LJ Idol Season Nine: "Net-Assisted Navel-Gazing"

[halfshellvenus]

Net-Assisted Navel-Gazing
lj idol season nine | week nine | 1232 words
Keep Calm And End This Meme

x-x-x-x-x

Who can resist those random online quizzes that come around? Thanks to those, I now know that I write like David Foster Wallace, I am more like John Watson than any of the other BBC Sherlock characters (though my Personality Defect is

Comments

[icaruslived]

I don't mean to be persnickety, I don't (fwiw, my MBTI tends to be INTJ as well) - but the MBTI has been academically basically discarded; it doesn't appear to measure anything real when you actually have the statistics of a large number of people's tests to analyze. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers-Briggs_Type_Indicator#Criticism .

The test that academia is currently happy with is the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits; they're fairly confident that it measures something real because experiment after experiment has pulled out these five factors.

[halfshellvenus]

Are you sure you aren't living up to your personality type? What with the throwing away the popular and embracing what seems to Explain It All? ;)

I'll check it out. The INTJ type description is really, really accurate for much of my personality, in a way that many of the other types aren't. Except for the part about 'feeling,' but again-- it focuses on how much you express, so that's a gray area.

I took another test years ago that had 12-16 personality types, and any three of them were similar facets of each other with some aspect of the personality riding stronger. That one was true as well.

I don't think we're going to find any True Universal Thing regarding personalities, because there are so many little differences and subtleties. But in the popular realm, MBTI still seems to be the bandwagon thing (and I'm years late to it!)

[icaruslived]

Haha, I'm pretty sure :P Of course I'm not saying we've found a True Universal Thing; as you rightly point out, that'd be silly :P

I'm just saying that, well, psychology is a science, these days anyway, and what it means to be a science is that at first you start out believing the earth is flat, and then you believe the earth is round, and then you believe the earth is an oblate spheroid. That the public still believes the earth is flat doesn't really mean much when your field has moved on decades ago :P

[reckless_blues]

I think Myers-Briggs is popular for the same reason astrology is popular - people are fascinated with themselves, they like to describe themselves, they're interested in how to interpret themselves and make their identities whole, they're attracted to the idea of embodying powerful archetypes. (I don't see this as being either positive or negative, myself.)

...I'm an INTP, Leo sun, Leo moon, Scorpio rising, Year of the Dragon.

[halfshellvenus]

people are fascinated with themselves, they like to describe themselves, they're interested in how to interpret themselves
Yes-- it seemed right at home in an entry on memes, especially the MeMeMeMeMe aspect of them!

Interesting that you equate it with astrology, and I can see why. I don't give much credence to astrology, though I pretty much embody my sign (Libra). But so does my daughter, who is a Leo. :D

[improper_me]

I threw a fit about taking this test as part of my job. Perhaps it was the J in my test that had me going ;)

But seriously, I brought up that it is not an accurate anything and my opinion was swept under the rug.

[halfshellvenus]

It could also be considered really intrusive, in a work environment!

Your employers have a right to know about your work behavior, and to set expectations for it. But outside of that? Not their business, anymore than any counseling sessions a person has would be their business!

[improper_me]

I have heard of many organization using this in the 'team-building' portion. But I do not disagree that it is super intrusive. It was an unhappy work environment anyway because my boss 'pegged' me for a type and that informed all his interactions with me. Also, wasn't the type that my test had produced.

He also tried to get me to do all these other random tests which he put on my desk and I had thought they were "weird things he was sharing with me" and when I didn't do them. I was in trouble for my review. I have been 9 months away from that workplace and will never go back.

[halfshellvenus]

Wow, I'm glad you escaped that place.

Something about magically expecting you to do all those (as the boss thought) 'self-revealing tests,' and then dinging you at review time when you didn't... spells out Tyrannical Nut to me. :O

[improper_me]

Life is pretty damned peachy keen now!