Words Like Locusts Flew From Her Fingers

The Cult of Personality

Salon.com Life | Yes, I’ve had tarry bowel movements! So what?: “The MMPI is the world’s most widely used clinical personality test, administered to an estimated 15 million Americans each year. The original version (it was revised in the late 1980s) contained 504 true-or-false statements, many of them even stranger than I remembered. ‘I believe my sins are unpardonable’; ‘Everything tastes the same’; ‘Often I feel as if there were a tight band around my head.’ Then, Paul says, there’s one that many who take the test can quote word-for-word years later: ‘I have never had any black, tarry-looking bowel movements.’”

This is from a review of Annie Murphy Paul’s new book “The Cult of Personality: How Personality Tests Are Leading Us to Miseducate Our Children, Mismanage Our Companies, and Misunderstand Ourselves”. Salon introduces this review with the words, “A new book says that bizarre personality tests like the Myers-Briggs, the MMPI and the Rorschach are overused, potentially damaging and an utter sham”.

I’ve already sent a letter to salon.com’s editor, but I want to mention it here too. Although it is often misused as one (and despite the word “personality” in the test’s name), the MMPI is not a “personality test”. It was designed for diagnosing mental illness in adults. While there are such things as personality disorders, personality in general is not an indicator of psychopathology (what the MMPI measures.) Like mood and cognition, personality is just one aspect of human psychology. (And, by the way, I’m not just blowing hot air here. One of my undergraduate degrees is in psychology.)

Okay. So…what about personality tests? Are they an “utter sham”? Certainly some of them are. There can be no doubt, though, that individuals have persistent traits– personalities –that frame their experiences of the world around them.

In the interview, Paul complains: “One of the basic flaws that all personality tests share is that they leave out the power of situation. Psychologists know, and I think all of us know from our daily experience, that each of us acts differently in different situations at different times with different people. A personality test is a one-time intervention that at best can take a snapshot of you at one particular moment in this very contrived artificial situation of filling out a pencil-and-paper test.”

This is simply incorrect. All personality tests do not have this flaw. Only bad personality tests fail to account for situational factors. The very definition of personality is that it is traits that persist through varying situations. People don’t act entirely differently “in different situations at different times with different people.” There are individual traits that persist in most people’s approach to daily life. These traits are what we identify as “personality” and their persistence is what enables each of us to accurately predict how the people we know well will behave. My introverted spouse will not suddenly yearn for a career as a car salesman. It’s not in his personality to want (or be good at) that kind of interaction with other people.

Paul goes on: “A lot of personality tests, by their very nature, are engaged in labeling people, stereotyping them — whether it’s a string of four letters, or measuring someone on five dimensions. A personality test would have to be as huge as the universe itself to really measure how unique and individual a person is.”

We all like to think of ourselves as being totally unique–unlike anyone else on earth. The reality is, though, that there absolutely are common identifiable personality traits. Introversion and extroversion are probably the most obvious. Persistent traits like introversion are what constitute personality. Anything that does not persist simply isn’t a part of an individual’s personality. If a test is measuring something that isn’t a persistent trait–then it’s not a good personality test. That doesn’t mean that personality doesn’t exist or that good tests for it don’t exist!

Paul is critical of the Myers-Briggs test, saying: “These descriptions have a little something for everybody. They hint at things that we all would like to think about ourselves. Or they’re hedged carefully enough so that, sure, they could apply to me. They could apply to anybody. All it takes is for our imagination to fill in the gaps and say, “Oh my god, that’s exactly me, they really hit the nail on the head.”" She (Paul) also goes on to say that 75% of people who re-take the Myers-Briggs test get a different personality type result from what their first test gave.

It would be interesting to know where this 75% figure comes from. Who were these re-testers? How many of them were there? Were they given the exact same version of the Myers-Briggs or some other version? How different were the second results from the first?

I’ve taken the Myers-Briggs several times and, while it’s not perfect, I believe it to be a fairly accurate test of my own personality type at least. I have consistently tested as an INTJ type. I have read the descriptions of the other types and I don’t believe they’ve “got a little something for everybody”. The other type descriptions do not fit me. Only the INTJ type comes close to describing what I (and others with whom I’ve spoken) see as my persistent personality traits. I’m introverted. Big time. Intuitive, yes. Thinking, absolutely. Judging, yep. That’s me.

I can agree with Paul about one thing, though: Personality tests are frequently misused by employers (and others, I assume.) While some personality traits truly are relevant to performing a particular job–you’d almost certainly want an extrovert as a car salesman, for example–in general, personality is no predictor of how trustworthy a person will be on the job.

Shaun of the Dead

“A London slacker must fend off flesh-eating zombies as he attempts to rescue his girlfriend and reach the safety of the local pub in this horror-farce. ” [Washington Post]

Heh, heh….

Zombies are attacking! Where shall we go?!? What shall we do!?!

Why…head off to the pub, of course!

I may need to reconsider my general attitude of scorn towards British zombie stories.

Janet Jackson’s Tit

CBS Stations Fined $550,000 for Jackson Breast Exposure (washingtonpost.com): “The Federal Communications Commission today slapped the CBS television stations owned by the network’s parent company with a record $550,000 fine for violating broadcast decency standards when CBS aired Janet Jackson’s breast-baring Super Bowl halftime show in January.”

They fine CBS for showing Janet Jackson’s boob yet have no problem with the networks showing graphic photographs of dead Iraqis.

What’s wrong with this picture?? If I had any kids, I’d rather that they saw Janet Jackson’s tit any day instead of the violent images shown on the network news programs.

We live in one crazy mixed-up world, folks.

[9/24/2004 Update: Oh...um...if you decide to visit the link above with the picture of Janet Jackson's tit, don't scroll all the way to the bottom of the page if hard core pornography bothers you. It turns out the Janet Jackson page has ties to some porn site and there's a hard core type photo-link at the foot of the page.]

[Which, incidentally, I'd still rather have kids looking at instead of pictures of dead Iraqis.]

Killing Leviathan

Powell’s Books – Review-a-Day – Monster of God: The Man-Eating Predator in the Jungles of History and the Mind by David Quammen, reviewed by Times Literary Supplement: “In Monster of God, [David Quammen] takes as his starting point Leviathan, the all-powerful, all-devouring menace, whose role is to teach us to know our place beneath God. For if we fear the monster, how much more should we fear the God who made him. As with Leviathan, so too should we be mindful of the lion and the tiger, the crocodile and the bear -for they too can eat us up for their supper. The knowledge that, potentially, we were prey, has been a check on our pride, and, argues Quammen, a key to our sense of belonging to a larger entity which is all life on earth. So what will happen to us when the monsters have gone? David Quammen suggests that by the year 2150 our human population will have stabilized at 11 billion, and that all alpha predators will be behind bars, fences or plate glass. This book examines that which we are about to lose — not the species so much as the states of mind.”

I was sent this book review just this afternoon. It’s a fitting follow-up to my earlier blog about the Maryland bear hunt. Read this review and then consider this: A great part of me yearns for a return to the old days when people couldn’t send their children out into the woods for fear of them being eaten by wolves or bears. The time of the fairy tales. The time of “Peter and the Wolf” and the time of Saki’s “The Interlopers”.

Killing Bears For Fun

In Md., Two Sides Take Aim Before Bear Hunt Begins (washingtonpost.com): “As Maryland prepares for its first bear hunt in 51 years, hunters are lining up for the challenge…”

Challenge? Challenge?!? What challenge is there in killing a defenseless animal? Equip the bears with the intelligence and opposable thumbs necessary for operating an automatic weapon. Then you’ll see a challenge.

The great majority of hunters in this country are the sort of people who really piss me off. They don’t hunt because they have no other choice. They don’t hunt because it’s necessary for feeding their families. There’s almost nobody in this country who is so poor or desperate that they have to hunt. No, the great majority of people hunt because–sick bastards that they are–they actually enjoy killing. Oh, sure, lots of them will tell you they only do it because they enjoy being out in the woods. Or because they like the “cameraderie” with other hunters. (Which generally means they like getting drunk with their buddies.) But when you point out to them that a person can enjoy being in the woods or have fun with friends without killing animals, they have no response. That’s because, of course, those are completely bullshit reasons for hunting. The only reason these people hunt–the reason they can’t admit even to themselves–is because they enjoy killing. And I’m here to tell you, folks, a person who enjoys killing is a bad person.

A Matter of Character

The New Republic Online: Character Acting: “Behind the Bush campaign’s defiant, happy talk about Iraq is a strange indifference to the world we are supposedly saving. It doesn’t matter that Iraqis don’t see us as liberators as long as we do. It doesn’t matter that the world increasingly lacks faith in the United States as long as we have faith in ourselves. ‘I want you to know that I believe with all my heart that America remains the great idea that inspires the world,’ Schwarzenegger said in his closing crescendo. He may want to believe that. I do, too. But recent polls suggest that, while people around the world still believe in democracy, fewer and fewer see the United States as its champion. The only way to change that is by understanding why others don’t see us as we see ourselves and by adjusting our policies so they better reflect our creed. ”

Check out this well-written editorial by Peter Beinart, an editor at The New Republic magazine.

My Tribe

Five years ago, or thereabouts, my spouse decided to fulfill a life-long dream and buy his own sailboat. He didn’t want anything fancy for his first boat (now called “Boat I”), just an easy-to-use day-sailer. Something he could sail by himself if necessary and that wouldn’t terrify me on those occasions when I could be persuaded to go out on the water with him.

Right around this same time, we were also thinking about possibly getting a new vehicle. I’d had my eye on a new model that was just out: the Volvo V70 XC. It’s a 4-wheel-drive boxy wagon sort of thing. Not as big as an SUV, but more practical than a sedan. I’d always liked Volvos. (Though now that they’re owned by Ford, my enthusiasm for them is dwindling. They’re just not…Swedish…anymore. Sigh.)

(This car thing fits into the story. Just wait.)

So, anyway, in pursuit of more data on the kinds of boats available, we decided to head on out to Annapolis, Maryland for the big sailboat show they have every October. The way they work it is that you park your car at the Naval Academy’s football stadium parking lot and there are buses that take you down to the city harbor area where the sailboat show is held.

There we were, wearing our corderoy pants and nubby sweaters, crowded onto a bus with a couple dozen other couples–all about the same age as us, all white, all wearing some version of the same pants/nubby sweater outfits that we had on. Coincidence? Perhaps. When we reached the harbor and disembarked, though, we saw hundreds of other couples: almost all white, almost all about our age, almost all wearing corderoy pants and nubby sweaters.

Whoa. Cue the Twilight Zone music!

As we were wandering around the boat show, we saw that there was a tent where an auto company was advertising its newest vehicle. You’ve already guessed what it was, haven’t you? Of course. It was Volvo–showing off their V70 XC.

It hit me like it never had before. I was part of an easily definable demographic.

The white, 40s, upper middle class, recycling, environmentally aware, PBS-watching, sailboating, Volvo-wanting, corderoy and nubby sweater wearing people.

My Tribe.

When you’re younger, you like to think of yourself as being unique. Nobody feels things the way you feel them. Nobody has your awareness.

It’s kind of startling to realize that you’re not so special after all. Depressing in some ways. Oddly comforting in others.

You’d Have To Be Crazy to Vote for George Bush

Dementia and the Voter (washingtonpost.com)

Heh, heh…. Only the Washington Post.

In essence, the concern is that in states (like Florida) where there’s a larger than average percentage of elderly–and quite possibly demented–voters, people are winning elections because their care-givers are voting twice: once for themselves and once through their influence over their crazy patient/spouse/parent.

The articles tells us: “Swerdloff [a Florida neurologist] said he wondered whether the Florida woman who voted for her demented husband was guilty of fraud. And he worried about activists going into nursing homes, where two-thirds of the residents have Alzheimer’s disease.

“”If they can go into a nursing home, why not go into an ICU and have a person who is comatose and on a ventilator — let the caregiver vote,” he said. “Then you say if a person is registered to vote, what about the brain-dead person?”"

Oh wait.

Never mind.

Islam Is Not The Problem

After Grief, The Fear We Won’t Admit (washingtonpost.com): “… Islam is not the problem, but the way out of a political predicament that has been building quietly for decades. It means not only supporting nationalists, liberals and nascent democrats already on our side in the quest to transform the Middle East but also encouraging Islamists and their parties to participate. Basically, it means differentiating between Islamists and jihadists, and accepting anyone willing to work within a system to change it rather than work from outside to destroy it.”

I wish everyone who’s in a position of actual power would read this article and learn from it. It’s really well written and the author makes many excellent points.

What Were You Doing That Day?

I was in the library at George Mason University, studying Digital Electronics or Computer Science with my classmate, Kalpana. I got a call on my cell phone from my mother and, in an almost hysterical voice, she asked me, “Do you know what’s happening in the world!? Somebody flew a jet into the World Trade Center tower in New York! Or maybe it was two jets! They’re not sure! It’s all confused!”

I thought it was probably just a horrible accident of some kind. But I figured I’d go to an authoritative source and check it out so I wandered around the library looking for a functioning ethernet plug for my laptop. When I finally got connected to the Washington Post web site it was a mess–not at all their usual format. They’d done a rush job of putting up a big photo of the first first jet slamming into the tower. The huge explosion. The second tower had been hit, too. It appeared to have been intentional, they said.

I took my computer back to where I’d been sitting with Kalpana to show her the picture. This is really serious, I told her. They’re saying there’s been some kind of big explosion at the Pentagon, too. I think we might be under attack. Oddly, Kalpana seemed uninterested. She kept studying. I’ve always wondered about that. Why did she seem so unconcerned? Is it a cultural thing? Was it because most of her family lived in another country? Maybe it was just a part of her individual personality.

The library was weirdly quiet. It turned out that most people already knew about the attacks and were downstairs in the student center watching the televisions. After about an hour, they announced over the campus-wide speaker system that classes were cancelled for the rest of the day.

It was so strange walking out to my car in the school parking lot. Most of the people had apparently already left but the ones I saw were all so quiet. It was so quiet outside. I listened to the radio while I was driving home. Other drivers must have been doing the same. Everyone drove slowly–carefully–shocked expressions on their faces.

At that time, in the early afternoon, it was looking like at least ten thousand people had been killed in the attacks. We didn’t know if it was over. We didn’t know where the next attack might occur but we were told that only military air traffic was allowed. Occasionally a military helicopter would go over our house or I could hear–up high–the sound of a military jet. Living near Washington DC, we felt particularly vulnerable. Would they attack the universities, too? Or just the government buildings?

I couldn’t tear myself away from the television. The images were horrible. The explosions. The fires. People jumping from the windows. Yes, they showed that, too. I wanted to cry for the thousands of people who were dead and dying but I couldn’t. It was just too big.

It was difficult going to sleep that night. I felt safer knowing the military was patrolling the airspace around DC but there was no way of knowing whether it was really all over.

The next day I had to take my cat, Roy, in for scheduled surgery. He had been losing weight and had a suspicious lump on his side. I’d told the vet that if it looked like cancer and if it couldn’t be removed, it would be better if Roy didn’t wake up.

Well, that’s how it turned out.

My good cat, Roy, died the day after the attacks.