Not a problem: you have correctly identified a meaningless question. The correct answer is “mu”.
I have read, and maybe don’t take my word for it, that so called “personality traits” don’t reliably correspond to objective properties of a person. Or rather, that we apply them as labels to a person on seeing one set of behaviour we associate with it, but they aren’t predictors of any of the other kinds of behaviour that typically get assigned the same label.
I don’t have a reference to it here at work, but at home I have a psychology book which contains a paper about it. Maybe someone else here will have a clearer memory of what I’m talking about?
Anyway, that’s my main objection to so-called personality tests that give you a numeric personality score on one or more axes. I just want to ask “what are the units on that number?”, “how was this calibrated against objective measurements?”. The Myers-Briggs test goes one step further and combines 4 uncalibrated numeric scores into a “personality type”. Might as well be a horoscope.
Not a problem: you have correctly identified a meaningless question. The correct answer is “mu”.
I have read, and maybe don’t take my word for it, that so called “personality traits” don’t reliably correspond to objective properties of a person. Or rather, that we apply them as labels to a person on seeing one set of behaviour we associate with it, but they aren’t predictors of any of the other kinds of behaviour that typically get assigned the same label.
I don’t have a reference to it here at work, but at home I have a psychology book which contains a paper about it. Maybe someone else here will have a clearer memory of what I’m talking about?
Anyway, that’s my main objection to so-called personality tests that give you a numeric personality score on one or more axes. I just want to ask “what are the units on that number?”, “how was this calibrated against objective measurements?”. The Myers-Briggs test goes one step further and combines 4 uncalibrated numeric scores into a “personality type”. Might as well be a horoscope.
This paper by Borsboom (pdf) maybe? (Specifically attacking the Big Five.)