Life of a Lab Rat

The Myers-Briggs (personality) type indicator has a reasonable reputation in the psychological profession. It is an attempt to make C. G. Jung's theory of psychological typing accessible, that is to use psychological markers to understand real people in real situations. Essentially there are four scales - you can call them dichotomies or preferences if you prefer - on which people can be measured. I prefer 'scales' to 'dichotomies' or 'preferences' because they are each a continuum, rather than binary.

The four scales assess a person's 'favourite world' (internal or external), how they handle information, how they handle making decisions, and how they deal with other people. See http://www.myersbriggs.org/my-mbti-personality-type/mbti-basics/index.asp. You do score in a binary fashion for each of these four 'tests', but any counsellor worth their salt will bear in mind where you are along each scale. So, crudely, 2^4 = 16 basic personality 'types', although of course there is overlap (and you have to read between the fuzzy lines to find out which types are "this guy is a nasty piece of work"). The assessments should be performed by people who have been trained, and who can help interpret the results to the subject and counsel them as necessary. Knowing someone else's personality type can help you understand them - and knowing your own helps you understand yourself (#inc confucious).

I say all this because a close friend of mine became interested in the MBTI, and actually took the course and began to help friends and family resolve conflicts (some of which arise because different types see the world in different ways and this can be a great source of tension) and understand each other, in their marriages and business and whatever. I think she also did the course on finding the right career. Unbeknown to me she had actually been assessing me, over a few months and retrospectively, and when she showed me her findings I find it nailed me dead centre. Similarly for her husband and the Black Queen.

So we have a respected, robust, personality assessment that has the potential to help people and enable them to improve their relationships and understand their spouses (spice), children, etc. And there are various personality tests you can find on the WWW that do this sort of thing, whether they claim to be following MBTI or not, and in the two or three I've done when bored I get the same answer. I was even given one to do when I moved to work for a company in Cambridge, although it became quite apparent that they took no notice of the results.

And then we have the "PersonalDNA | Your true self revealed" crap. I'm not going to talk about the stupid categories they use ('masculinity' and 'femininity'? You're not telling me that there is any objective value to those terms. I'm pretty sure that my idea of 'masculinity' is unrelated to your average Aussie bloke's). I will say that it looks like a complete rip-off of the MBTI (as usual) with some trendy, feel good categories thrown in.

I also want to rant about the the prissy little pictogram, sorry, "personalDNA strip that you can add to your website":

I mean, come on. What's the message here? They're saying that the size of genes on chromosomes determines how much of a particular personality trait you have. Yes they are. That picto is immediately recognizable as a representation of a chromosome. And the 'genes', left to right, are

Average Confidence
Slightly High Openness
Average Extroversion
Slightly High Empathy
Average Trust
Slightly Low Agency
Average Masculinity
Slightly Low Femininity
Average Spontenaiety (sic)
Slightly Low Attention to Style
Low Authoritarianism
Very Imaginative

Whisky tango foxtrot?

(This is not from my results, by the way. I couldn't be arsed taking the test. Also, "The report and the images are individualized based on your responses." No they are not. It's a script.)

This is stupid, and it is dangerous. People believe what is on the internet. Deliberating conflating the results of any psych test with that image is irresponsible. The company's name is 'PersonalDNA'. The message is clear: "This is your personality, and it is in your genes". That leads to the situation where people say "I'm not lazy, I have Slightly Low Agency. A website told me it was in my DNA." Or worse: "I beat my wife because a website said my genes have High Masculinity." "I have Low Imagination in my genes. That's why I invaded Iraq". Do I have to spell it out? Abdication of personal responsibility, denial of the possibility of change — it's all here.

But you, gentle reader, will turn around to me and say,
"Chill, BK. It's just a bit of fun."

And that is because I suspect my readership is self-selecting, and you actually possess the critical faculties to assess that test and the pictogram and assign a value to them. But people, in general, are stupid. You are not representative of the population as a whole. People do take this stuff seriously. The very people who inform themselves primarily from the internet are those without the nouse to realize that ninety percent of it is crud (Sturgeon). Moreover, people believe marketing. Why do you think there is so much advertising? Why do you think you never see a poor homeopath? Why do people spend excessive amounts of money on plastic tat in December?

I sometimes despair of getting Jane Public to think critically about science, when she can't think critically about the easy stuff. I am now going to take some more drugs and lie down.