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From: jer@peora.UUCP (J. Eric Roskos)
Newsgroups: net.singles
Subject: Re: the Personality Test
Message-ID: <801@peora.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 10-Apr-85 08:35:08 EST
Article-I.D.: peora.801
Posted: Wed Apr 10 08:35:08 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 11-Apr-85 01:59:24 EST
References: <8379@watarts.UUCP> <179@tove.UUCP> <241@osu-eddie.UUCP>
Organization: Perkin-Elmer SDC, Orlando, Fl.
Lines: 29

> The only problem that I see with the M/B test is that it assumes that
> the "norm" is a white, anglo-saxon, protestant, mail [sic], college
> student, between the ages of 18 and 25.

Now, I don't understand this.  If there exists a range of personality
traits, Introvert<->Extravert, Thinking<->Feeling, etc., are you saying
that this range's endpoints vary depending on the various social
attributes you've listed?  Or that there is some nonlinearity in mapping
the responses to the test questions onto the scales?  I don't think this
test suggests that there is such a "norm" at all.  If it did, it wouldn't
be possible to say "only 2% of the population is INFP, 54% is ESTJ" etc.
(these numbers are fictitious).  The results would be normalized so that
the "majority" (in your example, a majority among a small sample of society)
came out right in the middle.  Which they don't, really.

Incidentally, if you doubt this, there is a layperson's (did I say that
right?  Good thing it didn't have to have meter.*) version of the test, and
a book describing it, called _Please_Understand_Me_, by Kiersey and Bates,
published by Prometheus Nemesis.  The test results tend to come out
somewhat differently -- e.g., some people who show "Extravert" in the K&B
test seem to tend more to the middle of the scale in the original test --
but it is somewhat less dense reading than the original.

*Because "layperson" is a dactyl, you know... :-)
-- 
Full-Name:  J. Eric Roskos
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