People Tend To Cluster Into Four Distinct Personality 'Types,' Says Study (arstechnica.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A new study has sifted through some of the largest online data sets of personality quizzes and identified four distinct "types" therein. The new methodology used for this study -- described in detail in a new paper in Nature Human Behavior -- is rigorous and replicable, which could help move personality typing analysis out of the dubious self-help section in your local bookstore and into serious scientific journals. What's new here is the identification of four dominant clusters in the overall distribution of traits. [Paper co-author William Revelle (Northwestern University)] prefers to think of them as "lumps in the batter" and suggests that a good analogy would be how people tend to concentrate in cities in the United States. The Northwestern researchers used publicly available data from online quizzes taken by 1.5 million people around the world. That data was then plotted in accordance with the so-called Big Five basic personality traits: neuroticism, extraversion, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness. The Big Five is currently the professional standard for social psychologists who study personality. (Here's a good summary of what each of those traits means to psychologists.) They then applied their algorithms to the resulting dataset. Here are the four distinct personality clusters that the researchers ended up with:

Average: These people score high in neuroticism and extraversion, but score low in openness. It is the most typical category, with women being more likely than men to fit into it.
Reserved: This type of person is stable emotionally without being especially open or neurotic. They tend to score lower on extraversion but tend to be somewhat agreeable and conscientious.
Role Models: These people score high in every trait except neuroticism, and the likelihood that someone fits into this category increases dramatically as they age. "These are people who are dependable and open to new ideas," says Amaral. "These are good people to be in charge of things." Women are more likely than men to be role models.
Self-Centered: These people score very high in extraversion, but score low in openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness. Most teenage boys would fall into this category, according to Revelle, before (hopefully) maturing out of it. The number of people who fall into this category decreases dramatically with age.

Comments

humors me

[Anonymous Coward]

>largest online data sets of personality quizzes

LOL, no wonder there's a replication crisis in the social sciences field.

There are two types

[PPH]

Those who divide people into two types and those who don't.

Misandric Much?

[DatbeDank]

Lot of male hating going on in this so called study. Self centered especially.

Also women are more average and role models? So what is it? Can't have more of each unless they're 50/50.

With all due respect, most women make terrible role models, especially for boys. They tend to be stuck in their ways and offer advice from their own feminine perspective discounting what boys really need to do in order to strike out on their own.

Sorry mlds for the unpopular truth. I'll take a hit in karma because that's the reality of what I've seen.

Re:Misandric Much?

[Anonymous Coward]

First, you misunderstood what the summary said. The statements "women are more likely than men to be average" and "women are more likely than men to be role models" do not contradict, because they do NOT imply "most women are average" and "most women are role models". Nor does stating that "most teenage boys are self-centered" automatically imply misandry, especially if the stats back it up.

Second, don't confuse their definition of "role model" with your commonsense use of the term. For example, agreeableness is one of the dominant traits in their definition of "role model," and that seems intuitive since people like agreeable people. HOWEVER, agreeableness is negatively correlated with success in business and especially in leadership. If you have aspirations of being a leader or doing well in business, it would make sense for you to pick "role models" (commonsense use) who have been successful in these spheres, and hence likely would have levels of agreeableness too low to fit in their personality category.

Third....yeah, teenage boys are self-centered. You know it's true. I will also throw in my two cents: all other things being equal, the more extroverted a person is, the more of an asshole that person tends to be (regardless of gender).

Re:Misandric Much?

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude have you ever seen a single chick flick in your entire life. If teenage boys are simply self centred then teenage girls are frankly sadistic in comparison.

Oh, for fuck's sake.

[jcr]

Pop-psych trivia doesn't belong on /.

-jcr

I've been hearing this crap for years

[rsilvergun]

one time at I had to go through one of these personality tests to tell me which group I fit into. I was annoying, but me and my coworkers went from pretty annoyed to pissed when we learned the company paid $2k/each for the privilege. They could have just given us that $2k as a bonus and out moral woulda shot up. This was when I made a lot less money and $2k would have been an event.

My point is this personality crap is usually just an excuse to sell corporate seminars.

Re: Weird. I saw it the opposite

[Anonymous Coward]

Capitalism rewards a small subset of objectively good human qualities, and some objectively bad qualities. Financial success is not a good indicator of how well an individual fits into society.
Two examples: Being close to your children helps them mature into well rounded adults, but often requires you to work less. Being self-centered and opportunistic makes you money but no friends.