Now that's sorted, let's see what other questions psychology can answer.
100% of the population can be classified into two types: those who enjoy being simplistically categorised and those who don't.
This is impressive. So they took a survey and parsed it for trends. And then failed to parse it fully into trends. That's not a result, that's a failed model.The study analyzed the responses of 541 volunteers to hundreds of social dilemmas, with options leading to collaboration or conflict with others, based on individual or collective interests.
There is a fifth, undefined group, representing 10%, which the algorithm is unable to classify in relation to a clear type of behavior.
There is so much to poke fun at in this article. So they got the data, then tried to design their classification algorithm. Which might be innocent, but waves a pretty red flag that says there might be nothing here, but I'll find something anyway, if I look hard enough. But coming from a different direction, some game theorists set up some game-like scenarios, with rotating partners/competitors, and then when 30% judge their own ability in comparison to participants around them, the researchers announce envious is now a personality type.After carrying out this kind of social experiment, the researchers developed a computer algorithm which set out to classify people according to their behavior. The computer algorith organized 90% of people into four groups: the largest group, accounting for 30%, being the Envious -- those who don't actually mind what they achieve, as long as they're better than everyone else.
So... Divergent, the junior dystopian sci-fi where teens are separated into groups based on overly simplistic and crude personality categorizations, has more basis in fact than The Hunger Games, the junior dystopian sci-fi where everyone who lives in an area has the same job?
People keep on criticism the methodology of the study. It's fair game. Here is a more detailed report about the study: http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/2/8/e1600451 What I like in the methodology: -Real significient price for winners of the games. -Random pairing of player. -the grouping of similar behavior was statistic (5 groups was the optimal solution according to "Davies-Bouldin index". This index might be bullshit, but ....hey... sometime you have to be trusting ) -The grouping seems statistically sound and simple (minimize dispersion in cluster) What I dont like: -sample size coming from a fair (might skew the population toward certain type) -They could have report other statistical ways of grouping people to see it the result were still coherent. And btw it's not a personality test per se. It's a solution to the old problem of rational agent in economy. It might be a more precise separation than risk-adverse and risk-takers. And it only apply in collaborative interaction with perfect information (everyone know the chance, and payoff of their decision before hand.. Which never happen in real life) Still a nice tool to have.