Have you ever heard the question “Would you like a tea or a coffee” answered with a simple “Yes”? If so, the respondent almost certainly considers their response to be extremely witty. The questioner is unlikely to agree. There is also a high probability that the joker is someone’s Dad…or perhaps a mathematician.

I have to admit to having indulged in this “joke” in my time (more than once), but until recently it had not occurred to me that it in fact reflects a violation of a general principle of conversation. Enlightenment came when I read the seminal 1975 paper “Logic and Conversation” [1] by the philosopher H.P.Grice.

The humour (or lack thereof) of the coffee/tea gag lies in the conflict between the logical truth of the statement and its inappropriateness in conversation. While the statement “A or B” is logically true as long as at least one of A and B is true , in the context of conversation, logical truth is not enough. If you knew A was true and B was false, you would not bother saying “A or B”, you would just say “A”. Moreover, that is what others would expect of you. If I ask you to pass me a hammer, I don’t expect you to pass me a hammer and a spanner. In the same way, if you know you are going to Spain for your holidays, I don’t expect you to say “I’m either going to Spain or Canada”, despite the fact that, strictly speaking, it is a true statement. It is this distinction between simple logical truth and appropriateness in conversation that is the subject of Grice’s paper.

Grice bases his ideas on the notion of the “Cooperative Principle”, which he summarises as the requirement to

Make your conversation such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged.

People have conversations of many types for many reasons: to do business, to gossip, to seduce, to educate, to inform or simply for the pleasure of conversation itself. In every case, conversation involves (at least) two participants and the conversations that work best are the ones that take the needs of all of the participants into account. So it makes sense that a bit of cooperation is the foundation of a good conversation.

Based on the cooperative principle, Grice goes on to postulate a number of “maxims of conversation”. Here are the maxims as he describes them:

Quantity

1. Make your contribution as informative as is required (for the current purposes of the exchange).
2. Do not make your contribution more informative than is required.

Quality

1. Do not say what you believe to be false.
2. Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence.

Relation

1. Be relevant.

Manner

1. Avoid obscurity of expression.
2. Avoid ambiguity.
3. Be brief (avoid unnecessary prolixity).
4. Be orderly.

The term “maxim” is carefully chosen as Grice notes that one need not follow all of the maxims at all times, while still being cooperative. The main reason that a maxim could be violated is if it is in conflict with another maxim. An example would be providing less information than required (violating Quantity 1) because you are not confident you have the facts right (and you don’t want to violate Quality 2).

Viewed in terms of Grice’s maxims, the coffee/tea joke is a clear violation of the first maxim of quantity.

As I have already admitted to this particular breach, the obvious question is: have I violated any other maxims? Some who know me well would take the view that, while I may take pains to avoid a violation of either of the maxims of quality, I regularly and flagrantly violate Quantity 2 and Manner 3 and probably Relation 1. I need to learn to stick to the point or risk being branded an uncooperative conversationalist! Or perhaps it’s too late.

[1] Available in the collection “Studies in the Way of Words” by H.P.Grice.

A while ago, I had a bit of a rant in the post I Hate Personality Tests. Responding in this guest post, Maria Skarveli (who knows far more about psychology than I do) ponders personality testing phobia.

As a psychology student belonging to the faculty of health and behavioural sciences which also harbours biology, medical science and physiology, I was constantly hassled by my friends that were studying law, commerce and engineering and forever asking me “Can you read my mind?” or worse “Are you trying to analyse me?” as if I was Professor Xavier and I could distinguish mutants from humans. Of course I had to keep a straight face and stop myself from saying, “You’re an idiot, there you have it analysis complete” I just rolled my eyes and went with the flow. But deep down I was insulted. It was bad enough psychology had been branded as a “soft science”, which is apparently less intellectually stimulating than the “hard sciences” such as biology, physics and chemistry. But now the general view from all faculties was that psychology is akin to the paranormal, dare I say astrology!

In answer to those questions stated earlier, “No psychologists can not read your mind, contrary to what M Night Shyamalan’s The Sixth Sense taught you and no we are not analysing you, for goodness sake you study engineering you can’t exactly be that interesting!

It seems not much has changed since my university days. As a recruitment consultant, clients and candidates are now asking me those annoying questions. But now I have to treat people with an ever-increasing anxiety that has nearly reached epidemic levels and that is, “Psychometric Testing Phobia”.  But phobia is a strong word; surely people are not scared of answering some questions to examine personality traits and cognitive performance? Surely the test results won’t be used against them and or utilised by employers as a sole decision making tool towards hiring? Well those questions were sufficiently answered after reading the Mule’s post I Hate Personality Tests and hearing countless case studies of candidates who had completed some sort of psychometric test of either intelligence or personality. And by the way the verdict wasn’t good. It seems that psychometric testing is no longer associated with the scientific method or regarded as an instrumental tool utilised by psychologists and psychiatrists to examine human behaviour for the purposes of diagnoses, outcomes measurement and empirical observation. It seems that now, at least in the corporate world, psychometric tests are no different to horoscope readings. A Cleo Magazine questionnaire probably has more merit than most tests that are given to candidates these days, namely Myers-Briggs, HBDI and Keisey Temperament Sorter.

In response to my clients and candidates experiences, the Mule’s commentary post and my boyfriend’s absolute disregard for psychometric testing I have outlined five key indicators which every person must contemplate when taking a test. These points will allow you to differentiate a valid, sound empirical test from a total sham created by con artists posing themselves as psychologists in a bid to create a shit-load of money by selling these tests to HR departments who know fuck-all about psychology. (Pardon the cursing but when I get passionate about something I tend to get to show my feelings in a rather unconventional manner)

1. A test must possess adequate coverage of content domain. For example, a test that purports to measure personality needs to ensure that all major aspects of personality are covered. This can be difficult as personality is governed by an array of theories offering different viewpoints about the development and description of personality. However a test maker can make the distinction between good theories and bad ones. And besides, a test can examine personality from many different viewpoints offering a more holistic approach. As long as personality is measured from a variety of valid theoretical viewpoints, we will gain a better understanding of a person’s behaviour. Case in point: the Myers-Briggs test has its foundations in Carl Jung’s typological theory which characterises individuals on four dimensions of thinking, feeling, sensations and intuition, better known as introversion-extroversion, judgment-perception and sensing-intuition. The test has been constantly criticised as vague and general because nearly everyone can be characterised as either type. How many times have you come across a question, “Would you rather go out with your friends or stay at home and read a book?” Why the dichotomy? After all, can’t we do both and why should individuals have to be characterised by bipolar functions? The answer is we shouldn’t and the Myers-Briggs test offers little, if any, content domain on personality. For those of you who haven’t studied psychology, Carl Jung was one of Sigmund Freud’s students belonging to the school of psychodynamic theories, which has hardly any empirical justification. The fact that Myers-Briggs is still being utilised in the corporate world is nothing short of an enigma.
2. Reliability – If I take the test at Time A will I get the same the result when I take it again at Time B. Simply put.
3. Validity – If a test is measuring depression, will it relate to or be similar to other tests measuring depression? If it does we have something called convergent validity. Furthermore does the test differ from other tests measuring another construct such as psychosis? If so we have discriminate validity.
4. Usefulness – If a psychometric test has no predictive power, it doesn’t matter if other criteria mentioned are satisfied. It is commonly agreed that most valid intelligence tests are pragmatic in their ability to distinguish between individuals in terms of cognitive capacity. The same goes with depression and anxiety measures and these tests are commonly used by practitioners for outcomes measurement. How the test results are utilised in the corporate world in terms of hiring is a different matter and belongs to work ethics. I should add that using the results of a psychometric test, as a SOLE MEANS of hiring someone is wrong and not acceptable.
5. Falsification – The fundamental rule proposed by Karl Popper was that a theory or hypothesis must be subjected to disconfirmation if it is to attain scientific truth. The same goes with psychometric tests, especially personality measurement because these tests are fundamentally governed by theories. If the theories are constantly disconfirmed through experimentation then the tests should be scrapped or at least revised. Some of the best psychometric tools are constantly being revised due to the falsification of the hypotheses which they relied on. These are the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI), Welsher Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS – IV) and Depression Anxiety and Stress Scale (DASS – 42) to name a few.

I do hope these points are taken into consideration and that psychology can be taken seriously under the same umbrella as the “hard sciences”. If so then I may realise my dream to never hear those bothersome words again, “Can you read my mind?”

A colleague has lent me a copy of Oliver James’ book “Affluenza” and, while I am not far through it yet, it is scathing in its damnation of the effects of capitalism on individuals in society. At a time when capitalism is rapidly losing it shine on a global scale, with the financial sector collapsing around us, this individual perspective is an interesting small scale counterpoint to the large scale picture we are seeing on the news each day.

The thesis of the book is that an “affluenza virus” has spread thoughout English-speaking countries. This virus leads us to be obsessively focused on shallow material pursuits. At the same time, it leaves us anxious and prone to low self-esteem, addictions and depression as there is always someone with a faster car or a bigger cigar (to quote The Beautiful South).

The engine of capitalism, or “Selfish Capitalism” as James prefers say, is a society of consumers and it must constantly encourage further consumption to survive. Not surprisingly, this leads James to a particularly hostile attitude towards marketing, the art and science of generating the wants of consumers, thereby driving consumption. Since television (for now) remains the biggest medium for advertising, James not only sees it as a particularly sinister vector for the affluenza virus, but also the primary cause of increasing obesity in affluenza-afflicted nations:

It achieves this by a combination of discouraging exercise and encouraging, through adverts, the consumption of highly calorific food. It also lowers mood, which increases the likelihood of comfort eating…often done in front of the telly (p. 46)

Since James does not provide detailed references for all of his claims, referring readers instead to his monograph “Selfish Capitalist Origins of Emotional Distress”, I saw an opportunity here. I decided to test the link between television and obesity myself, not by commencing a TV-viewing binge, but by indulging my data-mining proclivities.

Last year, the OECD Directorate for Science, Technology and Industry published the OECD Communications Outlook 2007, which includes data on the amount of television watched in a selection of 18 countries (Table 6.8). The data is patchy, so I have taken the average over the years from 2002 to 2005. For data on obesity, I turned to the World Health Organisation (WHO) which provides a range of health statistics by country. The obesity statistics are all based on Body Mass Index (BMI) and I have taken the obesity rate to be the percentage* of a country’s population with a BMI of over 30, a level that is widely used as the threshold of obesity. The WHO data is a few years old now and, if recent reports on increased obesity in Australia are to believed, may be a little out of date. However, the OECD data is also a few years old, so the comparison should be a reasonable one. As usual, I have published the data on Swivel.

Starting with a correlation between average viewing hours per day and the obesity rate of 58% suggests that there may be a link between the two. However, the scatterplot of the data below tells a different story. Most strikingly, the USA is an outlier, both in terms of television viewing habits and obesity. Furthermore, the remaining points show no clear pattern and taking the US out of the sample reduces the correlation to -8%. Japan also diverges from the other countries, this time in a different direction: the Japanese watch a reasonably large amount of television, but exhibit the lowest obesity rate of the countries in the sample. Removing both Japan and the US results in a correlation of 5%.

While this is admittedly a small data set, it does not seem to support James’ contention about the link between watching television and obesity, however plausible the argument. Perhaps finer-grained data or a historical perspective with greater variation in television habits would bear him out, so I would  be very interested if any readers are aware of research on this subject.

* The WHO data separates statistics for males and females and I have used a simple average of these

While my recent post on personality testing attracted some unexpected attention (from an organiser of the course), it did also generate some interesting discussion. Some I have spoken to have found more value in personality tests like Myers-Briggs and HBDI than I have, while others shared my irritation.

The reason I am posting again on this subject is because an old friend of mine, who is a practising psychiatrist had emailed me with his thoughts on the topic, but preferred to remain anonymous and not post on the forum himself. He was, however, happy for me to share them, so here they are:

A lot of these tools fall down in the assumptions that personality is stable across contexts and over time, neither of which appears to be the case. Long live the reformed home devil/work angel!

Define these terms – temperament, character, personality, identity. Are we talking venn diagrammes or different languages here? What is the relationship between personality and cognitive style? How honest are people with themselves, let alone their employers, or perhaps more importantly, how good are people at judging themselves? Do you think the corporations peddling their mindreading wares have answered all these questions sufficiently, because if not, how can you be sure what their tool is measuring?

One of your commenters proffers a positive test/retest experience of Myers Briggs, but from what I remember reading these tests have pretty poor reliability compared to the more rigorous tools used in clinical research such as the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI).

The same learned commenter picked up on the dispute between type theories proffered by the mad Swiss and taken as gospel by MB et al (even if in somewhat dodgy translation), and the now ascendant trait models. The current banker is the Five Factor Model, with spectra of introversion/extraversion, openness/closedness, conscientiousness/the lack thereof, agreeableness/disagreeableness and neuroticism/emotional stability. In of themselves, they do have face validity and have been extensively replicated, but how far they take us in further understanding personality is unclear. There is quite a bit of research trying to link specific traits to everything from genes to neurotransmitter systems, with interesting if inconclusive results. What are the chances of successfully finding a key if you’re not sure of the shape of the lock? I’d be interested to know your take on the factor analysis techniques used to derive these traits.

As for the Sixteen Types in the MB, I fear this is moving into transformative hermeneutics of quantum gravity territory. To be fair, the typology of abnormal psychology I was taught at Shrink School is little better, with its borderlines and its narcissists, but it has lingered this long as it has everyday clinical utility and nothing better has come along to replace it. Until now. It seems that it may, in the next version of the Bible, DSM-V, be replaced  or complemented by a four factor trait model which you won’t at all be surprised to find fits very neatly with black bile, yellow bile, phlegm and blood. And who says those Greek geeks weren’t onto something!

Earlier this week I attended a training course that, once again, leaned heavily on colourful “HBDI profiles”. HBDI stands for “Herman Brain Dominance Indicator” and, much like the better-known Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), it is a personality test with a fancy name. I am lucky enough to have been subjected to both of these tests more than once, leaving me increasingly irritated each time. This has led me to reflect on why personality tests like these are so popular in the corporate world. I suspect that it is because they have much in common with astrology.

Obtaining your HBDI profile starts with answering 120 questions. These include such gems as “How do you hold your pen?”,  “How left or right-handed are you?” and “How often have you experienced motion sickness?” (have a look yourself if you don’t believe me!). Armed with your responses to these questions, a certified practitioner is supposedly able to determine your preference for four distinct “thinking styles”. Like Myers Briggs, the HBDI characteristics have a healthy dose of Jungian psychology, but also have a bit of pop brain lateralisation thrown in: the safekeeping and rational types of thinking are left-brain, while the experimental and feeling types are, of course, right-brain. While there is no doubt that the brain exhibits left-brain/right-brain lateralisation, it does so in a far more complex way* than this cliched analytic/creative dichotomy.

It is not only in its approach to brain lateralisation that HBDI exhibits pseudo-scientific tendencies. The Skeptic’s Dictionary has an excellent critique of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator which notes “no behavior can ever be used to falsify the type, and any behavior can be used to verify it” and HBDI is just as slippery. For example, when pressed on details, consultants are quick to emphasise that results only point to tendencies and that everyone can exhibit any of the four different types of thinking at any time.

Implausible though it may seem to me that the HBDI methodology can consistently provide meaningful insights into personality differences, people do seem to lap up the results. The surprising persistence of astrology in the modern era is often attributed to the fact that people have a marked tendency to interpret very general statements in the light of their own particular circumstance. They will focus on things that apply to them and unconsciously filter out things that do not. Known as the “Forer Effect”, this phenomenon was originally observed in the context of personality testing and I suspect that it is the secret to the success of HBDI. The name is taken from US psychologist Bertram R. Forer, who conducted the following experiment in 1948. He asked his students to complete a questionnaire for a personality test, but then ignored their answers and instead gave them all the following assessment:

You have a need for other people to like and admire you, and yet you tend to be critical of yourself. While you have some personality weaknesses you are generally able to compensate for them. You have considerable unused capacity that you have not turned to your advantage. Disciplined and self-controlled on the outside, you tend to be worrisome and insecure on the inside. At times you have serious doubts as to whether you have made the right decision or done the right thing. You prefer a certain amount of change and variety and become dissatisfied when hemmed in by restrictions and limitations. You also pride yourself as an independent thinker; and do not accept others’ statements without satisfactory proof. But you have found it unwise to be too frank in revealing yourself to others. At times you are extroverted, affable, and sociable, while at other times you are introverted, wary, and reserved. Some of your aspirations tend to be rather unrealistic.

You may have even found yourself nodding in recognition here, and that’s certainly what Forer’s students thought. They were asked to score how well they felt the assessment described their personality on a scale from 0 to 5. The average score was 4.26. The experiment has been repeated since and the average results consistently exceed 4.

So you might think that corporate HR departments could save a little on their expensive accredited HBDI consultants and simply circulate Forer’s personality profile to all of their staff. But wait, there’s more! HBDI takes the Forer Effect and adds a little marketing glitz. First, the somewhat unwieldy “safekeeping”, “rational”, “experimental” and “feeling” thinking styles are abstracted to “green”, “blue”, “red” and “yellow”. This is a deft touch, facilitating easy discussion; think “I’m a red but I tend to fall back to blue under stress…and also, I’m a Sagittarius, but on the cusp so there’s a bit of Scorpio there too”. Second, these colours are presented on a wonderful circular chart, which looks fantastic up on the walls around the training room. Why circular? Well, circular charts are the special domain of the consultant because, let’s face it, you could never charge as much for a simple bar chart.

If you catch me in a generous moment, I will concede that there is a bit more substance beneath Myers Briggs and HBDI profiling than astrology…but not much. The main thing that they have taught me is that I hate personality tests.

* For a look at the science behind brain lateralisation, “The Right Mind” by Robert Ornstein is a fascinating read.

Until recently, I’d never given much thought to the fact that whenever I buy my lunch at the deli behind my office building, I always get the same sandwich (chicken, avocado, cheese, tomato and lettuce on multi-grain, in case you were wondering). Then I started reading Dan Ariely‘s book Predictably Irrational and realised that I’d been “self-herding”.

You’re walking past a restaurant, and you see two people standing in line, waiting to get in. “This must be a good restaurant,” you think to yourself. “People are standing in line.” So you stand behind these people. Another person walks by and thinks, “This must be a fantastic restaurant,” and joins the line. Others join. We call this type of behavior herding. It happens when we assume that something is good (or bad) on the basis of other people’s behavior and our actions follow suit.

But there’s also another kind of herding, one that we call self-herding. This happens when we believe something is good (or bad) on the basis of our own previous behavior. Essentially, once we become the first person in line at the restaurant, we begin to line up behind ourself in subsequent experiences.

Dan Ariely, Predictably Irrational (HarperCollins)

So the first time I bought my chicken sandwich, it was probably a bit of a random choice, but since then I have been continually reinforcing my own behaviour: if it was right sandwich to buy on all those previous occasions, it really must be the best sandwich! Having had scientific and mathematical training, I have always prided myself on being rational and so I was a little bit disturbed to be exhibiting a behaviour described in a book on irrationality! And the sandwich was just the start, I started to see all sorts of ways in which I have been self-herding. Just about everywhere I eat regularly, there’s a standard meal I order (the Milanese at Cafe Corto, the pork and prawns at BBQ King and so on), I always set my mat down in the same spot at yoga and I always read the same sections of the newspaper in the same order.

Predictably Irrational is all about “behavioural economics”. Part economics, part psychology, behavioural economics aims to understand how people actually make decisions, rather than taking the traditional economics approach of assuming that people behave rationally, at least in aggregate. Researchers in the field take an experimental approach and Ariely’s book is filled with ingenious and entertaining examples, such as observing the difference between secretly leaving half a dozen cans of coke in shared dorm fridges (they quickly disappear) or leaving a saucer of dollar bills (they are untouched). This particular example is part of Ariely’s examination of our somewhat peculiar attitude to money: it is a store of value and yet we don’t relate to it in quite the same way as goods or services of an equivalent value.

Sadly, self-herding is far from the only irrational behaviour I recognised in myself as I read the book (and I don’t mean that I have a tendency to pinch cans of Coke). I can be fooled by products or services that are “free”, I am a serious procrastinator and I can certainly make poor judgements when my emotions run high. All of these behaviors and more are explored in the book and I might have to ponder some of these in future posts.

For anyone who read Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, you’ll find Predictably Irrational is the opposite side of the coin. Where Freakonomics explores the successful application of classical economics to rather bizarre situations, Predictably Irrational takes the most mundane situations in which the usual rules of economics fail to hold. It’s a fascinating read. Ariely’s website is also well worth a visit.