Wednesday, October 2, 2019

Domination's the name of the game

Let's play a little game, you see, a game with some added reality: the "DiSC Assessment". It has to do with personality types. Back when I was at Shell, the "Myers Briggs" was all the rage; I didn't get to do this myself, but I was curious about it. These days I am more suspicious of management-endorsed psychology.

DiSC stands for "Dominance, influence, Steadiness, Conscientiousness". These traits remind me of the virtues worshipped in the magical Britannia world of the Ultima series. The stench of cult is wafting to my nose.

Psychological tests which buttonhole humans into Types cannot but lead to prejudice. We cannot discriminate against someone based on orientation (whether or not we should) but there's no civil-rights case against those duly discovered to have Authoritarian Personality. And anyway: the tests're all certainly bogus.

There is a Replication Crisis raging throughout the sciences, even in mathematics. The crisis is much, much worse in psychology. Many of those who get into psychology are more fit to be analysed themselves than on theorising how to analyse others. Freud was particularly bad.

Given I've just critiqued such tests for facilitating ad hominem, it's only fair I look into the inventor of DiSC... William Marston. If his name sounds familiar, you might be a comic fan like me - he invented Wonder Woman. There's a movie about this man. He was a polygamous weirdo.

DiSC was composed by a weirdo, is based on some VERY dubious pre-WW2 psychology, and leads to prejudice. Small wonder some Christians consider it heresy.

BACKDATING 10/4, based on research during work hours. They want me to take this test in work hours; they need to accept that I am going to be reading up on it during work hours.

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