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Aug. 19th, 2019 07:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkat1. Took me a lot of scrolling to refind this article on FB, where someone had posted it. (As an aside, people spam a lot of garbage on FB, and cats and puppies...lots and lots of puppy and kitty porn.)
Michelle Williams - Gwen Verdon Emmy Interview
Actually, my next question is a little out there, so it’s perfect. The connection between Bob and Gwen, their collective creative genius, could sometimes seem other-worldly. How did that inform your portrayal?
It was something Sam and I talked about a lot. I always thought that they were like twin souls. That they were the Yin and Yang, the male/female, and I think maybe there was something mystical at work there, but I think that there’s also something really practical at work there, too. They both came from very damaged backgrounds. They both had a lot of damage inflicted upon them at a very early age. It caused them both to want to rise above their circumstances through hard work and to be noticed for something greater than the sum of just their parts. It gave them drive and grit.
Gwen wanted to run away. Gwen wanted to not look back on the past. She became enamored with this idea of the eternal optimist or harlequin, a clown. That was her coping mechanism. Bob wanted to stare into the muck and see every bit of filth and debris and constantly mine this darkness. But I think of their connection as understanding something so elemental and so ancient inside of each other that, like you said, it goes beyond words.
Tell me a little bit about working with Sam, because you two had never really worked together before. Had you known each other? What was it like building that relationship?
We continued to be surprised by the fact that we hadn’t worked together before because we both live in New York, we both do plays, we have a lot of friends in common, and we’ve both sort of made our life in indie cinema.
And so we’re very surprised that this was the first time that we’ve incarnated together as husband and wife. Because I would think that we would have had multiple marriages by this point.
I’m actually really glad that we got to meet as Bob and Gwen and that we didn’t have a string of other failed marriages in front of us. I’m glad that we got to know each other as these characters without any history of other characters. But I hope that it can leave room for future characters because he just tells the truth.
Were you together in dance training before filming? How did that play out?
We were in dance training, we had rehearsals and script meetings and hair and makeup tests. And so we were around each other quite a lot before we started shooting. I mean we were really clinging to each other because we were both terrified.
Part of the brilliance of “Fosse/Verdon” is its scope, but that’s a huge challenge for an actor. Did the prospect of tackling the breadth of Gwen’s life change how you prepared for the role?
I actually didn’t understand the extent to which we were going to age the character. I’ve always really been scared of doing that on film, because I’ve never been 60 and it’s hard for me to imagine what that is or what that feels like or what that looks like. I always thought that that would just be too hard for me to do. Then you get on to all the trouble of aging makeup and prosthetics, and sometimes you can really just look like you’re hung out to dry. You can just look like an actor wearing makeup, and then the whole thing is ruined.
So after we were well underway and I realized that we were going to be playing these people at these various ages, I had a little freak out. Luckily, something that’s really helpful when you’re playing a person who existed is that there is this footage. So I really clung to a few pieces of archival material about how Gwen aged and how it changed her body and her voice and her gestures.
I started to just break it down really technically, and the thing that I loved about playing her as she got older is that as she aged, it’s not like she became down and drawn and harsh. I thought of her as a sunflower. She just aged upward and outward like she was looking for more sunshine. In fact, one thing that I noticed was that when she was younger her resting face would either look straight ahead or it would even sort of look down a little bit. As she got older, in order to compensate for the doubling of the chin, she started to look up.
With that, I just started to notice these things that were really her and if I could lean into them, they would make me feel like her. I also thought of her as working in contradiction with her age. She got lighter and airier and a little bit daffier, the older that she got. She lost a kind of groundedness or practicality. She just became more and more.
And so it was an interesting way to age somebody that I found really beautiful and inspiring and tricky, because you’re always looking to make somebody look older, but you’re not trying to make them look bad or worse or harsh or sad.
2. Yet another pseudo-psychologist has determined a way to categorize human beings by personality type. What's Your Type Can Make You a Better Communicator.
A decade ago, the biological anthropologist Helen Fisher set out to answer this question of how we choose whom we love. Dr. Fisher is known for her research scanning the brains of people in various stages of love, and she went looking for neurological clues.
She found them—and, in the process, she developed a broad personality test that, unlike many others, is based on brain science rather than psychology. The Fisher Temperament Inventory measures temperament, which comes from our genes, hormones and neurotransmitters. It can help people understand themselves and why they are attracted to certain people, both romantically and as friends or colleagues. (It turns out some personality types are attracted to people who are the opposite of them, while other types are attracted to people who are similar.) And when you know the personality type of loved ones or co-workers, you will understand how they prefer to communicate and will be able to tailor your approach to what works best. The inventory is so comprehensive that now some companies are using a version of it to help understand and motivate their employees.
To develop her test, Dr. Fisher spent two years reviewing medical and academic literature, searching for the personality traits linked to a biological system. She identified four systems, each with its own host of traits: the dopamine, serotonin, testosterone and estrogen systems. Dopamine and serotonin, which are neurotransmitters, govern our “stay or go” scale, which decides how comfortable we are exploring unknown risks or whether we prefer the familiar. Testosterone and estrogen are hormones and determine the extent to which our brains express male or female traits.
We all have all four systems—as do humans, monkeys, lizards and birds. But we each have different levels of activity in each system. Some of us are dominant in one or, more often, two areas. Some are more balanced. It’s more of a spectrum. “This is a new way of understanding personality,” says Dr. Fisher, who is a senior research fellow at the Kinsey Institute at Indiana University, in Bloomington, Ind., and the author of several books, including “The Anatomy of Love.” “You are not putting people in buckets.”
The four types are each associated with distinct traits. People high on the dopamine scale tend to be adventurous, curious, spontaneous, enthusiastic and independent. They have high energy, are comfortable taking risks and are mentally flexible and open-minded. Serotonin types are very social, traditional, calm and controlled, conscientious and detail-oriented. They love structure and making plans. Testosterone types are direct and decisive, aggressive, tough-minded, emotionally contained, competitive and logical. They have good spatial skills and are good at rule-based systems, such as math or music. Estrogen types are intuitive, introspective, imaginative, empathetic and trusting. They’re emotionally intelligent.
The personality test is sold to companies for $300 dollars, and she uses it for marriage counseling. So don't look for it online.
I'm skeptical.
Here's the scientific article that the WSJ journalist links to : Four broad temperament dimensions: description, convergent validation correlations, and comparison with the Big Five
Which makes me even more skeptical.
Materials and Methods
Online Participants
To test a relatively large, international, non-college population and thus offer statistical power and generalizability, this study used archived data from the commercial websites Chemistry.com and Match.com. Consequently, our samples consisted of anonymous survey data. Participant informed consent was obtained through the U.S. dating websites Chemistry.com® and Match.com® during the registration process when members acknowledged and accepted the privacy statement and third party data-release policies. Given informed consent was obtained by the primary party, not the researchers, Rutgers University and Pacific University Institutional Review Board did not require that we obtain or solicit for post hoc informed consent to use the online survey data.
North American Sample
A sample of 17,392 men and 22,521 women (N = 39,913) were solicited for their participation in this study through the U.S. Internet dating site, Chemistry.com®. There were no inclusion or exclusion criteria, the sample consisted of members or visitors to the dating website and required that all individuals were of 18 years of age, and were not currently in a relationship and were looking for someone to date.
The data were collected from test-takers over three consecutive weeks at Chemistry.com®. Participants ranged in age from 18 to 88 years (M = 37.0; SD = 12.6); 89.6% sought an opposite sex partner. The geographic range included all 50 of the United States and all 13 provinces in Canada, including urban, suburban, and rural populations. Over half of the participants did not report their ethnic identity (n = 23,530; 59%); those who did (n = 16,383; 41%) were calculated as part of the whole population. Participants who reported ethnicity included: 1,310 (8.0%) African-Americans; 12,505 (76.3%) self-reported Euro-Americans [i.e., Caucasians; 359 (2.2%) were self-reported as the broad descriptor, Asian; 861 (5.3%) participants were Latino or Latina; 59 (0.36%) participants reported a “Middle Eastern” ethnic identity; 103 (0.63%) were Native American; 262 (1.6%) simply selected the innocuous category of “Other” and finally 881 (5.4%) participants reported mixed ethnic identities]. In addition to the ethnic identity demographic information, 4,154 (10.4%) participants reported seeking same-sex partners while the remaining 35,759 (89.6%) sought opposite sex-partners.
International Sample
Individuals took translated versions of the FTI questionnaire on related Internet dating sites in six other countries. Included in the international sample were participants from Match.com® sites in: Germany (n = 12,498); France (n = 12,713); Spain (n = 12,652); Sweden (n = 12,722); Australia (n = 12,498), and Japan (n = 11,770). Translated questionnaires were used in all countries except Australia, where the U.S. measure was administered.
Eigen Analysis Sample
For the Eigen analysis, a North American sample of 100,000 different anonymous members of and visitors to the same Internet dating site was used. This different sample was used because the Eigen Analysis was carried out at a different time from the other studies. There were no inclusion or exclusion criteria, except that all individuals were single and not in a partnership. Participants came from all 50 American states and 13 Canadian provinces and territories. Participants ranged in age from 18 to 88 years (M = 39.6, SD = 13.4); 52% were female; 92.8% sought an opposite sex partner. The geographic range included urban, suburban, and rural populations. Site employees regularly check the composition of members and it did not differ over the time period during which the studies discussed in this paper were carried out.
College Student Participants
The criterion validity study of the FTI and the NEO-FFI used self-report data from 81 men (Mage = 21.77 years; SDage = 5.41) and 109 women (Mage = 20.18 years; SDage = 4.61) enrolled in undergraduate and professional programs at Pacific University (N = 215). For those students who had tied temperament dimensions (n = 24) or who did not complete the survey (n = 1), their data was omitted for a final sample of 190 students. All participants signed an informed consent disclosure, and were provided $25 remuneration for their involvement.
Materials
The 56-items FTI consists of the four broad temperament dimensions: Curious/Energetic; Cautious/Social Norm Compliant; Prosocial/Empathic; and Analytical/Tough-Minded; each category has 14-items. The response options reflect a four option, Likert-like agreement scale with a score of 0 for “strongly disagree,” 1 for “disagree” 2 for “agree” and 3 for “strongly agree” (Fisher et al., 2010b).
My difficulty with this -- is the whole thing is based on a series of assumptions:
* That people will accurately answer questionnaires
* That people will honestly answer the questionnaires without lying
* That people will know or are self-aware enough to answer them
* That you can determine from a sampling of say 200-500,00 people world-wide what everyone's personality type is?
* And that Match.com and Chemistry.com are reliable sources or any internet dating site is reliable for data collection
Also, they state it's based on "brain chemistry" not "psychology" but their techniques are psychological not biological. I'm not a scientist and I know this.
The questions were designed using the biological literature. For example, activity in the dopamine system has been correlated with novelty and thrill and adventure seeking, boredom susceptibility and disinhibition (Cloninger et al., 1991; Comings et al., 2000; Zuckerman and Kuhlman, 2000), stamina, motivation and achievement striving (Depue and Collins, 1999; Wacker et al., 2006); abstract intellectual exploration (DeYoung et al., 2002); cognitive flexibility (Ashby et al., 1999); curiosity (Zuckerman and Kuhlman, 2000); verbal and non-linguistic creativity, idea generation (Flaherty, 2005; Reuter et al., 2006), low anxiety (Laakso et al., 2003) and poor introspection (Cloninger et al., 1991). The Curious/Energetic scale included statements such as, “I am always doing new things,” “My friends would say I am very curious,” and “I have more energy than most people.”
Activity in the serotonin system has been correlated with adherence to social norms (i.e., conventionalism; Golimbet et al., 2004); self control and self-regulation (Linnoila et al., 1994; Manuck et al., 1998); sociability (Golimbet et al., 2004); harm avoidance (Parks et al., 1998; Golimbet et al., 2004); precision and interest in details (Cloninger et al., 1991); conscientiousness (Manuck et al., 1998; DeYoung et al., 2002, 2010; DeYoung and Gray, 2009); cooperation (Bilderbeck et al., 2014) managerial skills (e.g., cooperation, reduced commands and reduced autonomous problem-solving; Knutson et al., 1998); figural and numeric creativity (Reuter et al., 2006); and self-transcendence (e.g., religiosity; Lorenzi et al., 2005; Ott et al., 2005). The Cautious/Social Norm Compliant scale included statements such as: “People should behave in ways that are morally correct,” “My friends and family would say I have traditional values,” and “In general, I think it is important to follow rules.”
Prenatal testosterone priming is linked with enhanced visual-spatial perception, mathematical skills, musical aptitude, aggressiveness, and compromised verbal fluency (Geschwind and Galaburda, 1985; Manning et al., 2001; Manning, 2002). Endogenous testosterone is also associated with enhanced attention to detail, focused attention (Knickmeyer et al., 2005); diminished emotion recognition, eye contact and social sensitivity (Lutchmaya et al., 2002); and reduced empathy (Knickmeyer et al., 2006). Characteristics correlated with activational testosterone (i.e., post-natal exposure) include enhanced self-assurance (Zilioli and Watson, 2013), candid and assertive communication (Nyborg, 1994; Archer, 2006; Guinn Sellers et al., 2007), sensitivity to social dominance and drive for rank (Mazur et al., 1997; Eisenegger et al., 2011), and emotional comportment (Dabbs, 1997). Questions in the Analytical/Tough-minded scale include, “I enjoy competitive conversations,” “I am more analytical and logical than most people,” and “I understand complex machines easily.”
So it's biological testing -- if they are forming questions using biological literature? People can change their responses to questions at any given time and often on a whim. I know I have. It's why I don't think lie detection is valid. How do you know people aren't lying or making stuff up?
This in a nutshell is my difficulty with personality typing based on questionnaires. You need much more than that to determine someone's personality. Also personality isn't necessarily stangnant and often determined by environmental factors as well as DNA, biological makeup, and experiences.
I don't think we can determine what a person's personality is by having them answer a bunch of questions.
It's also controversial in the psychological field -- my last psychiatrist was diametrically opposed to it. He felt that you can't categorize or label people. And that personality is a fluid thing, people can change. I don't know if he's right either -- I was skeptical of his views as well - he was a follower of the Fred Neuman approach -- a psychologist who promoted social group therapy techniques.
It's possible that I've misunderstood what they've done. I didn't read the article that closely -- I tried, but my eyes began to glaze over.
3. Don't retire early, don't buy a home and don't be a lawyer if you want to be happy...
Sigh, well two out of three ain't bad...but seriously, now they tell me?
(Technically speaking, I'm not a lawyer -- or a practicing one. I'm a contract specialist -- not the same thing. A law degree is not required for my job, most of the people I work with do not have one. They all have finance, economics and engineering degrees, which amuses me daily. One has a political science degree.)
5. Don’t be a lawyer
Maybe it’s all the lawyer jokes, but those who practice law have been found to be particularly unhappy. A 1990 study from John Hopkins University found that lawyers were 3.6 times more likely than non-lawyers to suffer from depression.
Researchers point to three main reasons as to why lawyers have a hard time finding happiness:
Prudence is one of the main qualifications for lawyers, which can often translate to skepticism or pessimism.
The high pressure put on and low influence given to young associates are the sort of work conditions that result in low morale in other workplaces.
The work — at least in the U.S. — is often a zero-sum game where your win is someone else’s loss, creating a hyper-competitiveness that also drains one’s sense of workplace satisfaction.
A 2016 study conducted by the American Bar Association, concluded that attorneys “experience problematic drinking that is hazardous, harmful, or otherwise consistent with alcohol use disorders at a higher rate than other professional populations.”
3. That ART SPIEGLEMAN Article that wasn't published because of how he referred to a certain individual that was elected to the White House.
Created in New York by Jewish immigrants, the first comic book superheroes were mythic saviours who could combat the Nazi threat. They speak to the dark politics of our times.
Back in the benighted 20th century comic books were seen as subliterate trash for kiddies and intellectually challenged adults – badly written, hastily drawn and execrably printed. Martin Goodman, the founder and publisher of what is now known as Marvel Comics, once told Stan Lee that there was no point in trying to make the stories literate or worry about character development: “Just give them a lot of action and don’t use too many words.” It’s a genuine marvel that this formula led to works that were so resonant and vital.
The comic book format can be credited to a printing salesman, Maxwell Gaines, looking for a way to keep newspaper supplement presses rolling in 1933 by reprinting collections of popular newspaper comic strips in a half-tabloid format. As an experiment, he slapped a 10 cents sticker on a handful of the free pamphlets and saw them quickly sell out at a local newsstand. Soon most of the famous funnies were being gathered into comic books by a handful of publishers – and new content was needed at cheap reprint rates. This new material was mostly made up of third-rate imitations of existing newspaper strips, or genre stories echoing adventure, detective, western or jungle pulps. As Marshall McLuhan once pointed out, every medium subsumes the content of the medium that precedes it before it finds its own voice.
Enter Jerry Siegel, an aspiring teenage writer, and Joe Shuster, a young would-be artist – both nerdy alienated Jewish misfits many decades before that was remotely cool. They dreamed of the fame, riches and admiring glances from girls that a syndicated strip might bring, and developed their idea of a superhuman alien from a dying planet who would fight for truth, justice and the values of President Roosevelt’s New Deal. Barely out of childhood themselves, the boys’ idea was rejected by the newspaper syndicates as naive, juvenile and unskilled, before Gaines bought their 13 pages of Superman samples for Action Comics at 10 bucks a page – a fee that included all rights to the character. Not only was Siegel and Shuster’s creation the model for the brand new genre that came to define the medium, their lives were the tragic paradigm for creators bilked of the large rewards their creations brought.
Here's the article explaining why it was refused.
Art Spiegelman, the legendary graphic novelist behind Maus, has claimed that he was asked to remove criticism of Donald Trump from his introduction to a forthcoming Marvel book, because the comics publisher – whose chairman has donated to Trump’s campaign – is trying to stay “apolitical”.
Spiegelman, who won a Pulitzer prize for Maus, his story of the Holocaust, has written for Saturday’s Guardian that he was approached by publisher the Folio Society to write an introduction to Marvel: The Golden Age 1939–1949, a collection ranging from Captain America to the Human Torch.
Tracing how “the young Jewish creators of the first superheroes conjured up mythic – almost godlike – secular saviours” to address political issues such as the Great Depression and the second world war, Spiegelman finishes his essay by saying: “In today’s all too real world, Captain America’s most nefarious villain, the Red Skull, is alive on screen and an Orange Skull haunts America.”
After submitting the essay in June, Spiegelman says he was told by the Folio Society that Marvel Comics was trying to stay apolitical, “and is not allowing its publications to take a political stance”. Neither publisher responded to requests for comment from the Guardian, but Spiegelman claims he was asked to remove the sentence referring to the Red Skull or his introduction would not be published. He pulled the essay, placing it instead with the Guardian.
So, the UK Guardian published it instead -- ensuring that it got far broader readership than it would have with Marvel. This is true, by the way, it went viral. By refusing to publish it -- the Marvel Chair made it political and underlined it, and ensured far more people read it. I'd never have read it otherwise. Honestly, how many people will actually read the Foilo edition of the Marvel comics? Maybe 1 million if that? You'd think the marketing people would know this?
4. The Crown's New Cast Describes the upcoming season
Michelle Williams - Gwen Verdon Emmy Interview
Actually, my next question is a little out there, so it’s perfect. The connection between Bob and Gwen, their collective creative genius, could sometimes seem other-worldly. How did that inform your portrayal?
It was something Sam and I talked about a lot. I always thought that they were like twin souls. That they were the Yin and Yang, the male/female, and I think maybe there was something mystical at work there, but I think that there’s also something really practical at work there, too. They both came from very damaged backgrounds. They both had a lot of damage inflicted upon them at a very early age. It caused them both to want to rise above their circumstances through hard work and to be noticed for something greater than the sum of just their parts. It gave them drive and grit.
Gwen wanted to run away. Gwen wanted to not look back on the past. She became enamored with this idea of the eternal optimist or harlequin, a clown. That was her coping mechanism. Bob wanted to stare into the muck and see every bit of filth and debris and constantly mine this darkness. But I think of their connection as understanding something so elemental and so ancient inside of each other that, like you said, it goes beyond words.
Tell me a little bit about working with Sam, because you two had never really worked together before. Had you known each other? What was it like building that relationship?
We continued to be surprised by the fact that we hadn’t worked together before because we both live in New York, we both do plays, we have a lot of friends in common, and we’ve both sort of made our life in indie cinema.
And so we’re very surprised that this was the first time that we’ve incarnated together as husband and wife. Because I would think that we would have had multiple marriages by this point.
I’m actually really glad that we got to meet as Bob and Gwen and that we didn’t have a string of other failed marriages in front of us. I’m glad that we got to know each other as these characters without any history of other characters. But I hope that it can leave room for future characters because he just tells the truth.
Were you together in dance training before filming? How did that play out?
We were in dance training, we had rehearsals and script meetings and hair and makeup tests. And so we were around each other quite a lot before we started shooting. I mean we were really clinging to each other because we were both terrified.
Part of the brilliance of “Fosse/Verdon” is its scope, but that’s a huge challenge for an actor. Did the prospect of tackling the breadth of Gwen’s life change how you prepared for the role?
I actually didn’t understand the extent to which we were going to age the character. I’ve always really been scared of doing that on film, because I’ve never been 60 and it’s hard for me to imagine what that is or what that feels like or what that looks like. I always thought that that would just be too hard for me to do. Then you get on to all the trouble of aging makeup and prosthetics, and sometimes you can really just look like you’re hung out to dry. You can just look like an actor wearing makeup, and then the whole thing is ruined.
So after we were well underway and I realized that we were going to be playing these people at these various ages, I had a little freak out. Luckily, something that’s really helpful when you’re playing a person who existed is that there is this footage. So I really clung to a few pieces of archival material about how Gwen aged and how it changed her body and her voice and her gestures.
I started to just break it down really technically, and the thing that I loved about playing her as she got older is that as she aged, it’s not like she became down and drawn and harsh. I thought of her as a sunflower. She just aged upward and outward like she was looking for more sunshine. In fact, one thing that I noticed was that when she was younger her resting face would either look straight ahead or it would even sort of look down a little bit. As she got older, in order to compensate for the doubling of the chin, she started to look up.
With that, I just started to notice these things that were really her and if I could lean into them, they would make me feel like her. I also thought of her as working in contradiction with her age. She got lighter and airier and a little bit daffier, the older that she got. She lost a kind of groundedness or practicality. She just became more and more.
And so it was an interesting way to age somebody that I found really beautiful and inspiring and tricky, because you’re always looking to make somebody look older, but you’re not trying to make them look bad or worse or harsh or sad.
2. Yet another pseudo-psychologist has determined a way to categorize human beings by personality type. What's Your Type Can Make You a Better Communicator.
A decade ago, the biological anthropologist Helen Fisher set out to answer this question of how we choose whom we love. Dr. Fisher is known for her research scanning the brains of people in various stages of love, and she went looking for neurological clues.
She found them—and, in the process, she developed a broad personality test that, unlike many others, is based on brain science rather than psychology. The Fisher Temperament Inventory measures temperament, which comes from our genes, hormones and neurotransmitters. It can help people understand themselves and why they are attracted to certain people, both romantically and as friends or colleagues. (It turns out some personality types are attracted to people who are the opposite of them, while other types are attracted to people who are similar.) And when you know the personality type of loved ones or co-workers, you will understand how they prefer to communicate and will be able to tailor your approach to what works best. The inventory is so comprehensive that now some companies are using a version of it to help understand and motivate their employees.
To develop her test, Dr. Fisher spent two years reviewing medical and academic literature, searching for the personality traits linked to a biological system. She identified four systems, each with its own host of traits: the dopamine, serotonin, testosterone and estrogen systems. Dopamine and serotonin, which are neurotransmitters, govern our “stay or go” scale, which decides how comfortable we are exploring unknown risks or whether we prefer the familiar. Testosterone and estrogen are hormones and determine the extent to which our brains express male or female traits.
We all have all four systems—as do humans, monkeys, lizards and birds. But we each have different levels of activity in each system. Some of us are dominant in one or, more often, two areas. Some are more balanced. It’s more of a spectrum. “This is a new way of understanding personality,” says Dr. Fisher, who is a senior research fellow at the Kinsey Institute at Indiana University, in Bloomington, Ind., and the author of several books, including “The Anatomy of Love.” “You are not putting people in buckets.”
The four types are each associated with distinct traits. People high on the dopamine scale tend to be adventurous, curious, spontaneous, enthusiastic and independent. They have high energy, are comfortable taking risks and are mentally flexible and open-minded. Serotonin types are very social, traditional, calm and controlled, conscientious and detail-oriented. They love structure and making plans. Testosterone types are direct and decisive, aggressive, tough-minded, emotionally contained, competitive and logical. They have good spatial skills and are good at rule-based systems, such as math or music. Estrogen types are intuitive, introspective, imaginative, empathetic and trusting. They’re emotionally intelligent.
The personality test is sold to companies for $300 dollars, and she uses it for marriage counseling. So don't look for it online.
I'm skeptical.
Here's the scientific article that the WSJ journalist links to : Four broad temperament dimensions: description, convergent validation correlations, and comparison with the Big Five
Which makes me even more skeptical.
Materials and Methods
Online Participants
To test a relatively large, international, non-college population and thus offer statistical power and generalizability, this study used archived data from the commercial websites Chemistry.com and Match.com. Consequently, our samples consisted of anonymous survey data. Participant informed consent was obtained through the U.S. dating websites Chemistry.com® and Match.com® during the registration process when members acknowledged and accepted the privacy statement and third party data-release policies. Given informed consent was obtained by the primary party, not the researchers, Rutgers University and Pacific University Institutional Review Board did not require that we obtain or solicit for post hoc informed consent to use the online survey data.
North American Sample
A sample of 17,392 men and 22,521 women (N = 39,913) were solicited for their participation in this study through the U.S. Internet dating site, Chemistry.com®. There were no inclusion or exclusion criteria, the sample consisted of members or visitors to the dating website and required that all individuals were of 18 years of age, and were not currently in a relationship and were looking for someone to date.
The data were collected from test-takers over three consecutive weeks at Chemistry.com®. Participants ranged in age from 18 to 88 years (M = 37.0; SD = 12.6); 89.6% sought an opposite sex partner. The geographic range included all 50 of the United States and all 13 provinces in Canada, including urban, suburban, and rural populations. Over half of the participants did not report their ethnic identity (n = 23,530; 59%); those who did (n = 16,383; 41%) were calculated as part of the whole population. Participants who reported ethnicity included: 1,310 (8.0%) African-Americans; 12,505 (76.3%) self-reported Euro-Americans [i.e., Caucasians; 359 (2.2%) were self-reported as the broad descriptor, Asian; 861 (5.3%) participants were Latino or Latina; 59 (0.36%) participants reported a “Middle Eastern” ethnic identity; 103 (0.63%) were Native American; 262 (1.6%) simply selected the innocuous category of “Other” and finally 881 (5.4%) participants reported mixed ethnic identities]. In addition to the ethnic identity demographic information, 4,154 (10.4%) participants reported seeking same-sex partners while the remaining 35,759 (89.6%) sought opposite sex-partners.
International Sample
Individuals took translated versions of the FTI questionnaire on related Internet dating sites in six other countries. Included in the international sample were participants from Match.com® sites in: Germany (n = 12,498); France (n = 12,713); Spain (n = 12,652); Sweden (n = 12,722); Australia (n = 12,498), and Japan (n = 11,770). Translated questionnaires were used in all countries except Australia, where the U.S. measure was administered.
Eigen Analysis Sample
For the Eigen analysis, a North American sample of 100,000 different anonymous members of and visitors to the same Internet dating site was used. This different sample was used because the Eigen Analysis was carried out at a different time from the other studies. There were no inclusion or exclusion criteria, except that all individuals were single and not in a partnership. Participants came from all 50 American states and 13 Canadian provinces and territories. Participants ranged in age from 18 to 88 years (M = 39.6, SD = 13.4); 52% were female; 92.8% sought an opposite sex partner. The geographic range included urban, suburban, and rural populations. Site employees regularly check the composition of members and it did not differ over the time period during which the studies discussed in this paper were carried out.
College Student Participants
The criterion validity study of the FTI and the NEO-FFI used self-report data from 81 men (Mage = 21.77 years; SDage = 5.41) and 109 women (Mage = 20.18 years; SDage = 4.61) enrolled in undergraduate and professional programs at Pacific University (N = 215). For those students who had tied temperament dimensions (n = 24) or who did not complete the survey (n = 1), their data was omitted for a final sample of 190 students. All participants signed an informed consent disclosure, and were provided $25 remuneration for their involvement.
Materials
The 56-items FTI consists of the four broad temperament dimensions: Curious/Energetic; Cautious/Social Norm Compliant; Prosocial/Empathic; and Analytical/Tough-Minded; each category has 14-items. The response options reflect a four option, Likert-like agreement scale with a score of 0 for “strongly disagree,” 1 for “disagree” 2 for “agree” and 3 for “strongly agree” (Fisher et al., 2010b).
My difficulty with this -- is the whole thing is based on a series of assumptions:
* That people will accurately answer questionnaires
* That people will honestly answer the questionnaires without lying
* That people will know or are self-aware enough to answer them
* That you can determine from a sampling of say 200-500,00 people world-wide what everyone's personality type is?
* And that Match.com and Chemistry.com are reliable sources or any internet dating site is reliable for data collection
Also, they state it's based on "brain chemistry" not "psychology" but their techniques are psychological not biological. I'm not a scientist and I know this.
The questions were designed using the biological literature. For example, activity in the dopamine system has been correlated with novelty and thrill and adventure seeking, boredom susceptibility and disinhibition (Cloninger et al., 1991; Comings et al., 2000; Zuckerman and Kuhlman, 2000), stamina, motivation and achievement striving (Depue and Collins, 1999; Wacker et al., 2006); abstract intellectual exploration (DeYoung et al., 2002); cognitive flexibility (Ashby et al., 1999); curiosity (Zuckerman and Kuhlman, 2000); verbal and non-linguistic creativity, idea generation (Flaherty, 2005; Reuter et al., 2006), low anxiety (Laakso et al., 2003) and poor introspection (Cloninger et al., 1991). The Curious/Energetic scale included statements such as, “I am always doing new things,” “My friends would say I am very curious,” and “I have more energy than most people.”
Activity in the serotonin system has been correlated with adherence to social norms (i.e., conventionalism; Golimbet et al., 2004); self control and self-regulation (Linnoila et al., 1994; Manuck et al., 1998); sociability (Golimbet et al., 2004); harm avoidance (Parks et al., 1998; Golimbet et al., 2004); precision and interest in details (Cloninger et al., 1991); conscientiousness (Manuck et al., 1998; DeYoung et al., 2002, 2010; DeYoung and Gray, 2009); cooperation (Bilderbeck et al., 2014) managerial skills (e.g., cooperation, reduced commands and reduced autonomous problem-solving; Knutson et al., 1998); figural and numeric creativity (Reuter et al., 2006); and self-transcendence (e.g., religiosity; Lorenzi et al., 2005; Ott et al., 2005). The Cautious/Social Norm Compliant scale included statements such as: “People should behave in ways that are morally correct,” “My friends and family would say I have traditional values,” and “In general, I think it is important to follow rules.”
Prenatal testosterone priming is linked with enhanced visual-spatial perception, mathematical skills, musical aptitude, aggressiveness, and compromised verbal fluency (Geschwind and Galaburda, 1985; Manning et al., 2001; Manning, 2002). Endogenous testosterone is also associated with enhanced attention to detail, focused attention (Knickmeyer et al., 2005); diminished emotion recognition, eye contact and social sensitivity (Lutchmaya et al., 2002); and reduced empathy (Knickmeyer et al., 2006). Characteristics correlated with activational testosterone (i.e., post-natal exposure) include enhanced self-assurance (Zilioli and Watson, 2013), candid and assertive communication (Nyborg, 1994; Archer, 2006; Guinn Sellers et al., 2007), sensitivity to social dominance and drive for rank (Mazur et al., 1997; Eisenegger et al., 2011), and emotional comportment (Dabbs, 1997). Questions in the Analytical/Tough-minded scale include, “I enjoy competitive conversations,” “I am more analytical and logical than most people,” and “I understand complex machines easily.”
So it's biological testing -- if they are forming questions using biological literature? People can change their responses to questions at any given time and often on a whim. I know I have. It's why I don't think lie detection is valid. How do you know people aren't lying or making stuff up?
This in a nutshell is my difficulty with personality typing based on questionnaires. You need much more than that to determine someone's personality. Also personality isn't necessarily stangnant and often determined by environmental factors as well as DNA, biological makeup, and experiences.
I don't think we can determine what a person's personality is by having them answer a bunch of questions.
It's also controversial in the psychological field -- my last psychiatrist was diametrically opposed to it. He felt that you can't categorize or label people. And that personality is a fluid thing, people can change. I don't know if he's right either -- I was skeptical of his views as well - he was a follower of the Fred Neuman approach -- a psychologist who promoted social group therapy techniques.
It's possible that I've misunderstood what they've done. I didn't read the article that closely -- I tried, but my eyes began to glaze over.
3. Don't retire early, don't buy a home and don't be a lawyer if you want to be happy...
Sigh, well two out of three ain't bad...but seriously, now they tell me?
(Technically speaking, I'm not a lawyer -- or a practicing one. I'm a contract specialist -- not the same thing. A law degree is not required for my job, most of the people I work with do not have one. They all have finance, economics and engineering degrees, which amuses me daily. One has a political science degree.)
5. Don’t be a lawyer
Maybe it’s all the lawyer jokes, but those who practice law have been found to be particularly unhappy. A 1990 study from John Hopkins University found that lawyers were 3.6 times more likely than non-lawyers to suffer from depression.
Researchers point to three main reasons as to why lawyers have a hard time finding happiness:
Prudence is one of the main qualifications for lawyers, which can often translate to skepticism or pessimism.
The high pressure put on and low influence given to young associates are the sort of work conditions that result in low morale in other workplaces.
The work — at least in the U.S. — is often a zero-sum game where your win is someone else’s loss, creating a hyper-competitiveness that also drains one’s sense of workplace satisfaction.
A 2016 study conducted by the American Bar Association, concluded that attorneys “experience problematic drinking that is hazardous, harmful, or otherwise consistent with alcohol use disorders at a higher rate than other professional populations.”
3. That ART SPIEGLEMAN Article that wasn't published because of how he referred to a certain individual that was elected to the White House.
Created in New York by Jewish immigrants, the first comic book superheroes were mythic saviours who could combat the Nazi threat. They speak to the dark politics of our times.
Back in the benighted 20th century comic books were seen as subliterate trash for kiddies and intellectually challenged adults – badly written, hastily drawn and execrably printed. Martin Goodman, the founder and publisher of what is now known as Marvel Comics, once told Stan Lee that there was no point in trying to make the stories literate or worry about character development: “Just give them a lot of action and don’t use too many words.” It’s a genuine marvel that this formula led to works that were so resonant and vital.
The comic book format can be credited to a printing salesman, Maxwell Gaines, looking for a way to keep newspaper supplement presses rolling in 1933 by reprinting collections of popular newspaper comic strips in a half-tabloid format. As an experiment, he slapped a 10 cents sticker on a handful of the free pamphlets and saw them quickly sell out at a local newsstand. Soon most of the famous funnies were being gathered into comic books by a handful of publishers – and new content was needed at cheap reprint rates. This new material was mostly made up of third-rate imitations of existing newspaper strips, or genre stories echoing adventure, detective, western or jungle pulps. As Marshall McLuhan once pointed out, every medium subsumes the content of the medium that precedes it before it finds its own voice.
Enter Jerry Siegel, an aspiring teenage writer, and Joe Shuster, a young would-be artist – both nerdy alienated Jewish misfits many decades before that was remotely cool. They dreamed of the fame, riches and admiring glances from girls that a syndicated strip might bring, and developed their idea of a superhuman alien from a dying planet who would fight for truth, justice and the values of President Roosevelt’s New Deal. Barely out of childhood themselves, the boys’ idea was rejected by the newspaper syndicates as naive, juvenile and unskilled, before Gaines bought their 13 pages of Superman samples for Action Comics at 10 bucks a page – a fee that included all rights to the character. Not only was Siegel and Shuster’s creation the model for the brand new genre that came to define the medium, their lives were the tragic paradigm for creators bilked of the large rewards their creations brought.
Here's the article explaining why it was refused.
Art Spiegelman, the legendary graphic novelist behind Maus, has claimed that he was asked to remove criticism of Donald Trump from his introduction to a forthcoming Marvel book, because the comics publisher – whose chairman has donated to Trump’s campaign – is trying to stay “apolitical”.
Spiegelman, who won a Pulitzer prize for Maus, his story of the Holocaust, has written for Saturday’s Guardian that he was approached by publisher the Folio Society to write an introduction to Marvel: The Golden Age 1939–1949, a collection ranging from Captain America to the Human Torch.
Tracing how “the young Jewish creators of the first superheroes conjured up mythic – almost godlike – secular saviours” to address political issues such as the Great Depression and the second world war, Spiegelman finishes his essay by saying: “In today’s all too real world, Captain America’s most nefarious villain, the Red Skull, is alive on screen and an Orange Skull haunts America.”
After submitting the essay in June, Spiegelman says he was told by the Folio Society that Marvel Comics was trying to stay apolitical, “and is not allowing its publications to take a political stance”. Neither publisher responded to requests for comment from the Guardian, but Spiegelman claims he was asked to remove the sentence referring to the Red Skull or his introduction would not be published. He pulled the essay, placing it instead with the Guardian.
So, the UK Guardian published it instead -- ensuring that it got far broader readership than it would have with Marvel. This is true, by the way, it went viral. By refusing to publish it -- the Marvel Chair made it political and underlined it, and ensured far more people read it. I'd never have read it otherwise. Honestly, how many people will actually read the Foilo edition of the Marvel comics? Maybe 1 million if that? You'd think the marketing people would know this?
4. The Crown's New Cast Describes the upcoming season
no subject
Date: 2019-08-20 06:07 pm (UTC)I'm certainly not going back to school to become a lawyer but it's too late for the first two. I retired in 2012 (for medical reasons) and we paid off our house in 2013. I definitely see cognitive decline in myself but I don't think retiring early is causative. And thank goodness we did buy a home when we did (1983)--on our fixed income, we could never afford to continue to live in Los Angeles otherwise. We had very little money for a down payment at the time, so we had to get Kyle's dad to co-sign on the loan. Interest rates were ridiculous, too--I think ours was close to 14 or 15 percent at the start and 8 or 9 percent the first time we refinanced. Obviously we really, really wanted to own our own home.
I'm reasonably happy, all things considered. I'd be happier if my husband's health were better but that's out of my control.
no subject
Date: 2019-08-21 12:14 am (UTC)I'm skeptical of the "don't retire early, etc" bit. People keep trying to codify what will make you happy. But happiness can't be found outside of ourselves. It's a state being. I know people who retired in their late 60s and 70s, that aren't happy, and people who retired in their late 50s that are. One guy retired at 70 and died three years later. He was a lawyer and wanted to be a carpenter. Got three years.
no subject
Date: 2019-08-21 01:24 am (UTC)I suspect the retiring early thing has a lot to do with the loss of social networks as well as a lot of people having low boredom thresholds. That said, it helps a lot to do volunteer work or some other regular activity that gives people some kind of a schedule. Not being paid is not the same as not working.
I think the aging thing is also true because people's not giving a fuck grows. But the actual aging thing does come with significant downsides after a certain point. It's just that I think people who are still alive are just happy they are -- it gives you a new sense of perspective.
My guess is that lawyers are unhappy because there are few jobs that will give you a better overview as to how rigged our systems are and how much simple luck factors into one's life.
Also, I'd say that "complain with purpose" isn't really complaining at all, it's being a fixer.
no subject
Date: 2019-08-21 02:44 am (UTC)It's not often I see the obvious (to me) statement that one tends to have more leisure time and less worry when one doesn't own a house. There's a reason we continue to rent after a dozen years here.
I rather liked that bit myself. Everyone was pressuring me to buy a house about ten years ago. And then, they stopped. Mainly because they began to realize that there were benefits to not owning a house. For one thing, you aren't responsible for the maintenance and upkeep. The landlord is. That's part of your rent. And you aren't responsible for things (at least I'm not) like garbage removal, exterior, landscaping, snow removal, heat, water, etc. Nor do I have to stay home -- the super can do that -- when it needs repairs.
Plus? Rent is weirdly cheaper than mortgage, plus taxes, plus upkeep, plus maintenance...
Sure I don't get to sell it -- but I don't want to deal with that headache either. That involves hiring a lawyer, drawing up contracts, getting a realtor - etc. Renting isn't nearly as stressful.
I suspect the retiring early thing has a lot to do with the loss of social networks as well as a lot of people having low boredom thresholds. That said, it helps a lot to do volunteer work or some other regular activity that gives people some kind of a schedule. Not being paid is not the same as not working.
I don't disagree -- my father said that people who found stuff to do when they retired did far better than those who didn't. If you don't have any hobbies...or anything to grab your mind, you are going to get bored and depressed fast.
That said? It depends. My social life was a lot better when I was unemployed than it is now -- I had more time to go out and hang with people. And my father retired early -- he did a lot of high mental activities. Retiring later would not have helped him any, if anything it would have made things worse -- since he had a high stress job.
Academics and teachers can work for a lot longer than management consultants who are on and off airplanes every single day.
I'm not sure you can generalize on that one.
My guess is that lawyers are unhappy because there are few jobs that will give you a better overview as to how rigged our systems are and how much simple luck factors into one's life.
Yeah, pretty much. It's also an exceedingly frustrating job, with long hours, and a lot of banging of one's head against a wall. Not to mention that the people you are working along side, are well..bullies. Nasty. Ill-mannered. Competitive. Bullies. Law does not attract the kindest people on the planet. I hated law school. It felt like high school all over again.
Also, I'd say that "complain with purpose" isn't really complaining at all, it's being a fixer.
Exactly. Pro-active complaining.
Some things can't be fixed. Or they can, but only by falling into another bigger problem. (Leave workplace you are having issues with -- unemployed and broke.)
no subject
Date: 2019-08-21 05:40 pm (UTC)Rent can definitely be cheaper, especially because it is more predictable -- at least until your lease renews you better know your monthly costs. And to me not having to buy OR sell is a real benefit. When we sold my family home, we got one offer in a year's time and Mike and I had to live apart (and support two households) for 8 months. More than a few people during the last recession got stuck with homes for years, having to be absentee landlords until the market improved. A house is an investment but it's one where one can lose money and trash one's credit in the process.
Agreed, the retirement issue depends on the person, their job, their plans, and also the unpredictable factor of how long one lives.
The clients can also be extremely trying. One can't always choose them either.
no subject
Date: 2019-08-21 06:48 pm (UTC)In NYC -- since you have no control over your heat (usually in apartments, depends), they pay for it. That's the general rule. If the tenant has no access or control -- the landlord pays for the utilities and maitainence. It's been a life saver with an apartment. But it can also be frustrating at times. They don't always repair things quickly and I can't do most of it myself.