I’m not sure why not to reinvent the wheel. Personality psychologists do so all the time; the facet-level structure of personality is not particularly well-settled (and existing measures seem unlikely to be very relevant to rationalist culture).
Well so if we take a closer look at the facets, we see that often they are measured by questions that often ask about slight variants of the same behaviors. Furthermore, the facets in most existing personality models were theoretically posited rather than empirically derived (surely 6 facets per factor is a biiit to convenient? and indeed more direct work finds a totally different facet-level structure). Furthermore, I have a more philosophical issue with the way personality scales are usually constructed, in that they focused excessively on very abstract behaviors, which can make them functionally opaque, and also makes them “not really tests” (the test is not performing much cognitive work; most of the evaluation comes from e.g. yourself).
These are very general problems which mostly apply to personality tests in general. And in fact I’ve been tempted to do a bottom-up replacement of existing personality models using my own methods that fix all these problems (that’s part of the “psychometrics addiction” I mentioned in the OP). But overall since I have so many problems with existing personality models, this also makes me have those problems with using them for this.
Less general/more specific to rationalism is that I think many of the nuances among rationalists would get lost. For instance, I’m not sure which classical personality facets are the most related to worrying about wild animal suffering, but I strongly suspect that none of them are very strongly related to worries about wild animal suffering.
Thanks for linking to the SPI. I wasn’t aware that there is now better psychometry than Big Five. I’m delighted!
I also didn’t know that
This means that most measures do a good job of assessing relatively narrow operationalizations of the five dimensions and ignore large swaths of the individual differences landscape.
and more worrying
Scale developers have abandoned the use of trait descriptive adjectives.
The topics in IPIP seem to span a lot of topics. You write:
I’m not sure which classical personality facets are the most related to worrying about wild animal suffering, but I strongly suspect that none of them are very strongly related to worries about wild animal suffering.
I found 10 items related to animals in the IPIP. Some are about suffering animals, though not explicitly “wild” animals. No animal question is included in the 135 selected items for SPI. I am a bit confused about this as there is some claim that the selected items cover all topics.
I retract my suggestion to use Big Five items and replace it with the suggestion to use suitable items from SPI plus missing ones from IPIP, e.g., an animal-related question.
I found 10 items related to animals in the IPIP. Some are about suffering animals, though not explicitly “wild” animals.
Right, so I’m thinking I would write novel items specifically for rationalists.
No animal question is included in the 135 selected items for SPI. I am a bit confused about this as there is some claim that the selected items cover all topics.
SPI was basically constructed by taking 696 items from common preexisting personality inventories, and submitting them to factor analysis. This means that it is comprehensive with respect to those inventories, and also that it improves upon them, as there are many places where SPI’s factor analysis gave different results than the structure that had been imposed on the prior personality inventories. However, it is not comprehensive with respect to IPIP, as IPIP has 3320 items and not just 696 items, nor is it comprehensive with respect to personality more generally, as there are places where IPIP is missing items.
I would not try to reinvent the wheel and choose a subset of the Big Five sun facets. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facet_(psychology)
One dimension that might be missing in Big Five but relevant for rationality and is present in HEXACO is honesty/humility with it’s sub facets; https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honesty-humility_factor_of_the_HEXACO_model_of_personality
Independently, it would be interesting to see how these correlate with
choice in prisoners dilemma
onebox twobox
dualism
...
I’m not sure why not to reinvent the wheel. Personality psychologists do so all the time; the facet-level structure of personality is not particularly well-settled (and existing measures seem unlikely to be very relevant to rationalist culture).
I’m fine to (re)invent parts that make the test better or add valuable parts. But why not reuse what is already good?
Well so if we take a closer look at the facets, we see that often they are measured by questions that often ask about slight variants of the same behaviors. Furthermore, the facets in most existing personality models were theoretically posited rather than empirically derived (surely 6 facets per factor is a biiit to convenient? and indeed more direct work finds a totally different facet-level structure). Furthermore, I have a more philosophical issue with the way personality scales are usually constructed, in that they focused excessively on very abstract behaviors, which can make them functionally opaque, and also makes them “not really tests” (the test is not performing much cognitive work; most of the evaluation comes from e.g. yourself).
These are very general problems which mostly apply to personality tests in general. And in fact I’ve been tempted to do a bottom-up replacement of existing personality models using my own methods that fix all these problems (that’s part of the “psychometrics addiction” I mentioned in the OP). But overall since I have so many problems with existing personality models, this also makes me have those problems with using them for this.
Less general/more specific to rationalism is that I think many of the nuances among rationalists would get lost. For instance, I’m not sure which classical personality facets are the most related to worrying about wild animal suffering, but I strongly suspect that none of them are very strongly related to worries about wild animal suffering.
Thanks for linking to the SPI. I wasn’t aware that there is now better psychometry than Big Five. I’m delighted!
I also didn’t know that
and more worrying
The topics in IPIP seem to span a lot of topics. You write:
I found 10 items related to animals in the IPIP. Some are about suffering animals, though not explicitly “wild” animals. No animal question is included in the 135 selected items for SPI. I am a bit confused about this as there is some claim that the selected items cover all topics.
I retract my suggestion to use Big Five items and replace it with the suggestion to use suitable items from SPI plus missing ones from IPIP, e.g., an animal-related question.
Right, so I’m thinking I would write novel items specifically for rationalists.
SPI was basically constructed by taking 696 items from common preexisting personality inventories, and submitting them to factor analysis. This means that it is comprehensive with respect to those inventories, and also that it improves upon them, as there are many places where SPI’s factor analysis gave different results than the structure that had been imposed on the prior personality inventories. However, it is not comprehensive with respect to IPIP, as IPIP has 3320 items and not just 696 items, nor is it comprehensive with respect to personality more generally, as there are places where IPIP is missing items.