#is infuriating

[pasiphile]

Psst... based on the research you did, is there anything reliable you can tell us about personality and how it works?

Gladly!

The current commonly accepted personality model is generally referred to as the Big Five, and it's relatively rare in that it's as close as a consensus as you can reach in psychology. There have been tonnes of research that keep turning up the same general results. Research across cultures, with babies, with animals, self reported questionnaires versus descriptions, open ended versus multiple choice questions, relationships with biomarkers... Obviously they're not all exactly identical, because psychology is not an Exact science, but the results are always similar enough that as far as models go, it's about as solid as you can get.

So, what is this model? It very simply says that there are five big, independent character traits that people can vary in, easily remembered by the handy acronym OCEAN :

- openness to experience : how curious you are, how interested you are in culture and how much imagination you have versus how much you prefer to concentrate on practical things and how conservative you are (in the non-political meaning of the word)

- conscientiousness: how much do you care about efficiency, accuracy and being on time, versus how sloppy or disorganised you are.

- extraversion: you know this one. How much do you like/need interaction with other people.

- agreability: how nice you are. Are you generally well-disposed towards people or are you more distrustful?

- neuroticism: are you a big worrier or are you more laidback?

Now, all of these are phrased like it's a choice between two options, but what the Big Five model also keeps turning up is that these five are a spectrum, with a large majority of people being sort of in the middle. Most people dislike being alone all day but also get tired from being in big groups for a long time. Most people worry about bigger, important things but less about smaller things. Most people want to be accurate and careful in general but don't mind being a bit more sloppy when it matters less to them. In statistical terms, they all follow a gauss curve, which looks like this (with the vertical axis being the amount of people and the horizontal one the score out of ten you would get on a questionnaire) :

Which means that if you take a group of random 100 people, only a handful will be on the extremes of the spectrum (the party animal versus the recluse) while 60 to 70 people will have no real, strong preferences either way.

And that's why personality models that want to divide people up into distinct groups are, objectively, wrong. The differences between someone who scores 49 and someone who scores 51 on an extraversion scale are minimal, but those personality type theories will have you believe those two are radically different people. One of the major issues with the MBTI is, in fact, that a lot of people keep getting different results if they retake the test a few weeks or months later, exactly because of this reason : if you're an average scorer (and again, most people are), choosing between two extremes makes no sense and you're basically assigned a type at random.

The Big Five is by no means a perfect model. There's doubt whether it can really be applied that easily to non-western cultures. The interaction with mental health and neurodivergence is still unclear (are people with anxiety just extremely high on the neuroticism scale, or is anxiety a separate thing that influences the results?). But it's been replicated enough that the core of it is, at this point beyond doubt. Meanwhile the MBTI, Insights Discovery, Kolb's learning styles and all those other "you're either type A or type B" models that are rife in the business world are scientifically bullshit.

Personality doesn't come in types. Personality is a spectrum, with a few people in the extremes but the majority somewhere in the middle.  And ignoring that in favour of putting people in neat but inaccurate boxes is very dangerous.

[trekkiehood]

I'm still so bitter that Dean didn't say yes to Michael in season 5

[idkhowtopickausername]

I’m glad that a lot of people are being radicalized by the experience of seeing in a clear and direct way how awful U.S. imperialism is but also a bit alarmed by the number of people who don’t seem to be

[bucksangel]

i’m literally so fucking tired of people insisting to me that i like men and that i just need to find the right guy like shut the fuck up that’s so disrespectful and shitty

[crinkle-eyed-boo]

.

[animerunner]

Also don’t know who needs to here it but Eda dying would be a combination of bury your gays (because even with that tweet the dialogue has told us multiple times she isn’t straight) and the only good disabled person is dead idea

And I shouldn’t have to explain why that combination is particularly nasty. And doesn’t even make sense

Why do y’all think their going to play straight a trope they’ve spent the entire run subverting?

Because they’ve subverted several of the tropes y’all legit think they’re going to use. Including the bury your gays and cure the disabled character.

But the self sacrifice-

Yeah I know it’s a theme but y’all really here thinking among other things Dana will kill off her OTP.

Along with the extremely harmful theming

Because this shit is harmful and it’s frustrating y’all don’t realize it

[synonymsforstupidity]

'Kris being an outcast who likes freaking people out means they must be a Bad Person™️ and thus taking their free will and piloting them like a puppet is actually Good™️ morally speaking'

How about I eat your skin how bout that

[xuanelle]

we need to bully dc writers into doing absolutely anything with one of the multiple unique abilities that simon has shown that he has. there's so much one could possibly with any of them

[strawberryoverlord]

how many old people does it take to use a card swiper?

the answer is 4 apparently

[ssaalexblake]

Show: this is one of Britain's most notorious crimes!

Me, who lives where it happened and has never even heard of it: ... Sure jan

[bonesandthebees]

one of the most infuriating things about becoming an adult is when you realize that it actually is 10x easier to solve problems by making a phone call vs literally any other communication method

[ironinkpen]

best thing about uncle iroh is that if you pay attention he is actually just as much of an idiot as zuko but has just mastered the art of coming across as a wise old man. the even better thing is that zuko is the only one on the planet who somewhat realizes this and no one would ever believe him because he's zuko

[testosteronetwunk]

[toskarin]

one time I got in a twitter argument I didn't really have any investment in so I drew an mspaint doodle of myself as christ on the cross and for some reason that didn't deescalate the argument

[trellanyx]

You’ve really gotta hand it to Brennan because Bobby Dawn had what, 3 lines between the end of this ep and the preview?

And EVERYONE wants this motherfucker dead already.

You know you’ve mastered the Southern Evangelist voice when just a single sentence makes me feel like nails are dragging down the chalkboard of my soul.

[reliabledragon]

To me, the best embodiment of modern capitalism is in the phrase "please hold, we are experiencing higher than usual call volume". I know it's a lie. You know it's a lie. But you still hear that line every time you call, regardless of the day or time, because it shifts the blame. It tries to prompt you to blame the other callers instead of asking, "Hey, why are they deliberately understaffing their call centers and making it so difficult to get help?" It takes a failing caused by a deliberate, profit-focused management choice, and turns it into a problem with the people using the system, rather than one with the system itself. And that pattern, to me, is the epitome of the modern corporate system.