Big Five; Big Thoughts
538 recently posted a simple version of the Big Five, probably the only personality inventory worth anything when it comes to statistical validity. MBTI might have corporate (hail!) thoroughly duped as they try to systematize nearly every aspect of corporate process, but Big Five is the king academically. Though with psych’s lamentable repeatability issues this doesn't really say too much. After taking the test, with China work-shopping a sort of “social score” to apply to their citizens…could Big Five step in and approximate something like this?
Anyways, let’s dive in!
Generally, you’re going to want to avoid High Conscientiousness/High Negative Emotion/Low Agreeableness people at any cost. Just cut them right out of you circle. Excise the tumor. This conveniently does not include yours truly! Not to say I’m so lovely; that big fat 0 Conscientious score means I’m forgetting your birthday and your fiancé’s name, don’t respond well to most social mores, and am generally just the flakiest person around. But again! Maybe some useful info if you’re looking to interact with me in some way and sort of want to see some receipts.
The caveat, of course; a lot of these personality inventories suck. Incredibly. They’re not predictive, ignore contexts where you can “turn on” a trait by running at an elevated energy level (we all do this!), change over time, etc. Yet the biggest issue, is that they still rely on self report. I don’t think most people are even that good at self-report, and we can end up inflating certain traits not based on how we are but based on what we value and what we aspire to be. Which is where the social application of this could come in. One could envision an environment similar to the Black Mirror episode Nosedive where we could asses our interactions or impressions of others in the context of Big Five and get a sense of how we come off.
But naturally, we’d be at the mercy of a true hell: other people. Oh. Well there you have it.
