Algorithms discover 4 new personality types



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  • An analysis of a massive amount of data reveals four new personality types.
  • The study is the first to take into account the self-assessment.
  • The four new types are "medium", "reserved", "egocentric" and "role model".

What kind of person are you? What about this other person? We have been interested for a long time in sorting ourselves and others according to personality types, as if knowing what type of person could allow us to predict their behavior reliably. That would be good – or maybe boring? – to have this kind of prior knowledge. But classifying people in a useful and reliable way has been a difficult goal to achieve. Most methods rely on self-reporting, which can be dishonest, even delusional, and exacerbated by small sets of data. A study just published in the journal Human behavior nature, however, took a different approach. He analyzed the features of 1.5 million people to come to the conclusion that there are only four types of people:

  • average
  • Reserve
  • egocentric
  • model

Myers-Briggs Personalities

There have been other well known but ultimately insufficient attempts to regroup in the past. the Myers-Briggs System sorts people into 16 archetypes based on Carl Jung & # 39; s observations of knowledge and literary references. The system is widely discredited these days, as its questions are considered poorly written and its results inconsistent. Psychologist from Eureka College Alexander Swan say it Washington Post"The social psychology community is in tune with the anti-Myers-Briggs personality assessment."

(Jake Beach, Wikimedia)

Categories of Myers-Briggs, generally considered discredited by psychologists.

The five personality types

Psychologists see the "Grand five"Personality types are more reliable than the Myers-Briggs system, and although they also support research in which subjects self-report their nature, the five personality traits are consistent with Peer reviews. Is the sample the key, do they really let go of grudges, for example, and can they be anxious to promote a certain self-image with questioned person?

(Big Think)

The Big Five Personality Types

How the new study on personality types worked

The new research was conducted at Northwestern University by Martin Gerlach, Beatrice Farb, William Revelle, and Luís A. Nunes Amaral. While resting again on self-reporting, scientists believe that the number of respondents allowed to analyze deliberate or unconscious subterfuges in the final results.

The questionnaires were administered online to volunteers interested in learning more about themselves. There were four questionnaires with between 44 and 300 questions that had been developed over the decades by the large community of psychological researchers, including those developed for the Big Five.

Once the data was compiled, the researchers used standard modeling algorithms to find meaningful models.

(Steven Su, Unsplash)

Lumps in the data

the the team came across their four types after an unsuccessful attempt to obtain consistent sets of traits – the psychologist Revelle called them "pieces in the dough" – which brought them to a dozen new and questionable personality types. Revelle sent them away: "No cigar".

The researchers tried different algorithms until they found themselves on a model that ultimately produced consistent and judicious results: three smaller groups and one larger group, which they described as "average". When the team tested this approach on two other datasets, the results were the same.

(Northwest University)

How each group relates to the five broad categories

Understand the four personality types

The researchers explained the new groupings in a Northwestern press release.

  • Average: The average people are rich in neurotism and extroversion, but not very open. "I would expect the typical person to be in this group," says Gerlach. Women are more likely than men to fall into the average type.
  • Reserve: The Reserved type is emotionally stable, but not open or neurotic. They are not particularly extroverted but are rather pleasant and conscientious.
  • models: The models have a low neurosis score and a high level in all other traits. The probability that someone is a model increases considerably with age. "They are people who are reliable and open to new ideas," says Amaral. "They are good people to be in charge of things – in fact, life is easier if you have more relationships with models." Women are more likely than men to be role models.
  • Self-centered: Self-centered people get very high results in extroversion and below average in terms of openness, friendliness and awareness. "These are people you do not want to spend with," Revelle said. There is a dramatic decrease in the number of egocentric types as people age in women and men.

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