• KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    7 months ago

    as a philosophy and sociology nerd myself (i.e. not at all qualified) i will simply say that there are many better alternatives.

    The big five is a pretty good one, a lot of people like it, i really like the enneagram. It’s really broad but incredibly specific at the same time, does a pretty good job at concatenating behaviors down into traits.

    Other than that, stop taking personality tests. Start quantifying your own behaviorism’s, it’s fun, just don’t take it seriously.

    • Omega_Haxors
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      7 months ago

      The idea of taking a complicated system and boiling it down to an essential value (or set of values) that describe everything is high-key fascism. It’s fine to simplify a system to better understand it, but the moment you start saying these abstractions have any kind of predictive capability outside their original contexts, that’s when you start getting into the eugenics shit.

    • Leate_Wonceslace@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      7 months ago

      When I was working on my associates, I took 3 psych classes as electives thinking I would minor/double major with math. I took all 3 of them with the same professor, and she took every opportunity she could to roast the OCEAN as a knock-off of the MBTI. She was particularly critical of people who dismissed the MBTI as pseudoscience while using the OCEAN.

      • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        7 months ago

        the OCEAN

        yeah that checks out. I’m not surprised people don’t like it. It’s hard to boil things down into a handful of traits. Specifically shorter ones.

        I presume it’s a lot less predatory than the MBTI though. Colleges are even starting to use the MBTI and it’s a huge cash cow for whoever owns that shit now.

        Big five will probably go that way given a long enough period if it isn’t already. I only mentioned it because it seems to be out there about as much as the MBTI lol.

        • Leate_Wonceslace@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          7 months ago

          a lot less predatory than the MBTI though

          You mean the practices surrounding it? I don’t see how a personality index can be predatory in-and-of-itself.

          • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            7 months ago

            yeah the practices around it. Technically the test itself can be predatory in the sense that it’s wrong, and people believe that it isn’t.

            Similar things in society have caused far worse outcomes. Notably, antisemitism. Though this isn’t nearly the same thing. People have a propensity to ascribe themselves to labels, or vice versa. And people like existing in groups. Labels are an incredibly easy way to define and arrange people into groups.

            Just being wrong in it of itself isn’t technically predatory though, but once you add in aspects like the MBTI pretending to be credible, suddenly now it becomes a lot more predatory on a personable level.

            you ever taken an online personality test of any kind? Ever notice how it says that it’s just for entertainment and shows no real data/labels? Similar thing there.