I have watched this thread develop with great interest. No, I didn't take any test, because I hate tests. Now why is that? Fear of failing, maybe. Yes, and one may fail a personality test in that they don't see themselves as others see them.
Anyone remember the MMPI? It was banned in Virginia because so many of the questions were of a personal nature. Here's an update:
http://www.psychologicaltesting.com/objectiv.htm
Patio, of course Ceili is a singer. All gypsies sing and play tambourines.
It is amazing everyone is fighting saying that similar is bad and impossible to come about.
How many hair colors are there? Natural?
How many eye colors are there?
How many noses do people have?
How many eyes do people have?
How many fingers do people have?
How many legs do people have?
How many brains do people have?
We are already similar in so many ways that people naturally want their personality to be way different than someone elses, and that there should be an infinite amount of personalities because that is the way they want it. They don't want to be the same as anyone else, that just isn't right. Which if the majority of people think the same way you are being the same as everyone else.
(On another note--for anyone who was thinking of doing this--I already see the line "How many brains do people have?" followed with "in this case none" line.)
BlueMonkey, I think all anyone is saying is, OK, this test categorizes people into one of 16 groups. And?
Why is this important? What practical applications does it have?
Your hair color example is actually a really good one. Hair colors can be categorized all kinds of ways. You can say:
Black, brown, and blonde.
But does everyone in the "black" group have exactly the same color hair? Everyone in the "brown" group? Nope... there is an enormously varying spectrum, and at some point it rather arbitrarily tips from one group to another. Two people from the "brown" and "black" groups, respectively, may have hair that is closer in color than two people in the "black" group.
To go back to patiodog's example of cultural bias, different cultures demarcate the line between the colors "blue" and "green" much differently. They have their own words for these colors, of course, but when shown a series of colors that change from green to blue, they will state the point where they change differently than we do. Or, even more specific to this example, there was recently a discussion of how "blonde" varied from culture to culture. What some cultures called "blonde", others would call "brown."
So, sure, 16 personalities, 3 hair colors.
And?
It is to help people understand others on how they react differently than they do with certain situations. Why they don't share their feelings as easily as the last one. Why they don't stop talking. Why they don't talk. Why they are so factual or so fantasy with their words.
It is to understand others.
Understanding others is cool. There are a lot of ways to do that.
This is a very rudimentary tool, though. It may tell you that a person is blonde, but not if they are white-blonde or honey-blonde. It may give you some guidelines, but the guidelines aren't going to be ironclad.
So, as an aside, there's this cool thing that liguistic anthropologists have noticed.
It's not surprising that different cultures have vocabularies of different sizes to describe color. What is strange is what happens when you go around the world and make surveys of color vocabularies.
Cultures that only have two words to describe color refer to, not surprisingly, black and white. Not necessarily light and dark, because when they are shown articles in a variety of the colors that we know through our language and are asked to pick out "black," they pick out the one we'd call black. Same goes for white.
In cultures with three colors, they always have black, white, and red. They'll apply the term for "red" to what we perceive as a wide variety of different colors, but when asked to point out a "red" object, they invariably point to something that we would view as "red," as well.
In cultures with four colors, the colors are black, white, red, and then either yellow or green. Never blue. Objects that we perceive as blue they put in the "yellow or green" category.
In cultures with five colors, the colors are black, white, red, yellow, and green. Blue is included with green.
Some shade of blue (which is apparently harder to define as it moves toward purple in one direction or toward green in the other) is always the sixth addition.
So, how many colors are there?
***
No one would dispute that there are certain tendencies in personality. However, the determinants -- unlike the determinants of, say, eye color -- are very, very many.
And, for that matter, there are probably more varieties of eye color than you're aware of, too. I believe it is coded for by six different genes, some with more than two variants. Skin color likewise.
sozobe wrote:Understanding others is cool. There are a lot of ways to do that.
This is a very rudimentary tool, though. It may tell you that a person is blonde, but not if they are white-blonde or honey-blonde. It may give you some guidelines, but the guidelines aren't going to be ironclad.
There more detailed than guidelines and less gripy then ironclad.
You're born with a predisposition towards personality. But it is the action of your life and the way you react and the consequences, accumulated over time, that make a personality. What you are born with is only predisposition: the ability to be quick to anger, to be colicky, to be prone to alchoholism, obesity, being non-athletic, good at math, etc.
But it is your life that brings these traits to the front, or leaves them unexpressed. There are people prone to alchoholism, for example, who don't drink because they have seen their family members destroyed by it. That is a life-trait as opposed to a genetic predispositioned trait taking dominance.
My favorite personality test is the Sparks!
Spark Personality Test
It is fun, and suprisingly accurate. I vary between performer and dreamer.
Alcoholism isn't a personality trait, it's a medical condition. Being predisposed to becoming addicted to alcohol does not meant that you will turn into an "alcoholic" as the term is used to refer to a personality type.
And the spark test says I'm a mastermind.
*Mr. Burns impression*
Eggzellant.
But they also think I'm a guy. Goes to show what those stupid tests are worth.
That's how the Myers-Briggs test classified me. Not entirely complimentary, that description...
And not the best test either.
No, of course not. Yours is the best test.
I suspect that in a hundred years this kind of test, BMonkey's or MyerBriggs, or Spark's, will be looked at in the way we look at phrenology. While personality can surely be affected by nurture or lack of it, some elements will be there at birth. I think the physiological basis for these patterns will be found upon following transfer RNA proteins around, which is to say I think there will be a genetic breakdown. As Patiodog was explaining, the genetics of perceived eye color is fairly complex. I think personality biochemistry will be shown to follow suit. No, I can't prove it, it hasn't been done yet, that I know of anyway.
