By my profile I should be the most liberal of liberals
In a Jordan Peterson video I saw something about this personality test, and I decided to spring for it to the tune of ten dollars. Taking it is kind of fun, and it gives you your assessment immediately. The scores are percentiles on five dimensions, and each of those are broken down into two parts as well:
The Understand Myself assessment and report is based on the Big Five Aspects Scale, the scientific model that describes your personality through the (Big Five) factors and each of their two aspects.
Individual Report
The assessment only takes 15-20 minutes. Your resulting report will give you a comprehensive description of the factors and aspects of your own personality.You will, for example, learn how agreeable you are relative to others, and how your Agreeableness breaks down into the aspects of Compassion and Politeness (deference to authority and social norms). You will also learn how these aspects of your personality influence how you act towards and react against the various people and situations you find yourself dealing with every day.
As an example of some of my results, I’m apparently way more compassionate than most people but way less polite. That’s no surprise. In person I’m actually quite polite in the conventional sense – I say “please” and “thank you” and “nice to have met you” and all that, but that’s not really what the test measures.
But on certain other dimensions – such as a subcategory called “orderliness,” I score in the basement. “Orderliness” on this test isn’t about being a hoarder or not – in my case it actually has to do with a deficit in planning skills and a dislike of predictable routine. And it also says this:
Those who are who are very low in orderliness are remarkably much less likely to be political conservatives.
I’m about as low on the “orderliness” scale as a person can get, and yet I’m a political conservative. Go figure.
One trait in which I score in the 98% percentile is “openness to experience.” For that trait it says: “Those who are liberal, politically, are very much more likely to be high in openness to experience than conservatives.” There we go again; I’m the opposite politically of what my personality scores would indicate.
Here’s an excerpt from the description of “openness to experience” [my emphasis]:
People with exceptionally high levels of openness to experience are almost always characterized by others as extremely smart, creative, exploratory, intelligent and visionary. They are extremely interested in learning, and are constantly acquiring new abilities and skills. They are extremely curious and exploratory. They are exceptionally interested in abstract thinking, philosophy, and the meaning of belief systems and ideologies. They live for cultural events such as movies, concerts, dance recitals, plays, poetry readings, gallery openings and art shows. They are very likely to enjoy writing (or even to be driven to write). They enjoy complex, abstract ideas and deeply love to confront and solve complex, abstract and multi-dimensional problems.
One intriguing thing the site offers is that if two people each take the test, you can ask it to analyze the type of relationship or marriage you will tend to have if you get romantically involved with each other.
Oh, so funny, Neo! I only skimmed your post because I’m on my way out, but I [would] score VERY low on orderliness as well, and I’m politically conservative, too!
Based on the explanation of “openness to experience,” I fit that almost to a tee as well.
Your link to the test doesn’t work.
‘Those who are liberal, politically, are very much more likely to be high in openness to experience than conservatives’
The term ‘liberal’ is really no longer useful in these types of things. ‘Leftist’ is more accurate.
What would have been considered a ‘liberal’ in the Bill Clinton presidency is now a slightly right moderate.
I would like it if conservatives and Republicans stop referring to Democrats as ‘liberals’ when they are more accurately ‘leftists’.
Griffin:
These tests have been in operation for many many years, and the links to liberalism and conservatism are based on a huge body of research over time.
Couldn’t get the link to work, but I fit the same mold. Though I would have described myself as liberal to very liberal on most issues into my mid 30’s.
neo,
Yes, but the liberals of ‘many, many years’ ago are not the same as those that are called liberal today is what I’m saying.
This might tell where you are on a left/right continuum but liberal is no longer a correct term for the modern Democrat. They are leftists.
Griffin:
I’m aware of that. But apparently the tests still seem to measure left or right tendencies or I don’t think Peterson would be using them.
It would seem to be less accurate now though. Kind of like that cartoon that Elon Musk tweeted where he stayed the same and the left went further left and now he is center right.
I’m arguing less about this test itself and more about the term ‘liberal’ and how it is used today because I doubt they are thinking of a classical liberal when they use the term. They are thinking left/right.
These labels are increasingly meaningless in our politically realigning times.
The link works now.
Neo,
You may score “liberal” in terms of what Kurt calls “feelz” but what really distinguishes you is your insistence on empirical evidence. Something you will never find on the left ever.
The link didn’t work when I tried it, so I went to YourMorals.org and took the Big Five Personality scale. I am very conservative, but also very open to experience (4.3/5), very conscientious/orderly (4.6/5), and not low on agreeableness (3/5). Like neo, In college I became a “liberal” (leftist in today’s lexicon) and remained one for many years thereafter. But I gradually became staunchly conservative because of my experiences and observations of the disconnects between leftist dogmas and reality. I believe that neo is also a “reformed” liberal/leftist. So, maybe we are conservatives because of our experiences and observations, not our personalities.
I had a similar experience with the test. The problem is definitions. If you listen to Jordan P., he also demonstrates a similar confusion. The test’s definition of “conservative” is reluctance to change, and regidity of thought. The conservatism of the modern right is to “conserve” the principles of individual liberty and thought inshrined in Western Civilization and the Declaration of Independence. When accepting this dichotomy the tests results makes more sense. Jordan’s results also show “openness” and “agreeableness.” However, he is anything but “liberal” by the modern standards.
This be heresy I know but based upon the above, I have to take issue with the accuracy of the Understand Myself Assessment and Report.
“Agreeableness breaks down into the aspects of Compassion and Politeness (deference to authority and social norms).”
Sorry, Compassion has little to nothing to do with “deference to authority”. “Compassion” extended because it’s what’s expected is not compassion, it’s deference to societal expectations.
“But on certain other dimensions – such as a subcategory called “orderliness,” I score in the basement. “Orderliness” on this test isn’t about being a hoarder or not – in my case it actually has to do with a deficit in planning skills and a dislike of predictable routine.”
This blog and the consistent, diligent effort to research, compose and post it on time, strongly demonstrates otherwise. Nor is it one post but 3,4 or 5 articles 6 days out of seven. That is strong evidence of superlative planning skills and the embrace of a predictable routine. What it is not evidence of is of routine for routine’s sake but of routine in service of passionate interests.
“People with exceptionally high levels of openness to experience are almost always characterized by others as extremely smart, creative, exploratory, intelligent and visionary. They are extremely interested in learning, and are constantly acquiring new abilities and skills. They are extremely curious and exploratory. They are exceptionally interested in abstract thinking, philosophy, and the meaning of belief systems and ideologies. They live for cultural events such as movies, concerts, dance recitals, plays, poetry readings, gallery openings and art shows. They are very likely to enjoy writing (or even to be driven to write). They enjoy complex, abstract ideas and deeply love to confront and solve complex, abstract and multi-dimensional problems.”
I too score very high on “high levels of openness”. And I am extremely interested in learning. But… I am NOT “constantly acquiring new abilities and skills”. In the areas in which I’m interested, I increase my depth of understanding in a cyclic manner. Revisiting an area of interest and then moving on letting renewed interest arise on its own or when new information prompts renewed interest.
I am exceptionally interested in philosophy, and the meaning of which belief systems and ideologies are constructed and based. But I am NOT interested in abstract thinking, finding it more often than not to be a ‘quicksand’ for the mind.
“Truth is simple but seldom ever heard” because uncovering truth requires the development of wisdom.
I do NOT “live for cultural events such as movies, concerts, dance recitals, plays, poetry readings, gallery openings and art shows”. The great majority of them I find to be pretentious and shallow. Obviously there are exceptions but they are exceptions.
I’m not sure I’m “driven to write” but I am driven to respond and writing allows me to better organize my thoughts.
I do NOT “enjoy complex, abstract ideas and deeply love to confront and solve complex, abstract and multi-dimensional problems”.
I do enjoy getting to the heart of what prevents solving complex problems.
Nature’s great complexity arises out of simple repeating patterns. Among others, Pi, the “Golden Ratio”, the “Fibonnacci numerical sequence” and the “80/20 Rule” are prevalent throughout external reality and, when cultural dysfunctions do not interfere, our internal reality reflects it.
There’s a reason why classical music is so prevalant in movies vs heavily distorted ‘music’. Why babies prefer soothing rather than grating sounds. Why even plants prefer Mozart to Ozzy Osborn.
In nature and in calm weather, morning arises with bird song. The ‘music’ of a babbling brook, of a light wind through aspen leaves, soothes the soul. Whereas the roar of a lion or grizzly bear, hurricane force winds, tornadoes, volcanoes, earthquakes, explosions, etc. are all associated with death.
Based on the demonstrated inaccuracy of the test, it would be well to take it with a large grain of salt when considering whether to use it in evaluating the prospects for a happy marriage.
Here’s what I’ve concluded to be the parameters for a happy marriage: do they share the same values? Specifically in regard to money, religion, having children and the parenting of them and politics. Is the relationship grounded in friendship? Are their sexual libidos compatible? Do they share the same perspective on humor, do they laugh at the same things? Do they make each other laugh? Do they laugh together or at entirely different things to which the other is clueless?
Finally and this really comes first, are there any “deal breakers”? Fundamental personal attributes, belief and values that over time and after the “bloom is off the rose” are likely to become intolerable?
One trait in which I score in the 98% percentile is “openness to experience.”
neo:
That’s how I arrived at whatever sort of conservative I am. It wasn’t because I thought it would make me richer or thinner or more popular. It sure didn’t.
I’m reminded of this passage from James Joyce’s “Ulysses.” Joyce is speaking cynically as Stephen Dedalus, the character who is transparently Joyce himself in the book:
________________________________________
You behold in me, Stephen said with grim displeasure, a horrible example of free thought.
________________________________________
However — sorry, folks — most conservatives in my estimation are rather like the guy in the old baseball metaphor “who was born on third base and thinks he hit a triple.”
““Those who are liberal, politically, are very much more likely to be high in openness to experience than conservatives.”
Given the history of the left and their reactions to conservative individuals and ideas, I find this risible.
A different assessment instrument claimed that conservatives are frequently fearful. I wrote to the guy noting that, for several generations, both sides’ men have participated in combat/ smash mouth sports and we haven’t missed many wars in the last 150 years
Found out not long after that none of his work, some sort of brushing Skinner, and other fields, could be replicated. Zip.
Felt kind of bad, hitting him when he was down.
America is conservative in its fundamental principles . . . but the principles conserved are liberal (in nature) and some indeed are radical.
T:
“Open to experience” as a measure has nothing to do with tolerance of different opinions or being able to hear them. It’s measuring something very very different than that.
The definition of a liberal has not changed.
Liberal: “Relating to or denoting a political and social philosophy that promotes individual rights, civil liberties, democracy, and free enterprise.”
The beliefs and aims of today’s so-called liberals have changed. They are no longer liberals. The so-called liberals have morphed into wanna be authoritarians. Their aim is not as above, but a society based on social justice, inclusion, racial diversity, equity, atheism, groupthink, and equality of outcomes. If successful, they will have created a society where the vast majority will enjoy equality of misery.
Most of those who call themselves liberals today are closed-minded Marxists who score very high on the test that measures unhappiness.
I once authored a post at Shrinkwrapped’s blog. It was my statement of my beliefs and a short explanation of why I believed them. He titled it “A Liberal Manifesto.” Why? Because my beliefs are very close to the above definition of a liberal.
The test is a quantifier of classical liberal values, not those of today’s so-called liberals.
Here in Europe, Libertarian types usually call themselves “classical liberals”.
JJ notes:
Liberal: “Relating to or denoting a political and social philosophy that promotes individual rights, civil liberties, democracy, and free enterprise.”
The authoritarian Democrats claim to be “liberal”, but don’t actually fit that definition, which itself fails to include a key “Liberal” trait – limited government.
In America, they are not “liberal”, but Republicans should also not call them “leftist” – they are Democrats. D & R appear on the ballots, and are after the names of elected politicians.
The problems in the USA won’t be solved as long as so many people vote Democrat. The bad policies are bad Democrat policies, including Slavery. Often the bad Dem policy got a lot of Rep support, and Dems get far more good press from MainStream Media – Dem media.
Political news fits into one of 4 political piles:
Good for Dems, Good for Reps;
Bad for Dems, Bad for Reps.
The Dem media has a Narrative: Dems good, Reps bad. That’s how they report almost everything they report – and if they can’t report it in a way to fit, they minimize the report.
Hunter Biden’s bribery is Bad for Dems – little coverage; deliberate censorship before the 2020 election (proof the US election was NOT 100% “free and fair”).
etc.
What the Big 5 fails to show is how important is The Objective Truth?
My preferred, 4 axis*, Myers Briggs test also doesn’t test this.
I’ve been looking, for decades now, for internet folk interested in the Truth AND who are interesting and fun to read.
Neo remains the best! 🙂
“Openness to experience” is not the same as “open to changing your previous position based on new facts”.
*The Big 5 has a 0-100 range on 5 traits: Agreeableness, Openness, Conscientiousness, Neuroticism, and Extroversion.
This seems helpful to psychologists in helping mentally disturbed people change to be less disturbed. It could, in theory, be graphed in 5 dimensions. Note that within each trait, they subdivide it further, so it could perhaps be 10 dimensions (why not even further?).
Knowing somebody else’s score doesn’t help much in knowing “who” they are.
The MB Type Indicator has 4 pairs of traits:
Introvert-Extrovert;
iNtuitive (abstract) – Sensitive (concrete);
Thinking – Feeling (decision making);
J (closure oriented, clean desk) – P (open ended, messy desk).
I’m an xNTP (balanced introvert extrovert; a Thinker, a Visionary, NTP).
https://www.xpersonalitytest.com < good showing of the 16 combos
Funny how the labels themselves create some prejudice, so I don't like to use, nor think of J as Judging, and P as Perceiving.
Insofar as many tests are sort of trying to find out why some folk are Democrats, and usually try to claim they are "better", I've stopped looking much at these tests.
I know Jordan Peterson is big on Big 5. It probably helps him treat people, sort of as a starting point.
The Big 5 doesn't tell me about me in a way I recognize. The MBTI does – and explains others, too, mostly fitting within the 16 "types".
Neo, and all, should try taking a Meyers Briggs test, too.
Here’s a free Big 5 test:
https://bigfiveaspects.com
I took it, can share it, so others can (maybe?) see it:
Save this id to retrieve this report in the future: 62bff56f89de37003e820b6d
See results, use ID, works for me.
https://bigfiveaspects.com/results
Notable for 2 reasons. a) all of my characteristics are below 50%.
b) my Conscientiousness is 0% (zero, nada) which I flatly don’t believe but …
[7 – industriousness (too low), 0 – orderliness (ok, maybe)]
On the other hand, if most folk with some kind of psych problem are high in some area, this test shows me with no such problems.
As compared to MBTI trying to understand who I am (Thinker, Visionary/Dreamer)
What? me worry? … Don’t worry be happy …
So, how is it determined that responding in a certain way to a question, is an indication of one’s personality profile.
My guess is that they give many many individuals , whose talents and proclivities are well known, a bunch of questions and examine their response.
These results are then AVERAGED for each know personality type.
Then using the magic of statistical analysis , a personality type can be “assigned” to any individual who takes this “personality” test as a function of how one responds to the questions.
Speaking of averages; there are 1000 tables in a warehouse; 500 of which have 4 legs and 500 of which have three legs?
On average, how many legs are there per table?
Answer: 3 1/2 legs.
How many of these tables actually have 3 1/2 legs?
Answer: ZERO
Just because you do the arithmetic correct or even if one applies, correctly !!, some fancy schmancy, hi fallutin advanced math/statistics analysis, it does not mean the answer has any real world applications or implications.
Wonder if Jeffrey Dahmer had taken the test that Neo took, if the answers he provided would have predicted his cannibalism? This assumes he first did not kill and eat the individual supplying the test.
I’d enjoy seeing someone who has personal experience of having been both liberal and conservative at some point in his life take on the task of sorting out the personality traits. Such a researcher might not become confused over his almost complete inability to understand the mindset of a conservatives, particularly a conservative of the libertarian stamp. It’s a dead giveaway that psychologists believe conservatives are more rigid and judgmental than liberals. Sometimes I think they design tests to distinguish between the kind of people they approve of and the kind they don’t. Any test that Jordan Peterson finds useful, though, probably does a pretty good job of meeting this standard.
In their own lives, surely diehard liberal psychologists have noticed that it’s more pleasant to interact with people–regardless of their political views–who have a firm enough sense of objective truth that their word means something, and enough conscientiousness that they won’t crumple under the slightest pressure of temporary circumstances. As C.S. Lewis used to say, he’d rather play poker with an atheist with solid ethics, even if the ethics couldn’t be justified by his creed, than with a Christian who indulged a weakness for cheating.
Liberalism is an ideology of divergence. Classical liberalism is constrained by principles. Progressivism is [unqualified] monotonic. Conservativism is moderating.
Tom Grey:
I’ve taken Myers Briggs several times and come out different every time. It’s not supposed to do that, but for me it is very variable. I’m not impressed by it.
This test is classical in its lack of objectivity and statistical validity.
I ain’t going there!
And we all know that Twitter sucks, and I do mean sucks.
The crazies are trying their best to make us all as stupidly crazy as they already are.
As a starter, most psychologists lack fully competent minds.
I’m guessing this test was not recently made. The world has turned upside down in numerous ways. The labels “liberal” and “conservative” no longer mean what they used to mean.
I suppose it’s about 10 years since I really looked into this. (About the time I first heard of Peterson.) What I saw:
1. These tests were not really based on large numbers of studies; rather they were quite a few studies which were mutually referring to one another. They all seemed to just assume what one another concluded, was true.
2. They had the interesting feature that one thing they didn’t do was predict someone’s political loyalties. Yes, that’s right, they studied people’s politics independent of their actual politics.
3. They all seemed to draw, ultimately, from the old discredited “F-scale” for authoritarianism.
4. None actually dealt with people’s ideas, or reasons for those. As usual for psychology, they all wanted to base everything on non-rational causes. I don’t entirely understand this. Why is there such a resistance? I suspect it may be related to the urge to “scientize” everything, getting rid of all causes but efficient ones.
5. Related to #4 is this:
https://wintermute10.tripod.com/AIP-48.htm
It took Orwell some years to see this, but he eventually did.
In any case, the whole exercise seemed to show a massive series of arguments in a circle, all based on nothing. (I’d also point out that Haidt’s point is relevant, that those on the left have no clue of what the right believes. And that of course will include the vast number of academics doing these studies.)
One last thing: I do take issue with the belief that things have changed very much. It’s got to be about a century since Santayana observed that the only thing modern liberals want to free men from is their marriage vows. (It is also true that the extent to which modern conservatism is really classical liberalism is overstated. It’s true of some, not all.)
The test’s definition of “conservative” is reluctance to change, and regidity [sic] of thought.
Which indicates that the test has trouble dealing with those who left the left, as Neo, I and other commenters here did.
@ Eeyore > “2. They had the interesting feature that one thing they didn’t do was predict someone’s political loyalties. Yes, that’s right, they studied people’s politics independent of their actual politics.
3. They all seemed to draw, ultimately, from the old discredited “F-scale” for authoritarianism.”
I got the same impression when I did some reading on the subject a few years back.
They defined “conservatism” and “liberalism,” by fiat, as constituted by certain factors (as noted by Mark & Griffin; the F-scale sounds familiar to me), constructed questions to reveal those factors by the subjects’ answers (which is legitimate), then drew the conclusion that conservatives and liberals were exactly what they had said they were (which is circular).
If any studies took random samples of registered or self-identifying Party members and then constructed “ideal” conservative or progressive profiles (back before all Democrats were leftists, liberals inhabited both parties), into which new respondents could be sorted, that might have had some small usefulness.
Eeyore; AesopFan:
Are you sure you’re referring to this particular test? There are many many personality tests. Peterson seems keen on this particular one. Here’s a lot of information about it.
I take them all with a grain of salt, but I think they’re fun as long as they’re not used for anything nefarious.
@ Eeyore > “It took Orwell some years to see this, but he eventually did.”
Thanks for linking that column from 1944 – it could have been written today about our current political and social culture. (I’ve added some paragraphing and emphasis.)
@ Neo >”I’ve taken Myers Briggs several times and come out different every time. It’s not supposed to do that, but for me it is very variable.”
I’m not suggesting this is what has happened to you BUT when our oldest son first took the test, he didn’t understand the directions correctly. The results were totally at odds with what we knew about his personality, so I quizzed him, and discovered that he was giving the answers to which he aspired, not the ones that were currently descriptive.
IOW, he WANTED to be more sociable, compassionate, organized, etc. because he knew that those were not his actual traits; high-functioning Asperger’s is none of those things except possibly compassionate – he loves helping people – that one came out of Sunday School lessons.
He has become very adept in a high-level computer engineering type of career, and is well-liked by his teams because he is very collegial (back when that meant something positive), so I think he was moderately successful at reaching his goals, even if they didn’t come naturally.
}}} There we go again; I’m the opposite politically of what my personality scores would indicate.
Anyone else want to bet that the creator of said test is a political liberal, who associates “orderliness” with OCD and being an asshole about it, and “openness” with being a Good Liberal Apparatchik ?
Any takers?
}}} I mean that almost nobody seems to feel that an opponent deserves a fair hearing or that the objective truth matters as long as you can score a neat debating point.
I would assert that this is much more of a politically liberal quality. The obstinacy of the Right, these days, is the result of many years of “being reasonable” and seeing it taken shit-poor advantage of:
“Give me half your cake.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s only fair.”
“Mrrr…. ok. Here.”
(no ‘thank you’ follows)
what follows next:
“Give me half your cake.”
After the 3rd or 4th iteration of this, you stop “being fair”, and for good reason.
OBloody:
The test in question used correlations between a person’s scores and that person’s self-reported political affiliation. See this. So it really wouldn’t matter what the person who designed the test thought. The correlations were present but not especially strong.
“Openness to experience” seems to measure artsiness, among other things, which we already know is correlated with political leftism. So I think it’s a real connection.
I’d enjoy seeing someone who has personal experience of having been both liberal and conservative at some point in his life take on the task of sorting out the personality traits. Such a researcher might not become confused over his almost complete inability to understand the mindset of a conservatives, particularly a conservative of the libertarian stamp. It’s a dead giveaway that psychologists believe conservatives are more rigid and judgmental than liberals. Sometimes I think they design tests to distinguish between the kind of people they approve of and the kind they don’t. Any test that Jordan Peterson finds useful, though, probably does a pretty good job of meeting this standard.
In their own lives, surely diehard liberal psychologists have noticed that it’s more pleasant to interact with people–regardless of their political views–who have a firm enough sense of objective truth that their word means something, and enough conscientiousness that they won’t crumple under the slightest pressure of temporary circumstances. As C.S. Lewis used to say, he’d rather play poker with an atheist with solid ethics, even if the ethics couldn’t be justified by his creed, than with a Christian who indulged a weakness for cheating.
Still having trouble posting.
Wendy Laubach:
It was in the spam folder and I got it out. Don’t know why it got filed there.
neo on July 2, 2022 at 10:55 pm said:
OBloody:
The test in question used correlations between a person’s scores and that person’s self-reported political affiliation. See this. So it really wouldn’t matter what the person who designed the test thought. The correlations were present but not especially strong.
“Openness to experience” seems to measure artsiness, among other things, which we already know is correlated with political leftism. So I think it’s a real connection.
________
Not really. I actually took part in one, about 2010 or so. (It was the guy who took down Krugman. Can’t remember his name now.) They don’t just rely on what people report as their affiliations. There’s a lot placed on the answers to questions of one’s views. And those questions were stunningly simplistic, with a blatant left wing bias.
So I searched more, and found that actual voting patterns weren’t so predictable. What they really were measuring was willingness to say things leftists regarded as deplorable. I tried pointing this out, but couldn’t get it through to them. I notice that few of the citations at Wiki are much later than that. So color me unconvinced.
I will also point out that the association of “artsiness” with the left is a very recent phenomenon. A century ago it wasn’t the case. Waugh and Orwell are worth reading on this.
Things, perhaps, may not have changed all that much—perhaps—but definitions certainly have.
For example, these days, JFK would be considered a dangerous, knuckle-dragging reactionary.
These days, those who position themselves right-of-center (perhaps because they’ve been “mugged by the Left/Left of Center) are the true Liberals.
Moreover, reading the many interesting comments above, I wonder whether this test is meant to protect Leftists from the ramifications of their neuroses and psychoses; e.g., might “be more open to new experiences” actually mean, “proclaim Transgenderism (or CRT or Cancel Culture or Censorship or any other form of “Transformation”) upon the land” while bashing/canceling/denigrating/censoring anyone who disagrees with you…
IOW the Left—the self-proclaimed Contrarians—are the “NEW REACTIONARIES” but this is the Truth that must not be stated…
(It is something that Christopher Hitchens—that professional, triumphalist contrarian—eventually came to realize…)
Eeyore:
You took part in one, but one WHAT? There are a lot of tests and I am speaking only of this particular test. I doubt you took part in the research in which this particular test was matched with people’s self-reported political affiliations. Political affiliation is not on the test. But certain aspects of the test are correlated with people’s self-reported political affiliations. That means people answering the question Are you a liberal or a conservative?, and then correlating other parts of the test to that answer, using the person’s answer itself as the definition of political affiliation rather than the correlations as a way to define affiliation.
I think the moral foundations test that Haidt et al used was very good at identifying political affiliation.
I took the test you linked. I printed the results and showed them to my wife who thinks it is a pretty good analysis. Most were “typical” as in about 50th percentile. Industrious was at 67%. Orderliness low at 20th percentile (she definitely agreed there.) Enthusiasm even lower at 13th. Neuroticism low at 14th and Withdrawal at 10th.
One problem is that I spent 50 years as a surgeon and am now 84. I don’t know how that would affect things. She doesn’t think it has.
I am also quite conservative, to the despair of a couple of my kids who are lefties.
I took the free test. I was high on openness and neuroticism, and low on everything else. I had a problem portraying myself as compassionate. I might care about other people and do nice things for them, but if I’m not doing that all the time and with people I barely know, I have a problem with saying that I’m especially caring. I have to feel close to somebody to go beyond the usual indifference, and if I try it with people I don’t know that well, I feel like I’m faking it. I also have a problem with saying that I am very conscientious. Some things that are important to me I do get done, but compared to others in my family and environment, I tend to avoid action.
About the politics. I’m a conservative outlier in a liberal community. I wonder if I lived in another part of the country, I might be a liberal outlier in a conservative community. Probably I just wouldn’t live there. I suspect liberals and conservatives in the same class with the same educational background will score about the same on openness. That is to say, if you are a conservative with a humanities or social science degree (or even more than one degree), you would score about as highly as liberals with the same background would score, though you would be very much an oddity and an outlier, given what humanities and social science departments are like now.
A very interesting discussion that will take some more research into how the test Peterson sells is constructed.
However, Neo is apparently not the only person surprised by her results.
https://www.quora.com/What-do-you-think-of-the-Understand-Myself-assessment-by-Dr-Jordan-B-Peterson?share=1
@ Neo > “The test in question used correlations between a person’s scores and that person’s self-reported political affiliation. See this. So it really wouldn’t matter what the person who designed the test thought. The correlations were present but not especially strong.”
I read through the Wikipedia article you linked here (and also in a reply to me and Eeyore earlier).
Here’s the relevant political portion:
That’s an extremely weak correlation. (The more simplistic of the resources I looked at considers anything at or below .3 to be weak.)
https://www.scribbr.com/statistics/correlation-coefficient/
I would not use the Big Five test to draw any conclusions about political affiliation, but Peterson’s test “assigned” the factors anyway, which may be why your results seemed odd to you.
Other considerations:
If you click through the links at the Wiki, you can see their definitions for right and left wing.
It’s not clear if the above sources looking at political affiliation used the same definitions; I would have to read the full studies and that’s too much work. 😉
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-wing_politics
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-wing_politics
I don’t see any immediate relevance for Conscientiousness on the Right and Openness to Experience on the Left, so the correlations, weak as they are, may be capturing some underlying facet (also defined in the Wikipedia article) in some fashion.
However, IF you are only going by someone’s self-reported identification as conservative or liberal, the subjects might not even be using the same definitions as each other, much less Wikipedia, which also leads to a weak correlation.
On the value of self-assessments: Bernard Goldman, in his book “Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News,” noted that Dan Rather considered the New York Times to be politically “middle of the road,” and judged himself IIRC to be in the same category or a bit more liberal.
Big LOL.
One serious problem is that liberal and conservative no longer capture the left-right axis in a meaningful way politically, much less wrt personality.
Some people have suggested a two-axis space instead: left-right per the Wikipedia definitions of ideological goals, and authoritarian vs not-authoritarian to capture the implementation.
Ends and means, if you will.
(I’ve seen such charts on the internet, but can’t find one now, of course.)
You could do independent assessments of those factors (NOT a self-identification), and then correlate that with the Big Five, and maybe get some interesting results.
Part II.
I was looking for the Nolan Chart.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nolan_Chart
Yes, Virginia, there are authoritarians on both ends of the scale.
https://www.psypost.org/2021/06/large-study-indicates-left-wing-authoritarianism-exists-and-is-a-key-predictor-of-psychological-and-behavioral-outcomes-61318
Pew Research thinks there are 9 political typology groups — I didn’t take the test to see what they are.
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/quiz/political-typology/
Some more discussion of left-right and all things in-between.
https://coredifferences.com/difference-between-left-and-right-wing/
Has some embarrassing typos and erroneous definitions, but covers most of the territory as understood by the general public.
https://www.political-coordinates.org/
Uses the Nolan chart, and talks about the problems with the Adorno authoritarianism study. Has a quiz you can take for political orientation.
Maybe I’ll take some of the quizzes tomorrow and see how they stack up.
Speaking of Hitchens, here’s this masterful appreciation (from 2010) that just cropped up on Powerline blog:
“Two-headed Hitchens
by Christopher Caldwell
“A review of Hitch-22: A Memoir by Christopher Hitchens.”—
https://newcriterion.com/issues/2010/6/two-headed-hitchens
Key graf 1 (RTWT):
‘…To read Hitchens is to realize how wrong we are to use the words “honesty” and “integrity” as synonyms. Hitchens is honest in the sense that, as best we can tell, he says what he believes without fear. But on page after page, using one metaphor after another, he describes his personality as not whole, not integral. “I use the words ‘double life’ without any shame,” he writes…’
…Which may call to mind the fractured realities of the personal lives of the extraordinary David Cornwell—at least when at the height of his literary powers—and the notorious Kim Philby, both sons of shamelessly mercurial and, possibly, narcissistic to the point of psychotic fathers. Hitchens’s father was not like this but one may conjecture that the fracture encountered in Hitchens’s case was the overall situation of post-war England, but also the fact that a person of his middling, son-of-an-officer social position was sent to the very best of English public schools (and then there is also the case of his mother, only later to be discovered by him to have been a Jewish refugee who sought, successfully, to conceal her background)…
Key graf 2 (and probably(?) the reason this piece was reposted on July 4, 2022):
‘…Hitchens moved to the America in 1981, drawn by a romantic sense that “the United States [is] at once the most conservative and commercial and the most revolutionary society on Earth.” (A Janus-faced place for Janus-faced people.) It was there that he broke almost all his past alliances….’
Feeling kind of metaphorical this morning; what does “open to experience” actually mean? I could drive a hundred miles in the rain, from garage to garage and not get a drop on me. During the trip I could wonder if it’s raining because I watered the lawn yesterday, whether a particular view of stately older homes is more stately in the rain than in the sun, think we needed the rain, wonder if there’s golf tournament postponed.
Does the fact that I was in the rain for a hundred miles count as “experience”? That I saw and thought about rain….casually and without any chance of affecting any further action…count as “open”? That it’s meaningless as regards future action and thought mean I’m not?
To be more connected to the discussion, there are people for whom experience is like rain on a duck’s back. They may not be able to escape it, but the change…? How does a test measure the likelihood one may be affected or changed by experience?
And can one be moved to an immovable position by an experience which is up close, personal and emotionally impactful while being nowhere near descriptive of the issue in general and, in fact, may miss the point entirely? Probably, for some people. Is that “open”? I have known people who, in effect, give points for being misled by emotionally loaded experiences. It means you’re compassionate or something. At a recent discussion of the J6 hearings, one woman went on about this young person–Hutchinson–being kind of alone, not getting supervision, left out of important things…..soft voice, etc, as if it meant something.
I would think being careful about experience, being able to put it in context, looking at it rationally, would be the better way, but is that being “open”?
Additionally, there’s language and its nuance. It was not so long ago that the words, “I should have….” meant “I would have…..” if something or other were known.
And “I had done….” was used where today we say “I did….”
One of my granddaughters, when in el ed, had an on-line reading course. The foils to the questions were perfect. Without being obviously nonsense, the wrong answers were not stupidly off topic or something. The right answer was right as to the actual subject. IOW, if you followed the reading, the right answer was clear without any flags saying CHOOSE ME, and the others were clearly not without any off-topic wanderings. That is a hell of a lot of work.
I’d be interested in definitions. For example, if I were asked whether I was “fearful”, or a “fearful” person, I’d wonder if the question was whether I found a lot of possibilities scary, or whether, having found something scary, I’d backed down, or gone ahead.
When I was in Jump School, I found three categories of guys. Some were petrified but went ahead anyway. Some liked it so much they’ll be sky diving until they’re eighty. For some it was another way to get to work and beat walking. So how does a graduate of Jump School grade himself as fearful? We all went out the door.
Anyway, my point, too long in the making, is that I distrust personality tests.
@ Aubrey > “I’d be interested in definitions.”
I just took the Big 5 test (a free one, not Peterson’s) and found myself wondering in most of them: what do they mean by that word?
Sometimes the ambiguity was in whether they meant “sometimes” or “all the times” about some behavior.
As for constructing test questions: it is an art, and most teachers are not very good at it.