Friday, May 24, 2019



How Accurate Is the Myers-Briggs Personality Test? (MBTI)

I have not bothered to keep the reference but I saw some internal reliablity statistics (alpha) for the various MBTI scales once.  They were deplorably low, around .3 -- showing that questions which were all supposed to be tapping the same trait mostly did not correlate at all.  They were all tapping different things.  That is the kiss of death for the scale concerned


There are two types of people in the world: those who believe in the Myers-Briggs personality test and those who don't.

Except that's not true. Grouping people into two, three or 16 categories, which is the aim of a lot of personality tests, has never quite worked. And even in the case of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), which is simultaneously the most popular personality test in the world and the most frequently debunked, non-experts and psychologists alike take varying positions about the value of the tool.

About 1.5 million people take the test online each year, and more than 88% of Fortune 500 companies, as well as hundreds of universities, use it in hiring and training, according to The Myers Briggs Company, a California-based firm that administers the MBTI. Even fictional characters, from Disney princesses, to Harry Potter and Darth Vader have been assigned an MBTI type. [Which Personality Types Are Most Likely to Be Happy?]

Despite the popularity of the test, many psychologists criticize it — hardly a few months go by without a harsh take-down of the MBTI in the media, where a psychologist will say that the Myers-Brigg is unscientific, meaningless or bogus. But there are others who take a milder view of the test. "Many personality psychologists consider the MBTI to be a somewhat valid measure of some important personality characteristics but one that has some important limitations," said Michael Ashton, professor of psychology at Brock University in Ontario.

What is the MBTI?

The MBTI was invented in 1942 by Katharine Cook Briggs and her daughter, Isabel Briggs Myers. Cook, always a keen observer of people and their differences, was inspired by the work of psychologist Carl Jung and his theories; for example, the concepts of introversion and extroversion. The mother and daughter devoted their lives to developing the type indicator, hoping to help people understand their tendencies and choose appropriate jobs. The test uses 93 questions to assess the following traits:

Introvert (I) versus Extrovert (E)
Intuitive (N) versus Sensory (S)
Thinking (T) versus Feeling (F)
Judging (J) versus Perceiving (P)

Based on the combination of traits people fall into, the test ultimately assigns them one of the 16 labels, such as INTJ, ENFP, and so on.

Why do psychologists doubt it?

Psychologists' main problem with the MBTI is the science behind it, or lack thereof. In 1991, a National Academy of Sciences committee reviewed data from MBTI research and noted "the troublesome discrepancy between research results (a lack of proven worth) and popularity."

The MBTI was born of ideas proposed before psychology was an empirical science; those ideas were not tested before the tool became a commercial product. But modern psychologists demand that a personality test pass certain criteria to be trusted. "In social science, we use four standards: Are the categories reliable, valid, independent and comprehensive?" Adam Grant, University of Pennsylvania professor of psychology, wrote on LinkedIn. "For the MBTI, the evidence says not very, no, no, and not really."

Some research suggests the MBTI is unreliable because the same person can get different results when retaking the test. Other studies have questioned the validity of the MBTI, which is the ability of the test to accurately link the "types" to outcomes in the real world — for example, how well people classified as a certain type will perform in a given job. [Why Do People Ghost?]

The Myers-Briggs Company says the studies discrediting the MBTI are old, but their results are still being perpetuated in the media. Since those early criticisms, the company says it has done its own research to refine the test and assess its validity. "When you look at validity of the instrument [the MTBI], it is just as valid as any other personality assessment," Suresh Balasubramanian, the company's general manager, told USA Today.

Some of the test's limitations, however, are inherent in its conceptual design. One limitation is the MBTI's black-and-white categories: You are either an extrovert or introvert, a judger or a feeler. "This is a shortcoming, because people don't fall neatly into two categories on any personality dimension; instead, people have many different degrees of the dimension," Ashton told Live Science. And, in fact, most people are close to the average, and relatively few people are at either extreme. By placing people into tidy boxes, we are separating people who are in reality more similar to each other than they are different.

The MBTI may be missing even more nuances by assessing only four aspects of personality differences. "Several decades ago, personality researchers had determined that there were at least five major personality dimensions, and more recent evidence has shown that there are six," Ashton said. "One of those dimensions involves how honest and humble versus deceitful and conceited someone is, and the other dimension involves how patient and agreeable versus quick-tempered and argumentative someone is."

Not entirely useless

Some of the shortcomings of the MBTI stem from the complex, messy nature of human personality. Neat categories of MBTI make personality look clearer and more stable than it really is, according to David Pincus, a professor of psychology at Chapman University in California. Psychologists prefer other tools, namely the Big Five, which assesses personality based on where an individual lies on the spectrums of five traits: agreeableness; conscientiousness; extraversion; openness to experience; and neuroticism. The Big Five model has a better record of scientific validation than the MBTI, experts say.

Still, the MBTI is not entirely useless.

People are drawn to tests like MBTI out of a desire to understand themselves and others. "The four dimensions from which the MBTI types are derived are all useful ones for describing people's personalities," Ashton said.

And even when the MBTI's results don't quite match your intuition about yourself or are just wrong, they can still provide insight. Many people who've taken the MBTI have noticed this effect. As a former employee at Bridgewater Associates (a hedge fund almost as famous for having employees take personality tests as it is for its $120 billion in assets) wrote in Quartz, the MBTI labels never seemed to fully describe a person. Instead, the real value of the test seemed to be in the push "to reconcile the gaps between what the test results tell us, and what we know to be true about ourselves."

In this sense, the MBTI can serve as a starting point for self-exploration by giving people a tool and a language to reflect on themselves and others. The test is "a portal to an elaborate practice of talking and thinking about who you are," Merve Emre, an associate professor of English at Oxford University in the United Kingdom, wrote in "The Personality Brokers," a review of the MBTI's history.

Ultimately, it's not the MBTI label, but the power of introspection that drives the insights and sometimes fuels the motivation to take steps to change one's condition.

SOURCE  






Somali Teen Mob Attack With Hammers: Targets ‘anyone who looked like they had money or were white’

A mob of more than a half-dozen Somali teens terrorized riders of a Minneapolis Metro train with pipes, and possibly hammers, resulting in two now facing criminal charges.

University of Minnesota Police were dispatched to the East Bank light rail platform where a mob of Somali juveniles were reportedly terrorizing riders with hammers and other weapons shortly before 10 p.m. on Friday, according to the UMN Police report.

The American Mirror Reports:

The Facebook page 2nd Precinct Minneapolis Crime Watch reported that university police requested assistance from Minneapolis police and Metro Transit police for “a group of 8-10 males chasing people with hammers” and reported injuries.

Minneapolis Scanner, another local Facebook crime page, also confirmed “multiple calls” regarding “10-12 Somali teen males armed with hammers chasing people,” from dispatch audio, Alpha News reports.

An alleged witness, Jay Hall, posted about the experience on the Minneapolis Crime Watch Page.

“ … It was a group of Somali young males with hammers and bars,” he wrote. “They were attacking anyone who looked like they had money or were white. I didn’t stick around all that long I’m not dumb and being pretty much unarmed I wasn’t taking on a bunch of dudes with blunt objects.

“I kind of hurried an older white lady away and walked a few blocks to catch a bus. They pretty much ignored me but I was in ratty work clothes and am half Arabic,” Hall continued. “Guess they gave me a pass. I didn’t see to much more I’m sorry and I really wish I had a concealed carry permit because then maybe I could have stopped at least a few of them.”

The incident occurred at the Green Line station at the center of the University of Minnesota campus, across the street from the UMN police department and a location popular with students and visitors, Alpha News reports.

When police arrived, they spotted a group of Somali teens as they tried to run off, but officers eventually caught up with the culprits, including two who had pipes with them. One of the teens gave officers a fake name and information, but one officer the scene recognized the boy from previous run-ins with the law.

Police initially detained seven teens involved in the incident, but only charged the two with weapons, identified as juveniles between the ages of 12 and 15.

Despite giving police false information, the teens were quickly identified through video surveillance and witness descriptions, UMN spokeswoman Lacy Nygard told the Pioneer Press.

“Two people harassed two male students and demanded their wallets. When the students refused, the suspects assaulted them and fled from the platform,” the Press reports. “The students were taken to the hospital for evaluation after they received bruising and cuts on their faces, according to the alert” from the school.

The teens were charged with misdemeanors for fleeing police, disorderly conduct and resisting arrest, and hauled to the Juvenile Supervision Center, where one of the teens had visited earlier in the day for truancy, according to the UMN Police Report.

The incident comes amid volatile race relations between the city’s growing Somali population and others in the community. On June 7, former Minneapolis Police Officer Mohamed Noor, a Somali and Muslim, will be the first Minnesota police officer in recent memory to be sent to prison for murder.

SOURCE  






New Study Shows America Is LESS Racist Under President Trump

According to a recent study, racism in the United States has significantly decreased during President Donald Trump’s first two years in office.

Two sociologists from the University of Pennsylvania, Daniel J. Hopkins and Samantha Washington, have been studying racial attitudes of randomly selected Americans since 2008.

The sociologists admitted that they expected to see an increase in racist tendencies. “Normalization of prejudice or opinion leadership both lead us to expect that expressed prejudice may have increased in this period, especially among Republicans or Trump supporters,” they said.

Much to their surprise, they actually found that racism has decreased under President Trump.

    Americans, claim Hopkins and Washington, have actually become less inclined to express racist opinions since Donald Trump was elected. Anti-black prejudice, they found, declined by a statistically-insignificant degree between 2012 and 2016, when Trump was elected. But then after 2016 it took a sharp dive that was statistically significant. Moreover, contrary to their expectations, the fall was as evident among Republican voters as it was among Democrats. There was also a general fall in anti-Hispanic prejudice, too, although this was more evident among Democrat voters.

When it comes down to it, President Trump may be the least racist President in American history.

He has employed people of color his entire life, he has supported the black community from day one, he has gotten record number unemployment rates for the minority communities.

    The only way the media have been able to smear Trump as a racist is through lies and deliberate misquotes. The Charlottesville Hoax is a perfect example, as is Jake Tapper’s serial lie about Trump mocking a reporter’s disability, as is Jim Acosta’s latest lie about Trump smearing all migrants…

    But no one had to misquote Obama’s rhetoric against the police on every single racially charged issue, his relentless attacks on Republicans as racist, his role (and CNN’s) in exacerbating the racial tensions that resulted in race riots in Ferguson and Baltimore, or his supporters’ relentless attacks on everyday Americans as racist…

    Trump, on the other hand, has offered only a unifying message about race and against racism. Despite the media’s lies, he condemns white supremacism, including after Charlottesville, and his focus on improving the lives of black and Hispanic Americans have resulted in record low unemployment for both groups.

The report was not too kind to Obama:

    Under Obama, racial tensions were always at a boil.

    Under Trump, racial tensions (outside of the lies screamed in the news media) have settled down considerably.

    Over the last two years, not only have blacks and Hispanics watched their economic conditions improve in ways Obama never seemed to care about, unlike any Republican over the last 30 years, Trump is actively reaching out and asking for the black vote. He is also willing to earn that vote through his economic policies, criminal justice reform (which Obama talk-talk-talked about for years, while Trump signed it into law), and immigration policies that restrict the illegal and cheap labor that disproportionately hurts working-class incomes and, by extension, black and Hispanic Americans.

When you block out the noise from the media and look at who Trump is as a person, you will understand that he is a man who wants to bring all of America together.

He is a man who wants the best for his people, no matter what their skin color is.

SOURCE  







Australia: Gender quota ‘offends’ conservative new senator Susan McDonald

Incoming senator Susan McDonald has rejected a quota to boost the number of Coalition women in parliament, saying she would be “offended and humiliated” to be preselected because of her gender.

The 49-year-old single mother and businesswoman is Nationals royalty, a scion of one of the wealthiest cattle families in Queensland whose father was a mover and shaker in the party, state and federally. She supports diversity in the workplace and politics, but insists gender is only one element in the mix.

“I would be offended and humiliated if I ever thought I had been given a job based on what I was, as opposed to who I was,” Ms McDonald said. “If you’re willing to disregard all the selection criteria in favour of one, that cannot be a good outcome. I would never run a business like that and I don’t think it’s the way to run the national parliament.”

The Coalition stands to increase its female representation to 27 in the next parliament, up six, but continues to trail Labor, which is close to a 50:50 gender balance. In the House, the Liberal and National parties will have 14 female MPs against Labor’s putative 27, but the major parties are closer in the Senate, where Ms McDonald will lift the number of Coalition women to 13 against 16 for Labor.

She is stepping away from her role as managing director of the McDonald family’s five-outlet Super Butcher chain to enter the Senate on July 1 after being elected in the No 2 spot on the LNP’s Queensland ticket.

The business employs about 80 people and Ms McDonald said she had pushed to promote women provided they were qualified, a lesson that also applied to politics.

“I absolutely wanted more women managers but the moment I made that decision it was a four-year journey for me to ask women to enrol in an apprenticeship, graduate from that apprenticeship and then to start management training,” she said. “If we want to have more women in parliament we have to provide a pathway for them to understand what skill sets are needed to be a representative of the nation, in the same way that we should with men. This is not a gender thing. This is making sure that people are coming fully armed with the skills and experience that we want.”

Her own political journey has had its twists and turns. Her father, Don McDonald, helped rebuild the Queensland National Party after Joh Bjelke-Petersen’s state government was destroyed by corruption scandals in the late 1980s and went on to serve as national president. She grew up at the family station near Cloncurry in northwest Queensland, studied commerce and economics at the University of Queensland and became an accountant.

Ms McDonald understands why Tanya Plibersek bowed out of Labor’s leadership race. In 2006, she was being positioned for a winnable spot on the Senate ticket. But her marriage had broken down and the priority was her three children, then aged between six and two. “I could not be away from them as much as the job ­demanded,” she explained.

“I believe there is an age where women say they are not willing to make that sacrifice. Tanya Plibersek said that this week and I think we have to call out what this is — we need to make a job in politics possible and attractive to everybody, male or female.”

The stars aligned last year when she was preselected at the expense of veteran Nationals senator Barry O’Sullivan, dumped alongside north Queensland-based Liberal Ian Macdonald. Asked if the Coalition needed more women in parliament, Ms McDonald said: “It would be good to have a broader cross section of people in the partyrooms and in the parliament making decisions.’’

SOURCE  

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of  other countries.  The only real difference, however, is how much power they have.  In America, their power is limited by democracy.  To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already  very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges.  They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did:  None.  So look to the colleges to see  what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way.  It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  Email me (John Ray) here

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