A new test claims to be most scientific yet and that out of four kinds, most of us are Median. The thing is, we dont really do them to find out the truth
I was once forced to take a personality test by a boss who had read that they were a valuable source of managerial insight, or some such nonsense. Weirdly, it didn’t go well. After wasting my day answering multiple-choice questions such as,” Do you detest wasting your time ?”, I received a laminated report informing me:” You rarely watch the required to be modest about your own achievements and have a high opinion of your own abilities .” Which is ridiculous because I am the most modest person I know. And I been a lot of people.
Anyway, my former employer isn’t the only one with a misguided passion for personality tests. Despite there being no scientific proof to back them up( many scientists consider them to be the business-bro equivalent of horoscopes ), personality exams are all the rage in the corporate world, where they are used as a guidebook in employ or assembling more effective teams.
The gold standard of personality tests is the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator( MBTI ), which divides people into 16 forms, depending on their self-reported preferences for things such as extroversion or introversion. The MBTI has been around since the 1960 s, and an estimated two million people take it every year, a lot of whom seem to be management consultants; the test reportedly exerts considerable influence at McKinsey. I know, it is hard to believe that management consultants would be enamoured of pseudo-scientific BS, but there you go.
Apologies for the snark. I’m an Aries; I can’t help it- it takes us a while to get to the point. If you’re an ENFP( outgoing and creative) on the MBTI, you will be glad to know that I have now reached my point- which is that time may ultimately be up for Myers-Briggs. Researchers at Northwestern University have just published what they believe to be the first scientifically sound approach to personality classification.” Personality kinds only existed in self-help literature and did not have a place in scientific publications ,” one of health researchers announced .” This will change because of this study .”
What builds this new study so great, apparently, is the volume of data; health researchers analysed questionnaires from more than 1.5 million people. They then ran algorithms and rendered lots of graphs. From this they concluded that there are four main personality types: you’re either a Samantha, a Carrie, a Miranda, or a Charlotte. Just kidding! Sorry, couldn’t help my inner Miranda coming out. No, according to this very serious study, your personality is either: Median, Reserved, Self-Centred, or a Role model. Apparently” young males are overrepresented in the Self-Centred group, while females over 15 years old are vastly underrepresented “. Meanwhile, the most common personality type is Average, which is defined as being” high in neuroticism and extroversion, while low in openness “. In conclusion: most of us are pretty terrible people. I’m not sure health researchers had to do a study to find that out, they could have just looked at Twitter.
I don’t want to tell these academics how to do their job, but they have wholly misunderstood the point of personality tests. Nobody cares if a personality test is scientific or not. We love them because they cater to our narcissism and our need to belong; they make us feel normal and special at the same time. No one wants to spend 15 minutes answering questions only to find out they are Average. Or is that Self-Centred?
Why do lesbians love cats ?
I recently realized that I have achieved something quite amazing: I have never dated anyone who owns a cat. The reason this is amazing is because I’ve chiefly dated females, and we are all aware fags love their cats. This isn’t just a stereotype, by the way, there is data to prove it. Autostraddle, an online magazine for LBT females, recently published the results of its 2018 Lesbian Stereotypes Survey. As a puppy person, it aches me to say this, but there seems to be firm evidence that most of my fellow homosexuals go to bat for cats. Especially in Australia, for some reason.
So why do girls who like daughters like cats so much? Please remove the obvious smutty joke from your head; this is a serious sociological discussion we’re having here. Well, first of all, it should be said that you should take these cat-stats with a pinch of salt. As Autostraddle noted,” a queer female in possession of a cat is exactly the type of person who would want to take a survey about lesbian stereotypes” in the first place.
With that caveat in place, Autostraddle considered the theory that cat-loving tends to be thought of as a female trait, and lesbians tend to be female. After contemplation a while on the matter, however, this theory was quickly nixed. Despite all the cliches about women and cats, it seems cats have subdued the petriarchy. According to a study from the Pet Food Manufacturers’ Association, more than two-thirds of cat owners in the UK are now men. The researchers suggested celebrity cat-owners such as Ed Sheeran may be behind the trend. I instead like this explanation as it chimes with my own personal motto:” When in doubt, blame Ed Sheeran .”
Russians will do anything for free pizza
Russians are famous for their love of Salisbury cathedral and, it would appear, their knack for ill-advised fast-food campaigns. Earlier this year an online backlash forced Burger King’s Russian division to pull a promotion that offered women a lifetime supply of Whoppers if they got impregnated by football players vying in the World Cup. Now a Domino’s Pizza franchise has abruptly ended a bargain offering free pizza for life to anyone who got the company’s logo tattooed on them. The promotion was supposed to run for two months, but 381 people branded themselves with Domino’s logoes in just four days, forcing the franchise to end the promotion before they were bled dry.
Read more: www.theguardian.com