tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/personality-assessment-54165/articlesPersonality assessment – The Conversation2020-03-24T18:58:23Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1340372020-03-24T18:58:23Z2020-03-24T18:58:23ZCoronavirus and you: how your personality affects how you cope and what you can do about it<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/322190/original/file-20200323-22618-vsvdoi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C5092%2C3397&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/cuyahoga-falls-ohusa-02-28-2020-1659147811">Eleanor McDonie/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>To some people, fighting in the aisles over toilet paper makes sense. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/mar/05/even-as-behavioural-researchers-we-couldnt-resist-the-urge-to-buy-toilet-paper">Driven by the social proof of empty shelves</a> and in fear of losing out, they fight. To others, such behaviour would be unthinkable. Clearly some cope differently to others when it comes to the coronavirus pandemic. The question is, why? </p>
<p>Our <a href="http://danariely.com/books/predictably-irrational/">behaviour is not that rational</a>. And it’s influenced by many factors, including <a href="http://web.missouri.edu/%7Esegerti/capstone/choicesvalues.pdf">change of context</a>, <a href="http://sciencesearch.defra.gov.uk/Default.aspx?Menu=Menu&Module=More&Location=None&Completed=0&ProjectID=16189">habit</a> and the focus of this piece – personality. </p>
<p>Personality is thought to be fairly stable across time and context, and difficult to change. So why bother to understand it? Exposing the cues your personality is sending will give you some choice over how to cope with the scarcity, threat of disease or social isolation the COVID-19 pandemic has brought. And if you’re lucky, you might just catch those personality cues in time and make better behavioural choices.</p>
<h2>The big 5 traits</h2>
<p>To understand personality let’s use the <a href="https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Between-facets-and-domains%3A-10-aspects-of-the-Big-DeYoung-Quilty/6257c0833dfa6fe89ef2e1133653b74f9dadc5f6">Big Five Aspect Scale</a>. The big five traits are commonly known by the acronym OCEAN. It stands for: openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism. </p>
<p>Each of those traits is a continuum. For example, on the extraversion trait scale extraversion is at one extreme and introversion at the other. </p>
<p>And each trait is comprised of two aspects:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>openness is comprised of openness to experience, and intelligence or preference for abstract thinking</p></li>
<li><p>conscientiousness is made up of the aspects industriousness, or work drive, and orderliness</p></li>
<li><p>extraversion is comprised of enthusiasm and assertiveness</p></li>
<li><p>agreeableness is comprised of compassion and politeness</p></li>
<li><p>neuroticism or susceptibility to negative emotion is comprised of the aspects, withdrawal and volatility, the latter a kind of defensive aggression.</p></li>
</ul>
<h2>What does this mean for how we respond?</h2>
<p>So, what kinds of behavioural cues are those aspects of your personality likely to send you about coping with the coronavirus? While it’s still early days, the behavioural impact of this pandemic appears to be gathering around three themes – anxiety, social distancing and micro public disorder. </p>
<p>At a time like this anxiety is likely to loom large, particularly if you are high in neuroticism. While the withdrawal aspect of neuroticism describes psychological rather than physical withdrawal, the new behavioural norms of social distancing being broadcast will feel very natural if withdrawal is an important aspect of your personality. </p>
<p>But if volatility is a large part of your make-up, empty shelves could trigger a strong desire for you to defend your right to your share. Negative or defensive aggression cues like those, if strong enough, could overwhelm the more considered part of your thinking. If unchecked or, worse, provoked by jostling crowds, for instance, you could find yourself arguing over toilet paper, despite being mild-mannered most other times. </p>
<p>Another big change we are facing is social distancing. </p>
<p>Being low on extraversion, enforced social distancing could be an absolute boon – your guilty little secret. At last you have a socially sanctioned excuse to keep those noisy extraverts at bay and be left alone to your rich inner world. </p>
<p>If you’re conscientious too, and high in aspect orderliness, you get the chance to have everything at home just so. You can colour-coordinate your wardrobe and have all the hangers pointing the same way. Or better still you can put the tins in your pantry in alphabetical order, with the smallest packages to the front, labels facing outward, of course. </p>
<p>If you’re high in trait extraversion, something <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/282720170_The_impact_of_individual_differences_on_influence_strategies">scarce is likely to be very attractive</a>. Seeking out excitement and opportunity, you’re likely drawn to the very thing you can’t have, those elusive toilet rolls.</p>
<p>And then there are the outbreaks of micro public disorder, cracks in the façade of acceptable behaviour that expose glimpses of something ugly below.</p>
<p>If you’re highly conscientious, it’s probably not so much that you enjoy working hard or being organised, but that you really can’t stand being idle or in a mess. Faced with shortages, you’re likely to want to be ready for the worst. The urge to hoard, and the temptation to work hard at it, could be difficult to resist.</p>
<p>Disagreeable people want to compete and dominate. So, if you’re low in agreeableness, the cues you’ll be getting will not be so much about getting toilet paper, as making sure you get more of the toilet paper than the next guy. If you’re also low in openness, you are more likely to be high in <a href="http://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/e82f/2cad364fee947f312be75bdb7d4366bb9a95.pdf">disgust sensitivity</a>. Which might be why we see people fighting over toilet rolls of all things.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/322193/original/file-20200323-22590-1cu736v.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/322193/original/file-20200323-22590-1cu736v.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/322193/original/file-20200323-22590-1cu736v.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/322193/original/file-20200323-22590-1cu736v.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/322193/original/file-20200323-22590-1cu736v.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/322193/original/file-20200323-22590-1cu736v.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/322193/original/file-20200323-22590-1cu736v.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/322193/original/file-20200323-22590-1cu736v.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">People whose personalities rate low on agreeableness and high on volatility might find themselves fighting in the aisles.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-vector/coronavirus-panic-shopping-women-fighting-over-1672900705">Jorieri/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Self-awareness will help</h2>
<p>The really difficult challenge is to spot the wave of behavioural cues as it crashes towards you and step back before you’re washed into a sea of unthinking action. </p>
<p>While personality change is really difficult, you can at least be aware of the behavioural cues your personality is sending you and try to make better choices.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Wondering about your personality traits? You can take an online Big 5 test <a href="https://openpsychometrics.org/tests/IPIP-BFFM/">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/134037/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Conor Wynn does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>If you know your own personality traits, you might then be better placed to resist your worst unthinking impulses in a time of high anxiety.Conor Wynn, PhD Candidate at BehaviourWorks, Monash Sustainable Development Institute, Monash University, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1287772019-12-17T02:01:53Z2019-12-17T02:01:53ZRobot career advisor: AI may soon be able to analyse your tweets to match you to a job<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/306943/original/file-20191215-85417-7jqaf7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=16%2C8%2C2779%2C1236&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Tennis professionals like Maria Sharapova (pictured) share similar personality traits to her peers and rivals in tennis, but these traits are entirely different to those in other professions such as technology or science.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/johanlb/5790331774/">johanlb/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Imagine yourself graduating from high school, with the world before you. </p>
<p>But now you must decide what career you want to pursue. You hope for a job that will pay the bills, but also one you will enjoy. After all, you will spend a large portion of your waking hours at work. </p>
<p>But how can you make a reliable choice – beyond what your parents might be pushing for, or what your final year results will get you direct entry into.</p>
<p>Our <a href="https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2019/12/10/1917942116">study published today</a> in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science found different professions attract people with very different psychological characteristics.</p>
<p>When looking for a new career, you might visit a career adviser and answer a set of questions to identify your interests and strengths. These results are used to match you with a set of potential occupations. </p>
<p>However, this method relies on long surveys, and doesn’t account for the fact that many occupations are changing or disappearing as technology transforms the employment landscape. </p>
<h2>21st century job search</h2>
<p>We wondered if we could develop a data-driven approach to matching a person with a suitable profession, based on psychological traces they reveal online. </p>
<p>Studies have shown people leave traces of themselves through <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1073191113514104?journalCode=asma">the language they post online</a> and <a href="https://www.pnas.org/content/110/15/5802">their online behaviours</a>. </p>
<p>Could we analyse this to find out the extent to which people doing the same job shared the same personality traits?</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/employment-services-arent-working-for-older-jobseekers-jobactive-staff-or-employers-98852">Employment services aren't working for older jobseekers, jobactive staff or employers</a>
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</em>
</p>
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<p>In our research, we identified more than 100,000 Twitter users, each of whom included one of 3,513 job titles in their user profile. </p>
<p>Then, using a tool available through IBM’s cloud-based artificial intelligence engine Watson, and its <a href="https://personality-insights-demo.ng.bluemix.net/">Personality Insights</a> service, we gave each profile a score across ten personality-related characteristics, based on the language in their posts. </p>
<p>We used a variety of data analytics and machine learning techniques to explore the personality of each of the occupations. </p>
<p>For example, to create the “vocation compass map” we used an unsupervised machine learning algorithm to cluster occupational personality data into twenty distinct clusters, grouping the occupations that were most similar in terms of personality.</p>
<h2>An occupational map</h2>
<p>Work has long been thought to be more fulfilling if it fits who we are as a person, in terms of our personality, values, and interests. </p>
<p>Our results confirmed this, and we found that different occupations tended to have very different personality profiles. </p>
<p>For instance, software programmers and scientists were generally more open to experiencing a variety of new activities, were intellectually curious, tended to think in symbols and abstractions, and found repetition boring. On the other hand, elite tennis players tended to be more conscientious, organised and agreeable. </p>
<p>Our findings point to the possibility of using data shared on social media to match an individual to a suitable job.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/306939/original/file-20191215-85376-1bpayac.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/306939/original/file-20191215-85376-1bpayac.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/306939/original/file-20191215-85376-1bpayac.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=291&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/306939/original/file-20191215-85376-1bpayac.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=291&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/306939/original/file-20191215-85376-1bpayac.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=291&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/306939/original/file-20191215-85376-1bpayac.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=365&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/306939/original/file-20191215-85376-1bpayac.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=365&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/306939/original/file-20191215-85376-1bpayac.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=365&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">People belonging to different occupations generally have distinct personality traits. This figure shows the digital fingerprints of 1,200 individuals across nine occupations. Each dot corresponds to a user - with people grouped.
within their self-identified occupation.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Paul X. McCarthy</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>We used machine learning to cluster more than one thousand roles based on the inferred personality traits of people in those roles.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/inspire-children-with-good-careers-advice-and-they-do-better-at-school-33104">Inspire children with good careers advice and they do better at school</a>
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</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>We found many similar jobs could be grouped together.</p>
<p>For example, one cluster included different technology jobs such as software programming, web development, and computer science. Another group included gym management, logistic coordination, and concert promotions.</p>
<p>You can <a href="http://bit.ly/vocation-map-interactive">explore more with this interactive online map</a> we made. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/306941/original/file-20191215-85428-nn12m0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/306941/original/file-20191215-85428-nn12m0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/306941/original/file-20191215-85428-nn12m0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/306941/original/file-20191215-85428-nn12m0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/306941/original/file-20191215-85428-nn12m0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/306941/original/file-20191215-85428-nn12m0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/306941/original/file-20191215-85428-nn12m0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/306941/original/file-20191215-85428-nn12m0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Vocations Map we created has clusters based on the predicted personalities of 101,152 Twitter users, across 1,227 occupations.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Marian-Andrei Rizoiu</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>However, while many of the combinations aligned with existing occupation classifiers (current formal groupings that governments and other organisations use to group jobs together), some clusters included roles not traditionally grouped together. </p>
<p>For instance, cartographers, grain farmers and geologists ended up grouped together and shared similar personality traits to many of the technology professionals. </p>
<h2>A data-driven vocation compass</h2>
<p>With our results, we explored the idea of building a data-driven vocation compass: a recommendation system that could find the best career fit for someone’s personality. </p>
<p>We built a system that could recommend an occupation aligned to people’s personality traits with over 70% accuracy. </p>
<p>Even when our system was wrong, it wasn’t far off, and pointed to professions with very similar skill sets. For instance, it might suggest a poet becomes a fictional writer. </p>
<p>Professions are quickly changing due to automation and technological breakthroughs. And in our connected, digital world, we leave behind traces of ourselves. Our work has offered one approach to using these traces in a productive way. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/artificial-intelligence-may-take-your-job-so-political-leaders-need-to-start-doing-theirs-103764">Artificial intelligence may take your job, so political leaders need to start doing theirs</a>
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<p>This approach may one day be used to help people find their dream career, or at the very least, better our understanding of the hidden personality dimensions of different roles.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/128777/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Marian-Andrei Rizoiu receives funding from Facebook, the Australian National University and the University of Technology Sydney. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Paul X. McCarthy and Peggy Kern do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>After analysing posts from 100,000 Twitter users, our research used big data, machine learning and artificial intelligence to reveal the hidden personality traits underpinning thousands of jobs.Peggy Kern, Associate professor, The University of MelbourneMarian-Andrei Rizoiu, Lecturer in Computer Science, University of Technology SydneyPaul X. McCarthy, Adjunct Professor, UNSW SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/957352018-05-24T10:22:34Z2018-05-24T10:22:34ZPersonality tests with deep-sounding questions provide shallow answers about the ‘true’ you<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/220226/original/file-20180523-51141-s5bwj2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=529%2C98%2C4742%2C3377&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A quirky quiz probably isn't going to tell you much about your innermost essence.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/portrait-smiling-young-woman-covering-her-648726070">StunningArt/Shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Have you ever clicked on a link like “What does your favorite animal say about you?” wondering what your love of hedgehogs reveals about your psyche? Or filled out a personality assessment to gain new understanding into whether you’re an introverted or extroverted “type”? People love turning to these kinds of personality quizzes and tests on the hunt for deep insights into themselves. People tend to believe they have <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691616689495">a “true” and revealing self</a> hidden somewhere deep within, so it’s natural that assessments claiming to unveil it will be appealing. </p>
<p><a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=Ep1t9nsAAAAJ&hl=en">As</a> <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=So__A9oAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=sra">psychologists</a>, we noticed something striking about assessments that claim to uncover people’s “true type.” Many of the questions are poorly constructed – their wording can be ambiguous and they often contain forced choices between options that are not opposites. This can be true of BuzzFeed-type quizzes as well as more seemingly sober assessments.</p>
<p>On the other hand, assessments created by trained personality psychologists use questions that are more straightforward to interpret. The most notable example is probably the well-respected <a href="https://ipip.ori.org/newBigFive5broadKey.htm">Big Five Inventory</a>. Rather than sorting people into “types,” it scores people on the established psychological dimensions of openness to new experience, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness and neuroticism. This simplicity is by design; psychology researchers know that the more respondents struggle to understand the question, the worse the question is.</p>
<p>But the lack of rigor in “type” assessments turns out to be a feature, not a bug, for the general public. What makes tests less valid can ironically make them more interesting. Since most people aren’t trained to think about psychology in a scientifically rigorous way, it stands to reason they also won’t be great at evaluating those assessments. We recently conducted <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550618766409">series of studies</a> to investigate how consumers view these tests. When people try to answer these harder questions, do they think to themselves “This question is poorly written”? Or instead do they focus on its difficulty and think “This question’s deep”? Our results suggest that a desire for deep insight can lead to deep confusion.</p>
<h2>Confusing difficult for deep</h2>
<p>In our first study, we showed people items from both the Big Five and from the Keirsey Temperament Sorter (KTS), a popular “type” assessment that contains many questions we suspected people find comparatively difficult. Our participants rated each item in two ways. First, they rated difficulty. That is, how confusing and ambiguous did they find it? Second, what was its perceived “depth”? In other words, to what extent did they feel the item seemed to be getting at something hidden deep in the unconscious?</p>
<p>Sure enough, not only were these perceptions correlated, the KTS was seen as both more difficult and deeper. In follow-up studies, we experimentally manipulated difficulty. In one study, we modified Big Five items to make them harder to answer like the KTS items, and again we found that participants rated the more difficult versions as “deeper.”</p>
<p>We also noticed that some personality assessments seem to derive their intrigue from having seemingly nothing to do with personality at all. Take <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/agh/this-color-association-test-will-reveal-the-age-you-are-at-h">one BuzzFeed quiz</a>, for example, that asks about which colors people associate with abstract concepts like letters and days of the week and then outputs “the true age of your soul.” Even if people trust BuzzFeed more for entertainment than psychological truths, perhaps they are actually on board with the idea that these difficult, abstract decisions do reveal some deep insights. In fact, that is the entire idea behind <a href="http://www.emory.edu/EMORY_REPORT/erarchive/2001/May/erMay.7/5_7_01lilienfeld.html">classically problematic</a> measures such as the Rorschach, or “ink blot,” test. </p>
<p>In two studies inspired by that BuzzFeed quiz, we found exactly that. We gave people items from purported “personality assessment” checklists. In one study, we assigned half the participants to the “difficult” condition, wherein the assessment items required them to choose which of two colors they associated with abstract concepts, like the letter “M.” In the “easier” condition, respondents were still required to rate colors on how much they associated them with those abstract concepts, but they more simply rated one color at a time instead of choosing between two.</p>
<p>Again, participants rated the difficult version as deeper. Seemingly, the sillier the assessment, the better people think it can read the hidden self.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/220227/original/file-20180524-51121-1e0hdfm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/220227/original/file-20180524-51121-1e0hdfm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/220227/original/file-20180524-51121-1e0hdfm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/220227/original/file-20180524-51121-1e0hdfm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/220227/original/file-20180524-51121-1e0hdfm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/220227/original/file-20180524-51121-1e0hdfm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/220227/original/file-20180524-51121-1e0hdfm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/220227/original/file-20180524-51121-1e0hdfm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Complicated or hard-to-parse questions about yourself aren’t going to spring open a shortcut to the true you.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/optical-form-examination-pencil-213521044">Basar/Shutterstock.com</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Intuition may steer you wrong</h2>
<p>One of the implications of this research is that people are going to have a hard time leaving behind the bad ideas baked into popular yet unscientific personality assessments. The most notable example is the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, which infamously remains quite popular while doing a fairly poor job of assessing personality, due to <a href="https://www.vox.com/2014/7/15/5881947/myers-briggs-personality-test-meaningless">longstanding issues</a> with the <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/give-and-take/201309/goodbye-mbti-the-fad-won-t-die">assessment itself</a> and the long-discredited <a href="https://medium.com/@AdamMGrant/mbti-if-you-want-me-back-you-need-to-change-too-c7f1a7b6970">Jungian theory</a> behind it. Our findings suggest that Myers-Briggs-like assessments that have largely been debunked by experts might persist in part because their formats overlap quite well with people’s intuitions about what will best access the “true self.” </p>
<p>People’s intuitions do them no favors here. Intuitions often <a href="https://www.basicbooks.com/titles/andrew-shtulman/scienceblind/9780465094929/">undermine scientific thinking</a> on topics like physics and biology. Psychology is no different. People arbitrarily divide parts of themselves into “true” and superficial components and seem all too willing to believe in tests that claim to definitively make those distinctions. But the idea of a “true self” doesn’t really work as a scientific concept.</p>
<p>Some people might be stuck in a self-reinforcing yet unproductive line of thought: Personality assessments can cause confusion. That confusion in turn overlaps with intuitions of how they think their deep psychology works, and then they tell themselves the confusion is profound. So intuitions about psychology might be especially pernicious. Following them too closely could lead you to know less about yourself, not more.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/95735/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Few can resist an assessment that promises to reveal your hidden, true self. But new research suggests that people mistakenly believe difficult to answer questions offer deep insights.Randy Stein, Assistant Professor of Marketing, California State Polytechnic University, PomonaAlexander Swan, Assistant Professor of Psychology, Eureka CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.