
Ask HN: Why can't type theory be applied to personality types? - waterwater
Given that type theory is a system for describing mathematics, and given that &quot;Math can be applied everywhere&quot;, why is it that type theory can&#x27;t seem to be applied to personality type theory? I&#x27;ve been thinking about this since about I started studying type theory. I&#x27;m thinking that one abstraction will be: a jolly man can act as a catalyst on a social environment and then cause the environment to be jolly as well. But I&#x27;m thinking as well about the case when a man &quot;wearing a hat&quot; can act as a catalyst on a social environment and then cause the environment to be &quot;wearing a hat&quot; as well. An environment &quot;wearing a hat&quot; doesn&#x27;t sound good, does it? Well, my main question has a tendency to be flawed, but I would really like to have sincere answers. It would really help if the answers would focus on type theory.
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omginternets
Short answer: personality is not strongly typed and interpretations vary
wildly depending on which scale you use.

In a sense, this is already being done in fields like "organizational
behavior", but the effect size of personality "type interfaces" (as it were)
is relatively small, and varies greatly.

Is it possible? Sure. Is it useful? In practice, rarely.

~~~
backpropagated
Personality could be strongly typed, we don't know if it is yet. The
continuous distributions we see in traits could be due to people behaving in a
socially desirable way, while their mental algorithms are distinctly
categorical. To link something like "type theory" to personality theory, I
would look to computational complexity theory. The link is conceptually simple
- different types of people might be optimized for solving different classes
of problems. There might be a more direct link with mathematical types - I'll
have to put it in the burner and see.

~~~
omginternets
I'm not sure we're using the term "strongly typed" in the same sense. Could we
back up a bit? In what sense are you using the term "strongly typed"?

~~~
backpropagated
The difference between strongly typed and duck typed is not exactly equivalent
to the difference between categorical and continuous variables, but it's close
enough for now.

~~~
omginternets
Okay, that's good enough for me :)

To speak plainly, the problem is that with duck-typing in computer science,
it's trivial to determine whether or not an object has a given method. With
regards to people, it's very difficult to reliably assess whether or not
someone has a given personality trait, and it's even more difficult to know
whether or not associating various personality traits together is beneficial.
Different measures yield different results, both with regards to personality
type and with regards to interactions between types.

------
raducu
I'm clueless about type theory, and outside school/university I've rearely
used math on complicated stuff (mainly geometry in from-scratch GUIs) because
creating mathematical models of real-world systems is very hard (in my
opinion).

So I would say that modeling human personality would be an incredibly
complex/non-liniar sort of thing.

I am quite fond of the Myers–Briggs Type Indicator, but I know it's
controversial, and it only has 4 variables, I imagine a more comprehensive
model would have many more variables.

~~~
jacques_chester
MBTI isn't controversial at all.

Those who make money from it, or who have been sold on it, think it's great.

Those who do actual psychometrics research ignore it.

~~~
backpropagated
The MBTI and Big 5 are simply rotations of one another. They explain most of
the same variance. This was demonstrated by McCrae & Costa, who created the
Big 5, in the 80s.

~~~
jacques_chester
> _The MBTI and Big 5 are simply rotations of one another. They explain most
> of the same variance._

They are not and do no such thing.

> _This was demonstrated by McCrae & Costa, who created the Big 5, in the
> 80s._

You're seizing on the same single article every single MBTI booster seizes on:
[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2709300](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2709300)

Particularly the abstract, in which the magic words "However, correlational
analyses showed that the four MBTI indices did measure aspects of four of the
five major dimensions of normal personality." appear.

The thing is that of the correlations found, the strongest is between the
5-factor introversion-extraversion and the MBTI introversion-extraversion (.74
for men, .69 for women). This is hardly ground-breaking stuff. The next best
is intuition and openness (.72 for men, .69 for women).

So on two axes, MBTI stumbles into something. Jung was a pretty smart guy who
interview a lot of folk, so it figures he'd have noticed the surface features
that anyone can notice (some people are introverted! some people are more
conscientious!)

But all of this is by the by. It doesn't matter that MBTI is _sometimes
right_. It matters that it is _more wrong than right_. If it is demonstrably
wrong, most of the time, on most of its types, then it is _dangerous and
foolish_ to use it.

You might as well argue that "some people get better from eating bread with
mould". Sure, that's true, but I'd rather take antibiotics.

~~~
backpropagated
"The five-factor model provides an alternative basis for interpreting MBTI
findings within a broader, more commonly shared conceptual framework."

That's the definition of a rotation. QED

~~~
jacques_chester
I feel like I'm wandering into a Monty Python sketch.

------
meric
I have been thinking about this problem for quite a while now. I will in this
comment describe the beginnings of a formal system of encoding the equations
that underpin one aspect of emotions. It's incorrect, and incomplete, so
forgive me.

1\. Everyone have a different skill levels for each of unlimited variety of
tasks, for example, in cooking, cycling, running, eating quickly, enjoying
food, planning vacations, etc. Everyone also have a different perception of
their own skill level on each of those tasks. Some people view their own skill
level at a particular task as better than it really is, some underestimate
themselves and view their own skill level as worse than it really is, and some
have a realistic perceptions. The disparity between reality and their self-
perception is called _ego_. For some people, the disparity between perception
and reality is so wide, and self-awareness in all aspects of life so low, we
either call them narcissists, or co-dependents, depending on which direction
the disparity goes. Let's denote a person's ego at a particular skill level as
+EGO<cycling>, meaning the person overestimates their cycling ability or
-EGO<cooking>, meaning the person underestimates their cooking ability.

2\. In a society, people interact with each other socially. Of the wide range
of human interactions, two important ones are approval, and disapproval of
another person's skill level at a particular task. These two messages, from
the sender's point of view, can be deserved (a compliment / a criticism), or
undeserved (flattery, insult). Over-simplifying a bit, a deserved compliment
simply means the person is sending the compliment views the receiver as
competent as a particular task, whereas an undeserved compliment means the
person is sending the approval or disapproval, knows it has no bearing on
reality, and is only doing the sending to achieve some motive, such as
manipulating the social hierarchy, or to balance the disequilibrium that is
occurring in their own selves, for example, insecurity. I've described
deserved & unreservedness as discrete, though it is continuous. E.g. A person
(prison guard in an nazi-like atmosphere?) complimenting Usain Bolt "You're
not bad at running, I'll let you run around the camp." intending it as an
insult, is a positive appraisal, but is underserved, because to the sender's
knowledge, Usain Bolt is better than "not bad". There's also a case, where,
for example, Usain Bolt's best friend who is bad at running saying "The
store's almost closed, you go buy it. You're the one good at running." as a
humorous understatement. I think that should still be classified undeserved
compliment. The purpose of understating the compliment would be to maintain
one's social standing in Bolt's eyes.

We can denote such a message as ++APPRAISAL<cycling>. The first sign "+"
indicates it is a positive appraisal, the second sign "+" indicates in which
direction it deviates from reality. If it contains only one sign,
"-APPRAISAL<cycling>", then it will mean it is a realistic appraisal, as far
as the sender is concerned.

3\. People are different. It means they deal with their own and others'
emotions differently. People change. Each time they deal with a scenario, they
change a little more. Now that we have some notations defined from above,
let's describe a scenario, where a narcissistic mother, Earline, gives an
negative, undeserved appraisal to her daughter, Maggie, who participates in a
boxing competition[1]. The daughter had just bought her mother a house. As a
narcissist, the mother is concerned with her image, and she thinks her
daughter should also be concerned with the same thing. The mother is
criticising her daughter's ability to generate a positive image, i.e., status,
in society.

 _EARLINE: Find a man, Marry him. Live proper. People hear 'bout what you're
doing and they laugh. Hurts me to tell you, but they laugh at you._

It's undeserved, because the only people who laugh are Earline's friends. Do
Maggie's fans laugh? No. Does her mentor laugh? No. As a codependent who is
-EGO<X> where X is not boxing, she takes it to heart, for now. Earline has
been raising Maggie this way since forever, it will explain why in the movie
the narrator tells the audience Maggie "knows she is trash". This continues
until the final moments in the movie, when Maggie figured out her mother
wouldn't praise her even when she was nearly the world champion at something.

Sending an appraisal message will alter the person's ego in some way. Sending
a false appraisal message will also alter the person's ego in someway, but,
like borrowing debt, while depositing cash in assets, creating a corresponding
liability at the same time, the false appraisal message, when found out as
false, will discredit the sender, diminishing the feelings the receiver have
for the sender towards the negative direction.

We'll make an "equation" to describe the effect of an appraisal message to a
person's psyche. As people are constantly changing, as they have experiences,
we'll use => to separate the left side and the right side.

{0}{1}APPRAISAL<X>(sender, receiver) => {0}EGO<X>(receiver) +
{1}RELATIONSHIP(receiver, sender)

{0}, {1}, are either positive or negative signs.

The notation as it is, isn't sufficient to describe the fact the negative
effect on the relationship between the receiver and the sender is delayed
until receiver _realises_ the appraisal is fake, retroactively. It is
important to note, as the receiver realises the appraisal is fake, the
receiver's ego _heals_ , so in fact, my equation isn't even correct, because
over time, it doesn't balance.

Anyway, it's my first stab at it and I think it needs a lot of improvement.
Thanks for writing this Ask HN to give me opportunity to try hashing some
things that's been on my mind for a while. I've worked out relationships and
the emotions that occur between narcissists and codependents, and the initial
courting process between a male and a female, have some structure as to how
people fall in love with each other, whether a couple will be stable, looking
at the disparity between their attractiveness, and what kind of interactions
that might occur if the disparity is too big. I have some idea of what happens
when two strangers meet, and how they become friends. I think I know enough to
eventually encode all of these, but there are more social interactions than
between narcissists and codependents, and between husband's and wive's and
their mistresses, and between strangers becoming friends. I thought about
implementing a set of notations as programming code eventually, but I can't
think of a use for it besides building more realistic diplomacy in strategy
games...:) And it's going to be a lot of effort I don't know if I can even
make some sort of significant headway.

[1] Scenario taken from "Million dollar baby". See script.
[http://screenplayexplorer.com/wp-content/scripts/Million-
Dol...](http://screenplayexplorer.com/wp-content/scripts/Million-Dollar-
Baby.pdf)

\--------------------------------------------------------------

 _Given that type theory is a system for describing mathematics, and given
that "Math can be applied everywhere", why is it that type theory can't seem
to be applied to personality type theory? I've been thinking about this since
about I started studying type theory. I'm thinking that one abstraction will
be: a jolly man can act as a catalyst on a social environment and then cause
the environment to be jolly as well. But I'm thinking as well about the case
when a man "wearing a hat" can act as a catalyst on a social environment and
then cause the environment to be "wearing a hat" as well. An environment
"wearing a hat" doesn't sound good, does it? Well, my main question has a
tendency to be flawed, but I would really like to have sincere answers. It
would really help if the answers would focus on type theory._

With the jolly man, through empathy, others feel the same joy, and through
peer pressure, some others will feel forced to show joy. On one hand it will
temporarily raise the mood of the social environment, on the other, in some
individuals the forced joy will even enhance their negative feelings and
resentment, causing jealousy. These negative emotions leak out eventually, to
return the environment to equilibrium (contentment, like a rock, like a tree,
like a baby drinking breast milk, like a sheep chewing on grass, like a man or
woman asleep). Of course in cycles, it usually overshoots to the other end of
the equilibrium, so you have that bouncing back and forth waves of joy and
discontent.

With the "wearing a hat", I grew a beard once, and within months half the
people in my company had a beard. So it can be said "the social environment
became more amenable to hat wearing", so what you're saying works on some
level. Of course eventually more people had a beard than didn't, and people
who wanted to show their individuality showed it by cutting their beard off
first, and then everyone followed through, and now I'm back to the only one
with a beard.

\--------------------------------------------------------------

I suspect there's no type system to describe all these is because no one who
knows enough about social interactions is interested and has the ability to
define it through a type system has started doing this yet. Can you think of a
way to denote all these specific aspects of persons and interactions in
symbols, and devise a way to show the deltas of these symbols, and describe
the changes the reverberate through the environment?

~~~
insoluble
Overall your typing proposal sounds like a good start. The one thing missing,
however, is any method of quantification. To bring a natural phenomenon into a
mathematical realm requires something of a "codec" translating between nature
and number. This, of course, would be a very big topic in itself. Neurological
reaction data could possibly be used in the calibration phase to determine for
various individuals the relative strengths of each relationship event. On the
other hand, there's the option of using purely subjective surveys to assess
the individual's reaction. Further still, with sufficient event data, relative
event strengths could be inferred without direct individual contact or
interference.

My observation on the topic of human social analysis has thus far been that
most folks are relatively uncomfortable discussing human quantification, as if
humans are somehow exempt from being measured. I sometimes wonder if the ego
is afraid of being seen in the daylight.

~~~
meric
Well, I think it's near impossible to quantify currently because all
experiences are subjective. I think it's not too unsurprising many people are
uncomfortable thinking about specific nuances of human social interaction, not
many people are comfortable watching a doctor dissecting a human eye ball
discussing how it works and measuring each part of it, either...

~~~
insoluble
I agree that it's no easy task. I'm thinking maybe when real-time brain
imaging (including EEG) improves sufficiently, the effects of social exchanges
could be measured more directly without having to rely on surveys. Either
this, or humans would need to be placed into a giant maze where all their
interactions are recorded.

Surveys can sometimes be somewhat informative if done correctly. I once ran a
morality survey (on TolunaQuick) where I quantified categories of morality
across socioeconomic statuses using a three-tier questionnaire. The approach
was much like that employed by common personality tests, where each
measurement is made from multiple questions essentially targeting the same
topic. By having related questions on different tiers (levels of magnitude or
intensity), the subjective information was somewhat quantifiable across
individuals. Like with many systems, it would be recommended to begin with a
simple scenario (one type of event, one variable being measured) and to build
from there.

Without having a method of quantification, the formulae for human interactions
would remain as nothing more than abstract hypotheses. Hence, quantification
is necessary for scientific analysis.

On a related note, I believe that one of the most detrimental flaws in
everyday human communication is that magnitudes are expressed using highly
subjective, discrete categories. For example, someone might ask, "How much fun
did you have?". The answer would generally be limited to a scale having just
several steps such as "a little bit", "a fair amount", "quite a bit", or "a
lot". It is unfortunate that humans are unable to give a more fluid answer
that is somehow standardised, such as by saying "3.5 F worth of fun". Another
deplorable example is when journalists take scientific findings and say
something like "X was found to be significantly more likely to give you cancer
than Y" while not giving any details as to the absolute _or_ relative quantity
of difference. For all we know, X increases the risk of cancer by 0.01%
compared with Y; and the general public seems ignorant of the uselessness of
the statistical term "significant" when not accompanied by the numbers whence
it sprang. Common tongue is inherently deceptive, and many people have a bad
habit of taking advantage of this ambiguity for propagandist purposes.

~~~
meric
Very good points. Better technology including the ability to record inputs on
the nervous system as well will go a long way. It sounds like something that
will take half a dozen decades, though.

How do you overcome the issue where, say, if we're asking our survey
participants, "How often do you feel insulted by a family member in a typical
day?", participants who experience frequent emotional abuse from their family
may not even realise what they're experiencing are insults? "It's not an
insult because it's true" kind of thing.

~~~
insoluble
Indeed that's a tricky one. My guess is that the average person lacks
sufficient self-awareness to be able to answer a question such as that,
especially if there are strong insecurities or other fears. At the same time,
I believe that many people could attain a better skill at answering such
questions if they practised meditation more regularly.

It seems that the nervous system pretty reliably adjusts its sensitivities to
the recent norms, so maybe the answer to this predicament involves not only
(a) asking participants such questions, but also (b) establishing for each
person the current systemic bias. Similar to pain-threshold testing, perhaps
the person could be exposed to social scenarios, such as in videos, while
being monitored with an EEG or related device. The pre-screening done on the
experiment participants in the 2001 film "The Experiment" could be seen as
similar since it tests emotional reactions. Even persons from different
worldly cultures and religions would presumably have different biases, so
finding this bias for each individual would probably be very important if
accurate analysis were sought. To give an analogy, asking people questions on
feelings is like asking a multi-meter for a reading. The problem is that each
person has a large set of calibration knobs, so the real-world measurements
can not be known without first checking the knobs.

