The desperation in gamers to be defined

It's simply another example of validation through classification.

SuperflyTNT wrote:

Applejack wrote: And Pete, you didn't say if you thought your Briggs-Myers type was accurate or not?

First, I think that these things are quite bullshit because if you take it at different stages in your life, you will have different results. I didn't actually put any thought whether it is accurate or not, to be honest. The real question is whether others think it's accurate, because people are generally worst at knowing how their personalities project to others.

During my job search last year, I noticed that Meyers-Briggs has declined in popularity with HR departments, and they are now using some worse bullshit called Big Five, which measures extraversion, openness, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and emotional stability (or neuroticism).

Meyers-Briggs at least has a reasonable structure, four pairs of opposing traits with most people falling somewhere in between the two extreme degrees. It offers some great insights regarding certain combinations of dominant traits, but seems to be missing some dimension because it fails to hit the mark with some people, like my girlfriend. I suspect that the blind spot has something to with where Meyers and Briggs themselves measure up on their own test, such that people who are very different from those two are less clearly understood.

I don't think it is wrong for a personality test to yield a different outcome at different points in a person's life. People grow up and change and sometimes go through hardships that reset their priorities. With respect to Meyers-Briggs, it is a known phenomenon that people tend to test closer to the middle of the extrovert/introvert range as they get older. When I first took the test in college, I scored as moderately introverted. The last couple of times that I have taken it, within the last ten years, I scored as mildly extroverted. In my case at least, that isn't a failure of the test, that's me changing over time.

SuperflyTNT wrote: Why is it that so many people in our hobby are so seemingly desperate to be defined? I really am curious why people have this overarching desire to define themselves based on some set of moving-target criteria. I realize that it's outside of gaming, but it really seems to me that gamers have this "need" to be defined and to organize things in small little boxes. This is evidenced by the aforementioned thread, plus the fact that there's many categories and subcategories of games, all neatly placed into little boxes, and then further drilled down by mechanic, genre, etc.

At least with games, I can understand the need to define them so that they can be easily searched and sorted, but with people, why? Why does someone need to say, "I'm a euro gamer", or "I'm an FPS player" as if that defines their existence in some meaningful way?

My theory is that gaming is more likely to attract detail-oriented people than some other hobbies might. A boardgame is a small, defined environment with rules and structure, and some people may find that more comfortable than the big, complex, messy world that we live in. The same kind of person is probably more comfortable with attaching labels and definitions to everything, in an attempt to make daily navigation through life more tolerable. I bet that role-playing gamers tend to be more comfortable with flexibility and open-ended situations.

Awhile ago, I worked for a corporation that paid a lot of $$$ per seminar attendee to have each of our employee's personalities analyzed and examined. It was a classic example of snake-oil, smoke-and-mirror, and flashy power point based pseudo-psycho-babble. All of it was Myers-Briggs based and used colors, instead of letters. It accomplished nothing. It achieved nothing. It didn't increase productivity. It didn't enhance team work. It didn't improve the management's leadership model. It didn't open our minds. It didn't create any personal development. They could have accomplished the same thing by eating lunch at a Chinese Restaurant and examining the Chinese birth year astrology often on their placemats. I'm a Monkey. On the other hand, I have taken real personality tests and been interviewed for security screening/clearance--it's nothing like Myers-Briggs.

LOL, I know EXACTLY what you're talking about, Stoic. It's apples and oranges. Plus, Myers-Briggs doesn't ask directly if you're an agent of a foreign government or entity.

For what its worth, both the Myers-Briggs and the Big Five have a well-established history in personality testing, with the Myers-Briggs being a subset of the Big Five (without the emotional stability dimension). Really, if you were to choose, you should choose the Big Five because it gives you the same + more information. The mapping is basically

Big Five (Myers-Brigg)
Extraversion (E-I)
Agreeableness (T-F)
Openness (S-N)
Conscientousness (J-P)
Neurotocism (e.g., Emotional Stability)

However, it is unclear how those things related to employment. Probably more relevant for employment would be the Holland Code, which has been linked to many jobs inside the O*NET database.

If you want a real personality test, you should probably take the MMPI (Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory) -- but these are often mapped back to the Big Five as well.

Space Ghost wrote: For what its worth, both the Myers-Briggs and the Big Five have a well-established history in personality testing, with the Myers-Briggs being a subset of the Big Five (without the emotional stability dimension). Really, if you were to choose, you should choose the Big Five because it gives you the same + more information. The mapping is basically

Big Five (Myers-Brigg)
Extraversion (E-I)
Agreeableness (T-F)
Openness (S-N)
Conscientousness (J-P)
Neurotocism (e.g., Emotional Stability)

However, it is unclear how those things related to employment. Probably more relevant for employment would be the Holland Code, which has been linked to many jobs inside the O*NET database.

If you want a real personality test, you should probably take the MMPI (Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory) -- but these are often mapped back to the Big Five as well.

The major difference between the voodoo that is Myers-Briggs and the MMPI (and variations therefrom) is the fact that the MMPI attempts to have norming standards to validate its test results.