1: mental illness or who are trying to pretend that they
24:30
Speaker 1: aren't suffering from a mental illness. It's really good at
24:33
Speaker 1: detecting that because it's so exhaustive and um using statistical analysis.
24:39
Speaker 1: If somebody skewed really far one way or skewed really
24:43
Speaker 1: far the other, they're just immediately exposed as as gaming
24:47
Speaker 1: the tests as best they can. Yeah. And one way
24:49
Speaker 1: they do that, which is in its own way, its
24:52
Speaker 1: own little psychology experiment at least, is by telling you
24:57
Speaker 1: we have ways like you will be rooted rooted out
25:01
Speaker 1: and we will know. So they tell people that beforehand,
25:03
Speaker 1: so you're more inclined to just be like, all right,
25:06
Speaker 1: we'll screw it. I'll tell the truth, especially when they're
25:08
Speaker 1: sitting there like clearing the air out of a syringe.
25:14
Speaker 1: That's creepy. All right, So let's get back to uh
25:18
Speaker 1: CPP and the n b t I, the consulting psychological
25:23
Speaker 1: Psychologists PRESS, and the Myers Briggs. We'll just keep calling
25:27
Speaker 1: it a test even though they say it's not a test,
25:29
Speaker 1: it's a it's a type inventory. Yeah. Uh, so we'll
25:33
Speaker 1: just go ahead and break down the deal here there
25:35
Speaker 1: are The object is to sort you into one of
25:39
Speaker 1: sixteen different types personality types, uh, based on which side
25:45
Speaker 1: of four pairs or dichotomy is that you're gonna fall on.
25:47
Speaker 1: And those are UM at the very base, you're either
25:51
Speaker 1: introverted or extroverted, Like we said, your eye, sensing or
25:55
Speaker 1: intuition s and n um and these words they sound
25:59
Speaker 1: little confusing, like what the heck does a sensing person mean?
26:03
Speaker 1: It means you like the big data and empirical data
26:08
Speaker 1: and a lot of information, right, whereas intuition is like
26:11
Speaker 1: you just go with your gut. That's how you prefer
26:13
Speaker 1: to be correct. Right. The next we have thinking and feeling.
26:18
Speaker 1: Thinking being more focused on logic. Uh, that's a logic
26:23
Speaker 1: with a t sure and objectivity. And then if you're feeling,
26:28
Speaker 1: you're gonna be um more interested in in relationships and
26:32
Speaker 1: harmony among your group. Plus two are pretty straightforward. And
26:36
Speaker 1: then lastly there's judging and perceiving. Those are that's a dichotomy.
26:41
Speaker 1: Judging is where you UM, you prefer schedules. You prefer
26:46
Speaker 1: um decisiveness. That's how you kind of approach life and
26:51
Speaker 1: perceiving is where you're just kind of like whatever. Yeah,
26:54
Speaker 1: I'm not too worried about it. Um. That's almost kind
26:58
Speaker 1: of like the difference between the type A and Type
27:01
Speaker 1: B personalities, which, by the way, was made up by
27:04
Speaker 1: a pair of cardiologists whose work was later secretly funded
27:08
Speaker 1: by the tobacco industry who were looking for anything to
27:12
Speaker 1: explain heart attacks besides smoking, so they funded type A
27:16
Speaker 1: and type B personality research for years. Interesting, Yeah, it
27:20
Speaker 1: really is. There's a UM just as an aside. There's
27:23
Speaker 1: a really interesting price I think. Yeah, Prison nomics UM
27:29
Speaker 1: article on type and type Yeah, just look it up.
27:33
Speaker 1: I don't remember the name, right. UM. So, when you
27:37
Speaker 1: sit down to take one of these uh not tests
27:40
Speaker 1: with a series of questions that you answer, I think
27:43
Speaker 1: they call them instruments, by the way, psychometric instruments, which
27:47
Speaker 1: are basically a series of questions on a piece of paper.
27:49
Speaker 1: It sounds like a test. Um. They will say things
27:53
Speaker 1: like uh ed has some good examples here. When you
27:55
Speaker 1: go on a trip, do you want everything planned out
27:58
Speaker 1: in advance or would you rather just take each day
28:00
Speaker 1: as it comes and do whatever you feel like. Pretty
28:03
Speaker 1: straightforward kind of stuff. Uh. And then they also have
28:05
Speaker 1: things like a word pairs just to see literally what
28:09
Speaker 1: word you like better, like compassion foresight, Like which word
28:16
Speaker 1: do you like better? Carrots or fruit? Uh? Fruit? Fruit?
28:22
Speaker 1: That's just prettier, it is. So I'm looking back here,
28:25
Speaker 1: I just want to say, so, I think trying to
28:30
Speaker 1: figure out what you were. Yeah, I think e n FP.
28:33
Speaker 1: Maybe I think that's what I was. We weren't the
28:37
Speaker 1: same thing. I don't remember you. Me and I got
28:40
Speaker 1: the same thing. She found an old email, but she
28:42
Speaker 1: forgot to tell me what we were. Really, I really,
28:46
Speaker 1: I don't know. The problem is would we still be
28:49
Speaker 1: the same today? Yeah? And I think, if I'm not mistaken,
28:53
Speaker 1: didn't we have this up on a big board in
28:54
Speaker 1: the office for a while. So yeah, it seems like
28:57
Speaker 1: a Jerry's nothing. That seems like a breach of protocol
29:00
Speaker 1: sure like privacy? Yeah, well again, being forced to gunpoint
29:04
Speaker 1: to do it was just from the start. Remember it
29:06
Speaker 1: was kind of fun night, a fun day. We'll talk
29:08
Speaker 1: about that as well. Um. So it's gonna cost you
29:11
Speaker 1: if you just do this as a single individual. Um.
29:14
Speaker 1: Not meaning not married but just a person about fifty
29:17
Speaker 1: bucks um, although they should charge more if you're married.
29:21
Speaker 1: More complex tests about fifty bucks. If you want our feedback,
29:26
Speaker 1: it'll cost you an extra hundred and if you want
29:28
Speaker 1: a career report all typed up, that'll be six And
29:33
Speaker 1: if you um, this is fifteen hundred dollars for a
29:36
Speaker 1: on site training classes at like what we had. So
29:39
Speaker 1: this is a this is not very well explained. If
29:41
Speaker 1: you want to administer the Myers Briggs personality or type inventory,
29:47
Speaker 1: you can get certified. It's four day training course and
29:51
Speaker 1: you pay fifteen hundred and sixteen hundred dollars. Cannot legally
29:54
Speaker 1: administer this test or you're infringing on their copyrights unless
29:59
Speaker 1: you're certified by CPP to do this. We should do
30:02
Speaker 1: it with one another on the air and risk a lawsuit.
30:05
Speaker 1: Well yeah, well you probably got a stude already with
30:08
Speaker 1: that one question you asked out loud? Which one? Just
30:11
Speaker 1: the one? Yeah? When you go on a trip, do
30:12
Speaker 1: you want everything planned out in advance? I just made
30:15
Speaker 1: that up. Oh good, I got that from Travelocity. Nice. Okay, yeah,
30:20
Speaker 1: that little gnome whispered it in your ear. But so
30:23
Speaker 1: you you would go and get certified, and then now
30:27
Speaker 1: you can go around to businesses and say, hey, uh,
30:30
Speaker 1: do you want to know more about your employees? You
30:32
Speaker 1: want to know who's good at what? Let me come
30:35
Speaker 1: give the Myers Briggs type inventory to your your employees
30:39
Speaker 1: and it will be wonderful. Right, So that's how the
30:42
Speaker 1: whole process goes. You pay to become certified, and then
30:47
Speaker 1: you go become something of an evangelist for the Myers
30:50
Speaker 1: Briggs tests, and you sell the test. You basically become
30:54
Speaker 1: a salesman as well. It's a it's very interesting UM
30:58
Speaker 1: dynamic that they have going that is, it's a good
31:01
Speaker 1: word dynamic. Um. They want to point out that um,
31:09
Speaker 1: the person taking the test is the expert um. And
31:13
Speaker 1: they also use this metaphor of handedness, which I didn't
31:16
Speaker 1: fully understand. They say things like, it feels more comfortable
31:20
Speaker 1: to sign your name with your dominant hand, but technically
31:22
Speaker 1: you can sign with your non dominant and if you
31:24
Speaker 1: need to write, And I'm not sure what they're trying
31:26
Speaker 1: to prove that. They're trying to say that despite the
31:30
Speaker 1: m B T I pigeonholing you fully in one category
31:35
Speaker 1: or another rather than on a spectrum they're saying that
31:38
Speaker 1: category that it's pigeonholing you into is actually just your preference.
31:43
Speaker 1: It's not you specifically, it's just ca Yeah, you can
31:48
Speaker 1: to be an extrovert, but of course everybody likes their
31:52
Speaker 1: own personal alone time, so yeah, you're going to be
31:55
Speaker 1: an introvert once in a while, but you're an extrovert
31:57
Speaker 1: more than than other times. Yeah, because I can't sign
32:01
Speaker 1: my name with my left hand that I didn't like
32:04
Speaker 1: that analogy because it literally I can barely hold a
32:08
Speaker 1: pin with my left hand. I'm seeing you're doing it right. Wow,
32:13
Speaker 1: If I tried to do it, it would look like
32:15
Speaker 1: a three year old with arthritis has tried to like
32:20
Speaker 1: scribble it out. Mine mine looks like um you d mum,
32:29
Speaker 1: it's my signature with my left hand, And they do
32:32
Speaker 1: they do try and point out like you said that
32:38
Speaker 1: it's interesting because they box you in. But at the
32:41
Speaker 1: same time they're saying, but you know, like you said,
32:45
Speaker 1: it's just predisposition. Don't don't really think of it about
32:48
Speaker 1: you being this type of person, even though you are
32:50
Speaker 1: a E N F B. Like you said, it was earlier,
32:55
Speaker 1: it was almost numbered. I mean, it is, it's lettered
32:58
Speaker 1: this is a different way of quantify buying it. Yeah,
33:02
Speaker 1: but without numbers. All right, you want to take a
33:04
Speaker 1: break and then come back and and maybe do a
33:08
Speaker 1: little criticism. Yeah, okay, that's sky. Shouldn't chuck, all right,
33:33
Speaker 1: chuck Like I said, it's kind of a pastime in
33:35
Speaker 1: the United States too. Two tee off on the Myers
33:39
Speaker 1: Briggs type inventory. Yeah, this is not us here, this
33:42
Speaker 1: is now. This is us talking about other people teeing
33:44
Speaker 1: off on it. Yeah. It's widely been criticized over the
33:47
Speaker 1: years from UM psychologists and well amateur no nothings like us.
33:56
Speaker 1: One of the big criticisms is that companies use this
34:00
Speaker 1: stuff UM and hiring and firing and promoting UM. But
34:05
Speaker 1: even the Myers Briggs people CPP say like, don't do that.
34:09
Speaker 1: Well I know, but they say that, but then don't
34:12
Speaker 1: go to an office and get hired by a corporation
34:15
Speaker 1: to administer it or go sell your services you know. Yeah, yeah,
34:20
Speaker 1: I agreed, And that's part of the problem to me.
34:25
Speaker 1: That is more UM the corporation's fault. Well, sure, like
34:32
Speaker 1: if you have an HR person who's like die hard
34:36
Speaker 1: believer in the m b t I and will hire
34:40
Speaker 1: or fire somebody based on their m b t I type,
34:45
Speaker 1: fire that person because you have a real dumb dumb
34:48
Speaker 1: on your hands, and they should not be responsible for
34:52
Speaker 1: people's livelihoods. Even I don't think they would put it
34:56
Speaker 1: quite in those terms, but even the Myers Briggs people
34:59
Speaker 1: say like, you shouldn't use this for hiring or firing,
35:03
Speaker 1: and yet yes, some people do. Some people swear by this.
35:07
Speaker 1: The impression that I have is that the Myers Briggs
35:11
Speaker 1: people tend to think of this as more like a
35:14
Speaker 1: team building exercise or where like a certified and b
35:19
Speaker 1: t I administrator can come to your place, get all
35:23
Speaker 1: your employees together, and they find out like all their
35:26
Speaker 1: personality types. And by the way, there's not a single
35:30
Speaker 1: negative personality type, and all personality types are equal, so
35:34
Speaker 1: everybody gets a participant ribbon in the form of their
35:37
Speaker 1: personality type and um. But at the same time, and
35:41
Speaker 1: this seems to be the crux, at the same time,
35:44
Speaker 1: everybody's finding out like, oh, you're a little different than me,
35:47
Speaker 1: and I'm a little different than you, and we all
35:49
Speaker 1: have differences in different perspectives, so let's celebrate that and
35:52
Speaker 1: let's respect one another's differences. And there is the actual
35:58
Speaker 1: point from what I underst stand up the Myers Briggs
36:01
Speaker 1: type inventory and taking it in a corporate setting, that's
36:04
Speaker 1: what stands out to me as what happened with us
36:07
Speaker 1: was I remember it kind of being a fun day. Yeah,
36:11
Speaker 1: we held goofed off and had a good time. And
36:13
Speaker 1: the person leading it, if they're good at what they do,
36:15
Speaker 1: which this person was, is always you know, it's always
36:18
Speaker 1: kind of a fun person and cracking jokes and they
36:22
Speaker 1: don't take it too seriously. None of us took it
36:25
Speaker 1: too seriously. Uh, And we all had a good time
36:28
Speaker 1: and it did. It was very much like a team
36:30
Speaker 1: building thing, right. So as long as there's like a
36:32
Speaker 1: wink wink, nudge nudge kind of thing, and that the
36:35
Speaker 1: people who take it actually take it seriously or taken
36:38
Speaker 1: off to the side by their hr rep to say like, no,
36:41
Speaker 1: this is a little less serious thing, then you're taking it.
36:45
Speaker 1: Then it's fine. But yes, once you start deciding people's
36:48
Speaker 1: fate based on this, then you have real problems because
36:52
Speaker 1: it's just about anybody will tell you the Myers Briggs
36:55
Speaker 1: type inventory is based at best on some shaky science,
37:00
Speaker 1: if at all, If you go back to the very
37:02
Speaker 1: beginning it's based on the theories of Carl Young, which
37:06
Speaker 1: have never been based on science. There are basically personal
37:09
Speaker 1: observations by Young, and the psychology community has disavowed Young
37:13
Speaker 1: in large part. So therefore anything based on his teachings
37:18
Speaker 1: and theories is by proxy disavowed as well. But if
37:21
Speaker 1: that weren't enough, psychology as a field loves going after
37:25
Speaker 1: the Myers Briggs type inventory just loves it as as
37:29
Speaker 1: totally baseless scientifically all right, so we've got UM. Shouldn't
37:35
Speaker 1: use it to hire and fire and corporations or or
37:38
Speaker 1: gift promotions we have not based on real science and
37:42
Speaker 1: science and scientific data. Um. These four dichotomies are problematic
37:49
Speaker 1: in and of themselves because everyone is on a spectrum.
37:53
Speaker 1: You can't say, like, you know, you answered these ten questions,
37:58
Speaker 1: you're either this or you're that. UM. And when one
38:02
Speaker 1: of the rebuttals because I think ED interviewed someone from CPP, right, UM.
38:07
Speaker 1: One of the rebuttals about being a non repeatable UM
38:12
Speaker 1: experiment of sorts is like, hey, yesterday I was an
38:17
Speaker 1: n f P and today I'm this. They'll say, well,
38:19
Speaker 1: you know what, if you have different answers, that means
38:21
Speaker 1: you were sort of on the cusp right there in
38:23
Speaker 1: that center line on some of these questions, and you
38:26
Speaker 1: might have just leapt over to that other side, which
38:29
Speaker 1: means you're basically kind of down the center. Yet they
38:32
Speaker 1: don't have a categorization for down the center. Yeah, because
38:35
Speaker 1: depending on as Ed puts it, you could answer all
38:40
Speaker 1: twenty four questions on the feeling side and you're gonna
38:43
Speaker 1: get the same result as somebody who answered eleven questions
38:47
Speaker 1: for thinking and thirteen questions for feeling. Right, same thing,
38:50
Speaker 1: You're still both in an f in that respect. And
38:54
Speaker 1: I saw elsewhere it put like if the Myers Briggs
38:57
Speaker 1: test um measured height, you would either be taller short. Yeah,
39:01
Speaker 1: you can say, well, actually I'm right there in the middle,
39:03
Speaker 1: and they'd be like, well that's short, right, or for you,
39:06
Speaker 1: it's short. For the guy who who is the same
39:08
Speaker 1: anxect tight, they're tall right. And trust me, nobody that's
39:12
Speaker 1: five tin likes to be considered short, right. I can
39:15
Speaker 1: say that from experience, because you're not you're in your
39:17
Speaker 1: average I'm average average. The fact that there isn't a
39:22
Speaker 1: spectrum is one thing that really makes it in stark
39:25
Speaker 1: contrast of of other much more widely accepted psychometric instruments. UM.
39:34
Speaker 1: It also points out to the Grabster that they're The
39:37
Speaker 1: construction of the UM instrument itself is problematic because one,
39:44
Speaker 1: like we talked about, it's self reporting. Anytime you're self reporting,
39:47
Speaker 1: there's going to be some weird bias in there, just
39:50
Speaker 1: almost impossible to avoid. The other one is that UM
39:55
Speaker 1: he says a couple of these dicademies are entangled, which
40:00
Speaker 1: I never really thought about that, but that's a pretty
40:02
Speaker 1: good point. So UM judging perceiving scale or correlated with
40:08
Speaker 1: answers on the sensing intuition scale, and if you like,
40:13
Speaker 1: this should be separated out for sure. I don't know
40:16
Speaker 1: why they don't. I don't either, you know, because they've
40:20
Speaker 1: really put a lot of work into this. Yeah. Um,
40:23
Speaker 1: it's not baked in stone from the nineteen forties and
40:27
Speaker 1: fifties and sixties, is it. No, it's not. And even
40:29
Speaker 1: while they were creating it was an ongoing, exhaustive process
40:34
Speaker 1: that UM, Mrs Briggs and Mrs Myers UM engaged in. Yeah,
40:39
Speaker 1: we don't want to give they spent decades on this. Yes,
40:41
Speaker 1: it wasn't like something they threw together. No, The problem
40:44
Speaker 1: is is they they did it backwards. They came up
40:47
Speaker 1: with the personality types and then set about creating the
40:50
Speaker 1: test that would detect these personality types. Rather than going
40:54
Speaker 1: out and testing people, seeing what personalities types emerged and
40:57
Speaker 1: then figuring out a test to find and other people,
41:01
Speaker 1: they did it backwards. It was based on young but
41:04
Speaker 1: it was not for lack of trying. Like as a
41:06
Speaker 1: matter of fact, one of the first things they did
41:08
Speaker 1: after they started to really establish the tests was they
41:11
Speaker 1: managed to administer it to like five thousand George Washington
41:15
Speaker 1: University medical students, and they took those results and tracked
41:19
Speaker 1: the students to see what fields of medicine they went in.
41:22
Speaker 1: They like really worked on this. I read an article
41:24
Speaker 1: in the Washington Post where um this I think Isabelle Myers'
41:30
Speaker 1: son Um remembers their vacations were basically like fact finding
41:37
Speaker 1: um missions all around the country, Like they would go
41:40
Speaker 1: administered tested, like everything was about this test and they
41:43
Speaker 1: worked on it for decades. So yeah, the problem is
41:46
Speaker 1: it was just it's just not based on science. They
41:49
Speaker 1: didn't follow the scientific method. So science, so science kind
41:54
Speaker 1: of poo poos the m b T I. But wait, wait, wait,
41:56
Speaker 1: get back here, because a lot of the criticisms fall
42:03
Speaker 1: just as easily on every other psychometric test around. Well, yeah,
42:07
Speaker 1: and that's one of the things that UM. I can't
42:09
Speaker 1: remember who was interviewed in here, but UM and one
42:11
Speaker 1: of those other articles you sent one of the um
42:15
Speaker 1: myers are I don't know if it was. Maybe it
42:18
Speaker 1: was a roor Shack defender, UM said, you know, like everyone, Yeah,
42:24
Speaker 1: it was Rorshak, Like everyone's always picking on ror Shack.
42:26
Speaker 1: When all of these psychological tests are, you know, subject
42:31
Speaker 1: to criticism, they are, you know, I think it's really
42:35
Speaker 1: easy for to tee off on Rorshak as well, because
42:38
Speaker 1: I mean we're talking ink plots. Man. It is the
42:41
Speaker 1: epitome of subjective self reporting. You're saying, I, uh, let's
42:46
Speaker 1: see in this one, I see mom's boobs. Yeah, Mom's
42:50
Speaker 1: boobs in that one, right, exactly so, and then from
42:55
Speaker 1: that it was strictly up to uh. Initially, Rorschack, I
43:00
Speaker 1: think came up with this test in nineteen I think,
43:05
Speaker 1: so he's a Swiss psychiatrist. It was. It was initially
43:09
Speaker 1: up to him and then later on his followers to
43:12
Speaker 1: interpret this, which is basically like interpreting dreams and UM,
43:19
Speaker 1: so subjective. It totally subjective from beginning end. And then
43:22
Speaker 1: and I think a guy at Bowling Green State University,
43:27
Speaker 1: which is right outside of Toledo, UM, came up with
43:31
Speaker 1: this a really exhaustive interpretive test that sought to quantify
43:39
Speaker 1: rorshack answers. Yeah, John Exner, Uh. And it was a
43:43
Speaker 1: test called the comprehensive system a hundred and forty components.
43:48
Speaker 1: And in this article you sent, they said that rorshack
43:51
Speaker 1: was probably going away, UM had it not been for
43:55
Speaker 1: Exner's accompaniment UM with this other process. Right, And even
44:00
Speaker 1: today he's got an institute in Asheville that's dedicated to
44:04
Speaker 1: the Rorschach test. Right. So, one thing I've noticed from
44:07
Speaker 1: researching this is each of these personality inventories has like
44:13
Speaker 1: its adherents and its detractors, And just judging from the outside,
44:17
Speaker 1: it looks a lot like colts gathered around their various idols. Right.
44:22
Speaker 1: There's like the original figurehead who came up with it,
44:25
Speaker 1: and everybody worships them, and he's attacked by these other
44:28
Speaker 1: followers who have a very similar figurehead. It came up
44:31
Speaker 1: with something very similar, but it's just different enough that
44:34
Speaker 1: that there's a huge chasm between the two. And there's
44:37
Speaker 1: a lot of dogma surrounding it, but the Rorschach test
44:41
Speaker 1: in particular is apparently well known to give wildly inaccurate results.
44:48
Speaker 1: How did you do? I got two out of tin,
44:51
Speaker 1: which means, um, I was only two to away whatever
44:55
Speaker 1: that means from being labeled like a psychotic. So yeah,
44:59
Speaker 1: there was to get four out of ten. I think
45:01
Speaker 1: there's this. Oh really, I think that's what it said. Yeah,
45:03
Speaker 1: that's close. And this is an online uh test. I
45:07
Speaker 1: don't know if it's like how true it was to
45:09
Speaker 1: the original or maybe the original it could be, and
45:12
Speaker 1: then they have an algorithm that runs the analysis. I
45:16
Speaker 1: keep seeing all kinds of things. When I looked at it,
45:18
Speaker 1: and I've never done an ink blot test, I would say, oh,
45:20
Speaker 1: that looks like a bat, and then I was like, no,
45:22
Speaker 1: it's like two bunnies. And then now it looks like
45:24
Speaker 1: a cool Mardi Gras mask. Did they did they move
45:27
Speaker 1: to you? Did you see colors? Well, some of them
45:30
Speaker 1: were colored, most of them were black, and they had
45:33
Speaker 1: a the one I took at a at a one
45:35
Speaker 1: and a two, like, um, what do you see? And
45:37
Speaker 1: what's like a secondary thing that you see? So you know,
45:42
Speaker 1: supposedly people who are supporters of the Rorshach tests say no, man,
45:45
Speaker 1: there's we don't know how it's working. But if you
45:49
Speaker 1: see movement in the Rorschach ink blots, it's suggestive of
45:53
Speaker 1: depression or something like that. And they say, statistically it's correlated.
45:57
Speaker 1: But like I was saying, it's also notorious for giving
46:00
Speaker 1: incorrect results. Yeah, like saying you're you have a mental illness, right, Okay,
46:04
Speaker 1: So there was this study in two thousand that was
46:06
Speaker 1: given to like one mentally sound elementary school kids and
46:12
Speaker 1: some like high percentage of them came back as borderline
46:16
Speaker 1: psychotic because of the ror check test, right, And it's
46:19
Speaker 1: hilarious to hear stories like that, Like I'm laughing inside
46:23
Speaker 1: right now. But um, the problem is is you were
46:26
Speaker 1: at the very least being labeled as psychotic, not a
46:30
Speaker 1: label you want in society, and it was because of
46:33
Speaker 1: this ink blot test that's a hundred years old. And
46:37
Speaker 1: then secondly, these tests are also being submitted and accepted
46:42
Speaker 1: as evidence in criminal trials. That's the biggest part. Child
46:47
Speaker 1: custody cases and sile case still given real weight and
46:51
Speaker 1: lives are changed and ruined based on looking at a
46:55
Speaker 1: hundred year old ink blots and a person subjective analysis
46:58
Speaker 1: of that that's not okay? Know this, Um, Howard Garb
47:02
Speaker 1: in this one article you sent and he's a co
47:04
Speaker 1: author of What's Wrong with the rorscheck? And he is
47:07
Speaker 1: head of cycle, or at least at the time of
47:09
Speaker 1: this article, he may still be head of psychological testing
47:12
Speaker 1: for the Air Force. Uh. He said that even with
47:15
Speaker 1: Exner's comprehensive system, he said, only ten percent of his
47:18
Speaker 1: system even meets the most basic scientific standards. And um,
47:24
Speaker 1: they did examine data of over thirty different ror Scheck studies,
47:28
Speaker 1: and he said they all have a tendency to label
47:31
Speaker 1: healthy people mentally ill. And if you're trying to get
47:34
Speaker 1: custody of your kid, or if you are on trial
47:36
Speaker 1: as a criminal, like it's just that's the last thing
47:39
Speaker 1: you need is somebody subjective opinion of is it a
47:43
Speaker 1: bunny or is it a bat? Oh? He said, a bat?
47:47
Speaker 1: Take that kid? You know quick? Kids like I like bunnies.
47:51
Speaker 1: The another one that that we have to talk about
47:56
Speaker 1: is the mm P I. Now the mm P I
47:58
Speaker 1: dash too. I think as of two thousand and twelve
48:01
Speaker 1: they revised it dramatic. Is this one? Is that right?
48:04
Speaker 1: It has over questions. Yeah, some of them originally were
48:08
Speaker 1: about like your bowel movements, um, really not so questions
48:14
Speaker 1: that supposedly really got to the heart of whether you
48:18
Speaker 1: were mentally disturbed or not right. And it was created
48:22
Speaker 1: at the University of Minnesota in the forties by a
48:26
Speaker 1: psychiatrist and a neurologist, I believe, and they hit upon
48:31
Speaker 1: a pretty clever idea. They said, we're not going to
48:34
Speaker 1: interpret the results right and say, you know, oh, this
48:38
Speaker 1: person said that they do feel like smashing something sometimes
48:42
Speaker 1: and that means this. Instead, we're gonna come up with
48:45
Speaker 1: this test of like five hundred and four questions, and
48:48
Speaker 1: we're going to give it to the patient or the
48:52
Speaker 1: family and staff of a mental hospital who were sure
48:57
Speaker 1: are sane, and we're gonna take their answers and they're
49:00
Speaker 1: going to become our control group, our baseline. So then
49:03
Speaker 1: anybody who takes this test, we're going to compare the
49:07
Speaker 1: test takers answers to the same control groups answers, and
49:11
Speaker 1: you know, depending on how it relates to the same
49:13
Speaker 1: control group, they're either mentally ill or not. You better
49:17
Speaker 1: have gotten that control group right. Well, that's the thing
49:19
Speaker 1: to begin with. So a group of like family and
49:22
Speaker 1: friends in Minnesota. Is the picture of sanity throughout the
49:26
Speaker 1: world is the basis of this test. That's a huge
49:29
Speaker 1: problem with it to begin with, but apparently a lot
49:32
Speaker 1: of people say, like, no, it really has It does
49:35
Speaker 1: a pretty good job of sustening sussing out mental illness. UM.
49:40
Speaker 1: It's also really good at detecting faker faking one way
49:43
Speaker 1: or the other. UM. But it's it's too invasive and
49:48
Speaker 1: when companies use it for hiring and firing, it's way
49:52
Speaker 1: too invasive. And apparently lawsuits have been filed against companies
49:55
Speaker 1: for using it. Well, I think that UM, most people
50:01
Speaker 1: are far more UM troubled than they ever let on
50:07
Speaker 1: in life. And UM part of success in life comes
50:14
Speaker 1: down to how good you are at UM covering that
50:18
Speaker 1: up or hiding it, or dealing with it and processing it,
50:22
Speaker 1: terms with it. UM, it's just to find a core
50:27
Speaker 1: group that are quote unquote saying normal people. UM, it's
50:33
Speaker 1: just you're starting off with a problem, he asked me.
50:37
Speaker 1: A faulty premise, right, Yeah, It's just there's no way
50:40
Speaker 1: like everyone has their issues. They're deep dark, uh, things
50:46
Speaker 1: that their brain that they don't want anyone to know.
50:47
Speaker 1: Sometimes even the people closest to them don't even know.
50:51
Speaker 1: And actually you you're in agreement with this. A sociologist
50:55
Speaker 1: named William White who criticized the mm p I as
50:59
Speaker 1: a tool that helped to create and perpetuate the oppressive
51:04
Speaker 1: group think of mid century organization man, where it's basically like,
51:08
Speaker 1: here's what we think is normal. Anything outside of that
51:11
Speaker 1: is abnormal, and we're not going to hire you because
51:13
Speaker 1: you don't fit into this picture of normalcy, which is
51:16
Speaker 1: basically white crew cut Minnesota from the forties, right, that's
51:20
Speaker 1: the picture of normalcy. That's highly debatable. The other thing
51:24
Speaker 1: I thought was interesting is a lot of skeptics and
51:26
Speaker 1: critics point to things like the m b t I
51:30
Speaker 1: and saying, this is just like astrology. There is really
51:34
Speaker 1: no different than reading your horoscope because it's all positive psychology. UM.
51:38
Speaker 1: At the end of a of a Myers Briggs um
51:42
Speaker 1: non test, no one walks away feeling bad. Usually it's
51:46
Speaker 1: all sort of positive wording and like like this is
51:49
Speaker 1: what you are. You're just this, so kind of don't
51:52
Speaker 1: worry about it the same way you read your horoscope
51:54
Speaker 1: in an in a given day. I mean, how many
51:56
Speaker 1: horoscopes say like UM today you're you will be prone
52:00
Speaker 1: to depression and wonder what it's all about. Right, maybe
52:04
Speaker 1: you should work on your core character because people don't
52:08
Speaker 1: like being around you that much. You don't hear that
52:10
Speaker 1: kind of stuff but taps into what's called the Horror
52:13
Speaker 1: effect f r r UM. There was a psychiatrist named
52:17
Speaker 1: Bertram Horror. This is so interesting. He will take it.
52:21
Speaker 1: It's pretty interesting stuff. Well, I mean, basically didn't he
52:24
Speaker 1: give the same He had people take these tests and
52:27
Speaker 1: then gave all of the people the exact same assessment,
52:31
Speaker 1: but telling everyone it was tailored for them their own
52:33
Speaker 1: personality assessment. And I think the people who just thought
52:37
Speaker 1: it was favorable, we're like, this is great. Well it
52:39
Speaker 1: was favorable. He actually called it from daily horoscopes. Well yeah,
52:42
Speaker 1: but what were they responding positively too? Well? They it
52:46
Speaker 1: was whether or not they wanted to feel that way
52:47
Speaker 1: about it, so they were it was a positive assessment.
52:50
Speaker 1: There was nothing negative in there, so it was all
52:52
Speaker 1: positive stuff like you have a lot of unused potential.
52:55
Speaker 1: That kind of stuff people stuff people wanted to identify with. Right,
52:58
Speaker 1: So the more uttering it was, the more likely the
53:01
Speaker 1: people were to say, this is an accurate assessment of me.
53:05
Speaker 1: So just despite the fact that it was the same
53:07
Speaker 1: one given to the entire class, he took their answers
53:09
Speaker 1: and threw them out and said, here's your assessment, the
53:11
Speaker 1: same one for everybody. It got like an accuracy from
53:15
Speaker 1: the class as a whole. Well, that's what I wondered.
53:17
Speaker 1: It was about, where those people just super honest maybe
53:21
Speaker 1: and like, no, this is really no. People actually don't
53:24
Speaker 1: like being around me. I'm using all of my potential
53:26
Speaker 1: and they still don't like me. Yeah, that's what I
53:29
Speaker 1: couldn't figure out. But I guess that makes sense. There
53:30
Speaker 1: are people out there that are I think I would
53:32
Speaker 1: be one of those that would be like, this isn't right.
53:36
Speaker 1: I'm not like that sure anything else I think not.
53:41
Speaker 1: This is a good one. We've been we've been wanting
53:43
Speaker 1: to do this for a while. Yeah, this is a
53:45
Speaker 1: special request by me and others. Uh. If you want
53:50
Speaker 1: to know more about personality tests, well you can go
53:53
Speaker 1: take them online. They're kind of huge right now. Uh,
53:56
Speaker 1: find out what kind of um hobbit you are. I
54:00
Speaker 1: don't know what box do you live in? Yeah? Uh,
54:04
Speaker 1: And in the meantime, you can type personality test in
54:06
Speaker 1: the search bar how stuff works dot com. And since
54:08
Speaker 1: I said that it's time for listener mail. The only
54:13
Speaker 1: thing that should live in a box is uh, temporary
54:18
Speaker 1: housing for a pet frog that's not bad, or the
54:22
Speaker 1: stuff you find in a tree hole that Boo Radley
54:24
Speaker 1: left for you. Yeah, back a month in the box. Uh. Hey, guys,
54:29
Speaker 1: feel compelled to write you today to tell you how
54:30
Speaker 1: grateful I am for your show uh and praise your
54:33
Speaker 1: good work. Um. Recently became a listener and I'm working
54:36
Speaker 1: my way through the entire archive. I think a lot
54:38
Speaker 1: of folks might be able to relate to this. Until
54:40
Speaker 1: recently I found out I found it really hard to
54:42
Speaker 1: relax and suffer with anxiety. Two months ago, I read
54:45
Speaker 1: an article basically pointing out how our obsession with being
54:48
Speaker 1: productive an associated guilt is a modern phenomenon. Um. I
54:53
Speaker 1: think that for sure. You know, although I had heard
54:56
Speaker 1: this before, something really clicked in my head. So I
54:59
Speaker 1: decided to abandon to an embrace relaxation, taking control of
55:02
Speaker 1: my own stress levels. You guys have been a big
55:04
Speaker 1: part of this. I have taken the time to slowly
55:08
Speaker 1: hotter around my flat, go for walks while listening and
55:11
Speaker 1: learning to your fascinating podcast, and they've lived in my mood.
55:14
Speaker 1: I feel mentally healthier than I ever have before. Although
55:18
Speaker 1: the content of what you discussed might not always be positive,
55:20
Speaker 1: the way in which you explain them in your own
55:23
Speaker 1: views personally revived my hope and humanity. That is ridiculously
55:26
Speaker 1: flatter and that nice. Yeah, I guess I should also
55:29
Speaker 1: mention that a big part of my tackling anxiety UH
55:32
Speaker 1: levels has been to abandon watching television and the psychotropic drugs.
55:37
Speaker 1: I would be really interested to know if there has
55:39
Speaker 1: been any research conductivity to affect TV has upon our lives.
55:42
Speaker 1: I'm sure there has been. I haven't owned a TV
55:44
Speaker 1: for many years, but my partner has since subscribed to
55:47
Speaker 1: an online provider and I realized how watching TV is
55:50
Speaker 1: not helped my anxiety. Also remember reading that after TVs
55:53
Speaker 1: came mainstream and Bhutan their crime rate went up something
55:57
Speaker 1: like seve my to prove an interesting topic for a
56:01
Speaker 1: future show. Yeah, anyway, sincerely grateful, keep it up. I
56:05
Speaker 1: am now recommending your shows to as many people as
56:07
Speaker 1: I can. Big love from the UK, MAC, Thanks a lot, Mac.
56:11
Speaker 1: That was great. We hear from a lot of people
56:13
Speaker 1: actually say that we help them with their anxiety. No
56:16
Speaker 1: idea how, but it doesn't matter, so thank you. Yeah.
56:21
Speaker 1: If you want to get in touch of this, like
56:22
Speaker 1: mac did, you can tweet to us at s Y
56:24
Speaker 1: s K podcast or josh um Clark. You can hang
56:27
Speaker 1: out with us on Facebook at Stuff you Should Know
56:31
Speaker 1: or Charles W. Chuck Bryant. You can send us an
56:33
Speaker 1: email the Stuff podcast how stuff works dot com and
56:36
Speaker 1: has always joined us at home on the web Stuff
56:38
Speaker 1: you Should Know dot com for more on this and
56:45
Speaker 1: thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff Works dot
56:47
Speaker 1: com