
How Swedes were fooled by the book “Surrounded by Idiots” - lelf
https://medium.com/@Soccermatics/how-swedes-were-fooled-by-one-of-the-biggest-scientific-bluffs-of-our-time-de47c82601ad
======
dgellow
> · Red: dominant, driven, solution focussed.

> · Blue: analytic, careful, meticulous

> · Green: patient, considerate, nice

> · Yellow: extroverted, creative, verbal

Damn. I spent so much of my time and energy pushing back exactly on this
bullshit when I was young. That's part of the curriculum of mandatory courses
I had to take during an apprenticeship in Switzerland. Expensive and mandatory
courses paid by students' employer, of course. But I didn't know that the
"color model" was THAT popular.

In french speaking countries, that's often presented as a package called PNL,
aka "Programmation Neuro-linguistique"
([https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programmation_neuro-
linguistiq...](https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programmation_neuro-
linguistique)). Based on my experience, that kind of pseudo-science is super
popular in corporate environment, and is really difficult to fight against.

~~~
wayoutthere
I think a big part of it is that corporate HR types are trying to turn people
into interchangeable cogs in the machine. But this ignores the richness of our
experience -- even if the color model were both static and true, I'm willing
to guess that the expression of those characteristics would vary widely from
person to person.

Better to just get to know people individually and talk to them about their
desires, capabilities and needs. But I guess that takes too much time in the
corporate world, so we classify people by color (and I suspect it also sells a
lot of books).

~~~
linuxftw
The problem is HR types are absolute conformist authoritarians. They don't
have any critical thinking skills whatsoever, otherwise they wouldn't be in
that field.

It's the exact kind of thing I expect colleges and universities to push out.
People that can only regurgitate information and then get indignant if you as
much as question it's validity. Brainwashing really works, and people often
pay for the privilege.

~~~
wayoutthere
I completely agree with you. HR seems to aggregate all the people that you
wouldn't allow anywhere near the actual business of the company.

~~~
LeoTinnitus
HR's primary existence is prevent lawsuits between the company and the
employees.

~~~
wayoutthere
I understand that, but in my experience HR is more often than not the _cause_
of most of those lawsuits.

------
achow
Couldn't help but check that it is rated 4.6/5 (113 reviews) in Amazon.

[https://www.amazon.com/Surrounded-Idiots-Behavior-
Effectivel...](https://www.amazon.com/Surrounded-Idiots-Behavior-Effectively-
Communicate/dp/1250179947/)

Excerpt from one of the top review..

 _The book really helps you to understand why 'blues' ask 100 questions, want
to problem solve all the time, always ask for more information, and can be
cold and distant instead of being emotional creatures. Yellows on the other
hand are always day dreaming, coming up with broad ideas, trying to plan
social gatherings and always seemingly have their 'head in the clouds' (this
is totally me). Reds can seem really aggressive, very dominant, demanding, and
short with those around you, and frankly they can't help it, and greens are
very amiable. They agree to everything, but are often afraid to speak their
mind._

Looks like it is not only Sweden but other places as well. Seems like easily
relatable and digestible like those on Sun Signs and Personality and hence a
'good seller', if not a best seller.

~~~
oefrha
Hah, this reminds me of zodiac signs, which every single non-scientist female
friend of mine seems to take very seriously (not sure about male friends since
this topic seems to never come up). No wonder it sells.

~~~
epx
And the zodiac signs are also divided in 4 groups (air, fire, earth, water) so
it seems the idea of dividing people in 4 quadrants is pretty old.

~~~
type0
What idiot-colors do you think it would corresponds to?

fire - red

water - blue

earth - green

air - yellow

pretty sure it's "scientific"

~~~
epx
I don't know, the only thing I remember is water ~= Pisces ~= melancholic ~=
<some color>

------
40four
I had never heard of this book, or color system before, but it makes me think
of my time working in car sales. Our senior sales managers trained us to
identify personalities, and they used similar groupings.

There were four 'buckets' and they are very close to this color system. They
are dominant driver, complacent, ego driven, and analytical. The idea is to,
as quickly as possible, identify the customer's type, and adapt your sales
approach to that. You learn to use a communication style for each bucket.
Different types of questions to ask, different speed/ energy, different body
language.

I was a terrible salesperson, but I watched the managers and top salespeople
use this approach with much success. They would match their style of
communication with the customer's, in an attempt to earn their favor and make
them feel more comfortable. The hypothesis is this increases the likelihood of
closing the sale.

I understand these buckets (colors) aren't scientific, and it sounds like some
folks in Sweden might have taken it too far or been misled. But the article
says

 _" Erikson has repeatedly claimed that the benefit of his colour approach is
that it helps us understand ourselves and others and, as a result, improves
our communication and reduces conflicts."_

So I'm not sure that the idea of learning different ways people communicate,
and in turn, how you yourself can communicate in different ways is a 'fraud'.
To be fair, I haven't read the book so I don't know how or what ideas are
presented.

I think the 4 buckets/colors can just be a loose 'framework'. As long as you
understand it's not the end all - be all of personality. In fact it's not
really 'personality' at all. It's just a quick and dirty way of grouping
common characteristics of people.

Maybe it's not useful in all situations, but for some applications (like
sales), there is certainly value in communicating with people in a way that is
compatible with their style. In the case of car sales, it's very tangible
value, a larger paycheck :)

~~~
coldtea
> _I was a terrible salesperson, but I watched the managers and top
> salespeople use this approach with much success. They would match their
> style of communication with the customer 's, in an attempt to earn their
> favor and make them feel more comfortable. The hypothesis is this increases
> the likelihood of closing the sale._

Yes. People are less "unique" than they think, and some scientists (or non
scientists) can come up with useful pattern matching/abstractions over people
types (like in the book), while others study subtlety and small differences at
another level, and are sometimes deluded that higher level personality types
don't exist.

That doesn't mean that this or that theory of types is fool-proof and always
applicable. But it also doesn't have to be, to be scientific (which just needs
it to be falsifiable, empirical based on observation, testable, and useful for
predictions).

A scientific theory != a law of nature. The former doesn't have to always
hold. It could still create very useful models for predicting people behavior
with success.

~~~
40four
Well said. This is the right way to look at it I think. It’s a loose model, or
abstraction. For some applications it provides utility/ value. Others, not so
much.

It’s not a universal definition of personality, but more a rough set of
patterns of communication style, where in really many different personalities
might fall under.

------
lemagedurage
How come dividing personality into introverted and extroverted (1 dimension)
is generally accepted, but dividing personality into more dimensions (disc has
2, mbti has 4, big five has 5, etc), people tend to feel uneasy (e. g. "I am
more than just this")?

All traps aside (confirmation bias, overdoing it), I do believe these
categorizations do make sense as a way to learn about behavior, especially for
the general public. That people misinterpret the meaning of the results is
obviously bad, but it doesn't invalidate the theory.

~~~
FranOntanaya
I look at MBTI as a hash function. Rather than having someone ask a few dozen
questions about myself and me answering them and them putting them together,
it's simpler to hash those answers into a 4 letter string. People with some
big differences do get the same hash value, but the loss of accuracy seems an
acceptable trade-off in casual situations.

~~~
Miraste
Hash functions are repeatable. MBTI types are not--people often receive
different results when retaking the test, even in short time periods. It
categories are not based on research about significant aspects of personality,
and often go against it. The Big Five personality test is a scientifically
grounded one that actually works as you describe, and with less loss of
accuracy.

------
oefrha
I skimmed the entire article and am still confused about how this guy managed
to persuade the media and “large parts of the Swedish population” that he’s a
behavioral scientist. I mean, especially for laypeople, the first question you
should ask when someone claims to be an expert in a certain science is “does
s/he have a Ph.D.?”. This guy did not disclose his academic background, which
no Ph.D. holder would ever hide, and his best claim to authority appears to be
“in an interview with Filter I referred to a psychologist who supported my
claim [to be a behavioural scientist]”, which is truly bizarre (and false
btw). Additionally, this guy debuted as a crime novel author ffs (according to
Google-translated version of his Swedish Wikipedia page[1]). What a joke.

(Granted, there’s a small percentage of frauds among Ph.D. holders. Meanwhile,
the percentage of frauds among self-proclaimed non-Ph.D. experts is likely
close to 100%.)

[1]
[https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=&sl=auto&tl=en&u=h...](https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=&sl=auto&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fsv.m.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FThomas_Erikson_\(ledarskapscoach\))

~~~
breck
The PhD is a fraternity.

I think the only thing a PhD makes you an expert in is "PhD-ing".

Don't get me wrong. I think having a PhD is a signal that you are very
intelligent, I respect, work with and love people with PhDs (I disrespect the
system). But if you believe this:

> Meanwhile, the percentage of frauds among self-proclaimed non-Ph.D. experts
> is likely close to 100%

then I would say the percentage of frauds among PhD experts is 99%. No one
knows anything. Perhaps non-PhDs are better than PhDs at remembering that.
PhD's don't tell you how expert someone is at something. Unless the task at
hand is making PDFs. People with PhDs are all great at that.

If you look at the track record of "Psychology PhDs" in the past 100 years, I
wouldn't be surprised if this fellow has done better work than more than half
of them. Purely by chance, knowing nothing about his book.

I trust experience and open data more than academic credentials.

I would not be surprised if in 50 years we have a much more scientific method
of doing science than the current PhD system.

~~~
oefrha
Outside a small percentage of fraudsters, having a Ph.D. in a subject is hard
proof that one has devoted thousands of hours into said subject and has
treaded a more or less established path, with at least a modicum of quality
assurance from field experts. That doesn't automatically make someone an
expert (depending on the definition of course), but it does indicate one can
have a serious conversation on said subject with said individual. It also
depends on the institution of course: I would place high confidence on someone
with a Ph.D. from Princeton Physics, and less on someone with a Ph.D. from a
no-name school/department.

With alternative scientists (I've seen many even when I was only a Ph.D.
candidate -- some like to email an entire department at a time) there's simply
no quality assurance whatsoever. You may review their work, but 99% of the
time it's nonsense, so you probably don't want to waste time on the next one.
And that's when you're qualified to review their work; when you're not, it
only makes sense to assume it's nonsense, unless their work is endorsed by
multiple field experts (without conflict of interest, which can be a murky
issue in certain fields).

So, you're welcome to propose better noise filters, but I maintain that having
a Ph.D. or not is the first question to ask when anyone is trying to sell you
a scientific theory you're not qualified to evaluate.

Obligatory mention of _The Crackpot Index_.
[http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/crackpot.html](http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/crackpot.html)

~~~
SkyBelow
If you reduce your standard from a Ph.D. to a 4 year degree from an accredited
university, how well does the filter work?

If someone is speaking physics and has a B.S. in physics, while it isn't as
good a check as a Ph.D., they are fare more likely to know what they are
talking about than someone without any degree in physics.

I would also add another standard of career experience at applying knowledge,
though I might just limit that to programming and computer science fields.

~~~
oefrha
I’m a physicist so I can say for certain that a typical college graduate
majoring in physics but not looking into a Ph.D. isn’t equipped to discuss any
advanced topic (say, quantum field theory). They are usually fifty to a
hundred years behind frontier research.

That doesn’t necessarily translate to psychology, which I have no idea.

~~~
SkyBelow
In matters of layman discussion, would you trust their input more than someone
with no formal education in physics?

To go with a more practical example, say a news report comes out that some new
exercise called joopies are better than burpees. Then say someone with a B.S.
in Exercise Science says the article is wrong and says burpees are better than
joopies. Without either peer reviewed research nor an expert with a Ph.D. (or
other doctorate) to weigh in on the issue, would you think that joopies are
better, that burpees are better, or that you don't have enough evidence to
decide either are better.

And if you would recommend the third option as a matter of course, would the
same hold true if we replace joopies with staring at a clock?

~~~
oefrha
Thus far the discussion has focused on non-Ph.D. posing as field expert and
coming up with original research. However, if you’re trying to evaluate some
pop science in media (which is likely garbage, so always start with negative
points) and have a friend or family member with a B.S. to talk to, they’re
often qualified to debunk a large class of bullshit. For instance, if there’s
a news report of a perpetual motion machine, and a physics major tells you
it’s obviously bullshit because it violates the first and/or second law of
thermodynamics, they’re likely correct. In less obvious scenarios, hopefully
they would try to track down the source and try to make sense of it, and tell
you if the source is garbage (in case they’re qualified to evaluate it),
and/or if the source is misrepresented in media. This isn’t always possible
and assumes a humble person who don’t brag about things they don’t understand,
though; if the person is known to be boastful then you probably won’t place
too much trust on them anyway.

The above is probably more useful for hard sciences though. Honestly when it
comes to psychology I take theories endorsed by actual field experts with a
grain of salt.

~~~
SkyBelow
>Thus far the discussion has focused on non-Ph.D. posing as field expert and
coming up with original research.

I had thought we had already diverged from that when we were discussing noise
filtering. In regards to original research in the actual field, I agree the
standard must be tougher and personally wouldn't depend upon a single expert
or peer reviewed paper to accept something as truth, especially in the social
sciences. In physics, I assume any ground breaking results would be quickly
redone by independent researchers and a consensus for or against would follow.

------
fredrik-j
As a swede this is a bit embarrassing to me. I have a few friends who's bought
into this completely, and of course bought the book. All without even a hint
of critical thinking. It is hard to tell your friends they've been conned.

I can understand it to some extent. Here's someone, who claims he is a
behavioral expert and scientist, and who offers a seemingly plausible simple
method to understand yourself and other people, and how to use that method to
efficiently interact and work with others. Who wouldn't want that?

Unfortunately the books are still sold. I've considered printing stickers that
warns about the nonsense and sneak it on to copies in book stores. How else
can we stop the proliferation of this junk?

~~~
csours
Well, some/many Japanese believe that blood type determines a lot about your
personality, and Americans believe in Myers-Briggs types, and I'm sure there
are local equivalents everywhere else too, so I wouldn't worry about it too
much.

~~~
fastball
I always thought of Myers-Briggs as being about identifying the things you are
less comfortable with and learning to address them. It's about identification
of tendencies, not blaming a Gremlin.

~~~
ncmncm
It has always struck me as odd when somebody insists Myers-Briggs has been
"debunked". It asks a lot of questions about what amount to boundaries of your
comfort zone. Of course as we age that zone changes, ideally, but sadly not
always, by expanding.

Naming various borders of your comfort zone is useful if you want to push them
back. If M-B has a failing, it is that its advocates never seem to suggest
that being dead center on all axes is an ideal to strive for.

~~~
AlanYx
"Debunked" is probably overstating it, but Myers-Briggs has been shown to have
fairly significant statistical deficiencies and its predictive claims are
largely pseudoscientific. It's not complete garbage, but there are personality
trait models like Big Five and HEXACO that are more robust and have more
research behind them, but even those are not as strong predictors as pop
management literature makes them out to be.

~~~
ncmncm
I never considered it to have _any_ predictive meaning at all, so saying it
doesn't seems to miss the whole point.

Predicting others' behavior on the basis of a generic quiz is a pretty silly
expectation.

------
mrkwse
I applied to Volvo when looking for graduate schemes in my final year of
university and recall having to complete a personality test there. I'm not
sure whether or not that particular test corresponded to the referenced
'method', however it was a series of very arbitrary statements that one had to
either agree or disagree with.

None of them seemed particularly useful for determining my aptitude as a
software engineer or professionalism more generally. I can still recall this
statement, verbatim, which I believe I stated I agreed with:

"I greatly enjoy the saucy and slapstick humour of some television shows"

~~~
yakshaving_jgt
I'm guessing this was in Göteborg. I also worked on a team in Göteborg and was
presented with this nonsense. I ended up telling the HR manager that this
"method" is obviously pseudoscience and a waste of my time, and I ended up
leaving the team.

~~~
mrkwse
You're right. Was an interesting sounding role and it didn't get my
application discarded before a Skype interview, but I didn't get very far in
the process and wonder how much bearing my love of slapstick had on their
decision to pass on me.

------
reggieband
I'm probably in the minority and I believe I am giving an unpopular opinion:
this is pretty much gatekeeping.

The tone of this article is acerbic. My cynicism says that this is someone who
got a piece of paper after much effort and cost and they think that makes them
something more than the author. They are upset that this book is being given
more attention then work they deem to be more valuable.

They aren't just fighting bad information with better information, they seem
indignant anyone would listen to this man at all. I'm very glad that, in
general, programming and computer science is a place where credentials matter
significantly less than contributions. Sure, the programming language you
wrote or the library you maintain may not be the best but no one listens to
whiny academics demanding everyone bow down to them and disregard your work.

~~~
outworlder
> I'm very glad that, in general, programming and computer science is a place
> where credentials matter significantly less than contributions. Sure, the
> programming language you wrote or the library you maintain may not be the
> best but no one listens to whiny academics demanding everyone bow down to
> them and disregard your work.

Yes, and that works for all exact sciences. If you can somehow prove a
formerly unproven mathematical conjecture, guess what, they will listen to
you. You may even get prizes.

But extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Since in psychology
very few things can be "proven", studies are the next best things. But you
cannot just spout nonsense and expect people who are actually experts in their
fields to endorse you.

------
croon
Provocative title. More accurate, but less surprising would be "A significant
portion of a population were fooled by a charlatan offering simple answers to
complex questions". That wouldn't be as salacious though.

But I'm very happen with what VoF did. The book has still been a huge
annoyance for years though, and I've seen personally workplace accomodations
based on its idiocy.

But if I'm allowed to generalize a bit myself, I would say that it's not more
people than are swayed daily by political facebook memes or fake internet
"news" publications with superficially professional design, regardless of
nation.

Critical thinking is hard, and takes a lot of time to process, and we're
continuously hit with increasingly more information that it's impossible to
deal with. I hope that people smarter than me can create tools and models to
make it easier.

~~~
0xdeadbeefbabe
> I hope that people smarter than me can create tools and models to make it
> easier.

On a happy note, people smarter than you may make even worse mistakes.

~~~
croon
I thank you for the effort, but I'm not sure that makes me feel better :)

------
NPMaxwell
"Some professionals recognised talk of colours from the infamous Myers-Briggs
test, administered by less-respectable management consultants. It built on the
mystical ideas of the Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Jung, active at the start of
the 20th century, whose theories are now mostly of historical interest. The
theory of Myers-Briggs was not something modern psychologists took seriously.
Since the test had been developed quite some time ago it had been the subject
of extensive research and the results had revealed serious flaws."

The Myers-Briggs corporate product is an interesting confirmation of 20th
Century scientific method. With standard methodologies, reviewed and published
by standard peer review processes, Myers-Briggs was shown to be useless before
1990. So science seems to work well. Nonetheless, the last time a company I
worked for paid (and spent on employee time) for Myers-Briggs testing was
2017. Science works well, but corporate purchasing of consulting does not have
such a good track record.

------
jessermeyer
I am more analytic than most of my friends. If you want to label that as
"Blue" or "7" or "J", "Conscientiousness" or "Engineer", that's one way to
represent the general classification. And it's useful, especially when used as
some kind of mirror for reflection. Whether it's useful in sum across a
population to answer specific questions like "Will this specific group of
people work well together" is highly suspect. The categories just are not
resolute enough, and people are more like clouds than clocks. Categories,
while a necessary first step to understanding, ultimately become a trap if
that's all you understand people as.

~~~
feintruled
> Categories, while a necessary first step to understanding, ultimately become
> a trap if that's all you understand people as.

And perhaps a trap for yourself too, if you find yourself saying things like
"I could never do something like that, I'm a blue!"

~~~
jessermeyer
Some guitarists never learn to play beyond the scales they first learned.

------
45ure
It is hard to figure out from this verbose article, whether it is just
professional jealousy or a genuine need to debunk the theory of assigning
colours to personality types, as described in the book titled _Surrounded by
idiots_. The crux of the argument is that a professional psychologist, who is
also a member Swedish Skeptics Society, is refuting the author's claim of
being a 'behavioural scientist', yet he admits that it is a meaningless term
and also legal in Sweden.

 _Erikson e-mailed me (we both shared the same international agent, so we had
met briefly once before) and asked whether, given my own profession as a
psychologist and my position as a board member of the Swedish Skeptics
Society, I would support his claim that he was a ‘behavioural scientist’. I
declined to offer such support, despite the fact that from a legal point of
view in Sweden, it is possible to call yourself a ‘behavioural scientist’
without any formal qualifications. He has just as much right as my poodle to
call himself a behavioural scientist._

~~~
Nursie
He also points out that the theory has no evidence behind it, that it appears
to be based on an older theory, also completely unevidenced, and that that
older theory draws on discredited Jungian archetypes.

To read this purely as an attack on someone's credentials out of jealousy is
to have missed the meat of the criticism.

~~~
45ure
I stated quite clearly, that it is hard to work out the intention of the
article. The professional psychologist in question seems to be spending an
awful amount of energy dispelling a theory that has been already discredited.
There is an unhealthy fixation on the circulation and sales of the book,
throughout the article. It is now a futile exercise to convince the readership
if it is drivel and providing the book with even more publicity. They will
come to a realization of their own accord and banish the book to the kooky
category.

~~~
acqq
No. It's clearly written:

"Despite the use of colours, it turned out that the “Surrounded by …” books
were not based on Myers-Brigg. Instead, they built on another personality
theory, the so-called DiSC model. The most noteworthy outcome of a search
through the academic literature on this model was that, despite the fact that
_the test had been around for fifty years, there was in principle no research
on whether or not it worked._ "

"According to Sune Gellberg, the owner of IPU, the organisation in Sweden
which sell the DiSC test, no qualifications are required to carry out
personality tests. “I don’t know what education our consultants have because
it doesn’t matter”, he told us, “It is a computer program that does the
personality analysis and gives the consultant a report which he can go through
with the respondent.”

 _Not even the representative for the test thinks that knowledge of psychology
is important! Personality consultants have no education in test methodology
and no knowledge of personality theory._ They just feed in numbers to a
computer and have no idea what the results mean or what their scientific value
is. It is very possible that Erikson believes that the test has scientific
grounds and, given his lack of education, it is very likely that he has no
idea what it actually says. "

~~~
45ure
There is no disagreement with Mr. Dan Katz's views; the licensed psychologist
and psychotherapist, whose words make up the article. He suitably hammers home
his point that the content of the books is nothing more than airport science,
as he openly rages against the profession of 'behavioural scientist'. He also
mentions the book sales, conferences, TV appearances, bestseller lists and
ever increasing circulation of the books etc.

I get it. He feels passionate and sees a charlatan, who is hitching a free
ride on the back of his respected profession and getting the rockstar
treatment. These compendium of books could have effectively been languishing
under the sections of new age, self-help, therapy etc., except they hit home
with a certain audience. Now that he has vented his spleen, what more does he
hope to achieve, especially under the circumstances that there are no laws or
regulation in place to curb any of the activities. Also, by continuing to rage
against it, he only brings more welcome publicity for the author and his
books.

~~~
acqq
> he only brings more welcome publicity for the author and his books.

That‘s obviously not true. Spreading the information that the books were
written by a person who is falsely claiming his qualifications and that the
premises of the book have no scientific confirmation is surely not supporting
their acceptance.

~~~
45ure
>books were written by a person who is falsely claiming his qualifications

You seem to be simultaneously agreeing and disagreeing. I refer you to the
points, made in your previous post; there are NO educational and professional
qualifications, scientific grounds or any legal regulations required to write
these books or conduct personality analysis, none whatsoever!

~~~
acqq
> there are NO educational and professional qualifications, scientific grounds
> or any legal regulations required to write these books

If some activity is not legally regulated it still doesn‘t mean that
uneducated person doing it should be tolerated as he presents himself as an
expert.

The media which didn’t check these facts are also to be blamed and shamed.

~~~
45ure
I feel you are being unnecessarily obtuse. I have expressed my opinion based
entirely on the article, but on each occasion, you completely disregard the
presented facts, demonstrate your displeasure and produce a reply within a
context that does not exist nor does it reflect my views.

We have arrived at a point, which is mirroring the predicament of the person
in question, so I must respectfully decline to enter into any further debate
on this particular topic.

~~~
acqq
> I feel you are being unnecessarily obtuse.

> you completely disregard the presented facts

No. If the "fact" is that he can't go to jail or pay a fine in Sweden because
he falsely presents himself as an expert, it doesn't mean anybody should
support him, or doubt the real expert writing about that.

And I still don't understand what's the intention behind your activity here
which includes you being rude.

------
itronitron
They could have saved people a lot of time by just marking down the dominant
color of each person's aura instead of making them complete a questionnaire.

------
pbhjpbhj
>"talk of colours from the infamous Myers-Briggs test, administered by less-
respectable management consultants" //

I think in the UK Myers-Briggs was fronted by "respectable" management
consultants and was mainstream.

Or perhaps no management consultants are respectable because they primarily
seem to front the current fashionable pseudo-science?

~~~
WAHa_06x36
Got it the second time.

------
Loughla
This article is a hack piece, in my opinion. First, formal qualifications do
not a scientist make. Second, using phrases like this, with zero real evidence
to support them:

>a distinction that even a someone who has studied a four-week course in the
area will know is incorrect.

Regardless of the validity of the 'color' theories, this is not journalism. It
is opinion presented as fact.

Full disclosure, I have never bought into colors theories, even though they
are currently en vogue in my field. But we need scientific study, not more
opinion nonsense.

------
testuser454
This (and the DiSC model) is a revamp of the four humors?

red = choleric

blue = melancholic

green = phlemetic

yellow = sanguine

~~~
mstade
Yes, it's even described in the book and used as a clever trick to suggest
it's ancient wisdom.

------
alexanderchr
Original (in Swedish):

[https://www.vof.se/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Katz-
Erikson-1...](https://www.vof.se/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Katz-
Erikson-19-1.pdf)

------
0xcde4c3db
This seems strikingly similar to the "shape" nonsense being sold to managers
as an explanation of explain team dynamics [1].

[1] [https://www.delcor.com/resources/blog/project-management-
per...](https://www.delcor.com/resources/blog/project-management-personality-
types)

~~~
umeshunni
As a matter of fact I have done a very similar color-coded personality test at
a corporate event.

[https://www.insights.com/us/products/insights-
discovery/](https://www.insights.com/us/products/insights-discovery/)

After the test, we were even given blocks to keep at our desks so that people
who interact with us knew whether we were 'blue' or 'yellow' and adapt their
reactions accordingly.

I guess I should have just said I was an Aquarius or Capricorn or some such
and it would have been just as scientifically accurate.

~~~
rapnie
I also did this Insights Discovery with a bunch of colleagues.

Two weeks beforehand we had to do an online multiple choice questionaire with
about 20 questions. Based on this everyone received an elaborate report with
their personality analyses. Strong points, weak points, etc. Very detailed.

But I've got to say that everyone in our group - mostly rational devs - was
positively surprised how accurate these analyses were.

~~~
bitwize
> But I've got to say that everyone in our group - mostly rational devs - was
> positively surprised how accurate these analyses were.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnum_effect](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnum_effect)

~~~
rapnie
Ha ha, good find, thanks! Sure there is a lot of generalization in these
reports, but still I found their description of my personality type quite
spot-on and recognizable, and hence useful to me. (And I don't believe in
astrology and the whole supernatural shebang :)

PS The whole follow-up with team communication, organization impact etc. was
not for me.

------
bobloblaw45
This sounds like the stupid pre-employment tests they make you take for lower
level jobs. Which by the way, I've taken many. You just lie and pick the
answers that don't make you sound like a grumpy introvert.

------
scoutt
> the question remains as why so many people bought the book

I tend to think that people like very simple answers to complex questions.

Full spectrum of personality traits back-and-forth? The answer is four colors.

Perhaps the fact of just being able to understand any given answer makes
people feel _smart_. I deduct it this way, since the author defends himself by
claiming skeptics "are attempting to make out that his readers are idiots".

------
eitland
To be fair, a some of the supposedly peer reviewed management science we
learned in engineering wasn't too far away from this.

Edit: And while I cannot say if it is right or wrong - it isn't like you can
put this stuff into a particle accellerator and smash it and verify
predictions - useful things can be extracted from it. One of the biggest ones
might be that it gives everyone a common terminology to discuss such topics.

I've said before that organizational psychology and management seemed like a
huge waste of time when the young me looked at the subjects I was supposed to
learn in engineering and yet sometimes feel like the most useful ones now that
I look back on it.

I mean: everything useful I nnow about programming from school I learned in
the C and microprocessors course. Almost everything else I know aboit
programming I learned either before or after my engineering degree.

------
tenpies
Is it not the same for the current wave of anti-bias/discrimination/racism
training? There is zero evidence that it has any effect. What few brave
researchers have risked their careers exploring the effectiveness of the
training have found that it does basically nothing. None of that stops
companies from paying millions for it and good luck to the employee or
executive that even dares suggest that perhaps there's better ways of tackling
the problem/issue.

~~~
growlist
Exactly! I had 'unconcious bias' training at work, one of the learning
outcomes of which was to understand the 'scientific basis' for unconcious
bias. After reviewing the material and finding myself somewhat dubious of its
claims, I - as a good scientist working in a technical role in a technical
company - went off to research for myself. Turns out the supposed scientific
basis is deeply flawed. And yet, this training is being rolled out in many
companies across the UK: training based on nonsense. What's deeply insulting -
and worrying - is that this should be pushed on educated, intelligent people
whose jobs in no small part depend on sniffing out bullshit. Do they think we
won't find out the truth? Are the management so clueless/compromised that they
actually believe in it? IDK.

~~~
bjourne
Let me ask you something: Is unconscious bias training the worst example of
bullshit you have experienced in your professional life or the thing that has
aggravated you the most? Does that tell you anything about your unconscious
biases?

The point of the training is for companies to absolve themselves of
culpability. If you act like a jerk after unconscious bias training you are on
your own and the company hopes that it can't be blamed for it.

~~~
dang
Please don't get personal about this. It only provokes others into doing
worse, as happened downthread.

Your comment would be just fine with just the second paragraph.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

~~~
ncmncm
The second paragraph is the useful part of the comment. You seem to be
reacting to the presence of the word "jerk", entirely ignoring the context.

~~~
dang
Yes, we agree. The comment would be fine _with_ just the second paragraph.

------
surfsvammel
I got this book as a Christmas present from my mom. Then I ran into the same
argument about pseudoscience that we have each year...

~~~
porknubbins
It was a little distressing to me to realize believing in pseudoscience (for
anyone not a scientist, doctor, engineer etc) has very little negative affect,
and lots of people seem to be much happier begin in a deluded state than
rigorously searching for truth.

~~~
surfsvammel
I don’t think that’s true though it sure seems like it.

Pseudoscience is very seldom harmless. There is often someone making money off
of someone else in the background, and in other cases it’s just plain health
risks (for example Chiropractors killing a young girl by injecting her with
turmeric or a naprapath taking a cancer patients money for snake oil for
something that could be spent on proper healthcare).

I can’t think of a single harmless pseudoscience.

------
playing_colours
Paraphrasing L. Ron Hubbard, the creator of Scientology: “If you want to get
rich, you come up with a new psychological theory”.

------
smukherjee19
Reading the article, the various comments and the linked "Why We Sleep"
criticism, I feel really disillusioned.

Honestly, there will always be people who write stuff they have no idea about,
or write stuff that are factually wrong.

But where does that leave me, and perhaps many other layman readers? I, as a
layman in psychology/neuroscience/<insert field>, do not have the academic
qualifications or the time to go through and understand the latest/greatest
scientific literature of the respective fields, nor am I equipped with the
necessary "instincts" to tell the doubtful or suspicious claims apart. Most of
the time, all I want is condensed information which is well, from the
scientific literature, yet put in one place in a way that laymen in the fields
have access to the subject. And to me atleast, books are the best way. But
then I find the books I thought were right and did not doubt, had factual
errors, or were written by someone who has a possibility of not knowing what
they are saying... This is sad.

So let me ask the community: what heuristics do you employ when trying to
decide whether you can trust a book on what it says or not? Especially if it's
not your field of expertise?

~~~
jonex
Number of citations per paragraph is a pretty good indicator in my experience.
Typically this is high (close to 1) for good text books in psychology and low
(1 per page or less) in bad ones. Citations isn't everything though, many
authors misrepresent the content to fit the narrative and in some areas it's
not as important. For instance in math, arguments can be made based on very
few axioms and you can evaluate the correctness yourself.

In general it helps to have a skeptical mindset, try to figure out the intent
of the author by how they treat facts, do they present inconsistent arguments
or gloss over relevant fallacies in the claims? Then their intent is probably
more about presenting a good argument than correct representation of facts.

Another thing to be watchful for is claims that "make sense" or are "obvious",
it's easy to fall in the trap of ignoring conflicting evidence when the theory
sounds good.

~~~
smukherjee19
Ah, citations and "obvious" claims, and to approach everything with a
skeptical mindset, I see! Thanks!

------
terapi
When I started my current work (Swedish software company) a few years ago, all
new employees performed the “DISC” analysis (bought from a consultant firm).
It was a fairly long questionnaire with situational questions and it was
advised not to think too much about each question before answering. Stupid as
it sounds.

Anyway, we got our profiles and at the follow up session we went through the
colors and everything else about the model. Some of my colleagues were
skeptical, some more enthusiastic (“this explains so much”). I was somewhere
in the middle. For sure I recognize some of the behaviors with my profile, on
the other side I questioned the validity mainly due to the way the foundation
to the profile what conducted (the questionnaire). I also read the book but
got the feeling that it was more of entertainment than the session and
profiling we did (in the book it’s a lot of “real life” examples etc).

In work life we mostly used the “tool” to describe persons outside our
organization. “The customers’ project manager in this project is very red”,
would be something a sales rep could say at a hand of. They probably mean
“He’s kind of a jerk but they pay so deal with it”. Although it was a pretty
long time since I heard anyone use it. I also think that the article describes
why the model is not sufficient even for describing people loosely.

Lastly I think that the article headline is kind of over exaggerating. I mean,
yes many read the book and might have use it to talk about themselves and/or
other people. Some organizations went to far and tax money was wasted. But
mostly it was consumed as most other books and people got entertained. I
haven’t encountered anyone who preached the message and method, more like a
conversation starter. The people who swallow the message fully is probably
already converted to the next personality model fraud. Or too busy reading
other truths on Facebook.

------
pimmen
I'm Swedish and yes, it was almost insufferable when this book was the hotness
during the past two years, but this is hardly "one of the biggest scientific
bluffs of our time". It's not even the worst one that got mainstream in
Sweden. Electromagnetic hypersensitivity[1] is far more stupid and God knows
how much money has been wasted on shielding people from electromagnetic fields
by local governments. Hell, just the fact that this has been debated and taken
seriously by politicians and government officials is astounding to me. It's a
sad reflection on the state of physics literacy in my country.

So, stupid? Yes. One of the worst pseudo-scientific scandals ever to have
swept over Sweden? Not even remotely close.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_hypersensitivi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_hypersensitivity)

~~~
fastball
I think it is less "physics literacy" and more a complete lack of teaching and
using critical thinking / reasoning. For whatever reason, the West in general
(and maybe the world) seems to be spending less and less time on critical
thinking and more time on picking a side and then running with it. I have no
idea if this is true or just a feeling I have, but if I was a betting man and
it is, I would blame media and short attention spans.

------
pvaldes
Another case of "something called Psychology was random and not real science
in the end"?

Cant help to remember this:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cm1dwB1U43A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cm1dwB1U43A)

------
Zenst
Issue is and always will be that people are quick to cide with anything that
promotes their narrative/World view as it is easier to be right than it is to
be wrong and change your narrative/World view for many people.

But in the realms of books, science does seem to be more accountable than
religious books and yet both have their effects and sway upon people. Just
that one is more open to being questioned and the other is not.

Sad truth is, if you wrap bad science under another banner, you can get away
with it more easily and less open to being questioned in a way that is
accepted in debate.

------
KirinDave
I still remember being at a company where we took an expensive (company
funded) personality test to rate is in these four colors and place us.

The director in charge of the team was concerned about our "Color Dynamics."

------
smileypete
Late to this, but it reminds me of 'the rise of the idiots' from the 2006(!)
series 'Nathan Barley'

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhAr_UeroCk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhAr_UeroCk)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rqfkuc5mawg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rqfkuc5mawg)

------
VectorLock
I enrolled in a management training course through work and the first thing
they had us do was take a personality test and then they sent us a grading on
the "personality color wheel" and it ruined the whole course for me. I'm
digging deep to pull out useful nuggets of truth but any time it goes back to
Myers-Briggs stuff my brain shuts down.

------
nlstitch
Not to be the devils advocate here, but does the fact that there isnt any
scientific proof proof it doesnt work? Not everything has to be tested and
verified in a lab, right?

Perhaps I am justifying myself though: I've had the DiSC traing THREE times
now. Is it all just a lie? I was kinda hoping this article would show actual
proof it doesnt work.

~~~
Miraste
Tests like DiSC and Meyers-Briggs are hard to disprove because they make
contradictory, non-falsifiable claims. This is part of what makes them
appealing: there's something identifiable for everyone in most of the
profiles, and stuff that doesn't fit is easy to dismiss. It's the same
strategy that enables horoscopes and psychics. Don't feel bad for believing it
--it's designed to be believable, rather than correct. If you want a more in-
depth breakdown of this and the other problems that make the test false but
also hard to falsify, this [1] is a pretty good analysis.

[1] [https://medium.com/@ronsoak/a-warning-against-using-disc-
mye...](https://medium.com/@ronsoak/a-warning-against-using-disc-myers-briggs-
profiling-in-the-workplace-6e96e6eb1a81)

~~~
nlstitch
Thanks!

------
kristianc
What you will guarantee is that if you ever agree to take one of these tests,
you'll only ever be seen through that lens. It becomes self-fulfilling, and
people see what they want to see. The people setting and commissioning the
tests are somehow always a miraculous and perfect blend of all of the colours.

------
jariel
Even Myers-Briggs is considered to be very problematic.

I think the only personality elements fairly well backed by Science are the
'big 5': Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Neuroticism, Agreeableness, Openness
to Experience.

It's fundamentally scary that any advanced nation would be taken in by any of
this.

------
abvdasker
One feature of these personality taxonomies is that inevitably in the set of
different categories designed to be of equal human value or worth, one or two
categories are always discernably worse than the others.

~~~
username90
The only scientific personality scale, Big5, was not designed that way. It is
pretty easy to figure out that workers with high conscientiousness and low
neuroticism are preferable. Which makes sense, we didn't evolve to be
corporate drones so not all personalities are equally fit for the role.

------
bryanrasmussen
There is also something hilarious about the name of the book, in this context.
It could only be better if it was "The Idiot's Guide To If You're Reading This
You're An Idiot"

------
mongol
That seems like an exaggregation. Certainly there must be larger "scientific
bluffs"? Examples of articles in peer reviewed journals, relying on
manipulated data or something.

~~~
SiempreViernes
True, climate change denialism is certainly a bigger deal, but it's not simply
a case of a single guy making stuff up to make money.

~~~
htfu
True, that's instead a case of many guys making stuff up to make money.

------
papreclip
People really yearn for systems like this, whether it's some weird color
coding, myers-briggs, astrology... this definitely won't be the last one to go
mainstream

------
franze
Oh yeah, i high school our psychology teacher was applying such a colored
cubes test to me.

Then she read the results of the test to class. While having a laughing fit.

------
wayoutthere
I think all of these "personality tests" are total BS -- while it's great to
think you can tl;dr a person, in reality we're far more complicated than that.
When you make assumptions about a person's "personality color" or Meyers-
Briggs profile, you disempower them from making their own decisions.

As adults mature, we all learn to be comfortable with a range of communication
styles. This kind of pop psychology may be comforting and in some ways holds
some element of truth, but the entire idea that a "personality" is fixed in
any way dismisses the potential for growth that makes us all so human.

------
tomp
_> Unfortunately, the theory behind this book, and the various follow-ups, is
no more than pseudoscientific nonsense. And Erikson appears to lack even basic
knowledge of psychology or behavioural science._

This seems to happen often. Are there _any_ non-pseudoscientific psychology
theories? AFAIK only IQ and (possibly) the "Big Five" personality traits.

Short list of (likely) "failed" (pop-)psychological theories:

\- _stereotype threat_ [1]

\- _implicit bias_ \- specifically refers to unconscious prejudice that exist
independently of any explicit / conscious bias; however, measurements of
implicit bias do _not_ predict biased behavior [2] and therefore implicit bias
training is likely completely useless [3] (this is _not_ to say that explicit
bias doesn't exist or that bigots don't try to conceal their bigotry)

\- _power posing_ , the idea that putting your body in a "power" position (a
pose that projects confidence) alters your hormonal levels - even the original
author no longer believes [4] that this effect is real (although I personally
still think that "power poses" can have an effect on _other_ people and how
they perceive you)

\- _growth mindset_ , the belief that you can learn and improve (which I
personally think is probably better than the reverse), doesn't actually result
[5] in better educational outcomes (but can result in millions of dollars
wasted [6]). The original researcher since came up with [7] a convenient
concept of "false" growth mindset - "saying you have growth mindset when you
don't really have it" \- but critics rightfully counter with (from the
Wikipedia link above):

 _> "If your effect is so fragile that it can only be reproduced [under
strictly controlled conditions], then why do you think it can be reproduced by
schoolteachers?"_

and

 _> to claim that your performance in a cognitive task is entirely dictated by
how hard you try and is nothing to do with raw candle-power flies in the face
of more than 100 years of intelligence research"._

\- _Stanford Prison Experiment_ [8] (where participants were knowingly acting
out their roles and which was never successfully replicated)

\- _Milgram Experiment_ (which, although somewhat replicated, was recently
criticized [9] that few participants actually believed the experiment was real
- a potential issue with any replication attempts as well)

Hope I didn't mess up any links. This is based only on my completely amateur
research of online sources, I'm more than happy to be pointed in the opposite
direction!

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereotype_threat#Criticism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereotype_threat#Criticism)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implicit_stereotype#Statement_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implicit_stereotype#Statement_by_Original_Authors)

[3] [https://qz.com/1144504/the-world-is-relying-on-a-flawed-
psyc...](https://qz.com/1144504/the-world-is-relying-on-a-flawed-
psychological-test-to-fight-racism/)

[4]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_posing#Replication_failu...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_posing#Replication_failure)

[5]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carol_Dweck#Criticism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carol_Dweck#Criticism)

[6]
[https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/05/180522114523.h...](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/05/180522114523.htm)

[7] [https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/12/how-
pr...](https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/12/how-praise-
became-a-consolation-prize/510845/)

[8]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment#Cri...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment#Criticism_and_response)

[9] [https://www.discovermagazine.com/mind/the-shocking-truth-
of-...](https://www.discovermagazine.com/mind/the-shocking-truth-of-the-
notorious-milgram-obedience-experiments)

~~~
MadWombat
Myers-Briggs is just about as unscientific as it gets. Neither Myers nor
Myers-Briggs (her daughter) had any formal education in psychology or any
serious experience. Their personality types are based on Jung's ideas that are
over a 100 years old and have been long since discredited. There are no
studies that confirm that MBTI type is predictive of anything. There are
studies that seem to confirm that the dichotomies used in MBTI might not
actually exist. Et cetera.

~~~
tomp
Thanks for the clarification. I actually had the Big Five in mind - somehow I
confused that and MB. Even there, I don't really have any idea if Big Five is
"true" (stable and/or predictive) or not, I'm really just listening to Jordan
Peterson here.

I'll edit the post above.

~~~
NPMaxwell
Before you invest in the Big Five, you'll want to check on how much it can
change your posterior odds, and compare that to results of investing time and
money into other approaches.

------
briandear
I’m curious if it is possible we are being fooled by other scientific hoaxes
at this very moment but yet don’t even realize it.

~~~
ncmncm
Of course we are.

As Josh Billings is usually quoted these days, "It ain’t what you don’t know
that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so."

We are so sure of things that are not true that we don't bother to check.

------
thisrod
I bet that the next title in the series will be _Surrounded by Fat People_ ,
and it will sell 100 million copies.

------
kovacs_x
I don't know the book, but judging by the title the author was apparently 110%
correct! :D

------
AzzieElbab
there is something about psychology that really invites all types of
pseudoscience. In all honesty I cant tell whether what I've learned in
introductory courses makes more or less sense than what is described as fraud
in the article

------
moretai
What if religions were just the self help theories that survived the erosion
of time?

------
0xdeadbeefbabe
> The invocation of a personality Gremlin is one example of careless thinking.

Am I supposed to accept this because it already makes sense, because Katz or
Sumpter wrote it, because other people believe it, or because of research to
back it up? I sympathize with all the so called foolish Swedes.

~~~
Barrin92
You're supposed to follow the argument in the article. The idea of invoking
these colours as an explanatory tool is circular reasoning. You're taking a
bunch of traits, call them blue, and then use that colour as an explanation
for why you have the traits, when in fact you have just restated some
behaviour using slightly different words.

it's like saying "the weather is bad because it rains". That's not an
explanation for why the weather is bad, it's just the definition of what bad
weather is.

When people are led to believe they have this or that trait because of some
sort of colour schema they tend to believe that this classification is an
explanation for their behaviour and has some sort of control or ontological
meaning, which it has not. In reality, the behaviour is complex, dynamic,
context-dependent and escapes easy classification. Which really should be
obvious to anyone with a critical mind because human psychology is slightly
more complicated than a test which has fewer colors than the power rangers.

~~~
0xdeadbeefbabe
> You're supposed to follow the argument in the article.

Yes you certainly are. When I read the article I regretted not having read it
already, and quickly revised all my ideas before anyone could see.

My point is more about inevitable error.

------
skizm
This is literally the Hogwarts houses right down to the colors matching...

------
air7
I hold the opposite view. I think this type of segmentation of people is
(1)beneficial and (2)mostly harmless.

(1) The sole reason for the feeling of "being surrounded by idiots" is lack of
understanding of the other. If someone has different opinions/behaviors/moral
values than I do, the easiest thing I could do is just label them "Idiot".
Real understanding and empathy are just too hard. Actually, this also true
when looking at one's own behaviour. We are mostly quick to judge and be angry
at ourselves.

Having a system such as this (even if it is pseudo-scientific) gives one pause
in judgement. For example: John isn't an idiot or an asshole, he's just a
Green. The implicit idea here is that John doesn't do it on purpose, he's part
of a group. So I should be more accepting of him and I should learn to deal
with Greens' quirks better. This neutral judgement (instead of the negative
one) automatically side-steps the anger, elicits more empathy and accepts
partial responsibility for the interactions. It also gives a feeling of
increased understanding of "how the world works" which feels good (even if
it's false). This also works when introspectively looking at one's own
behaviour: Us Blues have a hard time doing X. I should be easier with myself.

The actual underpinned theory is irrelevant (as so far as the aforementioned
benefits are considered). It works just as well with "John's just a
Gemini/INTP/Type 8". It's just the ability to attribute _something_ to the
person's actions I dislike other than stupidity or incompetence.

(2) People love this stuff. Personality segmentation models are abundant and
people love taking assessment quizzes. Astrology, Enneagram, Big-5,
Myer&Briggs and many others. I'd venture off saying that most people don't
take these things too seriously. Even the theories themselves recognize that
human's personality can't really fit nicely in n boxes, so all of them have
"extensions": You can be several colors, Astrology has "horizons", Ennegram
has "wings", Big5 gives a running score to each trait, etc. Proponents of a
system can easily utter something like "Mary's not a typical Aries, though".
So while there are some people that might take it too far, I feel it's mostly
used benignly.

The fact that the theory behind some of these systems are anywhere between
questionable to down right ludicrous is a pickle, though. But sometimes system
benefit people even when the people don't understand the mechanism in which
they do, or hold a wrong one. Therfor truth seeking shouldn't, in and of it
self, be enough of a reason to tear down such a system. This idea was explored
in an article posted here a few days ago:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22037749](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22037749)

~~~
duderific
At a previous employer we did a similar training program called True Colors,
to understand how to communicate differently based on personality types. It
broke down personality styles as follows:

Green - Intellectual; prefers less communication generally

Blue - Emotional; likes small talk and connecting with people

Orange - Spontaneous, life of the party, hates structure/rules

Gold - Analytical, needs order, boundaries and structure, makes lists for
everything

Generally you have one dominant color, and some mix of the other three as less
important factors in your personality. Most software engineers tend to be
Green, HR people are Blue, CEO's are Orange (outgoing, rally people around
them) etc.

I actually found it to be tremendously enlightening; I can usually bucket
people I know into one of the four colors pretty easily. For example my wife
is a Gold; she loves literally creating lists and checking off things when
she's done, and she can't stand things being out of order.

Edited for formatting

------
JackFr
Psychologists annoyed that an outsider is edging in on their grift.

------
makach
oh this _gem of a book_ , I remember I saw it at some managers desk, where
there was no attempt to hide it or anything. I often wonder wtf he was
thinking.

~~~
ncmncm
In parts of Bloomberg, as in apparently many other places, there is a cult
around what Geoff Pullum calls "the nasty book", Elements of Style.

It is similarly full of ignorant proclamations that serve mainly to make
people insecure about their communication skills.

Whenever I found one that didn't obviously belong to someone, I recycled it.

------
fullshark
These types of things may not be science, but they are so popular and will
always be popular because they are useful heuristics to make sense of the
chaos of dealing with humans.

~~~
maze-le
They might be heuristics, but how can they ever be useful? They can neither be
used in the analysis of a person nor are they predictive...

~~~
fullshark
Managers like them as they try to make sense of how their reports behave and
work together, people they know but not really. Sounds like some people like
them as a way to make sense of issues with their personal relationships.
People outside yourself make decisions that are frequently confusing, and
people like this sort of categorization to make sense of them.

~~~
Broken_Hippo
People liking something doesn't mean they are actually useful, though. Some
folks like fake medicine because they feel like they are doing something
useful - even when we can prove that no, "memory water" isn't curing your
cold. People like horoscopes for your same reasons - because people are
confusing and some sort of categorization is a way to make sense to them.

It doesn't actually mean it is useful or even accurate in any way - it just
means you are doing _something_. You could probably put the energy into
managing the environment or better communication or coming to terms with
"Other people are complicated".

~~~
fullshark
Sure but it's worth exploring why these are popular beyond simply writing it
off as "people are dummies."

~~~
teddyh
People have been exploring why astrology etc. are popular for as long as they
have existed. We don’t have to redo it all from scratch and have the whole
argument from first principles every time some some new popular pseudoscience
comes along. We can just declare it bunk and move on.

~~~
fullshark
IDK i don't see this stuff as all that different from doing like a k-means
clustering or factor analysis on a data set, it's just an attempt to do it on
human personality, which we know has variance and correlations. We don't freak
out at market segmentation analysis that involves labels like "early adopters"
and "laggards" which are imperfect but informative.

I think people just find the entire idea of labeling humans in this way
offensive, and latch onto some of the claims that it's "science" as an avenue
of attack.

Edit: And I think it's slightly better than just categorizing people based on
their birthday like you do in Astrology, as you are using at least responses
to a personality test in most instances.

~~~
jonex
Personalities doesn't cluster so k-means would not give anything interesting.
Big 5 is pretty close to a factor analysis on a questionnaire data set though,
so that's a reasonable though. Four colours is not based on anything like that
though.

I'd say that astrology is better than DISC in that it's obviously bunk, the
problem with the colours is that while some people claim to enjoy it as a
pastime or conversation starter, some seem to take it further and base actual
decisions on it. People reading horoscopes in a magazine wouldn't typically
actually follow the advice therein.

~~~
teddyh
> _People reading horoscopes in a magazine wouldn 't typically actually follow
> the advice therein._

How do you know? See also, by the way, Japanese people’s beliefs about blood
types:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_type_personality_theory#...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_type_personality_theory#Popularity)

------
oxymoran
Has anyone stopped to look and see if any of his advice worked though?
Pragmatic psuedoscience is more valuable than true science that can’t find a
repeatable answer.

------
deeteecee
Hmm, I didn't read the article. Seems a little tacky considering the first
word in the title is "swedes"

~~~
fastball
Huh? It's about a book written by a Swede that was published in Swedish that
gained popularity in Sweden.

------
somishere
Great title.

------
legitster
As someone with more than a fair bit of experience with DISC, I wanted to
provide some pushback on the article a bit:

> Erikson has repeatedly claimed that the benefit of his colour approach is
> that it helps us understand ourselves and others and, as a result, improves
> our communication and reduces conflicts. This is his argument as to why
> companies and organisations should adopt his approach. Since there is no
> scientific support for the four colours, there is naturally no support for
> this claim either.

Bullshit. Just because there was no study published on it in Nature doesn't
mean it doesn't have value or you should dismiss it completely! If I went
around proclaiming the importance of Agile, you shouldn't just dismiss me
because "there is no academic support". And to more of a point, it seems
unfair to single this guy out of the sea of pop-psychology and business
management books.

> It is difficult to imagine a more unpleasant and unfair way of dealing with
> a problem than simply attributing it to the fact that the person in the
> centre of a conflict “is blue”.

This seems to be a gross mis-characterization of the expected outcomes of the
behavioral training. The outcome of them (at least the ones I've gone through)
is to reframe work conflicts away from "this guy is stupid and should be
fired" to "we have completely different ways of talking through problems". In
that regards it's been super freaking helpful. I don't need an academic
consensus that I feel warm and fuzzy afterwards.

I strongly recommend this post from SlateStarCodex:
[https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/05/27/on-types-of-
typologies...](https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/05/27/on-types-of-typologies/)

>The claim that MBTI gives you new information would be a bold scientific
claim and would require bold scientific evidence. I don’t know to what degree
the MBTI people make this claim, but I don’t think it’s necessary for me to
enjoy the test and consider it useful. All it needs to do is condense the
information you put into it in a way that makes it more relevant and
digestible.

>Five Factor and MBTI are trying to do fundamentally different things. Five
Factor is trying to give us a mathematized, objectively correct version of
personality useful for research purposes. MBTI is trying to separate people
into little bins that put continuous personality space into discrete and easy-
to-think-about terms suitable for human processing, and even very poorly drawn
bins will do a pretty good job, just like European countries.

100%, DISC is just a construct, but it can still be a super useful and
effective one. Even if it's a placebo, I don't need someone running up and
knocking it out of my hand and telling me they did me a favor.

------
fastball
I have a problem with the article author's implication that someone without
credentials (read: university degree) isn't a scientist, or at least is a
lesser scientist.

A scientist is someone who employs the scientific method. That's it.

Thomas Erikson does not seem to qualify from what I can tell (he's just
winging it), but he absolutely does not need to have a doctorate (or even a
bachelors) in order to be a "behavioral scientist" \- he just needs to be
using the scientific method when testing the claims he makes in his book or
elsewhere.

No, your poodle does not have just as much right to call themselves a
scientist, as a poodle is literally incapable of ever using the scientific
method. You don't need an extensive "scientific background" in order for your
first book to be perfectly scientific.

~~~
DavidSumpter
I am the professor who translated the article from Swedish. I agree that
anyone can be a scientist. But, as you Erikson neither has qualifications, nor
does he show understanding and nor does he use the scientific method. So very
poor all round.

~~~
fastball
Oh, I agree. Erikson does not appear to be a scientist at all. But I think the
criticism should be along the lines of "he was not using the scientific method
or citing sources which used such in the writing of this book", not personal
attacks of "he doesn't have a degree in behavioral science".

To illustrate my point, this article[0] paints a very dim view of the science
used in the book "Why We Sleep". The author of the book is a professor of
neuroscience and psychology at UC Berkeley. Being in academia (even a
professor at a prestigious school!) doesn't mean the book he wrote is de facto
"scientific".

[0] [https://guzey.com/books/why-we-sleep/#appendix-what-do-
you-d...](https://guzey.com/books/why-we-sleep/#appendix-what-do-you-do-when-
a-part-of-the-graph-contradicts-your-argument-you-cut-it-out-of-course)

