site banner

Friday Fun Thread for July 25, 2025

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

2
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Does anyone here know their Myers-Briggs type or ever tried to figure it out?

Ok yes I know it's pseudoscience, I know it's not much better than a horoscope

Is it actually any worse than mainstream psychology?

Academic and high-class psychologists use Big Five, your average crunchy psychotherapist on the street is more likely to use the Enneagram.

Yes. Because mainstream psychology abandoned it ages ago in favor of the Big Five/OCEAN.

I was under the impression that it was never part of psychology, but was developed by two housewives for some popular magazine or something. Like 4bpp the claims of it being like a horoscope feel like cope. If psychology has a better test, fair enough, but I'm gonna need an RCT betwwen M&B and Big Five or whatever, before I actually believe it.

Well, I'm not a psychologist, so I might have misremembered that factoid. Never heard MB being used in a healthcare setting, last I heard, it had been a mild fad in HR.

Even OCEAN is of limited utility.

This is a really big area that I’m largely ignorant of. Here’s an overview of the historical development of the Big Five model with copious citations, particularly with reference to studies on cross-cultural validation of the Big Five categories.

I note that the paper notes that, methodologically, research into the Big Five “originated in studies of natural language trait terms […] For the layperson, personality is defined by such terms as friendly, high-strung, and punctual. These are the basic ways in which individuals understand themselves and others”. I sense an effortpost in the future on the relationship between ordinary language philosophy and this approach to psychology.