Comments on: Last Word on Personality Tests

By: Jon Peltier

Jon Peltier — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 03:22:47 +0000

I don’t know if it will help with book buying, and I can’t say I could ever consider book buying to be an obsession :) but this book has helped me figure out a few things about my own personality.

By: stubbornmule

stubbornmule — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 00:58:41 +0000

@Steve: let me know if it helps with compulsive book buying…I definitely need help in that area too!

By: Steve Reynolds

Steve Reynolds — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 00:08:29 +0000

@Jon: Thanks for the book recommendation. A copy is now winging its way to me courtesy of Amazon. (I wonder if it can help curb my compulsive book-buying?)

By: Elias Bizannes

Elias Bizannes — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 12:58:42 +0000

I personally believe if you aspire to be something – you end up morphing into it. With me for example, I have long idolised the entrepreneur. I have read and watched content that had me subconciously adapt my thinking into what I wanted to be. A sub-concious jouney of validating myself to acquire the attributes described of such a personality, until I’ve become one. The point I want to make, is that we embrace insights into ourselves as either validation of what we want to become or rejection of what we desire not to be. And even if it’s not true, but we accept it, it means we adapt our behaviours to now behave as such.

So for all the claims that “it’s not accurate”, think again. In the long term it probably will be.

By: Jon Peltier

Jon Peltier — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 12:54:23 +0000

Steve -

I’m reading a book called “Change Your Brain, Change Your Life” by Dr. Daniel Amen. He’s done imaging studies on normal brains, “abnormal” brains, and abnormal brains under pharmaceutical and therapeutic treatment. Knowing how injury affects personality and other brain functions, and how meds affect neurotransmitter levels, he’s mapped normal and abnormal activity in several brain regions to normal and abnormal personality behaviors.

The book was written for the layman, bit it is very informative.

By: Steve Reynolds

Steve Reynolds — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 09:33:50 +0000

Another great post, Sean (though I think the Sokal jibe is a tad unfair). A favour – can you please ask your shy friend if he can point me to some of these studies he mentions linking traits to genes, neruotransmitter systems, etc. Interested to learn more, even if they are inconclusive. Thanks.

By: stubbornmule

stubbornmule — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 03:11:20 +0000

Interesting. Part of my argument with corporate personality tests is that they are operated by businesses who have more of a commerical interest in making money out of consulting and training associated with the tests than refining their validity. In that context, the involvement of insurers with MMPI is very interesting.

By: OMBW

OMBW — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 02:58:15 +0000

I was at the very first training ever held after the re-norming of the MMPI. prior to that time results of this “rigorous” instrument were based on normed gathered via the relatives of patients in Minnesota psychiatric hospitals.

It has long been a tool used by clinician’s to “empirically” validate pathology to the satisfaction of insurance carriers. It has likely caused more iatrogenic illness through labeling than any other instrument in the mental health operating theater.