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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.
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.
Sounds like this article is calling out basic bitches.
Shame because the phenomena crosses the genders.
There's a reliable data source, free from built-in bias ("INQPTJLMNOP!") and hidden assumptions ("INTROVERT!")
>largest online data sets of personality quizzes
LOL, no wonder there's a replication crisis in the social sciences field.
The four personality types are: moist and warm, warm and dry, dry and cold, and cold and moist.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humorism
Those who divide people into two types and those who don't.
Have gnu, will travel.
Where is reserved and neurotic?
love is just extroverted narcissism
It looks like the article is calling males Average, self-centered, or betas; it's promoting that most organizations should be run by older women.
Look. They even bias the categories by labeling one of them "Role Models". Fuck that noise; I think extroverts are not role models; I think the world would be better served by promoting the reserved to higher positions—and you'll note that's the only category where they conveniently leave out gender.
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.
Thanks for repeating old news.
'Neuroticism' not 'neurotic'.
That mistake is about the only legit crit of Damour's memo.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
This four type of people also sounds like that. But one thing about grandma's nutrition, if you balance all the four things, you find you also get a reasonably balanced meal by modern standards. Not so sure this four type of people sorting would match that performance.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Pop-psych trivia doesn't belong on /.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
But the article says there are 100 types. Didn't you RTFA?
Science you can trust.
Psychology today refers to it as extroversion.
It's symmetrical that way (introversion - extroversion) to reflect opposite meanings in the subject of human personality.
The Jung thing references a German text. It's not bad Latin any more than extrude or external are.
You know how naming variables is important? That the variable name itself is supposed to convey meaning? Intro- and extro- are more likely to be linked - thus conveying meaning - than 'intro' and 'extra':
int intro;
int extro;
vs.
int intro;
int extra;
The symmetry is logical and conveys meaning. Thus extroversion is the superior spelling.
Let me guess; those who understand binary and those who don't?
They never reveal who the other 8 are. :p
This space unintentionally left blank.
.. psychobabble is a real word that most people recognize.
The 'Average' category was criticized by some of the authors for being 'weak', as it's the largest cluster yet not particularly descriptive. It has yet to be proven that these 4 categories actually correlate with anything important, although follow-up research is checking if Role Models have greater career success.
Also, these are just clusters, individuals can fall outside of these combinations. One bright spot is that the clusters were named after they were found, rather than before, so they weren't trying to hammer data to fit preconceptions of personality types.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
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.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
And have concluded that:
The majority of people are unsalted peanuts. This is the biggest category of people, because salt costs money.
The second largest category is salted peanuts. This category is filled mostly with middle age humans, as they have had a few years to gather enough salt.
The third and final category is candied peanuts. This category is 100% comprised of drug dealers and sex workers.
There is also peanut butter, but that is an unrelated category.
You are being ripped off every second of every day, so that advertisers can help rip you off even more tomorrow.
Read Why Him, Why Her and you'll learn about it.
They don't.
It's OK Bender, there's no such thing as 2.
I don't fall into any of those described categories. I guess that means I'm not a person?
Demonstrably incorrect.
Extroverts process externally, and because of this fact, are more visible doing whatever they do because: external processing is more visible and audible compared to introverts. This has the appearance of being more demonstrable, but is only emotive reaction visible to others because it's on display for all.
It's actions that count, and both do about the same actions in terms of sympathy and empathy, e.g. "caring". Some process inside. Others do not. They both care.
tl;dr: Extroverts can't help themselves be known, as introverts cannot help themselves be less known by listening. You can hear one more loudly than the other. Doesn't mean they don't both care, and equally.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
that the study authors should be beaten to within an inch of their life and tossed in a dungeon and forgotten about. They are political douche-bags and need to be excommunicated from civilization. They are garbage.
What? Like Windows 8?
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
Here I was thinking that there are twelve distinct personality types! Then along came the sixteen Meyers-Briggs Personality Types.... And I was all like "whaa..." And now this... I thought there'd be more, not less!
Twelve was wrong. Sixteen was wrong...
But hang on a sec... What do Twelve and Sixteen have in common?
THE FACTOR FOUR!!! Yes!!! It all makes sense now! Yes!!! I've been so blind all my life!
And looking around, thinking about my family, friends, colleagues, relatives... Indeed, they are essentially four personalities. Yup, this explains EVERYTHING!
Lemon curry???
I trust people I know, but I don't trust strangers. I dislike being the centre of attention, but I am not necessarily easy to satisfy.
Most times I have positive emotions, but I dislike large parties.
I like order (in my life) but I am untidy. I work hard but I don't always follow the rules. I try to avoid mistakes but I put off doing chores.
I like art, have a good imagination and can deal with complex problems but I don't think I experience emotions "intensely"
It all depends what sort of day I'm having and what the circumstances are. When I'm in the mood to fill in (silly) online quizzes I might be calm and relaxed, when working I am busy and juggling many things - or sometimes I am analytical and leading others. When socialising I can be thoughtful and kind, or exuberant. Sometimes I prefer to be on my own and other times I just think "screw it!" and want to stay in bed.
What is it with all this "one personality" stuff? Surely everyone adapts their thoughts and actions to the situation they find themselves in?
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
'Neuroticism' not 'neurotic'.
If this is your problem, then you are being fucking neurotic.
Seems that he nailed it.
"His name was James Damore."
A sort of variant on the MBPT,
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.
This person was BLUE, or a dove, typical emotional female, uses phrases often like, "I feel", are very concerned about the aesthetics of the inside of their home
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.
This person was GREEN, or an owl, i.e. your typical nerd, computer programmer etc, generally very organized
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.
These people were GOLD, or an eagle, law abiding, rules-based. Like things like their home to be very orderly, neat and tidy. In texas they tend to own guns and favor law enforcement
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.
These were ORANGE or parrots, loud, colorful, etc. These people tend to be musicians, artists (artists also fall in to blue to some extent, depending,), or sales people, or bar tenders, especially outgoing.
We took these personality tests back in 10th grade in the 1990s, this is nothing new, they had been giving out the same personality tests for 20 years when we got them.
moox. for a new generation.
The 5th type is the one I'm in. It's called "better" ;-)
I'd like these researchers the benefit of the doubt by saying a common problem with this kinds of studies is they fit the data but not reality. But really, you only need half an ounce of wisdom to realize that fitting 7.5 billion people into 4 personality types is an asinine blunder. Just a tad bit oversimplified to say the least. This is how awful stereotypes get started. Our brains sure don't like complexity do they? There's always a push to abstract information into small inaccurate subsets. 2 categories always seems the goal, black and white is so much easier to understand. Maybe we should applaud them for giving themselves 4 options instead of 2.
So there are 3 extravert categories and only 1 introvert? Being an introvert makes you automatically stable emotionally, agreeable and conscientious.
There are only two types of psychology research: garbage and complete garbage.
Full 30% of MBAs coming out the top schools are Indians, Indian Americans, engineers mostly. Prepare for the day most business decisions are made in Karnatic music concert venue canteens small talks and the circumambulation corridors of temples instead of country clubs.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
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Comment removed based on user account deletion
This reminds me of Astrology a lot. Lumping people into a few generic groups based on a few traits doesn't seem to have much value. Especially when there is more than 1% outliers. The only use I can see is to predetermine that someone is more suited for a specific job, but if it isn't 100% accurate, then its as unfair as racism and sexism.
Ninjas don't carry tic tacs
Then there's the group I think of as "deck-stackers", people who choose nice-sounding names for categories they want to sell everyone else on (e.g. "rrole models".
I'm going to read the underlying scientific paper where you describe, in detail, how this is all mostly meaningless.
And then label you a Self-Centered ...
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
The 4 types should have been called "Leonardo", "Donatello", "Rafael" and "Michelangelo"
Self-Centered = Erudite Reserved = Amity Self Centered = Erudite Role Models = DIVERGENT!
there are 100 types
I only counted FF types. Which one did I miss?
Have gnu, will travel.
It seems that all this can really tell you is that there might be 4 clusters of personality type amongst the type of people who do online personality tests.
You mean pioneers of personality typing, like Carl Jung and Myers-Briggs?
What this is ACTUALLY showing is something very different than what everybody is focusing on.
There are 5 cross-cultural, scientifically supported and well researched personality traits. They are Extraversion, Openness, Agreeableness, Neuroticism (sometimes referred to by its opposite, Emotional Stability), and Conscientiousness. These are well supported, and much more valid than your Myers-Brigg personality stuff or enneagram or astrological sign or whatever.
What these researchers have done is just a cluster analysis on a bunch of online personality test data, and found 4 correlated groupings of these traits along with a bit of demographic data. Everybody here bitching about the names of these clusters is missing the point. There's nothing particularly partisan about any of this, despite what the MRA snowflakes want to read into it. Really, the interesting thing here is that in this 5D space of human personality, these are the clusters that appear. There is actually some pretty cool statistical rigor here - finding the same clusters across 4 distinct datasets with different collection methods removes a lot of potential sources of error.
So, getting hung up on the names misses the point. Personally, I find each one pretty descriptive. Try to come up with your own names - chances are, you won't do much better than the original researchers, and a lot of the obvious choices seem far more biased.
Basically, whenever I've looked at one these psychobabble personality classification things, they've demanded yes/no (or at best, multiple choice) answers to questions that require at least a paragraph to properly answer. I get about as far as the first or second of these questions, shout "Oh *HELL* no!" and fling the test across the room. (Or wish I could.)
A valid evaluation would require ... oh, I don't know... maybe actually talking to and interacting with someone, rather than flinging an op-scan form at them.
"The Northwestern researchers used publicly available data from online quizzes taken by 1.5 million people around the world."
There's actually a fifth kind of person: the kind that doesn't take online personality quizzes.