November 15, 2025 • 57 mins
For millennia, we have tried to put human personalities into neat types, an effort psychology took up early in its history in an effort to legitimize itself. But is the idea of types – which all personality inventories are based on - flawed to begin with? Find out in this classic episode.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, everybody, it's me Josham. For this week's Select, I've
chosen our August twenty seventeen episode on personality tests. It
turns out that the vast majority of them, maybe all
of them, are scientifically faulty to at least some degree,
and some of them are just outright made up. This
can be a real problem if they're being used to
diagnose you with a mental illness, or hire or fire
(00:22):
you or put you in jail, and that actually happens.
So dig into this deceptively interesting episode and enjoy it.
And I'm an EENFP.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
By the way, Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a
production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's
Charles w Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry over there, and this
is Stuff you Should Know.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
Yeah, just a couple of.
Speaker 4 (00:59):
It.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
Jay says, I don't remember what I am. We've taken
it before. How Stuff Works hosted it years back. Do
you remember.
Speaker 5 (01:09):
Yeah, we had, like many companies do, as you'll see,
we had when we were under Discovery's tender wing. They
paid for someone to come to our office and administer
the Myers Briggs personality test.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
At gunpoint.
Speaker 5 (01:23):
Yeah, I don't remember, but I'm pretty sure I was
an E N F P.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
I I don't remember what I was. I'll probably say
like three different things as we go through this one.
Speaker 5 (01:35):
Like, just looking at it again, I'm pretty sure I
was an E N F P. Okay, P stands for
pisces right where.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
Yeah, let's see extroverted intuitive. Okay, what is the F
stand for? Feeling pooper?
Speaker 3 (01:56):
Is a spoiler? Yeah, feeling pooper.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
So we're what we're talking about. It sounds like we're
saying strings of letters. They actually do make sense if
you're familiar with what Chuck just said, the Myers Briggs
type inventory, which if you are in corporate America and
have been a part of corporate America for more than
probably three years, there's probably a pretty good likelihood that
(02:18):
you've taken the Myers Briggs type inventory for sure. Like
it's really widespread.
Speaker 3 (02:25):
Yeah, I love it.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
I saw something like thirteen percent of companies in America
use it. It's a lot.
Speaker 5 (02:32):
Yeah, it was it eighty nine of the Fortune one
hundred use it.
Speaker 1 (02:36):
Right, And then I saw another stat It was from
two thousand and one though, So I'm not sure how current.
It is well sixteen years old, right, but they said
that the uh, I think British companies somewhere between ten
and forty percent of British companies use them, right, So
(02:57):
I mean it's who knows. It's pretty wild, guess it
sounds like but.
Speaker 3 (03:02):
I wonder if they have their own It's.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
No, the Myers Briggs Test. They don't call it a test,
as we'll see. Sure, but the test is, it's worldwide,
it's translated into tons of different languages. They and no,
it's it's the Myers Briggs Test. And there's tons of knockoffs.
Oh sure, there's tons of personality tests in general, which
really is the larger umbrella the Myers Briggs Test falls under.
(03:28):
But it's probably the most famous of all time, at
least as far as pop culture goes.
Speaker 5 (03:33):
Yeah, and we're going to hit on everything from Rorshak
to the Myers Briggs.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
Sure, but we're going to hit on them.
Speaker 5 (03:39):
But the MBT I definitely is more of the focus
of this one because of its ubiquity.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
Right, because most people know it, and because it's one
of the overlooked pastimes in the United States to take
pot shots at the Myers Briggs type inventory. Sure, it's fun.
Speaker 5 (04:00):
So categorizing one's personality is nothing new, and that's what
these tests aim to do for various reasons, which we'll
go over later. But going back, and this was a
Grabster article, correct, that's right, so you know it's good. Yeah,
And Grabster was just at our show in Toronto. Yeah,
he was for the second time.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
He stood up and like, did that victory shake?
Speaker 6 (04:25):
Did he do that?
Speaker 2 (04:26):
No?
Speaker 3 (04:26):
He did. No, I'm a big fan of that. That's
old school.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
Oh it is. It's a good way to go. It
looks like you should be wearing those dolphin shorts just
having crossed the finish line and you doing that.
Speaker 5 (04:38):
So yeah, it's nothing new trying to categorize personalities. Way
back in the day, I know, on our Grave Robbing
Live Grave Robbing episode, we talked about the four humors
and we talked about him before before medical science was
kind of a real thing.
Speaker 1 (04:56):
It was an early attempt.
Speaker 5 (04:58):
Yeah, they talked about the four fluids or the four
humors black bile, yellow bile, phlegm, and blood, uh and
and imbalance in those will cause disease. But they were
also this is something I didn't know. These are also
linked to corresponding personality types.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
Right, Yeah, So like the word melancholy in English, it's
an adaptation of the Greek words I believe for black bile.
There it is, and melancholy personalities were associated with an
overabundance of black bile. And basically your melancholy you're you're
(05:37):
a depressed person or you're very reserved or quiet. And
for thousands of years people thought guy's got a lot
of black bile. Yeah, that explains his personality. The other
ones are pretty pretty interesting too, like phlegmatic.
Speaker 3 (05:54):
Uh, phlegmatic.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
I've seen flegmatic. I've heard flagmatic. Really, I've seen it too.
Speaker 3 (05:59):
So like when you cough something up, do you call
it flegum?
Speaker 1 (06:02):
Sometimes depends if it had like a lot of extra
chunks in it, it's flag Oh gosh. But phlegmatic, I say, phlegmatic.
That's very laid back. Did you know that?
Speaker 5 (06:14):
Well, Yeah, because I looked all these up. Oh okay,
because sanguine is one of my favorite words. Yeah, and
that's this is Hippocrates, by the way. He kind of
further refined these concepts of the temperament. So melancholic, phlegmatic, sanguine,
and what is it choleric.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
Here coleric, Yeah, choleric, coloric. Choleric is like irritable and
short and terse and Kurt.
Speaker 3 (06:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
But the thing is, there's something weird here, right if
you are a thinking human being, yes, who is not
in a vegetative state right now?
Speaker 3 (06:50):
Correct?
Speaker 1 (06:51):
And for all we know at this point in medical science,
maybe even if you are in a vegetative state, you're
probably thinking, Uh, it doesn't seem like anyone I've ever
met is just phlegmatic or just choleric, or just sanguine
or just melancholy. Sometimes I'm all four of those things.
(07:12):
Sometimes I go through those things all four in a day,
depending on how weird the day is.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
Sometimes I go through all four of those within the
course of one happy hour.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
Sure, okay, Right, And that's kind of the point here,
And it's also the basis of any criticism from this
moment in the podcast here on out, is that this
whole thing that started back with the Four Humors and
continues on to this day in the guise of personality tests, yeah,
is an attempt to take a human personality and say
(07:43):
you're this, Yeah, you're this one type, You're this type,
this is your type, this is what you're like, right,
And the human personality is just too complex, too squishy,
too jelly like to be boxed into one thing like that.
Speaker 5 (07:58):
Yeah, and we'll get into all criticisms, but that definitely
is the leading criticism.
Speaker 3 (08:02):
That is. Well, we'll save that.
Speaker 1 (08:05):
Okay. That was a tease.
Speaker 3 (08:08):
It was a good tease.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
It's a phlegmatic one.
Speaker 5 (08:10):
All these classifications, though, that we talk about now, are
or most of them at least are drive lai at
the feet of one man. When Carl Jung, Yeah, who
wrote a book called psychological types.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
How do you say it? Though in in German?
Speaker 3 (08:28):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
It's oh where is it? Let me see there it is.
I can't even begin to do it.
Speaker 3 (08:37):
Psycho psycho sorry, psychologic yesh, psychologic ish typing.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
That's not fair.
Speaker 3 (08:45):
It's so tiny. That was the problem because you.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
Oh, yeah, I do ten point I don't like to
waste paper.
Speaker 3 (08:50):
Well you know me.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
You do like sixteen point times new Roman.
Speaker 5 (08:55):
Paper, and I don't want to waste it. But I
also have to do my job. Sure, maybe I should
go double sided, but then my highlighter it gets in
the way.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
Oh yeah, it would be a problem, man, everything would
be highlighting, you might as well just dip the whole
page in yellow wink or something.
Speaker 3 (09:11):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 5 (09:12):
So anyway, Jung wrote this book, that book in nineteen
twenty one and at German and had it translated to
English a couple of years.
Speaker 3 (09:20):
Later, and he created these four categories sensation, intuition, thinking,
and feeling.
Speaker 5 (09:29):
Right, So those were his four that kind of most
of these modern tests are based on in some way
or another.
Speaker 6 (09:36):
Yeah, And.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
It's really almost impossible that I guess we could just
save all the criticisms for the end and just pile
them on. But it's really tough to talk about this
stuff and not like, as you present one fact, talk
about the problem with that fact as it relates to
modern incarnation. What do you think we should do? Should
we just save them, like you say, because I can
(09:59):
buite my time?
Speaker 3 (10:00):
Yeah, let's say them, okay, and then you can just like.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
I'm not even try like I'm not I'm not going
crop circle here. I'm just saying like, there's just there's
just a lot wrong with this. But even before Young
who created these the concept of the modern concept i
should say, personality types, and he created the idea of introvert,
an extrovert, which say what you will about you, and
a lot of psychologists have a lot to say about him. Yeah,
(10:25):
not necessarily the nicest things to say, but introversion and
extra extraversion is so widely accepted inside and out of
the field of psychology that I mean, if that were
his only contribution to the field, that's that's enough to
engrave it on your tombstone for sure.
Speaker 4 (10:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (10:44):
And each of those four psychological types he was talking
about are modified by whether or not you're introverted or extroverted.
Speaker 3 (10:53):
Right, so they all kind of work together to buch
you in.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
That was like the right, that was the main thing
is how you how you approach life is introvert, extrovert,
and everything else was like a sub It's kind of
a sub section of that or something.
Speaker 4 (11:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (11:06):
And one of the issues with this, and I don't
think this is part of the criticism, but.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
I was gonna say, I thought we were saving him.
Speaker 5 (11:12):
He was This was based on his ideas. It wasn't
like he had all this research and all this data.
He was a deep thinker, and he sat around and
thought of these things.
Speaker 1 (11:25):
Right exactly, And then he wrote entire books based on them. Yeah,
but he's a very well respected psychoanalyst, and he was
part of the early movement for psychoanalysis. With Freud, they
were colleagues. La Jung was much younger, but they eventually said,
I don't like you anymore. We're parting ways. But as
(11:49):
psychoanalysis was really kind of establishing itself, and if you
want to know more about that background in the origin
of psychoanalysis, go listen to her how pr works the
live show. Yeah, we talked a lot about that. But
as this was going on and it was starting to
kind of dominate the field of psychology, there was a
whole other movement, a parallel movement that said, you know what,
(12:11):
we think all that's a little mushy. We like the
idea of being able to quantify psychology. And so even
before you there were guys like Alfred Binet, who was
one of the indirect fathers of the Intelligence test IQ test,
a pair of researchers named Gray and Wheelwright, and plenty
(12:32):
of others who wanted to say, no, no, no, no, you
can study psychology. You can study things like the human personality,
and you can typify and you can add numbers, you
can quantify this stuff and in doing so, we will
prove psychology as a science as well. So this whole
movement to typify people and put them into convenient, almost
(12:57):
numerical categories came out of this urgent need to establish
a scientific basis for psychology.
Speaker 5 (13:06):
Yeah, and Jung he kind of laid the table for this.
And many years later, although not that many, there was
a woman named Katherine Cook Briggs and she was working
on this with her daughter, one Isabelle Briggs Myers. I
think you see where this is going. And this is
post World War two when they women were kind of
(13:29):
for the first time really going into the workforce in
full and en mass, and so they thought, well, maybe
we can put together some personality types to find out
what kind of jobs these women might be suited for,
what types of jobs they might enjoy. So they started
working together on this, and as legend has it, the
(13:51):
mom Katherine Briggs Cook Briggs, she was doing her thing
and then saw Jung's works and said, I got to
start over.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
This is the stuff She had already been working on
a personality test. Yeah, but apparently, according to the legend,
through her work into the fire said I'm starting from scratch.
Speaker 3 (14:12):
Because she's dramatic.
Speaker 1 (14:13):
She was a voracious reader, especially of the psychology, the
new psychology books that were coming out of Europe.
Speaker 5 (14:21):
Right, she didn't read Young She did well eventually, but yeah,
and then seems like it kind of came along later.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
Well, so, yeah, there's a there's kind of a weird
discrepancy in the history. And I don't know if it's
just that hasn't been covered right or if there is
a weird discrepancy, but supposedly she initiated it, and so
it would have been contemporary or shortly after Jung's Psychology
or Personality Types was translated into English in nineteen twenty three.
(14:49):
But it was her daughter Isabelle who really took it
and ran with it because of World War Two in
the need for women in the workplace.
Speaker 5 (14:57):
Correct, so they you know, kind of kept some of
young stuff built on that it kind of striped some
of it away, most notably a lot of the unconscious stuff.
They might have thought that was a little too weird
for you know, the modern American workforce. Yeah, so what
they ended up coming up with was the the MBTI
(15:19):
Myers Briggs Type Indicator, right, very famously.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
Yeah, and they had a publishing arrangement with one group
I can't remember what they were called, but they thought
it didn't do very well. And then in nineteen seventy
five they went with another publisher CPP and they're the
current publishers of the Myers Briggs Yeah type indicator. And
since then that's when it's ubiquity, like just really spread
was starting in the seventies and now it's just it's
(15:46):
basically married to corporate America.
Speaker 3 (15:49):
Should we take a break, sure, go get married to
corporate America.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
Yeah, as if we aren't already.
Speaker 5 (15:54):
All right, we'll come back and we'll talk a little
bit about personality tests in general and then focus in
a little more on the n B T I.
Speaker 6 (16:02):
As W.
Speaker 4 (16:05):
S k as all right, So.
Speaker 5 (16:28):
Personality tests is just there are many many ways you
can get evaluated psychologically by a professional.
Speaker 3 (16:34):
This is just one way.
Speaker 1 (16:36):
And you get your head measured with calibers. Back in
the day they did that, give you a bunch of
drugs and see what you do. There's a lot of ways.
Speaker 5 (16:44):
But these tests generally, as Grabster points out, falls into
a couple of types, projective and objective. Projective tests or
things like the roar shack test where you're shown something
some kind of stimulus and it's open to interpretation, and
you tell them what you think about it, and someone
sits back very quietly and taps on a pad of
(17:06):
paper and makes an evaluation. And then objective are more
like these personality tests. They're standardized assessments that people use,
and while it's subjective what you put down, they are
then evaluated again by a professional.
Speaker 6 (17:23):
Right.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
But ultimately that objective name is a bit of a
misnomer because on the end of it, it's still interpreted
by a person. Yeah, which is therefore makes it subjective, right,
and which, depending on who you ask, is the fatal
flaw of all personality tests.
Speaker 5 (17:40):
It should be the good song from the seventies had
a little parenthetical at the end of the title, right,
it should just say subjective also right in parentheses.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
Baby.
Speaker 3 (17:54):
So the big five are and this is the Big five.
Speaker 5 (17:58):
I get the feeling or the psycho logical tests that
that legit psychologists are more in favor of over something
like the MBT.
Speaker 3 (18:07):
I is that right?
Speaker 1 (18:08):
Yeah, it's not just there's tests to suss out the
Big five. The Big five are the personality types of
the field of psychology has come up with.
Speaker 5 (18:15):
Well, yeah, but the tests that you utilize that, right,
they kind of think are more legit than the MBT.
Speaker 1 (18:20):
I yeah, there's not a psychologist alive who uses the
the MBTI and the regular practice. Oh I bet there
are not that not that are speaking up.
Speaker 3 (18:31):
I guarantee you there's someone out there.
Speaker 6 (18:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
Sure it's a free wheeling type.
Speaker 3 (18:37):
Or is she?
Speaker 1 (18:39):
So?
Speaker 5 (18:39):
The Big five are extraversion, agreeableness, openness to experience, conscientiousness,
and neuroticism. Right, sounds like it could be like a
dating site thing that you fill out.
Speaker 1 (18:51):
It's funny, every time I see or hear the word neuroticism,
a bell goes off in my head, like.
Speaker 3 (18:57):
Thing, just a silent bell. I don't know what that means.
Speaker 1 (19:02):
I don't either, but it draws my attention to.
Speaker 3 (19:06):
So some of these tests, I mean, it depends on
what it is that.
Speaker 5 (19:10):
They might not all call them by those exact words,
but they're generally using they call them, you know, like
I said, the Big five.
Speaker 1 (19:16):
Yeah, and I I was looking into that Big five
and this site I can't remember what it was called,
but they were basically they were going over it like
extraversion is again just part of the scientific literature at
this point. Agreeableness is like whether you're how sympathetic or
kind or affectionate you are? Conscientiousness is are you organized?
(19:38):
Are you thorough? Are you the type who shows up
on time? That kind of thing, neuroticism, which is some
kind sometimes called emotional stability. How tense are you? How moody?
How anxious? And then like openness to experience? Right, yeah,
they sometimes call that intellect slash imagination. Do you have
wide interests? Are you an imaginative person? Are you insightful?
(20:01):
And the site really went to a lot of pains
to point out that what you would call these things
the big five personality traits are as far as a
psychologist is concerned, just one dimension of you, the human being,
and that to get a clearer picture of you, they
would also need to study your motivations, your emotions, your attitudes,
(20:24):
your abilities, your self concepts, your social roles, autobiographical memories,
your life stories. Now, if you start to put all
these things together, then you can start to kind of
approximate the person's personality. But it would just it takes
a lot of study of an individual and these different
components that make up their personality to get a clear picture.
(20:44):
So I don't think there are any psychologists walking around
saying the big five personality types or like the beginning
and end of a personality. It's just if you put
them together, you have just a sketch of somebody's personality
and you should go much deeper. Or if you're analyzing someone.
Speaker 5 (21:01):
Yeah, I think I used to think this stuff was
a lot neaterer when I was younger, and now it
kind of gives me a little anxiety. Oh yeah, yeah,
Like I just I don't know as far as doing
this to myself, and I still enjoy therapy, like that's different.
But I don't know, because every single one of these
I like my answer would be, well, it depends.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
Well, I think. I think also though, and I don't
mean to speak for you, but one of the issues
that that comes up for me is if somebody goes
to you and says, you know you you you rate
pretty high on the spectrum of neuroticism, Like that's obviously
you're gonna obsess about that kind of stuff, especially if
they're right.
Speaker 3 (21:40):
It can make you neurotic.
Speaker 1 (21:42):
But yeah, it's a boundary that somebody has just established
for you. That you may need feel the need to
stay in because that's the boundary that you're bound by,
whether you are or not.
Speaker 3 (21:54):
Like this is my box, right that I'll live in it.
Speaker 1 (21:56):
That would be the reason it raises anxiety for me.
Speaker 3 (21:59):
Yeah, my whole thing.
Speaker 5 (22:00):
Like I said, though, it is just depends every single
question that I would get asked. Well, not everyone. Sometimes
I'm pretty like set on something, but usually I'd say
I don't know. It depends on the scenario. Right, Am
I more prone in a crowd to do X or Y?
Maybe right?
Speaker 3 (22:17):
Maybe not? Depends on my mood.
Speaker 1 (22:19):
So one with these other personality tests, and the whole
field in psychology of studying traits personality traits in a
quantitative way is called psychometrics. So with these tests, the
more sophisticated ones, if they had a test taker like you,
(22:39):
they're designed to get around that. So they're going to
ask a bunch of different questions about the same thing,
but in different ways, coming from different directions, so that eventually,
if you put all of them together and run them
through statistical analysis, they're actually going to come up with
your genuine answer, which is kind of one way or another.
The other way that they get around this that kind
(23:02):
of hemming and hauling, I guess is by placing it
on a spectrum, you're not being lumped into one category
or another. It's here's one end of the spectrum, here's
the other end of the spectrum, and based on your answers,
you fall somewhere around the middle, like almost everybody does.
If you look at psychometric tests, a legitimate psychometric test
(23:24):
is going to basically look like a bell curve where
most people are going to be distributed toward the middle.
Speaker 5 (23:30):
Yeah, I think what that's why gives me anxiety. It's like,
what's the point? Don't box me in?
Speaker 1 (23:35):
It's a great question.
Speaker 5 (23:38):
Well, I think the second half of this is a
lot of what's the point? Yeah, you know, So looking
speaking on these tests to see if it's actually if
there is a point, if it's a valid thing to do.
There are a couple of measures that one must look
at and that psychologists do look at is it valid
and is it reliable? Valid in this that it really
(24:01):
is a pretty good reflection of Josh or Chuck or whoever,
and is it reliable. So if we take this test
tomorrow or a different test, that's just you know, maybe
different questions, will it reproduce the same result?
Speaker 3 (24:16):
And that's a big deal.
Speaker 5 (24:17):
Like if you're talking science and you're trying to have
a foundation that says, no, this is science. It's not
just a bunch of questions and hippie dippy questions that
we're asking. If you really want real data and science
behind it, you have to be able to reproduce it.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
One of the other things too, that these tests are
designed to do is to weed out fakers. Right, we'll
talk a lot more about the Minnesota Multi Phasic Personality Inventory,
which is one of the big ones. Yes, probably the
most taken personality test in the world, and it has
(24:56):
a lot of built in mechanisms and apparently is really
good at detecting people who are faking they're faking a
mental illness or who are trying to pretend that they
aren't suffering from a mental illness. Yeah, it's really good
at detecting that because it's so exhaustive and using statistical analysis.
(25:16):
If somebody is skewed really far one way or skewed
really far the other, they're just immediately exposed as gaming
the test as best they can.
Speaker 6 (25:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (25:25):
And one way they do that, which is in its
own way, its own little psychology experiment at least, is
by telling you if we have ways right, like, you
will be rooted out and we will know exactly. So
they tell people that beforehand, so you're more inclined to
just be like, all right, we'll screw it.
Speaker 1 (25:43):
I'll tell the truth, right, especially when they're sitting there
like clearing the air out of a syringe.
Speaker 3 (25:51):
That's creepy.
Speaker 5 (25:52):
It is, all right, So let's get back to CPP
in the MBTI, the consulting Psychological Psychologists PRESS and the
Myers Briggs.
Speaker 3 (26:03):
We'll just keep calling it a test, even though they
say it's not a.
Speaker 1 (26:05):
Test, it's a type inventory.
Speaker 5 (26:07):
Yeah, so we'll just go ahead and break down the
deal here there are. The object is to sort you
into one of sixteen different types personality types, based on
which side of four pairs or dichotomies that you're going
to fall on. And those are at the very base.
You're either introverted or extroverted, like we said, HE or I,
(26:30):
sensing or intuition S and N. And these words they
sound a little confusing, like what the heck does a
sensing person mean? It means you, like the big data
empirical data and a lot of information.
Speaker 1 (26:46):
Right, whereas intuition is like you just go with your gut,
that's how you prefer to be correct. Right.
Speaker 5 (26:52):
The next we have thinking and feeling. Thinking being more
focused on logic, that's a logic with the tea sure
and objectivity. And then if you're feeling, you're going to
be more interested in relationships and harmony among your group.
Speaker 1 (27:10):
Those two are pretty straightforward, Yeah, I think so. And
then lastly there's judging and perceiving. Those are that's a dichotomy.
Judging is where you prefer schedules, you prefer decisiveness, that's
how you kind of approach life, and perceiving is where
you're just kind of like whatever, Yeah, I'm not too
(27:31):
worried about it. Yeah, that's almost kind of like the
difference between the type A and type B personalities, which,
by the way, was made up by a pair of
cardiologists really whose work was later secretly funded by the
tobacco industry who are looking for anything to explain heart
attacks besides smoking, so they funded type A and type
(27:53):
B personality research for years. Interesting, Yeah, it really is.
There's a just as an aside, there's a really interesting price,
I think, yeah, price nomics.
Speaker 3 (28:06):
Article on type and type.
Speaker 1 (28:08):
Yeah, just look it up. I don't remember the name.
Speaker 4 (28:10):
All right.
Speaker 5 (28:12):
So when you sit down to take one of these
not tests with a series of questions that you answer,
I think.
Speaker 1 (28:19):
They call them instruments, by the way, psychometric instruments, which.
Speaker 3 (28:24):
Are basically a series of questions on a.
Speaker 1 (28:25):
Piece of paper that sounds like a test.
Speaker 5 (28:28):
They will say things like ed has some good examples
here when you go on a trip, do you want
everything planned out in advance or would you rather just
take each day as it comes, do whatever you feel like?
Pretty straightforward kind of stuff, right, And then they also
have things like word pairs, just to see literally what
word you like better, like compassion, foresight, Like which word
(28:52):
do you like better?
Speaker 1 (28:53):
Carrots or fruit?
Speaker 3 (28:57):
Fruit?
Speaker 1 (28:57):
Fruit? Yeah, that's just prettier, it is. So I'm looking
back here, I just want to say, so.
Speaker 3 (29:04):
I think you're trying to figure out what you were.
Speaker 1 (29:07):
Yeah, I think e n FP. Maybe I think.
Speaker 3 (29:12):
That's what I was. We weren't the same thing.
Speaker 1 (29:15):
I don't remember you. Me and I got the same thing.
She found an old email, but she forgot to tell
me what we were. Oh really, I really, I don't know.
Problem is would we still be the same today?
Speaker 5 (29:27):
Yeah, and I think, if I'm not mistaken, didn't we
have this up on a big board in the office
for a while, So yeah, it seems like a Jerry's nodding.
That seems like a breach of protocol. Sure like privacy.
Speaker 1 (29:38):
Yeah, well again, being forced a gunpoint to do it
was just from the start.
Speaker 3 (29:42):
I remember it was kind of fun. I had a
fun day.
Speaker 1 (29:44):
We'll talk about that as well.
Speaker 5 (29:46):
So it's gonna cost you if you just do this
as a single individual, not meaning not married, but just
a person, about fifty bucks, although they.
Speaker 3 (29:56):
Should charge more if you're married. It's more complex.
Speaker 5 (29:58):
Test fifty bucks. If you want an hour feedback, that'll
cost you an extra hundred. And if you want a
career report all typed up, that'll be sixteen ninety five. Yeah,
and if you this is fifteen hundred dollars for a
on site training classes at like what we had.
Speaker 1 (30:15):
So this is a this is not very well explained.
If you want to administer the Myers Briggs personality or
type inventory, yeah, you can get certified four day training course.
Oh okay, and you pay fifteen hundred to sixteen hundred dollars.
Speaker 3 (30:29):
Oh that's what that is.
Speaker 1 (30:30):
Cannot legally administer this test or you're infringing on their copyright,
right unless you are certified by CPP to do this.
Speaker 3 (30:39):
We should do it with one another on the air
and risk a lawsuit.
Speaker 1 (30:41):
Well yeah, well you probably got a suit already with
that one question you asked out loud.
Speaker 3 (30:46):
Which one? Oh, just the one?
Speaker 1 (30:48):
Yeah, when you go on a trip, do you want
everything planned out in advance?
Speaker 3 (30:51):
I just made that up. Oh good job, goodcha, I
got that from Travelocity.
Speaker 1 (30:55):
Nice. Okay, yeah, that little gnome whispered it in your.
Speaker 3 (30:58):
Ear, that's right.
Speaker 1 (30:59):
But so you you would go and get certified, and
then now you can go around to businesses and say, hey,
do you want to know more about your employees? You
want to know who's good at what? Let me come
give the Myers Briggs type inventory to your your employees
and it will be wonderful.
Speaker 6 (31:18):
Right.
Speaker 1 (31:18):
So that's how the whole process goes. You pay to
become certified, and then you go become something of an
evangelist for the Myers Briggs test and you sell the test.
You basically become a salesman as well. It's a it's
very interesting dynamic that they have going.
Speaker 5 (31:36):
That is, it's a good word dynamic. They want to
point out that the person taking the test is the expert,
and they also use this metaphor of handedness, which I
didn't fully understand. They say things like, it feels more
comfortable to sign your name with your domino hand, but
(31:58):
technically you can sign with your non dominant and if
you need to right. I'm not sure what they're trying
to prove that.
Speaker 1 (32:03):
They're trying to say that despite the MBTI, pigeonholing you
fully in one category or another rather than on a spectrum.
They're saying that category that it's pigeonholing you into is
actually just your preference. It's not you specifically, it's just.
Speaker 3 (32:22):
Your inclined pretension.
Speaker 1 (32:24):
Yeah, you tend to be an extrovert, but of course
everybody likes their own personal alone time, So yeah, you're
going to be an introvert once in a while, but
you're an extrovert more than other times.
Speaker 5 (32:36):
Yeah, because I can't sign my name with my left hand.
That I didn't like that analogy because it literally I
can barely hold a pin with my left hand.
Speaker 3 (32:47):
I'm seeing you're doing it right now.
Speaker 1 (32:48):
Wow, that was pretty bad.
Speaker 3 (32:49):
If I try to do it.
Speaker 5 (32:50):
It would look like a a three year old with
arthritis has tried to like scribble it.
Speaker 1 (32:57):
Out mine mine looks like umm.
Speaker 6 (33:02):
You d M.
Speaker 1 (33:04):
Yeah, it's my signature with my left hand.
Speaker 3 (33:08):
And they do they do try and point out. Like
you said that.
Speaker 5 (33:15):
It's interesting because they box you in. But at the
same time they're saying, but you know, like.
Speaker 3 (33:21):
You said, this is just predisposition.
Speaker 5 (33:22):
Don't don't really think of it about you being this
type of person, even though you are an A E
N F B. Right, like you said, it was earlier,
it was almost numbered. I mean it is this letter.
Speaker 1 (33:34):
This is a different way of quantifying it. Yeah, but
without numbers, you want to take a break and then
come back and and maybe do a little criticism.
Speaker 3 (33:45):
Yeah, okay, as why why.
Speaker 2 (33:49):
S K.
Speaker 6 (33:53):
You should know?
Speaker 1 (34:09):
All right, Chuck? Like I said, it's kind of a
pastime in the United States to to tee off on
the Myers Briggs type inventory.
Speaker 3 (34:17):
Yeah, this is not us here, this is now, this.
Speaker 1 (34:19):
Is us talking about other people. Team.
Speaker 3 (34:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (34:22):
It's widely been criticized over the years from psychologists and
uh well amateur.
Speaker 3 (34:31):
No, nothing's like us.
Speaker 1 (34:32):
Sure.
Speaker 3 (34:33):
One of the big criticisms is.
Speaker 5 (34:34):
That companies use this stuff and hiring and firing and promoting.
Speaker 1 (34:41):
But even the Myers Briggs people cpp say, like, don't
do that.
Speaker 5 (34:46):
Well I know, but they say that, but then don't
go to an office and get hired by a corporation
to administer.
Speaker 1 (34:52):
It, right or go sell your services you know? Yeah, yeah,
I agreed, And that's part of the problem. To me,
that is more the corporation's fault. Well, like, if you
have an HR person who's like a die hard believer
(35:14):
in the MBTI and will hire or fire somebody based
on their MBTI type, fire that person because you have
a real dumb dumb on your hands and they should
not be responsible for people's livelihoods. Even I don't think
they would put it quite in those terms, But even
(35:34):
the Myers Briggs people say like, you shouldn't use this
for hiring or firing, and yet yes, some people do,
some people swear by this. The impression that I have
is that the Myers Briggs people tend to think of
this as more like a team building exercise or 're
like a certified MBTI administrator can come to your place,
(35:59):
get all your employees together and they find out like
all their personality types and by the way, there's not
a single negative personality type and all personality types are equal. Sure,
so everybody gets a participant ribbon in the form of
their personality type. But at the same time, and this
seems to be the crux, at the same time, everybody's
(36:21):
finding out like, oh, you're a little different than me,
and I'm a little different than you, and we all
have differences in different perspectives, so let's celebrate that, and
let's respect to one another's differences. And there is the
actual point from what I understand, of the Myers Briggs
type inventory and taking it in a corporate setting.
Speaker 5 (36:40):
That's what stands out to me as what happened with
us was I remember it kind of being a fun
day and we're like TUTSI rolls. Yeah, we held goofed
off and had a good time. And the person leading it,
if they're good at what they do, which this person was,
is always you know, it's always kind of a fun
person and cracking jokes and they don't take it too serious.
None of us took it too seriously, and we all
(37:03):
had a good time and it was very much like
a team building thing.
Speaker 1 (37:07):
Right, So as long as there's like a wink wink,
nudge nudge kind of thing, and that the people who
take it actually take it seriously or taken off to
the side by their hr rep to say like, no,
this is a little less serious, then you're taking it.
Then it's fine. But yes, once you start deciding people's
fate based on this, then you have real problems because
(37:29):
it's just about anybody will tell you the Myers Briggs
type inventory is based at best on some shaky science,
if at all, if you go back to the very beginning,
it's based on the theories of Carl Jung, which have
never been based on science. There are basically personal observations
by Jung, and the psychology community has disavowed Jung in
(37:50):
large part, so therefore anything based on his teachings and
theories is by proxy disavowed as well. But if that
weren't enough, psychology, you as a field loves going after
the Myers Briggs type inventory just loves it as totally
baseless scientifically all.
Speaker 5 (38:08):
Right, So we've got shouldn't use it to hire and
fire in corporations or gift promotions. We have not based
on real science and scientific data. These four dichotomies are
problematic in and of themselves because everyone is on a spectrum.
(38:30):
You can't say, like, you know, you answered these ten questions,
you're either.
Speaker 3 (38:35):
This or you're that.
Speaker 5 (38:36):
Right, And when one of the rebuttals because I think
ED interviewed someone from CPP, right, Yeah, one of the
rebuttals about being a non repeatable experiment of sorts is like, hey, yesterday.
Speaker 3 (38:52):
I was an e NFP and today I'm this.
Speaker 5 (38:55):
They'll say, well, you know what, if you have different answers,
that means you were sort of on the cusp right
there in that center line on some of these questions,
and you might have just leapt over to that other side,
which means you're basically kind of down the center. Yet
they don't have a categorization for down the center.
Speaker 1 (39:11):
Yeah, because depending on as inputs it, you could answer
all twenty four questions on the feeling side and you're
going to get the same result as somebody who answered
eleven questions for thinking and thirteen questions for feeling. Right,
same thing, You're still both in f in that respect.
And I saw elsewhere it put like if the Myers
(39:33):
Briggs test measured height, you would either be tall or short. Yeah,
you could say well, actually I'm right there in the middle,
and they'd be like, well that's short, right, Or for you,
it's short. For the guy who is the same exact height, they're.
Speaker 3 (39:46):
Tall, right.
Speaker 5 (39:47):
And trust me, nobody this five' ten likes to be considered, short.
RIGHT i can say that from.
Speaker 1 (39:52):
Experience because you're. Not you're in your Average.
Speaker 3 (39:54):
I'm, average, Right so being.
Speaker 1 (39:56):
Average the fact that there isn't a spectrum is one
one thing that really makes it in stark contrast of
other much more widely accepted psychometric. Instruments for, sure.
Speaker 3 (40:11):
It also points out to the grabster that They're the construction.
Speaker 5 (40:14):
Of the instrument itself is problematic because, one like we talked,
about it's self. Reporting anytime you're self, reporting there's going
to be some weird bias in, there, sure just almost
impossible to. Avoid and the other one is that he
says a couple of these dichademies are, entangled WHICH i
(40:37):
never really thought about, that but that's a pretty good.
Speaker 3 (40:38):
Point so.
Speaker 5 (40:42):
Judging perceiving scale or correlated with answers on the sensing intuition,
scale and if you, like those should be separated out for.
Speaker 3 (40:51):
Sure for. SURE i don't know why they.
Speaker 1 (40:53):
DON'T i don't, either you, know because they've really put
a lot of work into.
Speaker 5 (40:58):
This, yeah it's not baked in stone from the nineteen
forties and fifties and, sixties is.
Speaker 1 (41:04):
It, no it's. Not and even while they were creating
it was an, ongoing exhaustive process That Missus briggs And
Missus myers engaged.
Speaker 5 (41:14):
In, yeah we don't want to Give they spent decades on. This,
yes it wasn't like something they threw.
Speaker 3 (41:18):
Together.
Speaker 1 (41:19):
No the problem is is they they did it. Backwards
they came up with the personality types and then set
about creating the test that would detect these personality. Types
rather than going out and testing, people seeing what personality
types emerged and then figuring out a test to find
that and other, people they did it. Backwards that's a good.
Point it was based on young but it was not
(41:41):
for lack of. Trying Like as a matter of, fact
one of the first things they did after they started
to really establish the tests was they managed to administer
it to like five Thousand George Washington university medical, students
and they took those results and tracked the students to
see what fields of medicine they went. In they like
really worked on. THIS i read an article in The
Washington post where THIS i Think Isabelle myers's son remembers
(42:10):
their vacations were basically like fact finding missions all around the,
country like they would go administer a, test like everything
was about this. Test AND i worked on it for a.
Decades so, yeah the problem is it was just it's
just not based on. Science they didn't follow the scientific.
Method so, science so science kind of poo poos THE.
(42:31):
MBT i but, wait, wait, wait get back, here because
a lot of these criticisms fall just as easily on
every other psychometric test.
Speaker 6 (42:42):
Around.
Speaker 5 (42:43):
Well, yeah and that's one of the things THAT i
can't remember who was interviewed in, Here but in one
of those other articles you sent one of The MYERS
i don't know if it was or maybe it was
a roar shack defender, said you, know like, everyone, yeah
it Was. Rorschak like everyone's always picking On, rorshak, right
when all of these psychological tests, are you, know subject to, criticism.
Speaker 1 (43:09):
They, are you, KNOW i think it's really easy for
to tee off On rorshak as, well BECAUSE i mean
we're talking ink. Plots, man it is the epitome of
subjective self. Reporting you're, SAYING, i let's see in this,
ONE i see mom's. Boobs, yeah mom's boobs in that one,
Too dad's, boobs right, right exactly. So and then from
(43:32):
that it was strictly up to Initially, rorshak WHO i
think came up with this test in nineteen, fifteen ninety.
Seventeen what it's the Name, HERMAN i think so he's
A swiss. Psychiatrist her it. Was it was initially up
to him and then later on his followers to interpret,
this which is basically like interpreting. Dreams, yeah and so,
(43:55):
subjective totally subjective from beginning. That and then IN i
think nineteen se seventy, five a guy At Bowling Green State,
university which is right outside Of, toledo came up with
this a really exhaustive interpretive test that sought to quantify rorschak.
Speaker 5 (44:16):
Answers, Yeah John, Exner and it was a test called
The Comprehensive system one hundred and forty. Components and in
this article you, sent they said That rorschak was probably
going away had it not been For exner's accompaniment with
this other, process.
Speaker 1 (44:36):
Right and even, today he's got an institute In asheville
that's dedicated to The rorschach. Test, Right, so one Thing
i've noticed from researching this is each of these personality
inventories has like its adherence and its, detractors and just
judging from the, outside it looks a lot like colts
(44:56):
gathered around their various. Idols. Right there's like the origin
figurehead who came up with, it and everybody worships, them
and he's attacked by these other followers who have a
very similar. Figurehead they came up with something very, similar
but it's just different enough that there's a huge chasm
between the two and there's a lot of dogma surrounding.
It but The rorschach test in particular is apparently well
(45:20):
known to give wildly inaccurate.
Speaker 3 (45:22):
RESULTS i took one, today did you? Online how'd you?
Speaker 5 (45:25):
DO i got two out of, ten which MEANS i
was only two two away whatever that means from being
labeled like a.
Speaker 3 (45:34):
Psychotic, so, yeah there was this four out of. TEN
i think there's This oh, REALLY i think that's what it. Said,
yeah that's. CLOSE i mean this is an online.
Speaker 5 (45:43):
TEST i don't know if it's, like how true it
was to the ORIGINAL i got, it or it may
be the, Original.
Speaker 1 (45:47):
Yeah it could. Be and then they have an algorithm
that runs the.
Speaker 5 (45:51):
ANALYSIS i kept seeing all kinds of things WHEN i
looked at, it And i've never done an ink plot.
TEST i would, say, oh that looks like a, bat
and then they was, like, no it's like two. Bunnies
and then now it looks like a Cool Marti gras.
Speaker 1 (46:02):
Mask did they move to?
Speaker 3 (46:04):
You did you see?
Speaker 5 (46:05):
Colors, well some of them were, Colored oh, okay most
of them were, black and they had A the ONE
i took had a one and a. Two, like what
do you? See and what's like a secondary thing that you?
Speaker 1 (46:16):
See so you, know supposedly people who are supporters of
The rorschak tests, say, no, man there's we don't know
how it's. Working but if you see movement in The
rorschach ink, blots it's suggestive of depression or something like.
That and they, say statistically it's. Correlated but LIKE i was,
saying it's also notorious for giving incorrect.
Speaker 3 (46:37):
Results, yeah like saying you have a mental. Illness, right.
Speaker 1 (46:40):
Okay so there was this study in two thousand that
was given to like one hundred mentally sound elementary school
kids and some like high percentage of them came back
as borderline psychotic because of The rorschak, test, Right and
it's hilarious to hear stories like, That Like i'm laughing
inside right. Now but the problem is is you're at
(47:03):
the very least being labeled as. Psychotic, sure not a
label you want in. Society and it was because of
this ink blot test that's one hundred years. Old and then,
secondly these tests are also being submitted and accepted as
evidence in criminal. Trials that's the biggest part child custody.
Speaker 5 (47:24):
Cases, YES i mean they're still given real weight and
lives are changed and ruined based on looking at one
hundred year old ink. Blots, yes and a person's subjective
analysis of.
Speaker 1 (47:35):
That that's not. Okay, No This.
Speaker 5 (47:37):
Howard garb in this one article you. Sent he's a
co author Of What's wrong with A rorshak and he
is head of psycho or at least at the time
of this, article he may still be head of psychological
testing for The Air. Force he said that even With
exner's comprehensive, system he, said only ten percent of his
system even meets the most basic scientific, standards and they
(48:01):
did the examine data of over thirty Different rorschak, studies
and he said they all have a tendency to label
healthy people mentally.
Speaker 3 (48:08):
Ill.
Speaker 5 (48:09):
Right and if you're trying to get custody of your
kid or if you are on, trial is a? Criminal,
like it's just that's the last thing you. Need, yeah
is someboddy subjective opinion of is it a bunny or
is it a?
Speaker 3 (48:21):
Bat?
Speaker 1 (48:22):
Oh he, said a? Bat take that, kid you know?
Quick kids LIKE i like.
Speaker 3 (48:27):
Bunnies the.
Speaker 1 (48:30):
Another one that we have to talk about is THE
Mmpi now THE mmpi dash. TOO i think as of
twenty twelve they revised it. Dramatic yeah is this?
Speaker 3 (48:39):
One is that? Right it has over five hundred? Questions?
Speaker 1 (48:42):
Yeah. Wow some of them originally were about like your bowel, movements,
okay really nutso questions that supposedly really got to the
heart of whether you were mentally disturbed or.
Speaker 3 (48:56):
Not.
Speaker 1 (48:57):
Right. Yeah and it was created at The University minnesota
in the forties by a psychiatrist and a, NEUROLOGIST i,
believe and they hit upon a pretty clever. Idea they,
said we're not going to interpret the results right and,
say you, Know, oh this person said that they do
feel like smashing something, Sometimes.
Speaker 3 (49:18):
Yeah and that means.
Speaker 1 (49:20):
This, instead we're going to come up with this test
of like five hundred and four, questions and we're going
to give it to the patient or the family and
staff of a mental hospital who we're sure or, sane
and we're going to take their answers and they're going
to become our control, group our. Baseline so then anybody
(49:40):
who takes this, test we're going to compare the test
taker's answers to the sane control group's, answers and you,
know depending on how it relates to the same control,
group they're either mentally ill or.
Speaker 3 (49:52):
Not you better have gotten that control, group. Right, well
that's the thing to begin.
Speaker 1 (49:56):
With so a group of like family and friends In,
minnesota is the picture of sanity throughout the world is
the basis of this. Test that's a huge problem with
it to begin. With, yeah but apparently a lot of people, say, like,
no it it really. Has it does a pretty good
job of sussening it sussing out mental. Illness it's also
(50:17):
really good at detecting faker faking one way or the.
Other but it's it's too invasive and when companies use
it for hiring and, firing it's way too invasive and
apparently lawsuits have been filed against companies for using.
Speaker 5 (50:32):
It, WELL i think that most people are far more
troubled than they ever let on in. Life, sure and
part of success in life comes down to how good
you are at covering that up or hiding, it or
(50:56):
dealing with it and processing it in terms with. It
it's just to find a core group that are quote unquote,
sane normal.
Speaker 3 (51:08):
People it's just you're starting off with a.
Speaker 5 (51:12):
Problem, yeah you ask me a faulty, premise, Right, yeah
there's no. Way, like everyone has their. Issues they're deep
dark things that their brain that they don't want anyone to.
Know sometimes even the people closest to them don't even.
Speaker 1 (51:26):
Know, yeah and actually you're in agreement with. THIS a
sociologist Named William white who criticized THE mmpi as a
tool that helped to create and perpetuate the oppressive group
think of mid century organization man where it's basically, like
here's what we think is. Normal anything outside of that is,
(51:48):
abnormal and we're not going to hire you because you
don't fit into this picture of, normalcy which is basically
white crew Cut minnesota from the. Forties, right that's the
picture of. Normalcy that's highly.
Speaker 5 (51:59):
Debatable the other THING i thought was interesting is a
lot of skeptics and critics point to things like THE
mbti and saying this is just like astrology is really
no different than reading your, horoscope because it's all positive.
Psychology at the end of A Myers briggs non, test
(52:20):
no one walks away feeling. Bad usually it's all sort
of positive wording and like like this is what you.
Are you're just, this so kind of don't worry about
it the same way you read your horoscope in any given.
DAY i, mean how many horoscopes say like today you
will be prone to depression and wonder what it's all.
Speaker 1 (52:40):
About, right maybe you should work on your core character
because people don't like being around you that. Much you
don't hear that kind of. Stuff but that taps into
what's called The forror. Effect. Flrr there is a psychiatrist
Named Bertram.
Speaker 3 (52:54):
Forrror, oh this is so. Interesting he will take.
Speaker 1 (52:57):
It it's pretty.
Speaker 5 (52:58):
Interesting, WELL i, mean basically did he give the Same
he had people take these tests and then gave all
of the people the exact same, assessment but telling everyone
it was tailored for them their own personality. Assessment AND
i think the people who just thought it was favorable were,
like this is.
Speaker 1 (53:14):
Great well it was. Favorable he actually called it from daily.
Speaker 5 (53:18):
Horoscopes well, yeah but what were they responding positively? To,
well it was whether or not they wanted to feel
that way about.
Speaker 1 (53:24):
This it was a positive. Assessment there was nothing negative in,
there so it was all positive stuff like you have
a lot of unused, potential that kind of, stuff stuff
people wanted to identify. With, Right so the more flattering it,
was the more likely the people were to, say this
is an accurate assessment of.
Speaker 3 (53:41):
Me oh, okay so just ac the fact that it was.
Speaker 1 (53:43):
The same one given to the entire. Class he took
their answers and threw them out and, said here's your.
Assessment they're the same one for. Everybody that's about. Right
it got like an eighty five percent accuracy from the
class as a.
Speaker 3 (53:52):
Whole, well that's WHAT i.
Speaker 5 (53:53):
Wondered it was about the fifteen percent where those people
just super honest.
Speaker 3 (53:57):
Maybe and like no this really.
Speaker 1 (53:59):
No people actually don't like being around. Me i'm using
all of my potential and they still don't like.
Speaker 3 (54:04):
Me, yeah that's WHAT i couldn't figure. Out BUT i
guess that makes.
Speaker 5 (54:07):
Sense there are people out there that ARE i THINK
i would be one of those that would be, like
this is all.
Speaker 3 (54:11):
Right, Yeah i'm not like. That sure you got anything?
Speaker 1 (54:15):
ELSE i think. Not this is a good.
Speaker 3 (54:18):
One we've been wanting to do this for a.
Speaker 1 (54:20):
While, yeah this is a special request by me and.
Others if you want to know more about personality, tests
well you can go take them. Online they're kind of.
Huge right, now find out what kind of hobbit you.
ARE i don't know.
Speaker 3 (54:37):
What blocks do you live?
Speaker 1 (54:38):
In, yeah and in the, meantime you can type personality
tests in the search bar at housetiffworks dot. Com and
SINCE i said, that it's time for listener.
Speaker 5 (54:46):
Mail the only thing that should live in a box
is temporary housing for a pet frog.
Speaker 1 (54:57):
That's not, bad or the stuff you find in a
tree hole That Boo radley left for.
Speaker 3 (55:01):
You, yeah live in the.
Speaker 5 (55:03):
Box, hey, guys feel compelled to write you today to
tell you how GRATEFUL i am for your show and
praise your good. Work recently became a listener And i'm
working my way through the entire. ARCHIVE i think a
lot of folks might be able to relate to, this
until RECENTLY i found OUT i found it really hard
to relax and suffer with. Anxiety two months, AGO i
read an article basically pointing out how our obsession with
(55:24):
being productive and associated guilt is a modern. PHENOMENON i
think that for, sure you know. Yep ALTHOUGH i had
heard this, before something really clicked to my. Head SO
i decided to abandon guilt and embrace, relaxation taking control
of my own stress. Levels you guys have been a
big part of. THIS i have taken the time to
slowly potter around my flat gopher walks while listening and
(55:48):
learning to your fascinating, podcasts and they've lifted my. MOOD
i feel mentally healthier THAN.
Speaker 3 (55:52):
I ever have. Before.
Speaker 5 (55:53):
Nice although the content of what you discussed might not
always be, positive the way in which you explain them
and your own views revive my hope in humanity.
Speaker 1 (56:02):
That is ridiculously. Flattered isn't that?
Speaker 3 (56:04):
Nice?
Speaker 5 (56:04):
YEAH i GUESS i should also mention that a big
part of my tackling anxiety levels has been to abandon
watching television.
Speaker 1 (56:10):
And fistfuls of psychotropic.
Speaker 5 (56:12):
DRUG i would be really interested to know if there's
been any research conducted into the EFFECT tv has upon our.
Speaker 3 (56:18):
Lives, Oh i'm sure there has. Been.
Speaker 5 (56:19):
SURE i haven't owned A tv for many, years but
my partner has since subscribed to an online provider AND
i realized how WATCHING tv has not helped my. ANXIETY
i also remember reading that AFTER TVs became mainstream In,
bhutan their crime rate went up something like seven.
Speaker 3 (56:35):
Percent might prove an interesting topic for a future. Show.
Speaker 5 (56:38):
Yeah, anyway sincerely, grateful keep it. UP i am now
recommending your shows to as many people AS i. Can
big love from THE.
Speaker 3 (56:45):
Uk.
Speaker 1 (56:46):
Mac thanks a, Lot, mac that was. Great we hear
from a lot of people actually say that we help
them with their. Anxiety no idea, how but it doesn't,
matter so thank.
Speaker 3 (56:56):
You. Yep.
Speaker 1 (56:56):
Yeah if you want to get in touch of, this
Like mac, did you can and send us an email
To stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot.
Speaker 2 (57:03):
Com stuff You Should know is a production Of. iHeartRadio
for more podcasts Myheart, radio visit The iHeartRadio, App Apple,
podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite.
Speaker 1 (57:15):
Shows
Hey, everybody, it's me Josham. For this week's Select, I've
chosen our August twenty seventeen episode on personality tests. It
turns out that the vast majority of them, maybe all
of them, are scientifically faulty to at least some degree,
and some of them are just outright made up. This
can be a real problem if they're being used to
diagnose you with a mental illness, or hire or fire
(00:22):
you or put you in jail, and that actually happens.
So dig into this deceptively interesting episode and enjoy it.
And I'm an EENFP.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
By the way, Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a
production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's
Charles w Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry over there, and this
is Stuff you Should Know.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
Yeah, just a couple of.
Speaker 4 (00:59):
It.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
Jay says, I don't remember what I am. We've taken
it before. How Stuff Works hosted it years back. Do
you remember.
Speaker 5 (01:09):
Yeah, we had, like many companies do, as you'll see,
we had when we were under Discovery's tender wing. They
paid for someone to come to our office and administer
the Myers Briggs personality test.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
At gunpoint.
Speaker 5 (01:23):
Yeah, I don't remember, but I'm pretty sure I was
an E N F P.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
I I don't remember what I was. I'll probably say
like three different things as we go through this one.
Speaker 5 (01:35):
Like, just looking at it again, I'm pretty sure I
was an E N F P. Okay, P stands for
pisces right where.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
Yeah, let's see extroverted intuitive. Okay, what is the F
stand for? Feeling pooper?
Speaker 3 (01:56):
Is a spoiler? Yeah, feeling pooper.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
So we're what we're talking about. It sounds like we're
saying strings of letters. They actually do make sense if
you're familiar with what Chuck just said, the Myers Briggs
type inventory, which if you are in corporate America and
have been a part of corporate America for more than
probably three years, there's probably a pretty good likelihood that
(02:18):
you've taken the Myers Briggs type inventory for sure. Like
it's really widespread.
Speaker 3 (02:25):
Yeah, I love it.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
I saw something like thirteen percent of companies in America
use it. It's a lot.
Speaker 5 (02:32):
Yeah, it was it eighty nine of the Fortune one
hundred use it.
Speaker 1 (02:36):
Right, And then I saw another stat It was from
two thousand and one though, So I'm not sure how current.
It is well sixteen years old, right, but they said
that the uh, I think British companies somewhere between ten
and forty percent of British companies use them, right, So
(02:57):
I mean it's who knows. It's pretty wild, guess it
sounds like but.
Speaker 3 (03:02):
I wonder if they have their own It's.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
No, the Myers Briggs Test. They don't call it a test,
as we'll see. Sure, but the test is, it's worldwide,
it's translated into tons of different languages. They and no,
it's it's the Myers Briggs Test. And there's tons of knockoffs.
Oh sure, there's tons of personality tests in general, which
really is the larger umbrella the Myers Briggs Test falls under.
(03:28):
But it's probably the most famous of all time, at
least as far as pop culture goes.
Speaker 5 (03:33):
Yeah, and we're going to hit on everything from Rorshak
to the Myers Briggs.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
Sure, but we're going to hit on them.
Speaker 5 (03:39):
But the MBT I definitely is more of the focus
of this one because of its ubiquity.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
Right, because most people know it, and because it's one
of the overlooked pastimes in the United States to take
pot shots at the Myers Briggs type inventory. Sure, it's fun.
Speaker 5 (04:00):
So categorizing one's personality is nothing new, and that's what
these tests aim to do for various reasons, which we'll
go over later. But going back, and this was a
Grabster article, correct, that's right, so you know it's good. Yeah,
And Grabster was just at our show in Toronto. Yeah,
he was for the second time.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
He stood up and like, did that victory shake?
Speaker 6 (04:25):
Did he do that?
Speaker 2 (04:26):
No?
Speaker 3 (04:26):
He did. No, I'm a big fan of that. That's
old school.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
Oh it is. It's a good way to go. It
looks like you should be wearing those dolphin shorts just
having crossed the finish line and you doing that.
Speaker 5 (04:38):
So yeah, it's nothing new trying to categorize personalities. Way
back in the day, I know, on our Grave Robbing
Live Grave Robbing episode, we talked about the four humors
and we talked about him before before medical science was
kind of a real thing.
Speaker 1 (04:56):
It was an early attempt.
Speaker 5 (04:58):
Yeah, they talked about the four fluids or the four
humors black bile, yellow bile, phlegm, and blood, uh and
and imbalance in those will cause disease. But they were
also this is something I didn't know. These are also
linked to corresponding personality types.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
Right, Yeah, So like the word melancholy in English, it's
an adaptation of the Greek words I believe for black bile.
There it is, and melancholy personalities were associated with an
overabundance of black bile. And basically your melancholy you're you're
(05:37):
a depressed person or you're very reserved or quiet. And
for thousands of years people thought guy's got a lot
of black bile. Yeah, that explains his personality. The other
ones are pretty pretty interesting too, like phlegmatic.
Speaker 3 (05:54):
Uh, phlegmatic.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
I've seen flegmatic. I've heard flagmatic. Really, I've seen it too.
Speaker 3 (05:59):
So like when you cough something up, do you call
it flegum?
Speaker 1 (06:02):
Sometimes depends if it had like a lot of extra
chunks in it, it's flag Oh gosh. But phlegmatic, I say, phlegmatic.
That's very laid back. Did you know that?
Speaker 5 (06:14):
Well, Yeah, because I looked all these up. Oh okay,
because sanguine is one of my favorite words. Yeah, and
that's this is Hippocrates, by the way. He kind of
further refined these concepts of the temperament. So melancholic, phlegmatic, sanguine,
and what is it choleric.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
Here coleric, Yeah, choleric, coloric. Choleric is like irritable and
short and terse and Kurt.
Speaker 3 (06:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
But the thing is, there's something weird here, right if
you are a thinking human being, yes, who is not
in a vegetative state right now?
Speaker 3 (06:50):
Correct?
Speaker 1 (06:51):
And for all we know at this point in medical science,
maybe even if you are in a vegetative state, you're
probably thinking, Uh, it doesn't seem like anyone I've ever
met is just phlegmatic or just choleric, or just sanguine
or just melancholy. Sometimes I'm all four of those things.
(07:12):
Sometimes I go through those things all four in a day,
depending on how weird the day is.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
Sometimes I go through all four of those within the
course of one happy hour.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
Sure, okay, Right, And that's kind of the point here,
And it's also the basis of any criticism from this
moment in the podcast here on out, is that this
whole thing that started back with the Four Humors and
continues on to this day in the guise of personality tests, yeah,
is an attempt to take a human personality and say
(07:43):
you're this, Yeah, you're this one type, You're this type,
this is your type, this is what you're like, right,
And the human personality is just too complex, too squishy,
too jelly like to be boxed into one thing like that.
Speaker 5 (07:58):
Yeah, and we'll get into all criticisms, but that definitely
is the leading criticism.
Speaker 3 (08:02):
That is. Well, we'll save that.
Speaker 1 (08:05):
Okay. That was a tease.
Speaker 3 (08:08):
It was a good tease.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
It's a phlegmatic one.
Speaker 5 (08:10):
All these classifications, though, that we talk about now, are
or most of them at least are drive lai at
the feet of one man. When Carl Jung, Yeah, who
wrote a book called psychological types.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
How do you say it? Though in in German?
Speaker 3 (08:28):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
It's oh where is it? Let me see there it is.
I can't even begin to do it.
Speaker 3 (08:37):
Psycho psycho sorry, psychologic yesh, psychologic ish typing.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
That's not fair.
Speaker 3 (08:45):
It's so tiny. That was the problem because you.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
Oh, yeah, I do ten point I don't like to
waste paper.
Speaker 3 (08:50):
Well you know me.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
You do like sixteen point times new Roman.
Speaker 5 (08:55):
Paper, and I don't want to waste it. But I
also have to do my job. Sure, maybe I should
go double sided, but then my highlighter it gets in
the way.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
Oh yeah, it would be a problem, man, everything would
be highlighting, you might as well just dip the whole
page in yellow wink or something.
Speaker 3 (09:11):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 5 (09:12):
So anyway, Jung wrote this book, that book in nineteen
twenty one and at German and had it translated to
English a couple of years.
Speaker 3 (09:20):
Later, and he created these four categories sensation, intuition, thinking,
and feeling.
Speaker 5 (09:29):
Right, So those were his four that kind of most
of these modern tests are based on in some way
or another.
Speaker 6 (09:36):
Yeah, And.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
It's really almost impossible that I guess we could just
save all the criticisms for the end and just pile
them on. But it's really tough to talk about this
stuff and not like, as you present one fact, talk
about the problem with that fact as it relates to
modern incarnation. What do you think we should do? Should
we just save them, like you say, because I can
(09:59):
buite my time?
Speaker 3 (10:00):
Yeah, let's say them, okay, and then you can just like.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
I'm not even try like I'm not I'm not going
crop circle here. I'm just saying like, there's just there's
just a lot wrong with this. But even before Young
who created these the concept of the modern concept i
should say, personality types, and he created the idea of introvert,
an extrovert, which say what you will about you, and
a lot of psychologists have a lot to say about him. Yeah,
(10:25):
not necessarily the nicest things to say, but introversion and
extra extraversion is so widely accepted inside and out of
the field of psychology that I mean, if that were
his only contribution to the field, that's that's enough to
engrave it on your tombstone for sure.
Speaker 4 (10:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (10:44):
And each of those four psychological types he was talking
about are modified by whether or not you're introverted or extroverted.
Speaker 3 (10:53):
Right, so they all kind of work together to buch
you in.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
That was like the right, that was the main thing
is how you how you approach life is introvert, extrovert,
and everything else was like a sub It's kind of
a sub section of that or something.
Speaker 4 (11:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (11:06):
And one of the issues with this, and I don't
think this is part of the criticism, but.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
I was gonna say, I thought we were saving him.
Speaker 5 (11:12):
He was This was based on his ideas. It wasn't
like he had all this research and all this data.
He was a deep thinker, and he sat around and
thought of these things.
Speaker 1 (11:25):
Right exactly, And then he wrote entire books based on them. Yeah,
but he's a very well respected psychoanalyst, and he was
part of the early movement for psychoanalysis. With Freud, they
were colleagues. La Jung was much younger, but they eventually said,
I don't like you anymore. We're parting ways. But as
(11:49):
psychoanalysis was really kind of establishing itself, and if you
want to know more about that background in the origin
of psychoanalysis, go listen to her how pr works the
live show. Yeah, we talked a lot about that. But
as this was going on and it was starting to
kind of dominate the field of psychology, there was a
whole other movement, a parallel movement that said, you know what,
(12:11):
we think all that's a little mushy. We like the
idea of being able to quantify psychology. And so even
before you there were guys like Alfred Binet, who was
one of the indirect fathers of the Intelligence test IQ test,
a pair of researchers named Gray and Wheelwright, and plenty
(12:32):
of others who wanted to say, no, no, no, no, you
can study psychology. You can study things like the human personality,
and you can typify and you can add numbers, you
can quantify this stuff and in doing so, we will
prove psychology as a science as well. So this whole
movement to typify people and put them into convenient, almost
(12:57):
numerical categories came out of this urgent need to establish
a scientific basis for psychology.
Speaker 5 (13:06):
Yeah, and Jung he kind of laid the table for this.
And many years later, although not that many, there was
a woman named Katherine Cook Briggs and she was working
on this with her daughter, one Isabelle Briggs Myers. I
think you see where this is going. And this is
post World War two when they women were kind of
(13:29):
for the first time really going into the workforce in
full and en mass, and so they thought, well, maybe
we can put together some personality types to find out
what kind of jobs these women might be suited for,
what types of jobs they might enjoy. So they started
working together on this, and as legend has it, the
(13:51):
mom Katherine Briggs Cook Briggs, she was doing her thing
and then saw Jung's works and said, I got to
start over.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
This is the stuff She had already been working on
a personality test. Yeah, but apparently, according to the legend,
through her work into the fire said I'm starting from scratch.
Speaker 3 (14:12):
Because she's dramatic.
Speaker 1 (14:13):
She was a voracious reader, especially of the psychology, the
new psychology books that were coming out of Europe.
Speaker 5 (14:21):
Right, she didn't read Young She did well eventually, but yeah,
and then seems like it kind of came along later.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
Well, so, yeah, there's a there's kind of a weird
discrepancy in the history. And I don't know if it's
just that hasn't been covered right or if there is
a weird discrepancy, but supposedly she initiated it, and so
it would have been contemporary or shortly after Jung's Psychology
or Personality Types was translated into English in nineteen twenty three.
(14:49):
But it was her daughter Isabelle who really took it
and ran with it because of World War Two in
the need for women in the workplace.
Speaker 5 (14:57):
Correct, so they you know, kind of kept some of
young stuff built on that it kind of striped some
of it away, most notably a lot of the unconscious stuff.
They might have thought that was a little too weird
for you know, the modern American workforce. Yeah, so what
they ended up coming up with was the the MBTI
(15:19):
Myers Briggs Type Indicator, right, very famously.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
Yeah, and they had a publishing arrangement with one group
I can't remember what they were called, but they thought
it didn't do very well. And then in nineteen seventy
five they went with another publisher CPP and they're the
current publishers of the Myers Briggs Yeah type indicator. And
since then that's when it's ubiquity, like just really spread
was starting in the seventies and now it's just it's
(15:46):
basically married to corporate America.
Speaker 3 (15:49):
Should we take a break, sure, go get married to
corporate America.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
Yeah, as if we aren't already.
Speaker 5 (15:54):
All right, we'll come back and we'll talk a little
bit about personality tests in general and then focus in
a little more on the n B T I.
Speaker 6 (16:02):
As W.
Speaker 4 (16:05):
S k as all right, So.
Speaker 5 (16:28):
Personality tests is just there are many many ways you
can get evaluated psychologically by a professional.
Speaker 3 (16:34):
This is just one way.
Speaker 1 (16:36):
And you get your head measured with calibers. Back in
the day they did that, give you a bunch of
drugs and see what you do. There's a lot of ways.
Speaker 5 (16:44):
But these tests generally, as Grabster points out, falls into
a couple of types, projective and objective. Projective tests or
things like the roar shack test where you're shown something
some kind of stimulus and it's open to interpretation, and
you tell them what you think about it, and someone
sits back very quietly and taps on a pad of
(17:06):
paper and makes an evaluation. And then objective are more
like these personality tests. They're standardized assessments that people use,
and while it's subjective what you put down, they are
then evaluated again by a professional.
Speaker 6 (17:23):
Right.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
But ultimately that objective name is a bit of a
misnomer because on the end of it, it's still interpreted
by a person. Yeah, which is therefore makes it subjective, right,
and which, depending on who you ask, is the fatal
flaw of all personality tests.
Speaker 5 (17:40):
It should be the good song from the seventies had
a little parenthetical at the end of the title, right,
it should just say subjective also right in parentheses.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
Baby.
Speaker 3 (17:54):
So the big five are and this is the Big five.
Speaker 5 (17:58):
I get the feeling or the psycho logical tests that
that legit psychologists are more in favor of over something
like the MBT.
Speaker 3 (18:07):
I is that right?
Speaker 1 (18:08):
Yeah, it's not just there's tests to suss out the
Big five. The Big five are the personality types of
the field of psychology has come up with.
Speaker 5 (18:15):
Well, yeah, but the tests that you utilize that, right,
they kind of think are more legit than the MBT.
Speaker 1 (18:20):
I yeah, there's not a psychologist alive who uses the
the MBTI and the regular practice. Oh I bet there
are not that not that are speaking up.
Speaker 3 (18:31):
I guarantee you there's someone out there.
Speaker 6 (18:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
Sure it's a free wheeling type.
Speaker 3 (18:37):
Or is she?
Speaker 1 (18:39):
So?
Speaker 5 (18:39):
The Big five are extraversion, agreeableness, openness to experience, conscientiousness,
and neuroticism. Right, sounds like it could be like a
dating site thing that you fill out.
Speaker 1 (18:51):
It's funny, every time I see or hear the word neuroticism,
a bell goes off in my head, like.
Speaker 3 (18:57):
Thing, just a silent bell. I don't know what that means.
Speaker 1 (19:02):
I don't either, but it draws my attention to.
Speaker 3 (19:06):
So some of these tests, I mean, it depends on
what it is that.
Speaker 5 (19:10):
They might not all call them by those exact words,
but they're generally using they call them, you know, like
I said, the Big five.
Speaker 1 (19:16):
Yeah, and I I was looking into that Big five
and this site I can't remember what it was called,
but they were basically they were going over it like
extraversion is again just part of the scientific literature at
this point. Agreeableness is like whether you're how sympathetic or
kind or affectionate you are? Conscientiousness is are you organized?
(19:38):
Are you thorough? Are you the type who shows up
on time? That kind of thing, neuroticism, which is some
kind sometimes called emotional stability. How tense are you? How moody?
How anxious? And then like openness to experience? Right, yeah,
they sometimes call that intellect slash imagination. Do you have
wide interests? Are you an imaginative person? Are you insightful?
(20:01):
And the site really went to a lot of pains
to point out that what you would call these things
the big five personality traits are as far as a
psychologist is concerned, just one dimension of you, the human being,
and that to get a clearer picture of you, they
would also need to study your motivations, your emotions, your attitudes,
(20:24):
your abilities, your self concepts, your social roles, autobiographical memories,
your life stories. Now, if you start to put all
these things together, then you can start to kind of
approximate the person's personality. But it would just it takes
a lot of study of an individual and these different
components that make up their personality to get a clear picture.
(20:44):
So I don't think there are any psychologists walking around
saying the big five personality types or like the beginning
and end of a personality. It's just if you put
them together, you have just a sketch of somebody's personality
and you should go much deeper. Or if you're analyzing someone.
Speaker 5 (21:01):
Yeah, I think I used to think this stuff was
a lot neaterer when I was younger, and now it
kind of gives me a little anxiety. Oh yeah, yeah,
Like I just I don't know as far as doing
this to myself, and I still enjoy therapy, like that's different.
But I don't know, because every single one of these
I like my answer would be, well, it depends.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
Well, I think. I think also though, and I don't
mean to speak for you, but one of the issues
that that comes up for me is if somebody goes
to you and says, you know you you you rate
pretty high on the spectrum of neuroticism, Like that's obviously
you're gonna obsess about that kind of stuff, especially if
they're right.
Speaker 3 (21:40):
It can make you neurotic.
Speaker 1 (21:42):
But yeah, it's a boundary that somebody has just established
for you. That you may need feel the need to
stay in because that's the boundary that you're bound by,
whether you are or not.
Speaker 3 (21:54):
Like this is my box, right that I'll live in it.
Speaker 1 (21:56):
That would be the reason it raises anxiety for me.
Speaker 3 (21:59):
Yeah, my whole thing.
Speaker 5 (22:00):
Like I said, though, it is just depends every single
question that I would get asked. Well, not everyone. Sometimes
I'm pretty like set on something, but usually I'd say
I don't know. It depends on the scenario. Right, Am
I more prone in a crowd to do X or Y?
Maybe right?
Speaker 3 (22:17):
Maybe not? Depends on my mood.
Speaker 1 (22:19):
So one with these other personality tests, and the whole
field in psychology of studying traits personality traits in a
quantitative way is called psychometrics. So with these tests, the
more sophisticated ones, if they had a test taker like you,
(22:39):
they're designed to get around that. So they're going to
ask a bunch of different questions about the same thing,
but in different ways, coming from different directions, so that eventually,
if you put all of them together and run them
through statistical analysis, they're actually going to come up with
your genuine answer, which is kind of one way or another.
The other way that they get around this that kind
(23:02):
of hemming and hauling, I guess is by placing it
on a spectrum, you're not being lumped into one category
or another. It's here's one end of the spectrum, here's
the other end of the spectrum, and based on your answers,
you fall somewhere around the middle, like almost everybody does.
If you look at psychometric tests, a legitimate psychometric test
(23:24):
is going to basically look like a bell curve where
most people are going to be distributed toward the middle.
Speaker 5 (23:30):
Yeah, I think what that's why gives me anxiety. It's like,
what's the point? Don't box me in?
Speaker 1 (23:35):
It's a great question.
Speaker 5 (23:38):
Well, I think the second half of this is a
lot of what's the point? Yeah, you know, So looking
speaking on these tests to see if it's actually if
there is a point, if it's a valid thing to do.
There are a couple of measures that one must look
at and that psychologists do look at is it valid
and is it reliable? Valid in this that it really
(24:01):
is a pretty good reflection of Josh or Chuck or whoever,
and is it reliable. So if we take this test
tomorrow or a different test, that's just you know, maybe
different questions, will it reproduce the same result?
Speaker 3 (24:16):
And that's a big deal.
Speaker 5 (24:17):
Like if you're talking science and you're trying to have
a foundation that says, no, this is science. It's not
just a bunch of questions and hippie dippy questions that
we're asking. If you really want real data and science
behind it, you have to be able to reproduce it.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
One of the other things too, that these tests are
designed to do is to weed out fakers. Right, we'll
talk a lot more about the Minnesota Multi Phasic Personality Inventory,
which is one of the big ones. Yes, probably the
most taken personality test in the world, and it has
(24:56):
a lot of built in mechanisms and apparently is really
good at detecting people who are faking they're faking a
mental illness or who are trying to pretend that they
aren't suffering from a mental illness. Yeah, it's really good
at detecting that because it's so exhaustive and using statistical analysis.
(25:16):
If somebody is skewed really far one way or skewed
really far the other, they're just immediately exposed as gaming
the test as best they can.
Speaker 6 (25:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (25:25):
And one way they do that, which is in its
own way, its own little psychology experiment at least, is
by telling you if we have ways right, like, you
will be rooted out and we will know exactly. So
they tell people that beforehand, so you're more inclined to
just be like, all right, we'll screw it.
Speaker 1 (25:43):
I'll tell the truth, right, especially when they're sitting there
like clearing the air out of a syringe.
Speaker 3 (25:51):
That's creepy.
Speaker 5 (25:52):
It is, all right, So let's get back to CPP
in the MBTI, the consulting Psychological Psychologists PRESS and the
Myers Briggs.
Speaker 3 (26:03):
We'll just keep calling it a test, even though they
say it's not a.
Speaker 1 (26:05):
Test, it's a type inventory.
Speaker 5 (26:07):
Yeah, so we'll just go ahead and break down the
deal here there are. The object is to sort you
into one of sixteen different types personality types, based on
which side of four pairs or dichotomies that you're going
to fall on. And those are at the very base.
You're either introverted or extroverted, like we said, HE or I,
(26:30):
sensing or intuition S and N. And these words they
sound a little confusing, like what the heck does a
sensing person mean? It means you, like the big data
empirical data and a lot of information.
Speaker 1 (26:46):
Right, whereas intuition is like you just go with your gut,
that's how you prefer to be correct. Right.
Speaker 5 (26:52):
The next we have thinking and feeling. Thinking being more
focused on logic, that's a logic with the tea sure
and objectivity. And then if you're feeling, you're going to
be more interested in relationships and harmony among your group.
Speaker 1 (27:10):
Those two are pretty straightforward, Yeah, I think so. And
then lastly there's judging and perceiving. Those are that's a dichotomy.
Judging is where you prefer schedules, you prefer decisiveness, that's
how you kind of approach life, and perceiving is where
you're just kind of like whatever, Yeah, I'm not too
(27:31):
worried about it. Yeah, that's almost kind of like the
difference between the type A and type B personalities, which,
by the way, was made up by a pair of
cardiologists really whose work was later secretly funded by the
tobacco industry who are looking for anything to explain heart
attacks besides smoking, so they funded type A and type
(27:53):
B personality research for years. Interesting, Yeah, it really is.
There's a just as an aside, there's a really interesting price,
I think, yeah, price nomics.
Speaker 3 (28:06):
Article on type and type.
Speaker 1 (28:08):
Yeah, just look it up. I don't remember the name.
Speaker 4 (28:10):
All right.
Speaker 5 (28:12):
So when you sit down to take one of these
not tests with a series of questions that you answer,
I think.
Speaker 1 (28:19):
They call them instruments, by the way, psychometric instruments, which.
Speaker 3 (28:24):
Are basically a series of questions on a.
Speaker 1 (28:25):
Piece of paper that sounds like a test.
Speaker 5 (28:28):
They will say things like ed has some good examples
here when you go on a trip, do you want
everything planned out in advance or would you rather just
take each day as it comes, do whatever you feel like?
Pretty straightforward kind of stuff, right, And then they also
have things like word pairs, just to see literally what
word you like better, like compassion, foresight, Like which word
(28:52):
do you like better?
Speaker 1 (28:53):
Carrots or fruit?
Speaker 3 (28:57):
Fruit?
Speaker 1 (28:57):
Fruit? Yeah, that's just prettier, it is. So I'm looking
back here, I just want to say, so.
Speaker 3 (29:04):
I think you're trying to figure out what you were.
Speaker 1 (29:07):
Yeah, I think e n FP. Maybe I think.
Speaker 3 (29:12):
That's what I was. We weren't the same thing.
Speaker 1 (29:15):
I don't remember you. Me and I got the same thing.
She found an old email, but she forgot to tell
me what we were. Oh really, I really, I don't know.
Problem is would we still be the same today?
Speaker 5 (29:27):
Yeah, and I think, if I'm not mistaken, didn't we
have this up on a big board in the office
for a while, So yeah, it seems like a Jerry's nodding.
That seems like a breach of protocol. Sure like privacy.
Speaker 1 (29:38):
Yeah, well again, being forced a gunpoint to do it
was just from the start.
Speaker 3 (29:42):
I remember it was kind of fun. I had a
fun day.
Speaker 1 (29:44):
We'll talk about that as well.
Speaker 5 (29:46):
So it's gonna cost you if you just do this
as a single individual, not meaning not married, but just
a person, about fifty bucks, although they.
Speaker 3 (29:56):
Should charge more if you're married. It's more complex.
Speaker 5 (29:58):
Test fifty bucks. If you want an hour feedback, that'll
cost you an extra hundred. And if you want a
career report all typed up, that'll be sixteen ninety five. Yeah,
and if you this is fifteen hundred dollars for a
on site training classes at like what we had.
Speaker 1 (30:15):
So this is a this is not very well explained.
If you want to administer the Myers Briggs personality or
type inventory, yeah, you can get certified four day training course.
Oh okay, and you pay fifteen hundred to sixteen hundred dollars.
Speaker 3 (30:29):
Oh that's what that is.
Speaker 1 (30:30):
Cannot legally administer this test or you're infringing on their copyright,
right unless you are certified by CPP to do this.
Speaker 3 (30:39):
We should do it with one another on the air
and risk a lawsuit.
Speaker 1 (30:41):
Well yeah, well you probably got a suit already with
that one question you asked out loud.
Speaker 3 (30:46):
Which one? Oh, just the one?
Speaker 1 (30:48):
Yeah, when you go on a trip, do you want
everything planned out in advance?
Speaker 3 (30:51):
I just made that up. Oh good job, goodcha, I
got that from Travelocity.
Speaker 1 (30:55):
Nice. Okay, yeah, that little gnome whispered it in your.
Speaker 3 (30:58):
Ear, that's right.
Speaker 1 (30:59):
But so you you would go and get certified, and
then now you can go around to businesses and say, hey,
do you want to know more about your employees? You
want to know who's good at what? Let me come
give the Myers Briggs type inventory to your your employees
and it will be wonderful.
Speaker 6 (31:18):
Right.
Speaker 1 (31:18):
So that's how the whole process goes. You pay to
become certified, and then you go become something of an
evangelist for the Myers Briggs test and you sell the test.
You basically become a salesman as well. It's a it's
very interesting dynamic that they have going.
Speaker 5 (31:36):
That is, it's a good word dynamic. They want to
point out that the person taking the test is the expert,
and they also use this metaphor of handedness, which I
didn't fully understand. They say things like, it feels more
comfortable to sign your name with your domino hand, but
(31:58):
technically you can sign with your non dominant and if
you need to right. I'm not sure what they're trying
to prove that.
Speaker 1 (32:03):
They're trying to say that despite the MBTI, pigeonholing you
fully in one category or another rather than on a spectrum.
They're saying that category that it's pigeonholing you into is
actually just your preference. It's not you specifically, it's just.
Speaker 3 (32:22):
Your inclined pretension.
Speaker 1 (32:24):
Yeah, you tend to be an extrovert, but of course
everybody likes their own personal alone time, So yeah, you're
going to be an introvert once in a while, but
you're an extrovert more than other times.
Speaker 5 (32:36):
Yeah, because I can't sign my name with my left hand.
That I didn't like that analogy because it literally I
can barely hold a pin with my left hand.
Speaker 3 (32:47):
I'm seeing you're doing it right now.
Speaker 1 (32:48):
Wow, that was pretty bad.
Speaker 3 (32:49):
If I try to do it.
Speaker 5 (32:50):
It would look like a a three year old with
arthritis has tried to like scribble it.
Speaker 1 (32:57):
Out mine mine looks like umm.
Speaker 6 (33:02):
You d M.
Speaker 1 (33:04):
Yeah, it's my signature with my left hand.
Speaker 3 (33:08):
And they do they do try and point out. Like
you said that.
Speaker 5 (33:15):
It's interesting because they box you in. But at the
same time they're saying, but you know, like.
Speaker 3 (33:21):
You said, this is just predisposition.
Speaker 5 (33:22):
Don't don't really think of it about you being this
type of person, even though you are an A E
N F B. Right, like you said, it was earlier,
it was almost numbered. I mean it is this letter.
Speaker 1 (33:34):
This is a different way of quantifying it. Yeah, but
without numbers, you want to take a break and then
come back and and maybe do a little criticism.
Speaker 3 (33:45):
Yeah, okay, as why why.
Speaker 2 (33:49):
S K.
Speaker 6 (33:53):
You should know?
Speaker 1 (34:09):
All right, Chuck? Like I said, it's kind of a
pastime in the United States to to tee off on
the Myers Briggs type inventory.
Speaker 3 (34:17):
Yeah, this is not us here, this is now, this.
Speaker 1 (34:19):
Is us talking about other people. Team.
Speaker 3 (34:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (34:22):
It's widely been criticized over the years from psychologists and
uh well amateur.
Speaker 3 (34:31):
No, nothing's like us.
Speaker 1 (34:32):
Sure.
Speaker 3 (34:33):
One of the big criticisms is.
Speaker 5 (34:34):
That companies use this stuff and hiring and firing and promoting.
Speaker 1 (34:41):
But even the Myers Briggs people cpp say, like, don't
do that.
Speaker 5 (34:46):
Well I know, but they say that, but then don't
go to an office and get hired by a corporation
to administer.
Speaker 1 (34:52):
It, right or go sell your services you know? Yeah, yeah,
I agreed, And that's part of the problem. To me,
that is more the corporation's fault. Well, like, if you
have an HR person who's like a die hard believer
(35:14):
in the MBTI and will hire or fire somebody based
on their MBTI type, fire that person because you have
a real dumb dumb on your hands and they should
not be responsible for people's livelihoods. Even I don't think
they would put it quite in those terms, But even
(35:34):
the Myers Briggs people say like, you shouldn't use this
for hiring or firing, and yet yes, some people do,
some people swear by this. The impression that I have
is that the Myers Briggs people tend to think of
this as more like a team building exercise or 're
like a certified MBTI administrator can come to your place,
(35:59):
get all your employees together and they find out like
all their personality types and by the way, there's not
a single negative personality type and all personality types are equal. Sure,
so everybody gets a participant ribbon in the form of
their personality type. But at the same time, and this
seems to be the crux, at the same time, everybody's
(36:21):
finding out like, oh, you're a little different than me,
and I'm a little different than you, and we all
have differences in different perspectives, so let's celebrate that, and
let's respect to one another's differences. And there is the
actual point from what I understand, of the Myers Briggs
type inventory and taking it in a corporate setting.
Speaker 5 (36:40):
That's what stands out to me as what happened with
us was I remember it kind of being a fun
day and we're like TUTSI rolls. Yeah, we held goofed
off and had a good time. And the person leading it,
if they're good at what they do, which this person was,
is always you know, it's always kind of a fun
person and cracking jokes and they don't take it too serious.
None of us took it too seriously, and we all
(37:03):
had a good time and it was very much like
a team building thing.
Speaker 1 (37:07):
Right, So as long as there's like a wink wink,
nudge nudge kind of thing, and that the people who
take it actually take it seriously or taken off to
the side by their hr rep to say like, no,
this is a little less serious, then you're taking it.
Then it's fine. But yes, once you start deciding people's
fate based on this, then you have real problems because
(37:29):
it's just about anybody will tell you the Myers Briggs
type inventory is based at best on some shaky science,
if at all, if you go back to the very beginning,
it's based on the theories of Carl Jung, which have
never been based on science. There are basically personal observations
by Jung, and the psychology community has disavowed Jung in
(37:50):
large part, so therefore anything based on his teachings and
theories is by proxy disavowed as well. But if that
weren't enough, psychology, you as a field loves going after
the Myers Briggs type inventory just loves it as totally
baseless scientifically all.
Speaker 5 (38:08):
Right, So we've got shouldn't use it to hire and
fire in corporations or gift promotions. We have not based
on real science and scientific data. These four dichotomies are
problematic in and of themselves because everyone is on a spectrum.
(38:30):
You can't say, like, you know, you answered these ten questions,
you're either.
Speaker 3 (38:35):
This or you're that.
Speaker 5 (38:36):
Right, And when one of the rebuttals because I think
ED interviewed someone from CPP, right, Yeah, one of the
rebuttals about being a non repeatable experiment of sorts is like, hey, yesterday.
Speaker 3 (38:52):
I was an e NFP and today I'm this.
Speaker 5 (38:55):
They'll say, well, you know what, if you have different answers,
that means you were sort of on the cusp right
there in that center line on some of these questions,
and you might have just leapt over to that other side,
which means you're basically kind of down the center. Yet
they don't have a categorization for down the center.
Speaker 1 (39:11):
Yeah, because depending on as inputs it, you could answer
all twenty four questions on the feeling side and you're
going to get the same result as somebody who answered
eleven questions for thinking and thirteen questions for feeling. Right,
same thing, You're still both in f in that respect.
And I saw elsewhere it put like if the Myers
(39:33):
Briggs test measured height, you would either be tall or short. Yeah,
you could say well, actually I'm right there in the middle,
and they'd be like, well that's short, right, Or for you,
it's short. For the guy who is the same exact height, they're.
Speaker 3 (39:46):
Tall, right.
Speaker 5 (39:47):
And trust me, nobody this five' ten likes to be considered, short.
RIGHT i can say that from.
Speaker 1 (39:52):
Experience because you're. Not you're in your Average.
Speaker 3 (39:54):
I'm, average, Right so being.
Speaker 1 (39:56):
Average the fact that there isn't a spectrum is one
one thing that really makes it in stark contrast of
other much more widely accepted psychometric. Instruments for, sure.
Speaker 3 (40:11):
It also points out to the grabster that They're the construction.
Speaker 5 (40:14):
Of the instrument itself is problematic because, one like we talked,
about it's self. Reporting anytime you're self, reporting there's going
to be some weird bias in, there, sure just almost
impossible to. Avoid and the other one is that he
says a couple of these dichademies are, entangled WHICH i
(40:37):
never really thought about, that but that's a pretty good.
Speaker 3 (40:38):
Point so.
Speaker 5 (40:42):
Judging perceiving scale or correlated with answers on the sensing intuition,
scale and if you, like those should be separated out for.
Speaker 3 (40:51):
Sure for. SURE i don't know why they.
Speaker 1 (40:53):
DON'T i don't, either you, know because they've really put
a lot of work into.
Speaker 5 (40:58):
This, yeah it's not baked in stone from the nineteen
forties and fifties and, sixties is.
Speaker 1 (41:04):
It, no it's. Not and even while they were creating
it was an, ongoing exhaustive process That Missus briggs And
Missus myers engaged.
Speaker 5 (41:14):
In, yeah we don't want to Give they spent decades on. This,
yes it wasn't like something they threw.
Speaker 3 (41:18):
Together.
Speaker 1 (41:19):
No the problem is is they they did it. Backwards
they came up with the personality types and then set
about creating the test that would detect these personality. Types
rather than going out and testing, people seeing what personality
types emerged and then figuring out a test to find
that and other, people they did it. Backwards that's a good.
Point it was based on young but it was not
(41:41):
for lack of. Trying Like as a matter of, fact
one of the first things they did after they started
to really establish the tests was they managed to administer
it to like five Thousand George Washington university medical, students
and they took those results and tracked the students to
see what fields of medicine they went. In they like
really worked on. THIS i read an article in The
Washington post where THIS i Think Isabelle myers's son remembers
(42:10):
their vacations were basically like fact finding missions all around the,
country like they would go administer a, test like everything
was about this. Test AND i worked on it for a.
Decades so, yeah the problem is it was just it's
just not based on. Science they didn't follow the scientific.
Method so, science so science kind of poo poos THE.
(42:31):
MBT i but, wait, wait, wait get back, here because
a lot of these criticisms fall just as easily on
every other psychometric test.
Speaker 6 (42:42):
Around.
Speaker 5 (42:43):
Well, yeah and that's one of the things THAT i
can't remember who was interviewed in, Here but in one
of those other articles you sent one of The MYERS
i don't know if it was or maybe it was
a roar shack defender, said you, know like, everyone, yeah
it Was. Rorschak like everyone's always picking On, rorshak, right
when all of these psychological tests, are you, know subject to, criticism.
Speaker 1 (43:09):
They, are you, KNOW i think it's really easy for
to tee off On rorshak as, well BECAUSE i mean
we're talking ink. Plots, man it is the epitome of
subjective self. Reporting you're, SAYING, i let's see in this,
ONE i see mom's. Boobs, yeah mom's boobs in that one,
Too dad's, boobs right, right exactly. So and then from
(43:32):
that it was strictly up to Initially, rorshak WHO i
think came up with this test in nineteen, fifteen ninety.
Seventeen what it's the Name, HERMAN i think so he's
A swiss. Psychiatrist her it. Was it was initially up
to him and then later on his followers to interpret,
this which is basically like interpreting. Dreams, yeah and so,
(43:55):
subjective totally subjective from beginning. That and then IN i
think nineteen se seventy, five a guy At Bowling Green State,
university which is right outside Of, toledo came up with
this a really exhaustive interpretive test that sought to quantify rorschak.
Speaker 5 (44:16):
Answers, Yeah John, Exner and it was a test called
The Comprehensive system one hundred and forty. Components and in
this article you, sent they said That rorschak was probably
going away had it not been For exner's accompaniment with
this other, process.
Speaker 1 (44:36):
Right and even, today he's got an institute In asheville
that's dedicated to The rorschach. Test, Right, so one Thing
i've noticed from researching this is each of these personality
inventories has like its adherence and its, detractors and just
judging from the, outside it looks a lot like colts
(44:56):
gathered around their various. Idols. Right there's like the origin
figurehead who came up with, it and everybody worships, them
and he's attacked by these other followers who have a
very similar. Figurehead they came up with something very, similar
but it's just different enough that there's a huge chasm
between the two and there's a lot of dogma surrounding.
It but The rorschach test in particular is apparently well
(45:20):
known to give wildly inaccurate.
Speaker 3 (45:22):
RESULTS i took one, today did you? Online how'd you?
Speaker 5 (45:25):
DO i got two out of, ten which MEANS i
was only two two away whatever that means from being
labeled like a.
Speaker 3 (45:34):
Psychotic, so, yeah there was this four out of. TEN
i think there's This oh, REALLY i think that's what it. Said,
yeah that's. CLOSE i mean this is an online.
Speaker 5 (45:43):
TEST i don't know if it's, like how true it
was to the ORIGINAL i got, it or it may
be the, Original.
Speaker 1 (45:47):
Yeah it could. Be and then they have an algorithm
that runs the.
Speaker 5 (45:51):
ANALYSIS i kept seeing all kinds of things WHEN i
looked at, it And i've never done an ink plot.
TEST i would, say, oh that looks like a, bat
and then they was, like, no it's like two. Bunnies
and then now it looks like a Cool Marti gras.
Speaker 1 (46:02):
Mask did they move to?
Speaker 3 (46:04):
You did you see?
Speaker 5 (46:05):
Colors, well some of them were, Colored oh, okay most
of them were, black and they had A the ONE
i took had a one and a. Two, like what
do you? See and what's like a secondary thing that you?
Speaker 1 (46:16):
See so you, know supposedly people who are supporters of
The rorschak tests, say, no, man there's we don't know
how it's. Working but if you see movement in The
rorschach ink, blots it's suggestive of depression or something like.
That and they, say statistically it's. Correlated but LIKE i was,
saying it's also notorious for giving incorrect.
Speaker 3 (46:37):
Results, yeah like saying you have a mental. Illness, right.
Speaker 1 (46:40):
Okay so there was this study in two thousand that
was given to like one hundred mentally sound elementary school
kids and some like high percentage of them came back
as borderline psychotic because of The rorschak, test, Right and
it's hilarious to hear stories like, That Like i'm laughing
inside right. Now but the problem is is you're at
(47:03):
the very least being labeled as. Psychotic, sure not a
label you want in. Society and it was because of
this ink blot test that's one hundred years. Old and then,
secondly these tests are also being submitted and accepted as
evidence in criminal. Trials that's the biggest part child custody.
Speaker 5 (47:24):
Cases, YES i mean they're still given real weight and
lives are changed and ruined based on looking at one
hundred year old ink. Blots, yes and a person's subjective
analysis of.
Speaker 1 (47:35):
That that's not. Okay, No This.
Speaker 5 (47:37):
Howard garb in this one article you. Sent he's a
co author Of What's wrong with A rorshak and he
is head of psycho or at least at the time
of this, article he may still be head of psychological
testing for The Air. Force he said that even With
exner's comprehensive, system he, said only ten percent of his
system even meets the most basic scientific, standards and they
(48:01):
did the examine data of over thirty Different rorschak, studies
and he said they all have a tendency to label
healthy people mentally.
Speaker 3 (48:08):
Ill.
Speaker 5 (48:09):
Right and if you're trying to get custody of your
kid or if you are on, trial is a? Criminal,
like it's just that's the last thing you. Need, yeah
is someboddy subjective opinion of is it a bunny or
is it a?
Speaker 3 (48:21):
Bat?
Speaker 1 (48:22):
Oh he, said a? Bat take that, kid you know?
Quick kids LIKE i like.
Speaker 3 (48:27):
Bunnies the.
Speaker 1 (48:30):
Another one that we have to talk about is THE
Mmpi now THE mmpi dash. TOO i think as of
twenty twelve they revised it. Dramatic yeah is this?
Speaker 3 (48:39):
One is that? Right it has over five hundred? Questions?
Speaker 1 (48:42):
Yeah. Wow some of them originally were about like your bowel, movements,
okay really nutso questions that supposedly really got to the
heart of whether you were mentally disturbed or.
Speaker 3 (48:56):
Not.
Speaker 1 (48:57):
Right. Yeah and it was created at The University minnesota
in the forties by a psychiatrist and a, NEUROLOGIST i,
believe and they hit upon a pretty clever. Idea they,
said we're not going to interpret the results right and,
say you, Know, oh this person said that they do
feel like smashing something, Sometimes.
Speaker 3 (49:18):
Yeah and that means.
Speaker 1 (49:20):
This, instead we're going to come up with this test
of like five hundred and four, questions and we're going
to give it to the patient or the family and
staff of a mental hospital who we're sure or, sane
and we're going to take their answers and they're going
to become our control, group our. Baseline so then anybody
(49:40):
who takes this, test we're going to compare the test
taker's answers to the sane control group's, answers and you,
know depending on how it relates to the same control,
group they're either mentally ill or.
Speaker 3 (49:52):
Not you better have gotten that control, group. Right, well
that's the thing to begin.
Speaker 1 (49:56):
With so a group of like family and friends In,
minnesota is the picture of sanity throughout the world is
the basis of this. Test that's a huge problem with
it to begin. With, yeah but apparently a lot of people, say, like,
no it it really. Has it does a pretty good
job of sussening it sussing out mental. Illness it's also
(50:17):
really good at detecting faker faking one way or the.
Other but it's it's too invasive and when companies use
it for hiring and, firing it's way too invasive and
apparently lawsuits have been filed against companies for using.
Speaker 5 (50:32):
It, WELL i think that most people are far more
troubled than they ever let on in. Life, sure and
part of success in life comes down to how good
you are at covering that up or hiding, it or
(50:56):
dealing with it and processing it in terms with. It
it's just to find a core group that are quote unquote,
sane normal.
Speaker 3 (51:08):
People it's just you're starting off with a.
Speaker 5 (51:12):
Problem, yeah you ask me a faulty, premise, Right, yeah
there's no. Way, like everyone has their. Issues they're deep
dark things that their brain that they don't want anyone to.
Know sometimes even the people closest to them don't even.
Speaker 1 (51:26):
Know, yeah and actually you're in agreement with. THIS a
sociologist Named William white who criticized THE mmpi as a
tool that helped to create and perpetuate the oppressive group
think of mid century organization man where it's basically, like
here's what we think is. Normal anything outside of that is,
(51:48):
abnormal and we're not going to hire you because you
don't fit into this picture of, normalcy which is basically
white crew Cut minnesota from the. Forties, right that's the
picture of. Normalcy that's highly.
Speaker 5 (51:59):
Debatable the other THING i thought was interesting is a
lot of skeptics and critics point to things like THE
mbti and saying this is just like astrology is really
no different than reading your, horoscope because it's all positive.
Psychology at the end of A Myers briggs non, test
(52:20):
no one walks away feeling. Bad usually it's all sort
of positive wording and like like this is what you.
Are you're just, this so kind of don't worry about
it the same way you read your horoscope in any given.
DAY i, mean how many horoscopes say like today you
will be prone to depression and wonder what it's all.
Speaker 1 (52:40):
About, right maybe you should work on your core character
because people don't like being around you that. Much you
don't hear that kind of. Stuff but that taps into
what's called The forror. Effect. Flrr there is a psychiatrist
Named Bertram.
Speaker 3 (52:54):
Forrror, oh this is so. Interesting he will take.
Speaker 1 (52:57):
It it's pretty.
Speaker 5 (52:58):
Interesting, WELL i, mean basically did he give the Same
he had people take these tests and then gave all
of the people the exact same, assessment but telling everyone
it was tailored for them their own personality. Assessment AND
i think the people who just thought it was favorable were,
like this is.
Speaker 1 (53:14):
Great well it was. Favorable he actually called it from daily.
Speaker 5 (53:18):
Horoscopes well, yeah but what were they responding positively? To,
well it was whether or not they wanted to feel
that way about.
Speaker 1 (53:24):
This it was a positive. Assessment there was nothing negative in,
there so it was all positive stuff like you have
a lot of unused, potential that kind of, stuff stuff
people wanted to identify. With, Right so the more flattering it,
was the more likely the people were to, say this
is an accurate assessment of.
Speaker 3 (53:41):
Me oh, okay so just ac the fact that it was.
Speaker 1 (53:43):
The same one given to the entire. Class he took
their answers and threw them out and, said here's your.
Assessment they're the same one for. Everybody that's about. Right
it got like an eighty five percent accuracy from the
class as a.
Speaker 3 (53:52):
Whole, well that's WHAT i.
Speaker 5 (53:53):
Wondered it was about the fifteen percent where those people
just super honest.
Speaker 3 (53:57):
Maybe and like no this really.
Speaker 1 (53:59):
No people actually don't like being around. Me i'm using
all of my potential and they still don't like.
Speaker 3 (54:04):
Me, yeah that's WHAT i couldn't figure. Out BUT i
guess that makes.
Speaker 5 (54:07):
Sense there are people out there that ARE i THINK
i would be one of those that would be, like
this is all.
Speaker 3 (54:11):
Right, Yeah i'm not like. That sure you got anything?
Speaker 1 (54:15):
ELSE i think. Not this is a good.
Speaker 3 (54:18):
One we've been wanting to do this for a.
Speaker 1 (54:20):
While, yeah this is a special request by me and.
Others if you want to know more about personality, tests
well you can go take them. Online they're kind of.
Huge right, now find out what kind of hobbit you.
ARE i don't know.
Speaker 3 (54:37):
What blocks do you live?
Speaker 1 (54:38):
In, yeah and in the, meantime you can type personality
tests in the search bar at housetiffworks dot. Com and
SINCE i said, that it's time for listener.
Speaker 5 (54:46):
Mail the only thing that should live in a box
is temporary housing for a pet frog.
Speaker 1 (54:57):
That's not, bad or the stuff you find in a
tree hole That Boo radley left for.
Speaker 3 (55:01):
You, yeah live in the.
Speaker 5 (55:03):
Box, hey, guys feel compelled to write you today to
tell you how GRATEFUL i am for your show and
praise your good. Work recently became a listener And i'm
working my way through the entire. ARCHIVE i think a
lot of folks might be able to relate to, this
until RECENTLY i found OUT i found it really hard
to relax and suffer with. Anxiety two months, AGO i
read an article basically pointing out how our obsession with
(55:24):
being productive and associated guilt is a modern. PHENOMENON i
think that for, sure you know. Yep ALTHOUGH i had
heard this, before something really clicked to my. Head SO
i decided to abandon guilt and embrace, relaxation taking control
of my own stress. Levels you guys have been a
big part of. THIS i have taken the time to
slowly potter around my flat gopher walks while listening and
(55:48):
learning to your fascinating, podcasts and they've lifted my. MOOD
i feel mentally healthier THAN.
Speaker 3 (55:52):
I ever have. Before.
Speaker 5 (55:53):
Nice although the content of what you discussed might not
always be, positive the way in which you explain them
and your own views revive my hope in humanity.
Speaker 1 (56:02):
That is ridiculously. Flattered isn't that?
Speaker 3 (56:04):
Nice?
Speaker 5 (56:04):
YEAH i GUESS i should also mention that a big
part of my tackling anxiety levels has been to abandon
watching television.
Speaker 1 (56:10):
And fistfuls of psychotropic.
Speaker 5 (56:12):
DRUG i would be really interested to know if there's
been any research conducted into the EFFECT tv has upon our.
Speaker 3 (56:18):
Lives, Oh i'm sure there has. Been.
Speaker 5 (56:19):
SURE i haven't owned A tv for many, years but
my partner has since subscribed to an online provider AND
i realized how WATCHING tv has not helped my. ANXIETY
i also remember reading that AFTER TVs became mainstream In,
bhutan their crime rate went up something like seven.
Speaker 3 (56:35):
Percent might prove an interesting topic for a future. Show.
Speaker 5 (56:38):
Yeah, anyway sincerely, grateful keep it. UP i am now
recommending your shows to as many people AS i. Can
big love from THE.
Speaker 3 (56:45):
Uk.
Speaker 1 (56:46):
Mac thanks a, Lot, mac that was. Great we hear
from a lot of people actually say that we help
them with their. Anxiety no idea, how but it doesn't,
matter so thank.
Speaker 3 (56:56):
You. Yep.
Speaker 1 (56:56):
Yeah if you want to get in touch of, this
Like mac, did you can and send us an email
To stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot.
Speaker 2 (57:03):
Com stuff You Should know is a production Of. iHeartRadio
for more podcasts Myheart, radio visit The iHeartRadio, App Apple,
podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite.
Speaker 1 (57:15):
Shows
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