Academic Psychology

[Proletar]

So many absolutes in this thread.

Science vs pseudo-science.
Function vs counter-function.
Psychology vs underground-psychology.
Stuff vs other stuff.

Mostly false dichotomies. Maybe the MBTI is a science in the same way that music is a science, and maybe it's an art-form in the same sense as music is an art-form. In the world of today, science should investigate how oxytocin aliviates pain while intuition shows us that hugs feel good. Instead, the esteemed scientific community of today gets together to without a single doubt prove that hugs feel good, and any assumption before that point holds no ground.

Never bet more than you could afford to lose. But don't restrain yourselves from your hunches. I know that some of the best decisions I've made in life so far have been made on hunches. Maybe MBTI doesn't have to be pinned down and completed before it can be useful. I know that it's been useful to me.


The first boat on the sea was probably not solar powered and streamlined. But it still was the best one at the time.

 

[MichiganJFrog]

Maybe MBTI doesn't have to be pinned down and completed before it can be useful. I know that it's been useful to me.

Same here. I mean, jeez, just the whole "Gifts Differing" concept was revolutionary for me, a huge relief. Growing up in the 70s, I thought all guys had to look and act like David Cassidy or John Travolta, and I couldn't pull it off. I think the MBTI works at least in part because it gives people some hope that they can be themselves. It will probably be superseded by something better, but I think it helped push the culture away from mindless conformity.

Anyway, I hope someone addressed the question in the OP.

 

[SpiralHacker]

The most interesting emperical studies on Jungian personality types is being done by Dario Nardi. The following is a lecture by him on his research.

Neuroscience of Personality Type

Note: I just learned that if you link to a YouTube video, it will still make it embedded. If anyone knows of how to hyperlink a video without embedding it, please PM me.

 

[Philovitist]

I was saving this for when I got into a bad mood.

Eh? Theists make an empirical claim: "God exists".

Not empirical. In principle, it cannot be tested.

Unexamined? Hardly. I know that the MBTI is approximate, but I don't understand anything else well enough (and thanks for pointing me to those other books! ) to use it in the moment.

Using a bad system is even worse than opting out of using a system at all.

Basic understanding of chemistry > detailed understanding of alchemy

Every time.

Who said that I did? I want (and perhaps I'm moving the goalposts here, remind me if I am) a good set of heuristics.

Can't a good set of heuristics if it's complete bs.

Which is what I do when I type someone. The typing itself is never meant to be anything more than a ballpark estimate of their personality and preferences. Ideally, I'd understand them with far more depth and precision, but alas, time constraints make doing so difficult.

-Duxwing

Then it would be better to type someone according to metrics of scientific rigor.

 

[Spirit]

The most interesting emperical studies on Jungian personality types is being done by Dario Nardi. The following is a lecture by him on his research.

Neuroscience of Personality Type
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGfhQTbcqmA
Note: I just learned that if you link to a YouTube video, it will still make it embedded. If anyone knows of how to hyperlink a video without embedding it, please PM me.

Here is a post he made on another forum about the validity of his research and methodology.


Hello Community,


I don’t normally comment on or even read forums, but I came across some comments--made by someone who supposedly does neuroscience--that are factually wrong about my work and for some reason attack me personally.


Imagine you’re tasked to write a book summary. Rather than read the book, you look at a few slides made by author years before the book was published and write a report that (inevitably) includes loads of assumptions and false information and attacks the author personally. Of course you don’t contact the author or such either. What kind of grade does that report deserve?


Let’s tackle some of the misunderstandings that have come up.


“Neuroscience of Personality” includes two full chapters that describe the protocol that was developed and used. After the first couple months, and for over 5 years, everybody worked from the same set of tasks. Yes, sometimes I’d add a task or go on an exploratory tangent, marking those times as such, and yes, the last 1/3rd or 1/4 of the time was open-ended, after we’d done to standard tasks, and that was designed in. And by the way, except for the open-ended time at the end of a session, I followed the kind of protocol and assumptions used by the well-received Human Connectome Project.


The book includes a whole chapter that delves into the rich variety of brain functionality well beyond some convenient labels to warm up laypersons to the topic. In those chapters, I made sure that *every* correlation I talked about is already mentioned somewhere in the neuroscience literature in textbooks and/or peer reviewed papers. For example, I’m not out to prove that the P3 region is involved with oddball identification or tracking of moving objects or a sense of personal body boundaries. Other folks have already published on that.


From the start, I state the strengths and limitations of the work and tentative nature of the results. The book has an appendix that summarizes some key technical details about the equipment and such with contact information to find me. I understand EEG data and how to analyze it. The device gives voltage readings and there are numerous frequencies present at once. And after one applies FFT, one can pick a dominant frequency. There are several standards to do that. Overall, I used an event-based approach. How else could one find correlations?


I didn’t begin with “type” as the model. I focused on the many potential intersections of behavior, reported mental activity, EEG results, and what was already known in the neuroscience literature. I also gathered demographic data including best-fit type results. When I did the statistical analysis, I found correlations between type and brain activity. Of course I had type in my head from the start, but believe it or not, by year 4, I had given up on there being a body of meaningful correlations. It was the analysis afterward that really turned me around. Even now though, when I conduct workshops, a lot of the time I don’t mention type, or need to, because the brain is incredibly rich and interesting on its own.


Also, let’s consider. I presented my work to folks in UCLA’s neuroscience department (of course). No one had a problem with my presentation. Naturally, they had some questions. I answered them. Similarly, other faculty joined me in the lab to observe and inquire. Are are these people “stupid” and not doing real science? Really? Similarly, people who attend my workshops include medical doctors, brain rehabilitation therapists, neuroscientists... No harshness yet, much less personal attacks. I go out of my way to remind people of the tentative nature of the work, the limits of EEG, and the incredibly rich, interlinked, organic nature of the brain; and I am happy to answer technical questions about how I did the work. Certainly, there are times when I say, "That's not my area" or "I don't know".


Young academics can start off with very narrow views about what constitutes scientific investigation. A good book or course on *philosophy of science* can correct and expand those views. If we don’t spend time asking, “What are the observables?”, “What questions are worth asking?”, and so forth, then we easily end up writing a bunch of pretty-looking, unremarkable papers. Prestige is not a replacement for discovery.


As for some of the more unusual phenomena I report, after spending a couple hundred hours in front of an EEG monitor running experiments, one sees some amazing stuff. It is very relevant and interesting when every region is dominated by the same frequency and the same amplitude, for 3 minutes solid and unwavering. Only certain events trigger those. Those events share commonalities. The triggers are repeatable for a particular person. Etc. I could go on, and it’s in the book.


As for my role at UCLA, for 13 years, I was a full time lecturer or assistant adjunct professor, won two teaching awards, and was voted overwhelming by the Anthropology faculty as “excellent” after a formal review process and considered fit to continue teaching and research as a senior lecturer. I'm doing a fellowship for 2 years instead. In fact, over 7 years, I personally supervised over 1500 social science research studies. My primary task was teaching students how to conduct research. Yep! Apparently, my fellow faculty determined I did that very well. Those faculty and I know far more than some random student posting here might imagine he or she knows.


Finally, let’s be really clear on one thing: My goal definitely isn’t to dress up the “MBTI type tree” with some fancy neuroscience clothing. My goal is to plant and nurture a neuroscience tree with the lessons and ideas of type (among other things) in mind. One of the biggest mistakes in a lot of neuroscience research is the lack of awareness of who the subjects are. As one of the neuroscience faculty here at UCLA said in a lecture a few years ago, we need to start looking at individual differences.


As I said at the start, I don’t do forums except on very rare occasions. A person might hold a negative impression, express skepticism, etc and seek clarity if interested. That’s natural and helps evolve and clarify things. It’s another to claim expertise, load up attacks based on a bunch of assumptions, fail to read or inquire, and then write stuff that puts quotation marks around things the author has never said (that’s called libel). In those cases, the person is not entitled to an opinion. That person is a troll. The behavior is unbecoming in any community.


I wish you all the best. If you’d like to know more, you can: a) Watch the Google video, keeping in mind it's meant for Google employees; b) Read my book, which is about 2 years out of date now, but so be it; c) Attend one of my workshops (the short ones I do at universities and clubs are free or almost free); or d) Shoot me an email with your questions, understanding that I’m busy like everyone else and may not respond immediately.


Regards,
Dario Nardi

 

[Spirit]

Using an EEG to understand type


What data does the EEG machine produce? It’s somewhat difficult to describe in words. But I’ll do my best using a metaphor. For amplitude, imagine an ocean wave. The amplitude is like the height of the wave. In contrast, frequency is like how quickly or slowly waves roll in. A metaphor, of course.

As a convenience, because there are so many frequencies (unlimited in a way), they are traditionally grouped into bands. There are several different standards to define where each band starts and ends. I used the band definitions that are the default for the MindSet, the machine and software I used for my research. The bands are often denoted by Greek names like alpha and theta and colors along a spectrum.

At any moment while watching the EEG monitor, for each region, I see amplitude shown as a bar's length and frequency shown as the bar’s color. A short red bar, for example, in region P3 indicates low amplitude, high frequency in that region. I actually tend to watch multiple views at the same time, each showing the data in a different way, but this is the one view I always attend to.

After running a whole session, I run the raw data through an algorithm that produces a matrix of data for that person. The matrix summarizes amplitudes of each of 16 regions, for each frequency band.

In “Neuroscience of Personality”, all you see is a grayscale neocortex map for each individual, such as Mary or Ross. The grayscale images are derived from the *amplitudes* of those regions across all frequencies. Somewhat simplified but still interesting.

In published EEG studies, we usually get a handful of color brain maps for the same person (or a composite of all persons). Each of those maps is for a different frequency band. Essentially, through multiple images, we get the same information as in the matrix I get, but in a fully visual rather than numeric form.

It is possible to pick single frequencies where the high amplitudes are. Early on, I was hoping that would be useful, and it can be, but often want to know the whole matrix for a person to really describe what’s going on. That said, I am not a clinician and my work isn’t about specific individuals, it’s about personality patterns.

Note: In “Neuroscience of Personality”, on page 43, I describe some ways to interpret high activity *in each band*. But when I get into the 8 functions later, due to the challenges of space, lack of color, and complexity for the reader, I report only amplitude visually. I use the text explanations on adjacent pages to discuss frequency, when relevant. So essentially, to not overwhelm readers, and because I can’t claim to understand every person’s or type’s neurological situation, I report the data in both visual and textual form.

Now, in presentations, I may use color to liven things. On slides where I am specifically talking about frequency, such as the “bright blue zen” pattern or the “Christmas tree” pattern, then the color (and it's brightness or dullness) is meaningful and indicates frequency and amplitude in a traditional way. On a few slides, however, I just show a generic colorful map or, to show activity level, I use an fMRI like color scheme, where red indicates more activity. Yes, I suppose this might confuse a person who knows EEG well as the slides are labeled saying color is amount of "activity".

In workshops, when participants complete a personal poster, they rate "cognitive skills" along a scale, ideally indicative of amplitude. However, they use crayons to color in the results because, well, people love coloring and don’t come to the workshop with assumptions about how color can be used to stand in for frequency. BTW, in those activities, I use an fMRI-like color scheme, even though what I’m do is informed by EEG. For attendees who have an EEG background and are already familiar with the traditional EEG color scheme, I point this out.

In summary, I don’t confound or equate frequency with amplitude. To the contrary, I’m acutely aware of the difference; and as an author and speaker, I need to make choices that don’t overwhelm people, such as text explanations in some places and visuals in others.

 

[Spirit]

Regarding peer validation.... When I started research, I was told that I could run it as a training lab or a formal study. I choose the former, because I wanted to explore. As a technical matter, that greatly limits where I can publish. Moreover, publishing anything related to Myers-Briggs is very difficult in establishment journals. Peers have been repeatedly told their papers are rejected solely because of using MB, and for no other reason. When I have 5+ subjects in *all* 16 types, I will publish in Journal of Psychological Type, for what that’s worth. (Right now, I have 64 subjects, but there is a still a deficit in some types). Moreover, I’ve taken the patent route. A patent must be excruciatingly clear how to replicate results, which is the gold standard of science. I could also make my data set available when the patent is done, so anyone can check my results. Also, I’m starting work with two persons at other universities right now. One has already worked a couple days with me just to see what I’m seeing, etc. He’s like, “Yep, there it is!” as a particular pattern comes up in an expected situation. Finally, even though a small number of subjects is acceptable in neuroscience, it’s better to have more. I’m working on automated analysis of EEG data, so a room full of folks can wear portable caps as they tackle a diverse set of activities and then receive a computer-generated report, which makes it all pretty objective, even if doing so loses value with respect to context and individuality. That’s a loss: As I explore midlife adults, I find they show more diversity and their brain activity patterns are more readily contextual compared to college students. For that reason, self-reflective best-fit instruments and such may always be useful. Which makes everything harder and reminds us of the subtle complexity of psyche.

 

[TimeAsylums]

Oh reductionism...

 

[Duxwing]

Oh reductionism...

The alternative being an incomprehensible gestalt?

-Duxwing

 

[TimeAsylums]

The alternative being an incomprehensible gestalt?

-Duxwing

The alternative(s) being literally any number of combinations. But good job, you instantly assumed that assinine stance. If you're going to be snarky, be more creative and intelligent.

 

[doncarlzone]

I need to apologize for being too combative in this thread. It's clear that no one here is using the MBTI blindly. I'm just too reactive when it comes to scientific psychology. >.>

I personally think this was one of the most interesting discussions I've read on this forum in a long time. Both you and Duxwing raised some very valid questions.

I'd dare argue though that some people are indeed blindly using MBTI. Perhaps less so on this forum, as one should expect from someone testing "INTP", agree with you there Philovitist. As I've mentioned before, it becomes similar to religion when the validity of the system itself is never questioned.

However, I also tend to agree with Duxwing's point that you don't always need an empirical study to figure a certain pattern in life out. Needless to say though, one should never be too certain and always encourage skepticism.

 

[Duxwing]

I personally think this was one of the most interesting discussions I've read on this forum in a long time. Both you and Duxwing raised some very valid questions.

Thanks.

However, I also tend to agree with Duxwing's point that you don't always need an empirical study to figure a certain pattern in life out. Needless to say though, one should never be too certain and always encourage skepticism.

Perhaps we should include time in our considerations? When one has only seconds to determine the nature of another, the MBTI and its associated visual typing system (thanks, PhoenixRising and Auburn) act as heuristics that narrow down one's searches for specific types of people and lend an immediate, rudimentary understanding of their psyches; empirically studying someone yields far deeper knowledge and understanding of him or her but requires years-long application of professional education, equipment, and expertise and will likely not help understanding of additional others. Therefore, unless the empirical study in question is so deep as to explain nearly any given brain and the mind therein, the MBTI remains a useful screening tool for lay people.

-Duxwing