Comment Re:Self-assessment fundamentally flawed (Score 1) 473
No, because you're suggesting that the general goal for the entire field of Psychological studies is to eventually be able to predict peoples outcomes, which isn't the case.
The goal is simply to understand. The mind is just as interesting if not more than say, general anatomy. Psychology is striving to understand people and what makes them act the way they do, and one way to do it is by recognizing trends in peoples behaviors as patterns, and forming hypothesis from them. This does not make it imprecise, this just implies the complexity of the source material these ideas are coming from.
When it comes to things like typing personalities the main goal is not to tell you who you are; it is to help you understand the way your brain receives information, and the processes it goes through interpreting this information in order to understand why you function the way you do and the roots of all your actions and personal reasonings.
And it is true verifying anything that has to do with the mind is very difficult, but it's slowly happening. Ultimately, we truly are nothing more than chemicals interacting in predictable ways and neurons firing and all that jazz--just on a really large scale. Understanding this is possible, and this is the understanding that Psychology is striving towards.
But first, we gotta get a basic understanding. It would have been ridiculous trying to study black holes before we had the faintest concept of gravity or light, and I look at psychology in a similar way.
I think it's fascinating. I am really excited when our understanding of the physical workings of our brains get to a point where we'll be able to say things like "You're an INTP because of these certain reactions causing these particular relationships which invoke these reactions because of....." you get my point.
The goal is simply to understand. The mind is just as interesting if not more than say, general anatomy. Psychology is striving to understand people and what makes them act the way they do, and one way to do it is by recognizing trends in peoples behaviors as patterns, and forming hypothesis from them. This does not make it imprecise, this just implies the complexity of the source material these ideas are coming from.
When it comes to things like typing personalities the main goal is not to tell you who you are; it is to help you understand the way your brain receives information, and the processes it goes through interpreting this information in order to understand why you function the way you do and the roots of all your actions and personal reasonings.
And it is true verifying anything that has to do with the mind is very difficult, but it's slowly happening. Ultimately, we truly are nothing more than chemicals interacting in predictable ways and neurons firing and all that jazz--just on a really large scale. Understanding this is possible, and this is the understanding that Psychology is striving towards.
But first, we gotta get a basic understanding. It would have been ridiculous trying to study black holes before we had the faintest concept of gravity or light, and I look at psychology in a similar way.
I think it's fascinating. I am really excited when our understanding of the physical workings of our brains get to a point where we'll be able to say things like "You're an INTP because of these certain reactions causing these particular relationships which invoke these reactions because of....." you get my point.
