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These two points just occurred to me overnight: Now it’s in print in this weeks’ issue.. World’s top personality test doesn’t really work – should we ditch it? https://www.newscientist.com/article/2209360-worlds-top-personality-test-doe snt-really-work-should-we-ditch-it/ [open-access] Implications: 1. What does this say about the credibility of genetic research which attempts to associate ‘genes’ with scores on Big Five self-report tests? If the Big Five scores from such assessments are not accurate/relevant in some groups of people, then how can we simultaneously be seeking evidence of genetic causation for these scores? 2. What does this say about the credibility of neuroscience/imaging which attempts to associate cerebral regions of interest with scores on Big Five self-report tests? Are we really only looking at patterns of activity in those who happen to possess certain kinds of scores? And what does that then say about the meaningfulness of any claims that certain activity in areas of the brain is indicative of one’s standing on a ‘latent variable’ of the Big Five? Remember what Read et al said years ago – which was quietly ignored by many: Read, S.J., Monroe, B.M., Brownstein, A.L., Yang, Y., Chopra, G., & Miller, L.C. (2010). A neural network model of the structure and dynamics of human personality. Psychological Review, 117, 1, 61-92. p. 87 "Relation of the current model to the structure of individual personality and the Big Five. This model is intended as a potential model of the structure of human personality. But by that we do not mean that any specific instantiation of the model will provide a replication of personality structure, such as the Big Five. Instead, we view any specific set of parameters and learning experiences as representing a particular individual or type of individual. The Big Five is a representation of the structure of human personality across a group of people. This structure is not seen for a single person but is rather the result of the covariation among characteristics within a large sample of people. Therefore, if we created a large number of virtual individuals, each with a different random set of parameters, we would expect the resulting patterns of behavior across individuals to give us something like the Big Five." As I asked back in 2010 on idanet: [Question]: if we administer someone a “Big Five” questionnaire, but the structure is not to be seen for (within) a single person, then what is a “test-score” a score of exactly? This also begs the ancillary question asking what exactly is “true” about a “true score”. Remember also: Gurven, M., von Rueden, C., Massenkoff, M., Kaplan, H., & Vie, M.L. (2013). How universal Is the Big Five? Testing the Five-Factor Model of personality variation among forager-farmers in the Bolivian Amazon. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 104, 2, 354-370. Abstract The five-factor model (FFM) of personality variation has been replicated across a range of human societies, suggesting the FFM is a human universal. However, most studies of the FFM have been restricted to literate, urban populations, which are uncharacteristic of the majority of human evolutionary history. We present the first test of the FFM in a largely illiterate, indigenous society. Tsimane forager– horticulturalist men and women of Bolivia (n = 632) completed a translation of the 44-item Big Five Inventory (Benet-Martínez & John, 1998), a widely used metric of the FFM. We failed to find robust support for the FFM, based on tests of (a) internal consistency of items expected to segregate into the Big Five factors, (b) response stability of the Big Five, (c) external validity of the Big Five with respect to observed behavior, (d) factor structure according to exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis, and (e) similarity with a U.S. target structure based on Procrustes rotation analysis. Replication of the FFM was not improved in a separate sample of Tsimane adults (n = 430), who evaluated their spouses on the Big Five Inventory. Removal of reverse-scored items that may have elicited response biases produced factors suggestive of Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness, but fit to the FFM remained poor. Response styles may covary with exposure to education, but we found no better fit to the FFM among Tsimane who speak Spanish or have attended school. We argue that Tsimane personality variation displays 2 principal factors that may reflect socioecological characteristics common to small-scale societies. We offer evolutionary perspectives on why the structure of personality variation may not be invariant across human societies. Regards .. Paul Chief Research Scientist Cognadev Ltd. ____________________________________________________________________________ ______ W: <https://www.pbarrett.net/> https://www.pbarrett.net/ E: <mailto:[log in to unmask]> [log in to unmask] M: +64-(0)21-415625 ######################################################################## To unsubscribe from the IDANET list, click the following link: https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?SUBED1=IDANET&A=1