Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, it's me Josham. For this week's Select, I've
Speaker 1: chosen our August twenty seventeen episode on personality tests. It
Speaker 1: turns out that the vast majority of them, maybe all
Speaker 1: of them, are scientifically faulty to at least some degree,
Speaker 1: and some of them are just outright made up. This
Speaker 1: can be a real problem if they're being used to
Speaker 1: diagnose you with a mental illness, or hire or fire
Speaker 1: you or put you in jail, and that actually happens.
Speaker 1: So dig into this deceptively interesting episode and enjoy it.
Speaker 1: And I'm an EENFP.
Speaker 2: By the way, Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a
Speaker 2: production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's
Speaker 1: Charles w Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry over there, and this
Speaker 1: is Stuff you Should Know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, just a couple of.
Speaker 4: It.
Speaker 1: Jay says, I don't remember what I am. We've taken
Speaker 1: it before. How Stuff Works hosted it years back. Do
Speaker 1: you remember.
Speaker 5: Yeah, we had, like many companies do, as you'll see,
Speaker 5: we had when we were under Discovery's tender wing. They
Speaker 5: paid for someone to come to our office and administer
Speaker 5: the Myers Briggs personality test.
Speaker 1: At gunpoint.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I don't remember, but I'm pretty sure I was
Speaker 5: an E N F P.
Speaker 1: I I don't remember what I was. I'll probably say
Speaker 1: like three different things as we go through this one.
Speaker 5: Like, just looking at it again, I'm pretty sure I
Speaker 5: was an E N F P. Okay, P stands for
Speaker 5: pisces right where.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's see extroverted intuitive. Okay, what is the F
Speaker 1: stand for? Feeling pooper?
Speaker 3: Is a spoiler? Yeah, feeling pooper.
Speaker 1: So we're what we're talking about. It sounds like we're
Speaker 1: saying strings of letters. They actually do make sense if
Speaker 1: you're familiar with what Chuck just said, the Myers Briggs
Speaker 1: type inventory, which if you are in corporate America and
Speaker 1: have been a part of corporate America for more than
Speaker 1: probably three years, there's probably a pretty good likelihood that
Speaker 1: you've taken the Myers Briggs type inventory for sure. Like
Speaker 1: it's really widespread.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I love it.
Speaker 1: I saw something like thirteen percent of companies in America
Speaker 1: use it. It's a lot.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it was it eighty nine of the Fortune one
Speaker 5: hundred use it.
Speaker 1: Right, And then I saw another stat It was from
Speaker 1: two thousand and one though, So I'm not sure how current.
Speaker 1: It is well sixteen years old, right, but they said
Speaker 1: that the uh, I think British companies somewhere between ten
Speaker 1: and forty percent of British companies use them, right, So
Speaker 1: I mean it's who knows. It's pretty wild, guess it
Speaker 1: sounds like but.
Speaker 3: I wonder if they have their own It's.
Speaker 1: No, the Myers Briggs Test. They don't call it a test,
Speaker 1: as we'll see. Sure, but the test is, it's worldwide,
Speaker 1: it's translated into tons of different languages. They and no,
Speaker 1: it's it's the Myers Briggs Test. And there's tons of knockoffs.
Speaker 1: Oh sure, there's tons of personality tests in general, which
Speaker 1: really is the larger umbrella the Myers Briggs Test falls under.
Speaker 1: But it's probably the most famous of all time, at
Speaker 1: least as far as pop culture goes.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and we're going to hit on everything from Rorshak
Speaker 5: to the Myers Briggs.
Speaker 1: Sure, but we're going to hit on them.
Speaker 5: But the MBT I definitely is more of the focus
Speaker 5: of this one because of its ubiquity.
Speaker 1: Right, because most people know it, and because it's one
Speaker 1: of the overlooked pastimes in the United States to take
Speaker 1: pot shots at the Myers Briggs type inventory. Sure, it's fun.
Speaker 5: So categorizing one's personality is nothing new, and that's what
Speaker 5: these tests aim to do for various reasons, which we'll
Speaker 5: go over later. But going back, and this was a
Speaker 5: Grabster article, correct, that's right, so you know it's good. Yeah,
Speaker 5: And Grabster was just at our show in Toronto. Yeah,
Speaker 5: he was for the second time.
Speaker 1: He stood up and like, did that victory shake?
Speaker 6: Did he do that?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 3: He did. No, I'm a big fan of that. That's
Speaker 3: old school.
Speaker 1: Oh it is. It's a good way to go. It
Speaker 1: looks like you should be wearing those dolphin shorts just
Speaker 1: having crossed the finish line and you doing that.
Speaker 5: So yeah, it's nothing new trying to categorize personalities. Way
Speaker 5: back in the day, I know, on our Grave Robbing
Speaker 5: Live Grave Robbing episode, we talked about the four humors
Speaker 5: and we talked about him before before medical science was
Speaker 5: kind of a real thing.
Speaker 1: It was an early attempt.
Speaker 5: Yeah, they talked about the four fluids or the four
Speaker 5: humors black bile, yellow bile, phlegm, and blood, uh and
Speaker 5: and imbalance in those will cause disease. But they were
Speaker 5: also this is something I didn't know. These are also
Speaker 5: linked to corresponding personality types.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, So like the word melancholy in English, it's
Speaker 1: an adaptation of the Greek words I believe for black bile.
Speaker 1: There it is, and melancholy personalities were associated with an
Speaker 1: overabundance of black bile. And basically your melancholy you're you're
Speaker 1: a depressed person or you're very reserved or quiet. And
Speaker 1: for thousands of years people thought guy's got a lot
Speaker 1: of black bile. Yeah, that explains his personality. The other
Speaker 1: ones are pretty pretty interesting too, like phlegmatic.
Speaker 3: Uh, phlegmatic.
Speaker 1: I've seen flegmatic. I've heard flagmatic. Really, I've seen it too.
Speaker 3: So like when you cough something up, do you call
Speaker 3: it flegum?
Speaker 1: Sometimes depends if it had like a lot of extra
Speaker 1: chunks in it, it's flag Oh gosh. But phlegmatic, I say, phlegmatic.
Speaker 1: That's very laid back. Did you know that?
Speaker 5: Well, Yeah, because I looked all these up. Oh okay,
Speaker 5: because sanguine is one of my favorite words. Yeah, and
Speaker 5: that's this is Hippocrates, by the way. He kind of
Speaker 5: further refined these concepts of the temperament. So melancholic, phlegmatic, sanguine,
Speaker 5: and what is it choleric.
Speaker 1: Here coleric, Yeah, choleric, coloric. Choleric is like irritable and
Speaker 1: short and terse and Kurt.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: But the thing is, there's something weird here, right if
Speaker 1: you are a thinking human being, yes, who is not
Speaker 1: in a vegetative state right now?
Speaker 3: Correct?
Speaker 1: And for all we know at this point in medical science,
Speaker 1: maybe even if you are in a vegetative state, you're
Speaker 1: probably thinking, Uh, it doesn't seem like anyone I've ever
Speaker 1: met is just phlegmatic or just choleric, or just sanguine
Speaker 1: or just melancholy. Sometimes I'm all four of those things.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I go through those things all four in a day,
Speaker 1: depending on how weird the day is.
Speaker 3: Sometimes I go through all four of those within the
Speaker 3: course of one happy hour.
Speaker 1: Sure, okay, Right, And that's kind of the point here,
Speaker 1: And it's also the basis of any criticism from this
Speaker 1: moment in the podcast here on out, is that this
Speaker 1: whole thing that started back with the Four Humors and
Speaker 1: continues on to this day in the guise of personality tests, yeah,
Speaker 1: is an attempt to take a human personality and say
Speaker 1: you're this, Yeah, you're this one type, You're this type,
Speaker 1: this is your type, this is what you're like, right,
Speaker 1: And the human personality is just too complex, too squishy,
Speaker 1: too jelly like to be boxed into one thing like that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and we'll get into all criticisms, but that definitely
Speaker 5: is the leading criticism.
Speaker 3: That is. Well, we'll save that.
Speaker 1: Okay. That was a tease.
Speaker 3: It was a good tease.
Speaker 1: It's a phlegmatic one.
Speaker 5: All these classifications, though, that we talk about now, are
Speaker 5: or most of them at least are drive lai at
Speaker 5: the feet of one man. When Carl Jung, Yeah, who
Speaker 5: wrote a book called psychological types.
Speaker 1: How do you say it? Though in in German?
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 1: It's oh where is it? Let me see there it is.
Speaker 1: I can't even begin to do it.
Speaker 3: Psycho psycho sorry, psychologic yesh, psychologic ish typing.
Speaker 1: That's not fair.
Speaker 3: It's so tiny. That was the problem because you.
Speaker 1: Oh, yeah, I do ten point I don't like to
Speaker 1: waste paper.
Speaker 3: Well you know me.
Speaker 1: You do like sixteen point times new Roman.
Speaker 5: Paper, and I don't want to waste it. But I
Speaker 5: also have to do my job. Sure, maybe I should
Speaker 5: go double sided, but then my highlighter it gets in
Speaker 5: the way.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, it would be a problem, man, everything would
Speaker 1: be highlighting, you might as well just dip the whole
Speaker 1: page in yellow wink or something.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 5: So anyway, Jung wrote this book, that book in nineteen
Speaker 5: twenty one and at German and had it translated to
Speaker 5: English a couple of years.
Speaker 3: Later, and he created these four categories sensation, intuition, thinking,
Speaker 3: and feeling.
Speaker 5: Right, So those were his four that kind of most
Speaker 5: of these modern tests are based on in some way
Speaker 5: or another.
Speaker 6: Yeah, And.
Speaker 1: It's really almost impossible that I guess we could just
Speaker 1: save all the criticisms for the end and just pile
Speaker 1: them on. But it's really tough to talk about this
Speaker 1: stuff and not like, as you present one fact, talk
Speaker 1: about the problem with that fact as it relates to
Speaker 1: modern incarnation. What do you think we should do? Should
Speaker 1: we just save them, like you say, because I can
Speaker 1: buite my time?
Speaker 3: Yeah, let's say them, okay, and then you can just like.
Speaker 1: I'm not even try like I'm not I'm not going
Speaker 1: crop circle here. I'm just saying like, there's just there's
Speaker 1: just a lot wrong with this. But even before Young
Speaker 1: who created these the concept of the modern concept i
Speaker 1: should say, personality types, and he created the idea of introvert,
Speaker 1: an extrovert, which say what you will about you, and
Speaker 1: a lot of psychologists have a lot to say about him. Yeah,
Speaker 1: not necessarily the nicest things to say, but introversion and
Speaker 1: extra extraversion is so widely accepted inside and out of
Speaker 1: the field of psychology that I mean, if that were
Speaker 1: his only contribution to the field, that's that's enough to
Speaker 1: engrave it on your tombstone for sure.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: And each of those four psychological types he was talking
Speaker 5: about are modified by whether or not you're introverted or extroverted.
Speaker 3: Right, so they all kind of work together to buch
Speaker 3: you in.
Speaker 1: That was like the right, that was the main thing
Speaker 1: is how you how you approach life is introvert, extrovert,
Speaker 1: and everything else was like a sub It's kind of
Speaker 1: a sub section of that or something.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: And one of the issues with this, and I don't
Speaker 5: think this is part of the criticism, but.
Speaker 1: I was gonna say, I thought we were saving him.
Speaker 5: He was This was based on his ideas. It wasn't
Speaker 5: like he had all this research and all this data.
Speaker 5: He was a deep thinker, and he sat around and
Speaker 5: thought of these things.
Speaker 1: Right exactly, And then he wrote entire books based on them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but he's a very well respected psychoanalyst, and he was
Speaker 1: part of the early movement for psychoanalysis. With Freud, they
Speaker 1: were colleagues. La Jung was much younger, but they eventually said,
Speaker 1: I don't like you anymore. We're parting ways. But as
Speaker 1: psychoanalysis was really kind of establishing itself, and if you
Speaker 1: want to know more about that background in the origin
Speaker 1: of psychoanalysis, go listen to her how pr works the
Speaker 1: live show. Yeah, we talked a lot about that. But
Speaker 1: as this was going on and it was starting to
Speaker 1: kind of dominate the field of psychology, there was a
Speaker 1: whole other movement, a parallel movement that said, you know what,
Speaker 1: we think all that's a little mushy. We like the
Speaker 1: idea of being able to quantify psychology. And so even
Speaker 1: before you there were guys like Alfred Binet, who was
Speaker 1: one of the indirect fathers of the Intelligence test IQ test,
Speaker 1: a pair of researchers named Gray and Wheelwright, and plenty
Speaker 1: of others who wanted to say, no, no, no, no, you
Speaker 1: can study psychology. You can study things like the human personality,
Speaker 1: and you can typify and you can add numbers, you
Speaker 1: can quantify this stuff and in doing so, we will
Speaker 1: prove psychology as a science as well. So this whole
Speaker 1: movement to typify people and put them into convenient, almost
Speaker 1: numerical categories came out of this urgent need to establish
Speaker 1: a scientific basis for psychology.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and Jung he kind of laid the table for this.
Speaker 5: And many years later, although not that many, there was
Speaker 5: a woman named Katherine Cook Briggs and she was working
Speaker 5: on this with her daughter, one Isabelle Briggs Myers. I
Speaker 5: think you see where this is going. And this is
Speaker 5: post World War two when they women were kind of
Speaker 5: for the first time really going into the workforce in
Speaker 5: full and en mass, and so they thought, well, maybe
Speaker 5: we can put together some personality types to find out
Speaker 5: what kind of jobs these women might be suited for,
Speaker 5: what types of jobs they might enjoy. So they started
Speaker 5: working together on this, and as legend has it, the
Speaker 5: mom Katherine Briggs Cook Briggs, she was doing her thing
Speaker 5: and then saw Jung's works and said, I got to
Speaker 5: start over.
Speaker 1: This is the stuff She had already been working on
Speaker 1: a personality test. Yeah, but apparently, according to the legend,
Speaker 1: through her work into the fire said I'm starting from scratch.
Speaker 3: Because she's dramatic.
Speaker 1: She was a voracious reader, especially of the psychology, the
Speaker 1: new psychology books that were coming out of Europe.
Speaker 5: Right, she didn't read Young She did well eventually, but yeah,
Speaker 5: and then seems like it kind of came along later.
Speaker 1: Well, so, yeah, there's a there's kind of a weird
Speaker 1: discrepancy in the history. And I don't know if it's
Speaker 1: just that hasn't been covered right or if there is
Speaker 1: a weird discrepancy, but supposedly she initiated it, and so
Speaker 1: it would have been contemporary or shortly after Jung's Psychology
Speaker 1: or Personality Types was translated into English in nineteen twenty three.
Speaker 1: But it was her daughter Isabelle who really took it
Speaker 1: and ran with it because of World War Two in
Speaker 1: the need for women in the workplace.
Speaker 5: Correct, so they you know, kind of kept some of
Speaker 5: young stuff built on that it kind of striped some
Speaker 5: of it away, most notably a lot of the unconscious stuff.
Speaker 5: They might have thought that was a little too weird
Speaker 5: for you know, the modern American workforce. Yeah, so what
Speaker 5: they ended up coming up with was the the MBTI
Speaker 5: Myers Briggs Type Indicator, right, very famously.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and they had a publishing arrangement with one group
Speaker 1: I can't remember what they were called, but they thought
Speaker 1: it didn't do very well. And then in nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: five they went with another publisher CPP and they're the
Speaker 1: current publishers of the Myers Briggs Yeah type indicator. And
Speaker 1: since then that's when it's ubiquity, like just really spread
Speaker 1: was starting in the seventies and now it's just it's
Speaker 1: basically married to corporate America.
Speaker 3: Should we take a break, sure, go get married to
Speaker 3: corporate America.
Speaker 1: Yeah, as if we aren't already.
Speaker 5: All right, we'll come back and we'll talk a little
Speaker 5: bit about personality tests in general and then focus in
Speaker 5: a little more on the n B T I.
Speaker 6: As W.
Speaker 4: S k as all right, So.
Speaker 5: Personality tests is just there are many many ways you
Speaker 5: can get evaluated psychologically by a professional.
Speaker 3: This is just one way.
Speaker 1: And you get your head measured with calibers. Back in
Speaker 1: the day they did that, give you a bunch of
Speaker 1: drugs and see what you do. There's a lot of ways.
Speaker 5: But these tests generally, as Grabster points out, falls into
Speaker 5: a couple of types, projective and objective. Projective tests or
Speaker 5: things like the roar shack test where you're shown something
Speaker 5: some kind of stimulus and it's open to interpretation, and
Speaker 5: you tell them what you think about it, and someone
Speaker 5: sits back very quietly and taps on a pad of
Speaker 5: paper and makes an evaluation. And then objective are more
Speaker 5: like these personality tests. They're standardized assessments that people use,
Speaker 5: and while it's subjective what you put down, they are
Speaker 5: then evaluated again by a professional.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 1: But ultimately that objective name is a bit of a
Speaker 1: misnomer because on the end of it, it's still interpreted
Speaker 1: by a person. Yeah, which is therefore makes it subjective, right,
Speaker 1: and which, depending on who you ask, is the fatal
Speaker 1: flaw of all personality tests.
Speaker 5: It should be the good song from the seventies had
Speaker 5: a little parenthetical at the end of the title, right,
Speaker 5: it should just say subjective also right in parentheses.
Speaker 1: Baby.
Speaker 3: So the big five are and this is the Big five.
Speaker 5: I get the feeling or the psycho logical tests that
Speaker 5: that legit psychologists are more in favor of over something
Speaker 5: like the MBT.
Speaker 3: I is that right?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's not just there's tests to suss out the
Speaker 1: Big five. The Big five are the personality types of
Speaker 1: the field of psychology has come up with.
Speaker 5: Well, yeah, but the tests that you utilize that, right,
Speaker 5: they kind of think are more legit than the MBT.
Speaker 1: I yeah, there's not a psychologist alive who uses the
Speaker 1: the MBTI and the regular practice. Oh I bet there
Speaker 1: are not that not that are speaking up.
Speaker 3: I guarantee you there's someone out there.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Sure it's a free wheeling type.
Speaker 3: Or is she?
Speaker 1: So?
Speaker 5: The Big five are extraversion, agreeableness, openness to experience, conscientiousness,
Speaker 5: and neuroticism. Right, sounds like it could be like a
Speaker 5: dating site thing that you fill out.
Speaker 1: It's funny, every time I see or hear the word neuroticism,
Speaker 1: a bell goes off in my head, like.
Speaker 3: Thing, just a silent bell. I don't know what that means.
Speaker 1: I don't either, but it draws my attention to.
Speaker 3: So some of these tests, I mean, it depends on
Speaker 3: what it is that.
Speaker 5: They might not all call them by those exact words,
Speaker 5: but they're generally using they call them, you know, like
Speaker 5: I said, the Big five.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I I was looking into that Big five
Speaker 1: and this site I can't remember what it was called,
Speaker 1: but they were basically they were going over it like
Speaker 1: extraversion is again just part of the scientific literature at
Speaker 1: this point. Agreeableness is like whether you're how sympathetic or
Speaker 1: kind or affectionate you are? Conscientiousness is are you organized?
Speaker 1: Are you thorough? Are you the type who shows up
Speaker 1: on time? That kind of thing, neuroticism, which is some
Speaker 1: kind sometimes called emotional stability. How tense are you? How moody?
Speaker 1: How anxious? And then like openness to experience? Right, yeah,
Speaker 1: they sometimes call that intellect slash imagination. Do you have
Speaker 1: wide interests? Are you an imaginative person? Are you insightful?
Speaker 1: And the site really went to a lot of pains
Speaker 1: to point out that what you would call these things
Speaker 1: the big five personality traits are as far as a
Speaker 1: psychologist is concerned, just one dimension of you, the human being,
Speaker 1: and that to get a clearer picture of you, they
Speaker 1: would also need to study your motivations, your emotions, your attitudes,
Speaker 1: your abilities, your self concepts, your social roles, autobiographical memories,
Speaker 1: your life stories. Now, if you start to put all
Speaker 1: these things together, then you can start to kind of
Speaker 1: approximate the person's personality. But it would just it takes
Speaker 1: a lot of study of an individual and these different
Speaker 1: components that make up their personality to get a clear picture.
Speaker 1: So I don't think there are any psychologists walking around
Speaker 1: saying the big five personality types or like the beginning
Speaker 1: and end of a personality. It's just if you put
Speaker 1: them together, you have just a sketch of somebody's personality
Speaker 1: and you should go much deeper. Or if you're analyzing someone.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think I used to think this stuff was
Speaker 5: a lot neaterer when I was younger, and now it
Speaker 5: kind of gives me a little anxiety. Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 5: Like I just I don't know as far as doing
Speaker 5: this to myself, and I still enjoy therapy, like that's different.
Speaker 5: But I don't know, because every single one of these
Speaker 5: I like my answer would be, well, it depends.
Speaker 1: Well, I think. I think also though, and I don't
Speaker 1: mean to speak for you, but one of the issues
Speaker 1: that that comes up for me is if somebody goes
Speaker 1: to you and says, you know you you you rate
Speaker 1: pretty high on the spectrum of neuroticism, Like that's obviously
Speaker 1: you're gonna obsess about that kind of stuff, especially if
Speaker 1: they're right.
Speaker 3: It can make you neurotic.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's a boundary that somebody has just established
Speaker 1: for you. That you may need feel the need to
Speaker 1: stay in because that's the boundary that you're bound by,
Speaker 1: whether you are or not.
Speaker 3: Like this is my box, right that I'll live in it.
Speaker 1: That would be the reason it raises anxiety for me.
Speaker 3: Yeah, my whole thing.
Speaker 5: Like I said, though, it is just depends every single
Speaker 5: question that I would get asked. Well, not everyone. Sometimes
Speaker 5: I'm pretty like set on something, but usually I'd say
Speaker 5: I don't know. It depends on the scenario. Right, Am
Speaker 5: I more prone in a crowd to do X or Y?
Speaker 5: Maybe right?
Speaker 3: Maybe not? Depends on my mood.
Speaker 1: So one with these other personality tests, and the whole
Speaker 1: field in psychology of studying traits personality traits in a
Speaker 1: quantitative way is called psychometrics. So with these tests, the
Speaker 1: more sophisticated ones, if they had a test taker like you,
Speaker 1: they're designed to get around that. So they're going to
Speaker 1: ask a bunch of different questions about the same thing,
Speaker 1: but in different ways, coming from different directions, so that eventually,
Speaker 1: if you put all of them together and run them
Speaker 1: through statistical analysis, they're actually going to come up with
Speaker 1: your genuine answer, which is kind of one way or another.
Speaker 1: The other way that they get around this that kind
Speaker 1: of hemming and hauling, I guess is by placing it
Speaker 1: on a spectrum, you're not being lumped into one category
Speaker 1: or another. It's here's one end of the spectrum, here's
Speaker 1: the other end of the spectrum, and based on your answers,
Speaker 1: you fall somewhere around the middle, like almost everybody does.
Speaker 1: If you look at psychometric tests, a legitimate psychometric test
Speaker 1: is going to basically look like a bell curve where
Speaker 1: most people are going to be distributed toward the middle.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think what that's why gives me anxiety. It's like,
Speaker 5: what's the point? Don't box me in?
Speaker 1: It's a great question.
Speaker 5: Well, I think the second half of this is a
Speaker 5: lot of what's the point? Yeah, you know, So looking
Speaker 5: speaking on these tests to see if it's actually if
Speaker 5: there is a point, if it's a valid thing to do.
Speaker 5: There are a couple of measures that one must look
Speaker 5: at and that psychologists do look at is it valid
Speaker 5: and is it reliable? Valid in this that it really
Speaker 5: is a pretty good reflection of Josh or Chuck or whoever,
Speaker 5: and is it reliable. So if we take this test
Speaker 5: tomorrow or a different test, that's just you know, maybe
Speaker 5: different questions, will it reproduce the same result?
Speaker 3: And that's a big deal.
Speaker 5: Like if you're talking science and you're trying to have
Speaker 5: a foundation that says, no, this is science. It's not
Speaker 5: just a bunch of questions and hippie dippy questions that
Speaker 5: we're asking. If you really want real data and science
Speaker 5: behind it, you have to be able to reproduce it.
Speaker 1: One of the other things too, that these tests are
Speaker 1: designed to do is to weed out fakers. Right, we'll
Speaker 1: talk a lot more about the Minnesota Multi Phasic Personality Inventory,
Speaker 1: which is one of the big ones. Yes, probably the
Speaker 1: most taken personality test in the world, and it has
Speaker 1: a lot of built in mechanisms and apparently is really
Speaker 1: good at detecting people who are faking they're faking a
Speaker 1: mental illness or who are trying to pretend that they
Speaker 1: aren't suffering from a mental illness. Yeah, it's really good
Speaker 1: at detecting that because it's so exhaustive and using statistical analysis.
Speaker 1: If somebody is skewed really far one way or skewed
Speaker 1: really far the other, they're just immediately exposed as gaming
Speaker 1: the test as best they can.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 5: And one way they do that, which is in its
Speaker 5: own way, its own little psychology experiment at least, is
Speaker 5: by telling you if we have ways right, like, you
Speaker 5: will be rooted out and we will know exactly. So
Speaker 5: they tell people that beforehand, so you're more inclined to
Speaker 5: just be like, all right, we'll screw it.
Speaker 1: I'll tell the truth, right, especially when they're sitting there
Speaker 1: like clearing the air out of a syringe.
Speaker 3: That's creepy.
Speaker 5: It is, all right, So let's get back to CPP
Speaker 5: in the MBTI, the consulting Psychological Psychologists PRESS and the
Speaker 5: Myers Briggs.
Speaker 3: We'll just keep calling it a test, even though they
Speaker 3: say it's not a.
Speaker 1: Test, it's a type inventory.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so we'll just go ahead and break down the
Speaker 5: deal here there are. The object is to sort you
Speaker 5: into one of sixteen different types personality types, based on
Speaker 5: which side of four pairs or dichotomies that you're going
Speaker 5: to fall on. And those are at the very base.
Speaker 5: You're either introverted or extroverted, like we said, HE or I,
Speaker 5: sensing or intuition S and N. And these words they
Speaker 5: sound a little confusing, like what the heck does a
Speaker 5: sensing person mean? It means you, like the big data
Speaker 5: empirical data and a lot of information.
Speaker 1: Right, whereas intuition is like you just go with your gut,
Speaker 1: that's how you prefer to be correct. Right.
Speaker 5: The next we have thinking and feeling. Thinking being more
Speaker 5: focused on logic, that's a logic with the tea sure
Speaker 5: and objectivity. And then if you're feeling, you're going to
Speaker 5: be more interested in relationships and harmony among your group.
Speaker 1: Those two are pretty straightforward, Yeah, I think so. And
Speaker 1: then lastly there's judging and perceiving. Those are that's a dichotomy.
Speaker 1: Judging is where you prefer schedules, you prefer decisiveness, that's
Speaker 1: how you kind of approach life, and perceiving is where
Speaker 1: you're just kind of like whatever, Yeah, I'm not too
Speaker 1: worried about it. Yeah, that's almost kind of like the
Speaker 1: difference between the type A and type B personalities, which,
Speaker 1: by the way, was made up by a pair of
Speaker 1: cardiologists really whose work was later secretly funded by the
Speaker 1: tobacco industry who are looking for anything to explain heart
Speaker 1: attacks besides smoking, so they funded type A and type
Speaker 1: B personality research for years. Interesting, Yeah, it really is.
Speaker 1: There's a just as an aside, there's a really interesting price,
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, price nomics.
Speaker 3: Article on type and type.
Speaker 1: Yeah, just look it up. I don't remember the name.
Speaker 4: All right.
Speaker 5: So when you sit down to take one of these
Speaker 5: not tests with a series of questions that you answer,
Speaker 5: I think.
Speaker 1: They call them instruments, by the way, psychometric instruments, which.
Speaker 3: Are basically a series of questions on a.
Speaker 1: Piece of paper that sounds like a test.
Speaker 5: They will say things like ed has some good examples
Speaker 5: here when you go on a trip, do you want
Speaker 5: everything planned out in advance or would you rather just
Speaker 5: take each day as it comes, do whatever you feel like?
Speaker 5: Pretty straightforward kind of stuff, right, And then they also
Speaker 5: have things like word pairs, just to see literally what
Speaker 5: word you like better, like compassion, foresight, Like which word
Speaker 5: do you like better?
Speaker 1: Carrots or fruit?
Speaker 3: Fruit?
Speaker 1: Fruit? Yeah, that's just prettier, it is. So I'm looking
Speaker 1: back here, I just want to say, so.
Speaker 3: I think you're trying to figure out what you were.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think e n FP. Maybe I think.
Speaker 3: That's what I was. We weren't the same thing.
Speaker 1: I don't remember you. Me and I got the same thing.
Speaker 1: She found an old email, but she forgot to tell
Speaker 1: me what we were. Oh really, I really, I don't know.
Speaker 1: Problem is would we still be the same today?
Speaker 5: Yeah, and I think, if I'm not mistaken, didn't we
Speaker 5: have this up on a big board in the office
Speaker 5: for a while, So yeah, it seems like a Jerry's nodding.
Speaker 5: That seems like a breach of protocol. Sure like privacy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well again, being forced a gunpoint to do it
Speaker 1: was just from the start.
Speaker 3: I remember it was kind of fun. I had a
Speaker 3: fun day.
Speaker 1: We'll talk about that as well.
Speaker 5: So it's gonna cost you if you just do this
Speaker 5: as a single individual, not meaning not married, but just
Speaker 5: a person, about fifty bucks, although they.
Speaker 3: Should charge more if you're married. It's more complex.
Speaker 5: Test fifty bucks. If you want an hour feedback, that'll
Speaker 5: cost you an extra hundred. And if you want a
Speaker 5: career report all typed up, that'll be sixteen ninety five. Yeah,
Speaker 5: and if you this is fifteen hundred dollars for a
Speaker 5: on site training classes at like what we had.
Speaker 1: So this is a this is not very well explained.
Speaker 1: If you want to administer the Myers Briggs personality or
Speaker 1: type inventory, yeah, you can get certified four day training course.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, and you pay fifteen hundred to sixteen hundred dollars.
Speaker 3: Oh that's what that is.
Speaker 1: Cannot legally administer this test or you're infringing on their copyright,
Speaker 1: right unless you are certified by CPP to do this.
Speaker 3: We should do it with one another on the air
Speaker 3: and risk a lawsuit.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, well you probably got a suit already with
Speaker 1: that one question you asked out loud.
Speaker 3: Which one? Oh, just the one?
Speaker 1: Yeah, when you go on a trip, do you want
Speaker 1: everything planned out in advance?
Speaker 3: I just made that up. Oh good job, goodcha, I
Speaker 3: got that from Travelocity.
Speaker 1: Nice. Okay, yeah, that little gnome whispered it in your.
Speaker 3: Ear, that's right.
Speaker 1: But so you you would go and get certified, and
Speaker 1: then now you can go around to businesses and say, hey,
Speaker 1: do you want to know more about your employees? You
Speaker 1: want to know who's good at what? Let me come
Speaker 1: give the Myers Briggs type inventory to your your employees
Speaker 1: and it will be wonderful.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 1: So that's how the whole process goes. You pay to
Speaker 1: become certified, and then you go become something of an
Speaker 1: evangelist for the Myers Briggs test and you sell the test.
Speaker 1: You basically become a salesman as well. It's a it's
Speaker 1: very interesting dynamic that they have going.
Speaker 5: That is, it's a good word dynamic. They want to
Speaker 5: point out that the person taking the test is the expert,
Speaker 5: and they also use this metaphor of handedness, which I
Speaker 5: didn't fully understand. They say things like, it feels more
Speaker 5: comfortable to sign your name with your domino hand, but
Speaker 5: technically you can sign with your non dominant and if
Speaker 5: you need to right. I'm not sure what they're trying
Speaker 5: to prove that.
Speaker 1: They're trying to say that despite the MBTI, pigeonholing you
Speaker 1: fully in one category or another rather than on a spectrum.
Speaker 1: They're saying that category that it's pigeonholing you into is
Speaker 1: actually just your preference. It's not you specifically, it's just.
Speaker 3: Your inclined pretension.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you tend to be an extrovert, but of course
Speaker 1: everybody likes their own personal alone time, So yeah, you're
Speaker 1: going to be an introvert once in a while, but
Speaker 1: you're an extrovert more than other times.
Speaker 5: Yeah, because I can't sign my name with my left hand.
Speaker 5: That I didn't like that analogy because it literally I
Speaker 5: can barely hold a pin with my left hand.
Speaker 3: I'm seeing you're doing it right now.
Speaker 1: Wow, that was pretty bad.
Speaker 3: If I try to do it.
Speaker 5: It would look like a a three year old with
Speaker 5: arthritis has tried to like scribble it.
Speaker 1: Out mine mine looks like umm.
Speaker 6: You d M.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's my signature with my left hand.
Speaker 3: And they do they do try and point out. Like
Speaker 3: you said that.
Speaker 5: It's interesting because they box you in. But at the
Speaker 5: same time they're saying, but you know, like.
Speaker 3: You said, this is just predisposition.
Speaker 5: Don't don't really think of it about you being this
Speaker 5: type of person, even though you are an A E
Speaker 5: N F B. Right, like you said, it was earlier,
Speaker 5: it was almost numbered. I mean it is this letter.
Speaker 1: This is a different way of quantifying it. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: without numbers, you want to take a break and then
Speaker 1: come back and and maybe do a little criticism.
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, as why why.
Speaker 2: S K.
Speaker 6: You should know?
Speaker 1: All right, Chuck? Like I said, it's kind of a
Speaker 1: pastime in the United States to to tee off on
Speaker 1: the Myers Briggs type inventory.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is not us here, this is now, this.
Speaker 1: Is us talking about other people. Team.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: It's widely been criticized over the years from psychologists and
Speaker 5: uh well amateur.
Speaker 3: No, nothing's like us.
Speaker 1: Sure.
Speaker 3: One of the big criticisms is.
Speaker 5: That companies use this stuff and hiring and firing and promoting.
Speaker 1: But even the Myers Briggs people cpp say, like, don't
Speaker 1: do that.
Speaker 5: Well I know, but they say that, but then don't
Speaker 5: go to an office and get hired by a corporation
Speaker 5: to administer.
Speaker 1: It, right or go sell your services you know? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I agreed, And that's part of the problem. To me,
Speaker 1: that is more the corporation's fault. Well, like, if you
Speaker 1: have an HR person who's like a die hard believer
Speaker 1: in the MBTI and will hire or fire somebody based
Speaker 1: on their MBTI type, fire that person because you have
Speaker 1: a real dumb dumb on your hands and they should
Speaker 1: not be responsible for people's livelihoods. Even I don't think
Speaker 1: they would put it quite in those terms, But even
Speaker 1: the Myers Briggs people say like, you shouldn't use this
Speaker 1: for hiring or firing, and yet yes, some people do,
Speaker 1: some people swear by this. The impression that I have
Speaker 1: is that the Myers Briggs people tend to think of
Speaker 1: this as more like a team building exercise or 're
Speaker 1: like a certified MBTI administrator can come to your place,
Speaker 1: get all your employees together and they find out like
Speaker 1: all their personality types and by the way, there's not
Speaker 1: a single negative personality type and all personality types are equal. Sure,
Speaker 1: so everybody gets a participant ribbon in the form of
Speaker 1: their personality type. But at the same time, and this
Speaker 1: seems to be the crux, at the same time, everybody's
Speaker 1: finding out like, oh, you're a little different than me,
Speaker 1: and I'm a little different than you, and we all
Speaker 1: have differences in different perspectives, so let's celebrate that, and
Speaker 1: let's respect to one another's differences. And there is the
Speaker 1: actual point from what I understand, of the Myers Briggs
Speaker 1: type inventory and taking it in a corporate setting.
Speaker 5: That's what stands out to me as what happened with
Speaker 5: us was I remember it kind of being a fun
Speaker 5: day and we're like TUTSI rolls. Yeah, we held goofed
Speaker 5: off and had a good time. And the person leading it,
Speaker 5: if they're good at what they do, which this person was,
Speaker 5: is always you know, it's always kind of a fun
Speaker 5: person and cracking jokes and they don't take it too serious.
Speaker 5: None of us took it too seriously, and we all
Speaker 5: had a good time and it was very much like
Speaker 5: a team building thing.
Speaker 1: Right, So as long as there's like a wink wink,
Speaker 1: nudge nudge kind of thing, and that the people who
Speaker 1: take it actually take it seriously or taken off to
Speaker 1: the side by their hr rep to say like, no,
Speaker 1: this is a little less serious, then you're taking it.
Speaker 1: Then it's fine. But yes, once you start deciding people's
Speaker 1: fate based on this, then you have real problems because
Speaker 1: it's just about anybody will tell you the Myers Briggs
Speaker 1: type inventory is based at best on some shaky science,
Speaker 1: if at all, if you go back to the very beginning,
Speaker 1: it's based on the theories of Carl Jung, which have
Speaker 1: never been based on science. There are basically personal observations
Speaker 1: by Jung, and the psychology community has disavowed Jung in
Speaker 1: large part, so therefore anything based on his teachings and
Speaker 1: theories is by proxy disavowed as well. But if that
Speaker 1: weren't enough, psychology, you as a field loves going after
Speaker 1: the Myers Briggs type inventory just loves it as totally
Speaker 1: baseless scientifically all.
Speaker 5: Right, So we've got shouldn't use it to hire and
Speaker 5: fire in corporations or gift promotions. We have not based
Speaker 5: on real science and scientific data. These four dichotomies are
Speaker 5: problematic in and of themselves because everyone is on a spectrum.
Speaker 5: You can't say, like, you know, you answered these ten questions,
Speaker 5: you're either.
Speaker 3: This or you're that.
Speaker 5: Right, And when one of the rebuttals because I think
Speaker 5: ED interviewed someone from CPP, right, Yeah, one of the
Speaker 5: rebuttals about being a non repeatable experiment of sorts is like, hey, yesterday.
Speaker 3: I was an e NFP and today I'm this.
Speaker 5: They'll say, well, you know what, if you have different answers,
Speaker 5: that means you were sort of on the cusp right
Speaker 5: there in that center line on some of these questions,
Speaker 5: and you might have just leapt over to that other side,
Speaker 5: which means you're basically kind of down the center. Yet
Speaker 5: they don't have a categorization for down the center.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because depending on as inputs it, you could answer
Speaker 1: all twenty four questions on the feeling side and you're
Speaker 1: going to get the same result as somebody who answered
Speaker 1: eleven questions for thinking and thirteen questions for feeling. Right,
Speaker 1: same thing, You're still both in f in that respect.
Speaker 1: And I saw elsewhere it put like if the Myers
Speaker 1: Briggs test measured height, you would either be tall or short. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you could say well, actually I'm right there in the middle,
Speaker 1: and they'd be like, well that's short, right, Or for you,
Speaker 1: it's short. For the guy who is the same exact height, they're.
Speaker 3: Tall, right.
Speaker 5: And trust me, nobody this five' ten likes to be considered, short.
Speaker 5: RIGHT i can say that from.
Speaker 1: Experience because you're. Not you're in your Average.
Speaker 3: I'm, average, Right so being.
Speaker 1: Average the fact that there isn't a spectrum is one
Speaker 1: one thing that really makes it in stark contrast of
Speaker 1: other much more widely accepted psychometric. Instruments for, sure.
Speaker 3: It also points out to the grabster that They're the construction.
Speaker 5: Of the instrument itself is problematic because, one like we talked,
Speaker 5: about it's self. Reporting anytime you're self, reporting there's going
Speaker 5: to be some weird bias in, there, sure just almost
Speaker 5: impossible to. Avoid and the other one is that he
Speaker 5: says a couple of these dichademies are, entangled WHICH i
Speaker 5: never really thought about, that but that's a pretty good.
Speaker 3: Point so.
Speaker 5: Judging perceiving scale or correlated with answers on the sensing intuition,
Speaker 5: scale and if you, like those should be separated out for.
Speaker 3: Sure for. SURE i don't know why they.
Speaker 1: DON'T i don't, either you, know because they've really put
Speaker 1: a lot of work into.
Speaker 5: This, yeah it's not baked in stone from the nineteen
Speaker 5: forties and fifties and, sixties is.
Speaker 1: It, no it's. Not and even while they were creating
Speaker 1: it was an, ongoing exhaustive process That Missus briggs And
Speaker 1: Missus myers engaged.
Speaker 5: In, yeah we don't want to Give they spent decades on. This,
Speaker 5: yes it wasn't like something they threw.
Speaker 3: Together.
Speaker 1: No the problem is is they they did it. Backwards
Speaker 1: they came up with the personality types and then set
Speaker 1: about creating the test that would detect these personality. Types
Speaker 1: rather than going out and testing, people seeing what personality
Speaker 1: types emerged and then figuring out a test to find
Speaker 1: that and other, people they did it. Backwards that's a good.
Speaker 1: Point it was based on young but it was not
Speaker 1: for lack of. Trying Like as a matter of, fact
Speaker 1: one of the first things they did after they started
Speaker 1: to really establish the tests was they managed to administer
Speaker 1: it to like five Thousand George Washington university medical, students
Speaker 1: and they took those results and tracked the students to
Speaker 1: see what fields of medicine they went. In they like
Speaker 1: really worked on. THIS i read an article in The
Speaker 1: Washington post where THIS i Think Isabelle myers's son remembers
Speaker 1: their vacations were basically like fact finding missions all around the,
Speaker 1: country like they would go administer a, test like everything
Speaker 1: was about this. Test AND i worked on it for a.
Speaker 1: Decades so, yeah the problem is it was just it's
Speaker 1: just not based on. Science they didn't follow the scientific.
Speaker 1: Method so, science so science kind of poo poos THE.
Speaker 1: MBT i but, wait, wait, wait get back, here because
Speaker 1: a lot of these criticisms fall just as easily on
Speaker 1: every other psychometric test.
Speaker 6: Around.
Speaker 5: Well, yeah and that's one of the things THAT i
Speaker 5: can't remember who was interviewed in, Here but in one
Speaker 5: of those other articles you sent one of The MYERS
Speaker 5: i don't know if it was or maybe it was
Speaker 5: a roar shack defender, said you, know like, everyone, yeah
Speaker 5: it Was. Rorschak like everyone's always picking On, rorshak, right
Speaker 5: when all of these psychological tests, are you, know subject to, criticism.
Speaker 1: They, are you, KNOW i think it's really easy for
Speaker 1: to tee off On rorshak as, well BECAUSE i mean
Speaker 1: we're talking ink. Plots, man it is the epitome of
Speaker 1: subjective self. Reporting you're, SAYING, i let's see in this,
Speaker 1: ONE i see mom's. Boobs, yeah mom's boobs in that one,
Speaker 1: Too dad's, boobs right, right exactly. So and then from
Speaker 1: that it was strictly up to Initially, rorshak WHO i
Speaker 1: think came up with this test in nineteen, fifteen ninety.
Speaker 1: Seventeen what it's the Name, HERMAN i think so he's
Speaker 1: A swiss. Psychiatrist her it. Was it was initially up
Speaker 1: to him and then later on his followers to interpret,
Speaker 1: this which is basically like interpreting. Dreams, yeah and so,
Speaker 1: subjective totally subjective from beginning. That and then IN i
Speaker 1: think nineteen se seventy, five a guy At Bowling Green State,
Speaker 1: university which is right outside Of, toledo came up with
Speaker 1: this a really exhaustive interpretive test that sought to quantify rorschak.
Speaker 5: Answers, Yeah John, Exner and it was a test called
Speaker 5: The Comprehensive system one hundred and forty. Components and in
Speaker 5: this article you, sent they said That rorschak was probably
Speaker 5: going away had it not been For exner's accompaniment with
Speaker 5: this other, process.
Speaker 1: Right and even, today he's got an institute In asheville
Speaker 1: that's dedicated to The rorschach. Test, Right, so one Thing
Speaker 1: i've noticed from researching this is each of these personality
Speaker 1: inventories has like its adherence and its, detractors and just
Speaker 1: judging from the, outside it looks a lot like colts
Speaker 1: gathered around their various. Idols. Right there's like the origin
Speaker 1: figurehead who came up with, it and everybody worships, them
Speaker 1: and he's attacked by these other followers who have a
Speaker 1: very similar. Figurehead they came up with something very, similar
Speaker 1: but it's just different enough that there's a huge chasm
Speaker 1: between the two and there's a lot of dogma surrounding.
Speaker 1: It but The rorschach test in particular is apparently well
Speaker 1: known to give wildly inaccurate.
Speaker 3: RESULTS i took one, today did you? Online how'd you?
Speaker 5: DO i got two out of, ten which MEANS i
Speaker 5: was only two two away whatever that means from being
Speaker 5: labeled like a.
Speaker 3: Psychotic, so, yeah there was this four out of. TEN
Speaker 3: i think there's This oh, REALLY i think that's what it. Said,
Speaker 3: yeah that's. CLOSE i mean this is an online.
Speaker 5: TEST i don't know if it's, like how true it
Speaker 5: was to the ORIGINAL i got, it or it may
Speaker 5: be the, Original.
Speaker 1: Yeah it could. Be and then they have an algorithm
Speaker 1: that runs the.
Speaker 5: ANALYSIS i kept seeing all kinds of things WHEN i
Speaker 5: looked at, it And i've never done an ink plot.
Speaker 5: TEST i would, say, oh that looks like a, bat
Speaker 5: and then they was, like, no it's like two. Bunnies
Speaker 5: and then now it looks like a Cool Marti gras.
Speaker 1: Mask did they move to?
Speaker 3: You did you see?
Speaker 5: Colors, well some of them were, Colored oh, okay most
Speaker 5: of them were, black and they had A the ONE
Speaker 5: i took had a one and a. Two, like what
Speaker 5: do you? See and what's like a secondary thing that you?
Speaker 1: See so you, know supposedly people who are supporters of
Speaker 1: The rorschak tests, say, no, man there's we don't know
Speaker 1: how it's. Working but if you see movement in The
Speaker 1: rorschach ink, blots it's suggestive of depression or something like.
Speaker 1: That and they, say statistically it's. Correlated but LIKE i was,
Speaker 1: saying it's also notorious for giving incorrect.
Speaker 3: Results, yeah like saying you have a mental. Illness, right.
Speaker 1: Okay so there was this study in two thousand that
Speaker 1: was given to like one hundred mentally sound elementary school
Speaker 1: kids and some like high percentage of them came back
Speaker 1: as borderline psychotic because of The rorschak, test, Right and
Speaker 1: it's hilarious to hear stories like, That Like i'm laughing
Speaker 1: inside right. Now but the problem is is you're at
Speaker 1: the very least being labeled as. Psychotic, sure not a
Speaker 1: label you want in. Society and it was because of
Speaker 1: this ink blot test that's one hundred years. Old and then,
Speaker 1: secondly these tests are also being submitted and accepted as
Speaker 1: evidence in criminal. Trials that's the biggest part child custody.
Speaker 5: Cases, YES i mean they're still given real weight and
Speaker 5: lives are changed and ruined based on looking at one
Speaker 5: hundred year old ink. Blots, yes and a person's subjective
Speaker 5: analysis of.
Speaker 1: That that's not. Okay, No This.
Speaker 5: Howard garb in this one article you. Sent he's a
Speaker 5: co author Of What's wrong with A rorshak and he
Speaker 5: is head of psycho or at least at the time
Speaker 5: of this, article he may still be head of psychological
Speaker 5: testing for The Air. Force he said that even With
Speaker 5: exner's comprehensive, system he, said only ten percent of his
Speaker 5: system even meets the most basic scientific, standards and they
Speaker 5: did the examine data of over thirty Different rorschak, studies
Speaker 5: and he said they all have a tendency to label
Speaker 5: healthy people mentally.
Speaker 3: Ill.
Speaker 5: Right and if you're trying to get custody of your
Speaker 5: kid or if you are on, trial is a? Criminal,
Speaker 5: like it's just that's the last thing you. Need, yeah
Speaker 5: is someboddy subjective opinion of is it a bunny or
Speaker 5: is it a?
Speaker 3: Bat?
Speaker 1: Oh he, said a? Bat take that, kid you know?
Speaker 1: Quick kids LIKE i like.
Speaker 3: Bunnies the.
Speaker 1: Another one that we have to talk about is THE
Speaker 1: Mmpi now THE mmpi dash. TOO i think as of
Speaker 1: twenty twelve they revised it. Dramatic yeah is this?
Speaker 3: One is that? Right it has over five hundred? Questions?
Speaker 1: Yeah. Wow some of them originally were about like your bowel, movements,
Speaker 1: okay really nutso questions that supposedly really got to the
Speaker 1: heart of whether you were mentally disturbed or.
Speaker 3: Not.
Speaker 1: Right. Yeah and it was created at The University minnesota
Speaker 1: in the forties by a psychiatrist and a, NEUROLOGIST i,
Speaker 1: believe and they hit upon a pretty clever. Idea they,
Speaker 1: said we're not going to interpret the results right and,
Speaker 1: say you, Know, oh this person said that they do
Speaker 1: feel like smashing something, Sometimes.
Speaker 3: Yeah and that means.
Speaker 1: This, instead we're going to come up with this test
Speaker 1: of like five hundred and four, questions and we're going
Speaker 1: to give it to the patient or the family and
Speaker 1: staff of a mental hospital who we're sure or, sane
Speaker 1: and we're going to take their answers and they're going
Speaker 1: to become our control, group our. Baseline so then anybody
Speaker 1: who takes this, test we're going to compare the test
Speaker 1: taker's answers to the sane control group's, answers and you,
Speaker 1: know depending on how it relates to the same control,
Speaker 1: group they're either mentally ill or.
Speaker 3: Not you better have gotten that control, group. Right, well
Speaker 3: that's the thing to begin.
Speaker 1: With so a group of like family and friends In,
Speaker 1: minnesota is the picture of sanity throughout the world is
Speaker 1: the basis of this. Test that's a huge problem with
Speaker 1: it to begin. With, yeah but apparently a lot of people, say, like,
Speaker 1: no it it really. Has it does a pretty good
Speaker 1: job of sussening it sussing out mental. Illness it's also
Speaker 1: really good at detecting faker faking one way or the.
Speaker 1: Other but it's it's too invasive and when companies use
Speaker 1: it for hiring and, firing it's way too invasive and
Speaker 1: apparently lawsuits have been filed against companies for using.
Speaker 5: It, WELL i think that most people are far more
Speaker 5: troubled than they ever let on in. Life, sure and
Speaker 5: part of success in life comes down to how good
Speaker 5: you are at covering that up or hiding, it or
Speaker 5: dealing with it and processing it in terms with. It
Speaker 5: it's just to find a core group that are quote unquote,
Speaker 5: sane normal.
Speaker 3: People it's just you're starting off with a.
Speaker 5: Problem, yeah you ask me a faulty, premise, Right, yeah
Speaker 5: there's no. Way, like everyone has their. Issues they're deep
Speaker 5: dark things that their brain that they don't want anyone to.
Speaker 5: Know sometimes even the people closest to them don't even.
Speaker 1: Know, yeah and actually you're in agreement with. THIS a
Speaker 1: sociologist Named William white who criticized THE mmpi as a
Speaker 1: tool that helped to create and perpetuate the oppressive group
Speaker 1: think of mid century organization man where it's basically, like
Speaker 1: here's what we think is. Normal anything outside of that is,
Speaker 1: abnormal and we're not going to hire you because you
Speaker 1: don't fit into this picture of, normalcy which is basically
Speaker 1: white crew Cut minnesota from the. Forties, right that's the
Speaker 1: picture of. Normalcy that's highly.
Speaker 5: Debatable the other THING i thought was interesting is a
Speaker 5: lot of skeptics and critics point to things like THE
Speaker 5: mbti and saying this is just like astrology is really
Speaker 5: no different than reading your, horoscope because it's all positive.
Speaker 5: Psychology at the end of A Myers briggs non, test
Speaker 5: no one walks away feeling. Bad usually it's all sort
Speaker 5: of positive wording and like like this is what you.
Speaker 5: Are you're just, this so kind of don't worry about
Speaker 5: it the same way you read your horoscope in any given.
Speaker 5: DAY i, mean how many horoscopes say like today you
Speaker 5: will be prone to depression and wonder what it's all.
Speaker 1: About, right maybe you should work on your core character
Speaker 1: because people don't like being around you that. Much you
Speaker 1: don't hear that kind of. Stuff but that taps into
Speaker 1: what's called The forror. Effect. Flrr there is a psychiatrist
Speaker 1: Named Bertram.
Speaker 3: Forrror, oh this is so. Interesting he will take.
Speaker 1: It it's pretty.
Speaker 5: Interesting, WELL i, mean basically did he give the Same
Speaker 5: he had people take these tests and then gave all
Speaker 5: of the people the exact same, assessment but telling everyone
Speaker 5: it was tailored for them their own personality. Assessment AND
Speaker 5: i think the people who just thought it was favorable were,
Speaker 5: like this is.
Speaker 1: Great well it was. Favorable he actually called it from daily.
Speaker 5: Horoscopes well, yeah but what were they responding positively? To,
Speaker 5: well it was whether or not they wanted to feel
Speaker 5: that way about.
Speaker 1: This it was a positive. Assessment there was nothing negative in,
Speaker 1: there so it was all positive stuff like you have
Speaker 1: a lot of unused, potential that kind of, stuff stuff
Speaker 1: people wanted to identify. With, Right so the more flattering it,
Speaker 1: was the more likely the people were to, say this
Speaker 1: is an accurate assessment of.
Speaker 3: Me oh, okay so just ac the fact that it was.
Speaker 1: The same one given to the entire. Class he took
Speaker 1: their answers and threw them out and, said here's your.
Speaker 1: Assessment they're the same one for. Everybody that's about. Right
Speaker 1: it got like an eighty five percent accuracy from the
Speaker 1: class as a.
Speaker 3: Whole, well that's WHAT i.
Speaker 5: Wondered it was about the fifteen percent where those people
Speaker 5: just super honest.
Speaker 3: Maybe and like no this really.
Speaker 1: No people actually don't like being around. Me i'm using
Speaker 1: all of my potential and they still don't like.
Speaker 3: Me, yeah that's WHAT i couldn't figure. Out BUT i
Speaker 3: guess that makes.
Speaker 5: Sense there are people out there that ARE i THINK
Speaker 5: i would be one of those that would be, like
Speaker 5: this is all.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah i'm not like. That sure you got anything?
Speaker 1: ELSE i think. Not this is a good.
Speaker 3: One we've been wanting to do this for a.
Speaker 1: While, yeah this is a special request by me and.
Speaker 1: Others if you want to know more about personality, tests
Speaker 1: well you can go take them. Online they're kind of.
Speaker 1: Huge right, now find out what kind of hobbit you.
Speaker 1: ARE i don't know.
Speaker 3: What blocks do you live?
Speaker 1: In, yeah and in the, meantime you can type personality
Speaker 1: tests in the search bar at housetiffworks dot. Com and
Speaker 1: SINCE i said, that it's time for listener.
Speaker 5: Mail the only thing that should live in a box
Speaker 5: is temporary housing for a pet frog.
Speaker 1: That's not, bad or the stuff you find in a
Speaker 1: tree hole That Boo radley left for.
Speaker 3: You, yeah live in the.
Speaker 5: Box, hey, guys feel compelled to write you today to
Speaker 5: tell you how GRATEFUL i am for your show and
Speaker 5: praise your good. Work recently became a listener And i'm
Speaker 5: working my way through the entire. ARCHIVE i think a
Speaker 5: lot of folks might be able to relate to, this
Speaker 5: until RECENTLY i found OUT i found it really hard
Speaker 5: to relax and suffer with. Anxiety two months, AGO i
Speaker 5: read an article basically pointing out how our obsession with
Speaker 5: being productive and associated guilt is a modern. PHENOMENON i
Speaker 5: think that for, sure you know. Yep ALTHOUGH i had
Speaker 5: heard this, before something really clicked to my. Head SO
Speaker 5: i decided to abandon guilt and embrace, relaxation taking control
Speaker 5: of my own stress. Levels you guys have been a
Speaker 5: big part of. THIS i have taken the time to
Speaker 5: slowly potter around my flat gopher walks while listening and
Speaker 5: learning to your fascinating, podcasts and they've lifted my. MOOD
Speaker 5: i feel mentally healthier THAN.
Speaker 3: I ever have. Before.
Speaker 5: Nice although the content of what you discussed might not
Speaker 5: always be, positive the way in which you explain them
Speaker 5: and your own views revive my hope in humanity.
Speaker 1: That is ridiculously. Flattered isn't that?
Speaker 3: Nice?
Speaker 5: YEAH i GUESS i should also mention that a big
Speaker 5: part of my tackling anxiety levels has been to abandon
Speaker 5: watching television.
Speaker 1: And fistfuls of psychotropic.
Speaker 5: DRUG i would be really interested to know if there's
Speaker 5: been any research conducted into the EFFECT tv has upon our.
Speaker 3: Lives, Oh i'm sure there has. Been.
Speaker 5: SURE i haven't owned A tv for many, years but
Speaker 5: my partner has since subscribed to an online provider AND
Speaker 5: i realized how WATCHING tv has not helped my. ANXIETY
Speaker 5: i also remember reading that AFTER TVs became mainstream In,
Speaker 5: bhutan their crime rate went up something like seven.
Speaker 3: Percent might prove an interesting topic for a future. Show.
Speaker 5: Yeah, anyway sincerely, grateful keep it. UP i am now
Speaker 5: recommending your shows to as many people AS i. Can
Speaker 5: big love from THE.
Speaker 3: Uk.
Speaker 1: Mac thanks a, Lot, mac that was. Great we hear
Speaker 1: from a lot of people actually say that we help
Speaker 1: them with their. Anxiety no idea, how but it doesn't,
Speaker 1: matter so thank.
Speaker 3: You. Yep.
Speaker 1: Yeah if you want to get in touch of, this
Speaker 1: Like mac, did you can and send us an email
Speaker 1: To stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot.
Speaker 2: Com stuff You Should know is a production Of. iHeartRadio
Speaker 2: for more podcasts Myheart, radio visit The iHeartRadio, App Apple,
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Speaker 1: Shows