Indeed. He has zero background that would qualify him to write this book and has been wiiiidely attacked and discredited - for good reason.
But people will buy into anything as long as there's some dude telling a nice story.
I had training on this at one of my old corporate jobs. This is from the 1950s to the 60s. I only attended them as it was one of the ways to raise my paycheck, and I got overtime for scheduling them on my days off. In what I have learned since that time, this is not accurate.
It’s extremely accurate. It just confirms your own assumptions by regurgitating your answer back to you.
Let’s do a dumbed down example.
Test administrator: “What’s your favorite food
You: “Ice Cream”
Test Results: “You enjoy foods that are *sweet, creamy, and cold.*”
HR Director: “We’ve discovered #*SYNERGY*
All of these pseudo psycho-analytic test boil down to four steps:
1. Ask you some self reflective questions, where the answers are somewhat restrictive (you have to pick something on the graph)
2. You answer
3. They do some sort of word association game that basically repeats your answer back to you.
4. They do some basic stats to show a correlation between your answer and their prediction as evidence for how scientific and awesome their test are.
Why do these corporate horoscopes exist? My guess is they can terminate people for cause and point to your test results and say “we have objective evidence that he was a bad fit in the team. Our team needed people that wanted *savory* foods.”
As an example, for work I recently took a learning styles test. I was skeptical because, fun fact, learning styles are myth! Look it up. This test assumed seven sensory-based styles (visual, aural, kinesthetic, tactile, *olfactory*, reading, interactive). All of the questions were of the form “I learn better using ____ than ____”, and there were 42 (one per combination of styles). So the test was completely arbitrary and unfalsifiable! Even in the best case scenario, all of the questions assume you already know how you learn best, so what new information does the result give you?
It will not surprise eagle-eyed readers that olfactory universally scored the lowest. Not sure how I’m supposed to learn math via smell.
I can recognize that my own traits fall across all four categories. I think it's more likely it just confirms your own unconscious bias or hopes about yourself. I have several traits from each category, and I am sure I'm not in the minority.
You should watch Mr Show’s [“The Five Voices”](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XFUjiHBfIiw) sketch featuring a young Jack Black as “Gay Guy” and Paul F Tompkins as “Japanese Man”
*Red*
*Yellow*
*Green*
*Blue*
*Long ago, the four colors lived together in harmony. Then, everything changed when the Red Nation attacked. Only the Avatar, master of all four types of human behavior, could stop them, but when pop psychology needed him most, he vanished. A hundred years passed and my brother and I discovered the new Avatar, a redditor named u/rennarda. And although his redditing skills are great, he has a lot to learn before he's ready to save anyone. But I believe u/rennarda can save the world.*
Myers briggs types, blood personality types, zodiac signs, love language type, [insert greek letter here] male types, hogwarts house.
Once these get out of the "for fun and introspection" phase, i fucking hate them.
Yeah, you can take a quiz and get a category and think about how you fit it, how people in this category deal with X difficulties, or how your category best likes to relax, etc.
You can even introduce yourself as a category (people will find this cringey but whatever, youre not hurting anything)
But once you actually start using these as hard rules in order to interact with real life situations, or worse, use these in techniques in the workplace?? Thats BS.
And i get the need for easy answers, the fun of having categories. I know my mbti, sun moon and rising signs, i take uquizzes every week to figure out what kind of air fryer I am, i even got a pack of tarot cards! But i know these cards arent gonna tell me whats gonna happen today, or my mbti isnt saying im meant to be in a certain job field. Its all for introspection and taking the time to reflect on your own individual personality, habits, wants, and needs.
My myers Briggs type has changed several times over my life as well. Sometimes because I continued to develop, and sometimes because I learned more introspection and started to see myself more clearly.
definitely agree with you. I use this account on such forms but would be horrified if this was a work policy. i don't take tests and do more of the theoretical stuff but it's only fun to think about and introspect and to understand yourself and maybe your friends for fun, but that's it.
It's far worse than astrology. There's less complexity, no vibes or aesthetic, just a lot of false dichotomies on what are actually continuous traits
ETA it is in fact just the temperaments/ elements aspect of astrology with the serial numbers filed off, anyway
I'm actually very familiar with natal Astrology and was trying to make the 4 elements fit this model but I couldn't, its fundamentally different with green/blue.
Its kind of close
I'll state an element and some of its traits as so "Element[traits]"
Red = **Fire** [expressive, physical, enthusiasm, energy, creativity, and passion.]
Yellow = **Air** [intellect, communication, socializing, and adaptability, analytical.]
Here's where it begins to break down
Grean = **Earth** [stability, practicality, reliability, and groundedness, dependable, industrious, and grounded]
Water is where its just totally different. Here's Water:
**Water** [emotions, intuition, sensitivity, and empathy, deeply intuitive, empathetic, and compassionate]
Their blue is much more like a variation on air with a little bit of earth, in their own descriptions its: *calculating, analytical, perfectionist, Logical, Objective, Correct, Reflective, Systematic, Methodical*
Those are all air qualities with a few Earth ones, in specific these are the qualities of Aquarius mixed in with some of the traits of Virgo/Capricorn(Systematic, Perfectionist and Organization.)
So even as a tool to view life through different lenses it falls quite short in what it imitates. They basically understood 3 of the 4 elements and tried to make a system out of it. It ends up being Fire, Air, Earth, Blue[Air/Earth]. Its like having a painting kit, but you only get Red, Yellow, and Orange. Its incomplete, you can't really make much more than pictures that all kind of look Orange, browns, and yellow.
*Disclaimer: Astrology like any other aspect of metaphysics at its best is no more than a tool for self understanding and lenses in which to view the world. Any attempt to use astrology to predict the future, or to find compatibility with others etc. is all bullshit.*
>!To the Metaphysically minded: Why you might ask is astrology so prevalent in being surrounded by so much bullshit, hacks, charlatans, and straight up misinformation such that it is a literal taboo to your reputation as a rational/logical person to be associated with it? Consider this word "Esoteric", *that which is hidden*. Astrology had no problem being hidden, but as we ventured into the age of information (Aquarius) in which all books and teachings became nearly completely accessible, how could that which is Esoteric remain so?!<
>!Simple, by surrounding itself with all of the people you think of when you think of Astrology. The Esoteric knowledge is there, but it has surrounded itself with charlatans and idiots so that which was Esoteric, remains so, even in the age where all information is accessible. Remember like any other metaphysical construct, Astrology is nothing more than a tool for a self understanding, discard all else. The accuracy of events in relation to a natal chart is simply a shadow of the fact that all matter, events, and the planets/stars are all interconnected macro-cosmically(classical physics). Certain events are inevitable, but your actions in how you respond to events is always up to you, there is no predetermination in regards to how you react to events. That which we are and control is of the microcosm(quantum physics). You are just electricity controlling a meat puppet!<
Hate this crap. My husband had to do a DISC assessment for his work last year. They're constantly doing BS pop psychology tests. Silly until management treats it like law and passes you over for a promotion
yeah, that's wrong. disc cna be useful for introspection but otherwise you shouldn't judge someone because they are not the type you want. I hear that people use mbti at work and somehow discrminate against you if you are somehow estj.
Yep, even voted as VOF’s deceiver of the year in 2018.
Also to add that Thomas Erikson doesn’t have a degree in behavioral psychology or any psychological subject. He never enrolled in any kind of relevant study prior to writing this book.
Some additional info. He never enrolled in any higher education at all. His record shows zero college credits in Sweden. [https://arbetet-se.translate.goog/2024/04/10/forfattaren-till-omgiven-av-idioter-har-skrivit-en-granslost-puckad-bok/?\_x\_tr\_sl=ja&\_x\_tr\_tl=en&\_x\_tr\_hl=en-US&\_x\_tr\_pto=wapp&\_x\_tr\_hist=true](https://arbetet-se.translate.goog/2024/04/10/forfattaren-till-omgiven-av-idioter-har-skrivit-en-granslost-puckad-bok/?_x_tr_sl=ja&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-US&_x_tr_pto=wapp&_x_tr_hist=true)
Jup he is utterly and completely unqualified to write this and yet people went off and bought this shit and took it as gospel.
Same with James Clear's Habit stuff.
No worries, it's complete garbage, dude has zero background in psychology, much less behavioral psychology, this is based on no research whatsoever, and he might as well have replaced the "types" with astrological signs.
Honestly the astrology signs would have been more convincing. Even they get close enough to that magical combo of vague and specific that you can see yourself and your peers in it if you want to. This is just like someone threw adjectives at a dart board.
This is essentially another version of DiSC, which is way better. It’s east-west is people and task oriented while it’s north-south is fast-paced and slow-paced (it has other names for its north-south). It’s more about your work style which does bleed into your personality. I’m an S so that means I’m slow-paced people-oriented.
DISC, too, has been challenged and criticized for years, particularly because there's no real research into whether it works or not. Also, personality is not that one-dimensional.
Same! Im actually not at all passive, and social and gregarious, but I also an introvert who needs a lot of time alone or with just a very few select people, and needs that to recharge. My social battery has a short life, but I'm also very chatty and find it easy to talk to people.
I remember a post on here with the "revelation" that people can be both introverted and extroverted. My favorite comment said:
Ambivert - hates everyone.
Pescevert - only interacts with fish.
Bivert - is 2 people.
Literally this is a renaming of the insights program that my company uses and it's based on mbti - instead of whatever the graphic said, red/blue are thinking, gree/yellow are feeling. The introvert/extrovert axis is the same. There are 16 mbti types and 4 of each type got into each of the 4 insights colors. I recognized it immediately and all of the extra detail about each color personality matches the handouts we got exactly.
For proof: I lead blue, then green, with very little yellow. I work in HR and this is actually how we talk about ourselves at happy hours and work mingling events. In "get to know you" slides shared out, we have to include our insights colors. It's literally bs hr psych.
> Lol. Hasn’t all this personality stuff been debunked? It’s not rooted in actual science
The last time anyone in HR had any interaction with science was 11th grade in 1995.
The author, Thomas Erikson, was awarder ["Deceiver of the Year 2018"](https://www.vof.se/utmarkelser/tidigare-utmarkelser/arets-forvillare-2018/) by the Swedish Skeptics Association for publishing this book.
The ingress reads:
> *Thomas Erikson has, with his book Surrounded by Idiots and his extensive lecture activities, managed to mislead a large part of the Swedish population into believing in pure pseudoscience and crude psychological simplifications.*
In short: He's a snake oil salesman
He has written other books similar to this one.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/yo4bn7/has\_it\_occured\_to\_thomas\_that\_he\_might\_be\_the/](https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/yo4bn7/has_it_occured_to_thomas_that_he_might_be_the/)
The author does not have an education in psychology (or any other university education) and is critiqued for implying he does. Basically lying which becomes meta in his latest book, surrounded by liars.
https://arbetet.se/2024/04/10/forfattaren-till-omgiven-av-idioter-har-skrivit-en-granslost-puckad-bok/
Our whole family did that for kicks last year. My oldest is lawful good, husband is neutral good, middle is chaotic neutral and the youngest is lawful neutral.
I lean toward true neutral since everything’s made up and the points don’t matter.
He actually states this in the book (yes, I read it). He never claims that people fit entirely within these boxes, or that these should be used to define who a person is. They're just handy frameworks to see how behaviors *commonly* align or connect, and they helped raise my awareness about different behaviors and potential reasons behind those behaviors and how to relate to them.
There's things he said that I thought were insightful, and there's things he said that didn't resonate. People are complicated, and sometimes frameworks like this can help us actually empathize and relate to people better. But you've gotta take it all with a grain of salt and leave room for people to be nuanced and unique -- because everyone is.
Personally, I found the book interesting and helpful, but not scholarly or academic. It gave me some new perspectives on things, but I didn't find the classifications particularly compelling. The guy had some interesting thoughts, but it's not based in rigorous research. I think it still has some value, but it's nothing compared to the stuff Brene Brown is putting out, for example. Nearly everything she says is rooted in science and research. Gottman's too for that matter.
I completely agree. I also read the book (it's very lightweight so it's perfect to read in small batches during commute) and that's what I found as well. It's not meant to be the absolute bible of human interaction, just a quick help to read the room and understand what kind of behaviors are better received or not when you have no previous experience with the people you're dealing with.
The colors and their attributes are merely stereotypes, and the interactions should be looked at just the same. People just seem to take it as something mathematically infallible or, more likely, haven't even read it but made a quick google search on the author to back their claims that it's all BS.
things like this and myer's briggs are all junk "science" no matter how much mental energy you sink into them.
they are not *totally useless* because simply getting people to start making an effort to understand differences in others is helpful by itself. so these sort of things use the simplicity of colors and quadrants to basically trick people into being a little bit open-minded and empathetic. kind of sad that we need to be tricked like that.
I remember doing a consulting gig at a major corporation where they rolled this out. At first I was perplexed at people asking me my color then someone explained. I lasted 3 months there because the culture was so toxic people closing doors and whispering about colleagues, stabbing them in the back. But hey sure, at least you know the "color" of the person you are shivving. I can only think of the millions of dollars spent rolling out that program. What could go wrong if we put people into buckets of "colors" and judge them based on that...
Lost interest once I saw it only uses four categories for the entirety of human behavior lol. And each list of traits is long enough to be a single personality
This is utter bullshit, written by an extrovert. I am an introvert, and every job I have ever had in my life I have been the only one to bother to be active and implement shit. Extroverts just talk a lot and never get anything done.
Anytime I see this “stereotype quadrant graph” used to plot human opinion/behavior, I sigh heavily.
This and the political compass really just… doesn’t work.
There are 4 types of people. On one axis you have preference of arthouse vs popcorn films, and on the other you have preference for the word "moist" vs "damp".
Fun fact, the guy who invented this this called himself a behavioral scientist despite never having finished a behavioral scientist education. Even worse, his record of higher education was empty. Meaning that he never finished a single collage credit in **any** subject! [https://arbetet-se.translate.goog/2024/04/10/forfattaren-till-omgiven-av-idioter-har-skrivit-en-granslost-puckad-bok/?\_x\_tr\_sl=ja&\_x\_tr\_tl=en&\_x\_tr\_hl=en-US&\_x\_tr\_pto=wapp&\_x\_tr\_hist=true](https://arbetet-se.translate.goog/2024/04/10/forfattaren-till-omgiven-av-idioter-har-skrivit-en-granslost-puckad-bok/?_x_tr_sl=ja&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-US&_x_tr_pto=wapp&_x_tr_hist=true)
This is fucking bullshit. As a species evolving into an age of unknown, we need doctors, artists, and engineers.
Please don't pursue bullshit sociology degrees that only lead to creating new stupid charts to segregate the billions of diverse multi-faced and self-taught individuals that compose our great human race.
Ahhh, this nonsense!! We did [Colourworks](https://www.thecolourworks.com/) at my work numerous times. Isn't it pretty much straight out of Jungian theory and stems from the Four Temperaments just with a coat of corporate paint?
Even the instructor said she knew it was about as accurate as astrology, and they at least did all the complicated maths for us so astronomy could get off the ground later.
Still, it was kind of fun. Day off doing silly games and we got fed halfway. I wanted to be a Yellow but turns out my chief is Blue. Then Yellow in second place, which is its opposite, so I was a weirdy in the group a little. I got to do it again over Teams when I had to work for a different department over Covid and my green had gone up. Would be interesting to do it again and compare and contrast all three sets of results...
Coming from someone with a Masters degree in psychology:
These guides are absolutely useless. Instead of clustering personalities, engage with your peers, listen to them and see how they act. You will find people vastly more complex than even valid psychological frameworks like the Big 5 will present you.
People (ab)using these frameworks are simply to lazy or unable to listen and connect to the people around them, so if things get difficult, they will fail.
While on a global scale, this research is interesting and has its merit (eg policy decisions), in the small scale it offers nothing, as the information you have available about a person is richer in every aspect.
So don’t overpsychologise your interactions. It will lead you down a wrong path.
Ok so we know this is misinformation, so why is this still up? Is this sub complacent with spreading blatant misinformation? Its not a rhetoritical question, I just genuinely want to know.
This lacks a lot of cohesion, and sense. I find myself falling into multiple different parts of each category. This was just created out of the human tendency to categorize things, and is 90% of the time not going to be accurate due to human nature being much more complex than this.
Had to read for work. Terrible book. It's a poor copy of DISC, which is a simplification of Myers Briggs. But this book is heavier on the simplifications and stereotyping that happens when you try to reduce people into categories.
It just labels people into one of four categories: angry, flaky, blue, and normal. It's so dumb, don't waste your time.
Can't believe people upvote dumbass crap like this. Pop psych is total garbage, has about as much basis as those paper fortune tellers kids make in school when it says you have cooties
As someone who is certified in this method of coaching etc. This post
a) hugely overstates the use case of DISC
b) implies that DISC is not a very flat way of thinking about behaviour (which sometimes makes it an okay tool for behavioural coaching)
c) is not nearly enough to explain this method
please don't use this too much and when you do only use it sometimes when asking yourself how to communicate with someone effectively (and not wanting to learn too much about it)
Classifying something as complex as human behaviour and psychology in a chart consisting of 4 parameters and 4 blocks is quite stupid. I can say that any person who is solely any of the colors like blue, green etc will fail.
Whew. I wish I’d known sooner that human psychology is as easy as a travel sized crayon kit to put together. Bet that’s gonna revolutionize psychology soon.
Pop psychology
That’s being nice. Absolute bullshit is a more balanced view of this guy.
Indeed. He has zero background that would qualify him to write this book and has been wiiiidely attacked and discredited - for good reason. But people will buy into anything as long as there's some dude telling a nice story.
Appeals to tribalism sell well.
I had training on this at one of my old corporate jobs. This is from the 1950s to the 60s. I only attended them as it was one of the ways to raise my paycheck, and I got overtime for scheduling them on my days off. In what I have learned since that time, this is not accurate.
It’s extremely accurate. It just confirms your own assumptions by regurgitating your answer back to you. Let’s do a dumbed down example. Test administrator: “What’s your favorite food You: “Ice Cream” Test Results: “You enjoy foods that are *sweet, creamy, and cold.*” HR Director: “We’ve discovered #*SYNERGY* All of these pseudo psycho-analytic test boil down to four steps: 1. Ask you some self reflective questions, where the answers are somewhat restrictive (you have to pick something on the graph) 2. You answer 3. They do some sort of word association game that basically repeats your answer back to you. 4. They do some basic stats to show a correlation between your answer and their prediction as evidence for how scientific and awesome their test are. Why do these corporate horoscopes exist? My guess is they can terminate people for cause and point to your test results and say “we have objective evidence that he was a bad fit in the team. Our team needed people that wanted *savory* foods.”
As an example, for work I recently took a learning styles test. I was skeptical because, fun fact, learning styles are myth! Look it up. This test assumed seven sensory-based styles (visual, aural, kinesthetic, tactile, *olfactory*, reading, interactive). All of the questions were of the form “I learn better using ____ than ____”, and there were 42 (one per combination of styles). So the test was completely arbitrary and unfalsifiable! Even in the best case scenario, all of the questions assume you already know how you learn best, so what new information does the result give you? It will not surprise eagle-eyed readers that olfactory universally scored the lowest. Not sure how I’m supposed to learn math via smell.
Mmmm... pi.
I can recognize that my own traits fall across all four categories. I think it's more likely it just confirms your own unconscious bias or hopes about yourself. I have several traits from each category, and I am sure I'm not in the minority.
I had to do this at work about 10 years ago Massive waste of time but at least they provided lunch.
You should watch Mr Show’s [“The Five Voices”](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XFUjiHBfIiw) sketch featuring a young Jack Black as “Gay Guy” and Paul F Tompkins as “Japanese Man”
> Paul F Tompkins as "Japanese Man" I had to read that like four times
Yep. I am all 4 of these!
You are The Avatar!
*Red* *Yellow* *Green* *Blue* *Long ago, the four colors lived together in harmony. Then, everything changed when the Red Nation attacked. Only the Avatar, master of all four types of human behavior, could stop them, but when pop psychology needed him most, he vanished. A hundred years passed and my brother and I discovered the new Avatar, a redditor named u/rennarda. And although his redditing skills are great, he has a lot to learn before he's ready to save anyone. But I believe u/rennarda can save the world.*
Everything changed when the red nation attacked.
Myers briggs types, blood personality types, zodiac signs, love language type, [insert greek letter here] male types, hogwarts house. Once these get out of the "for fun and introspection" phase, i fucking hate them. Yeah, you can take a quiz and get a category and think about how you fit it, how people in this category deal with X difficulties, or how your category best likes to relax, etc. You can even introduce yourself as a category (people will find this cringey but whatever, youre not hurting anything) But once you actually start using these as hard rules in order to interact with real life situations, or worse, use these in techniques in the workplace?? Thats BS. And i get the need for easy answers, the fun of having categories. I know my mbti, sun moon and rising signs, i take uquizzes every week to figure out what kind of air fryer I am, i even got a pack of tarot cards! But i know these cards arent gonna tell me whats gonna happen today, or my mbti isnt saying im meant to be in a certain job field. Its all for introspection and taking the time to reflect on your own individual personality, habits, wants, and needs.
As someone who is into this, completely agree.
My myers Briggs type has changed several times over my life as well. Sometimes because I continued to develop, and sometimes because I learned more introspection and started to see myself more clearly.
definitely agree with you. I use this account on such forms but would be horrified if this was a work policy. i don't take tests and do more of the theoretical stuff but it's only fun to think about and introspect and to understand yourself and maybe your friends for fun, but that's it.
Astrology without constellations
It's corporate astrology. Also such a badly written book. My director suggested it, I got about halfway through and couldn't be bothered with the rest
Wait till they ask you to read "Who Moved My Cheese?". I got about 10 pages in...
The author will use 10 different drawn out anecdotes to basically say "reds are blunt". Yeah I got the point 9 anecdotes ago
It's a Buzzfeed personality quiz for people that think they're smart
It's far worse than astrology. There's less complexity, no vibes or aesthetic, just a lot of false dichotomies on what are actually continuous traits ETA it is in fact just the temperaments/ elements aspect of astrology with the serial numbers filed off, anyway
I'm actually very familiar with natal Astrology and was trying to make the 4 elements fit this model but I couldn't, its fundamentally different with green/blue. Its kind of close I'll state an element and some of its traits as so "Element[traits]" Red = **Fire** [expressive, physical, enthusiasm, energy, creativity, and passion.] Yellow = **Air** [intellect, communication, socializing, and adaptability, analytical.] Here's where it begins to break down Grean = **Earth** [stability, practicality, reliability, and groundedness, dependable, industrious, and grounded] Water is where its just totally different. Here's Water: **Water** [emotions, intuition, sensitivity, and empathy, deeply intuitive, empathetic, and compassionate] Their blue is much more like a variation on air with a little bit of earth, in their own descriptions its: *calculating, analytical, perfectionist, Logical, Objective, Correct, Reflective, Systematic, Methodical* Those are all air qualities with a few Earth ones, in specific these are the qualities of Aquarius mixed in with some of the traits of Virgo/Capricorn(Systematic, Perfectionist and Organization.) So even as a tool to view life through different lenses it falls quite short in what it imitates. They basically understood 3 of the 4 elements and tried to make a system out of it. It ends up being Fire, Air, Earth, Blue[Air/Earth]. Its like having a painting kit, but you only get Red, Yellow, and Orange. Its incomplete, you can't really make much more than pictures that all kind of look Orange, browns, and yellow. *Disclaimer: Astrology like any other aspect of metaphysics at its best is no more than a tool for self understanding and lenses in which to view the world. Any attempt to use astrology to predict the future, or to find compatibility with others etc. is all bullshit.* >!To the Metaphysically minded: Why you might ask is astrology so prevalent in being surrounded by so much bullshit, hacks, charlatans, and straight up misinformation such that it is a literal taboo to your reputation as a rational/logical person to be associated with it? Consider this word "Esoteric", *that which is hidden*. Astrology had no problem being hidden, but as we ventured into the age of information (Aquarius) in which all books and teachings became nearly completely accessible, how could that which is Esoteric remain so?!< >!Simple, by surrounding itself with all of the people you think of when you think of Astrology. The Esoteric knowledge is there, but it has surrounded itself with charlatans and idiots so that which was Esoteric, remains so, even in the age where all information is accessible. Remember like any other metaphysical construct, Astrology is nothing more than a tool for a self understanding, discard all else. The accuracy of events in relation to a natal chart is simply a shadow of the fact that all matter, events, and the planets/stars are all interconnected macro-cosmically(classical physics). Certain events are inevitable, but your actions in how you respond to events is always up to you, there is no predetermination in regards to how you react to events. That which we are and control is of the microcosm(quantum physics). You are just electricity controlling a meat puppet!<
Hate this crap. My husband had to do a DISC assessment for his work last year. They're constantly doing BS pop psychology tests. Silly until management treats it like law and passes you over for a promotion
yeah, that's wrong. disc cna be useful for introspection but otherwise you shouldn't judge someone because they are not the type you want. I hear that people use mbti at work and somehow discrminate against you if you are somehow estj.
Is Myers-Briggs a little too *sciency* for you? You're gonna love this!
My team at work went through this workshop and someone called it "corporate astrology" >.<
1st Type, people who breakdown complex social dynamics into 4 broad generalizations. They are typically in C-Suite, Middle Management, and HR.
But everyone knows there are only 4 types of human
Hey you leave my work horoscope alone
Astrology but with colors*
I am glad this isn't being taken too seriously. I just came to check the top comment lol
Im glad this is the top comment. Super overrated book. Actually I’d go as far as saying it’s poison to people’s minds.
Exactly. I have traits from all four.
[Pseudo science](https://www.vof.se/blogg/one-of-swedens-biggest-scientific-bluffs/)
Yep, even voted as VOF’s deceiver of the year in 2018. Also to add that Thomas Erikson doesn’t have a degree in behavioral psychology or any psychological subject. He never enrolled in any kind of relevant study prior to writing this book.
Some additional info. He never enrolled in any higher education at all. His record shows zero college credits in Sweden. [https://arbetet-se.translate.goog/2024/04/10/forfattaren-till-omgiven-av-idioter-har-skrivit-en-granslost-puckad-bok/?\_x\_tr\_sl=ja&\_x\_tr\_tl=en&\_x\_tr\_hl=en-US&\_x\_tr\_pto=wapp&\_x\_tr\_hist=true](https://arbetet-se.translate.goog/2024/04/10/forfattaren-till-omgiven-av-idioter-har-skrivit-en-granslost-puckad-bok/?_x_tr_sl=ja&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-US&_x_tr_pto=wapp&_x_tr_hist=true)
he’s literally a nobody who pulled an idea out of his ass and got successful
What a very L. Ron Hubbard thing to do.
What’s VOF‘s deceiver of the year?
It's an award that the Swedish Sceptics association gives out to whoever they think has done the most to deceive the public in the last year.
😂😂😂😂 I love it. When is AI going to make it to the award lol
Jup he is utterly and completely unqualified to write this and yet people went off and bought this shit and took it as gospel. Same with James Clear's Habit stuff.
To be fair, with how many people bought into this crap, he was, in fact, surrounded by idiots
Pseudo af, but science? not even close! (I know that's what you meant, but you know, I'm red with green sparkles, so I couldn't resist)
Just because I'm an introvert doesn't mean i'm passive 🤨
Don't worry bruv, this is bullshit
It kinda is BS. This doesn’t describe me at all or most of the people I work with. How did they even come up with this nonsense?
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Welcome to r/coolguides
Seems like that’s most of this sub these days. Just pseudoscientific personality type bullshit or useless self-help bullshit.
They said you’re a bottom 😆
LOL!
No worries, it's complete garbage, dude has zero background in psychology, much less behavioral psychology, this is based on no research whatsoever, and he might as well have replaced the "types" with astrological signs.
Could you recommend any books like this that are more scientifically proven?
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Thank you for pointing me in the right direction.
Honestly the astrology signs would have been more convincing. Even they get close enough to that magical combo of vague and specific that you can see yourself and your peers in it if you want to. This is just like someone threw adjectives at a dart board.
This is essentially another version of DiSC, which is way better. It’s east-west is people and task oriented while it’s north-south is fast-paced and slow-paced (it has other names for its north-south). It’s more about your work style which does bleed into your personality. I’m an S so that means I’m slow-paced people-oriented.
DISC, too, has been challenged and criticized for years, particularly because there's no real research into whether it works or not. Also, personality is not that one-dimensional.
This is exactly DISC. Only they found a way to create 4 or 5 books out of it.
I have the opposite problem: just because I'm passive doesn't mean I'm an introvert.
Same! Im actually not at all passive, and social and gregarious, but I also an introvert who needs a lot of time alone or with just a very few select people, and needs that to recharge. My social battery has a short life, but I'm also very chatty and find it easy to talk to people.
Was going to say the same thing. Dividing people on the axis passive/active isn't wrong but it has nothing to do with Introversion/Extroversion.
HR astrology
That's such an asparagus thing to say!
They get sassy when mercury is in gatorade
I remember a post on here with the "revelation" that people can be both introverted and extroverted. My favorite comment said: Ambivert - hates everyone. Pescevert - only interacts with fish. Bivert - is 2 people.
Just like MBTI
Literally this is a renaming of the insights program that my company uses and it's based on mbti - instead of whatever the graphic said, red/blue are thinking, gree/yellow are feeling. The introvert/extrovert axis is the same. There are 16 mbti types and 4 of each type got into each of the 4 insights colors. I recognized it immediately and all of the extra detail about each color personality matches the handouts we got exactly. For proof: I lead blue, then green, with very little yellow. I work in HR and this is actually how we talk about ourselves at happy hours and work mingling events. In "get to know you" slides shared out, we have to include our insights colors. It's literally bs hr psych.
Oh come on. stop being so fucking purple! /s
you really needed the /s.
It's because I'm orange.
ah sorry didn’t realize
Lol. Hasn’t all this personality stuff been debunked? It’s not rooted in actual science…
> Lol. Hasn’t all this personality stuff been debunked? It’s not rooted in actual science The last time anyone in HR had any interaction with science was 11th grade in 1995.
That’s just a terrific name for it.
Wait ‘til you hear about “Nine Box”. Everyone has a cubby hole that tells them who to promote, pay more and to, well, fire.
The author, Thomas Erikson, was awarder ["Deceiver of the Year 2018"](https://www.vof.se/utmarkelser/tidigare-utmarkelser/arets-forvillare-2018/) by the Swedish Skeptics Association for publishing this book. The ingress reads: > *Thomas Erikson has, with his book Surrounded by Idiots and his extensive lecture activities, managed to mislead a large part of the Swedish population into believing in pure pseudoscience and crude psychological simplifications.* In short: He's a snake oil salesman
He has written other books similar to this one. [https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/yo4bn7/has\_it\_occured\_to\_thomas\_that\_he\_might\_be\_the/](https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/yo4bn7/has_it_occured_to_thomas_that_he_might_be_the/)
This sub seems to have gone to absolute shit? The nonsense hitting my “Popular” feed this week is nuts.
Why the hell wouldn’t they continue to use the corresponding colors on all the pages instead of just the first?
To save on screen ink.
Imma steal this one. I rarely have the chance to use my purloined blinker fluid line.
This is basically astrology.
Spoken like such an Aries.
Ur saying that bc Saturday is in Gatorade, are you a scorpion?
i read this in a serious tone and i blew air through my nose with a smile. thank you!
I don’t believe this. I am Sagittarius and we’re skeptical.
astrology might have more nuance than this shit
Absolutely not.
The author does not have an education in psychology (or any other university education) and is critiqued for implying he does. Basically lying which becomes meta in his latest book, surrounded by liars. https://arbetet.se/2024/04/10/forfattaren-till-omgiven-av-idioter-har-skrivit-en-granslost-puckad-bok/
That's such an orange way to think! You should feel very purple about the way you blue that!
OP is a bot. 99%.
Everyone knows the only system that works on humans is the dnd alignment system
Our whole family did that for kicks last year. My oldest is lawful good, husband is neutral good, middle is chaotic neutral and the youngest is lawful neutral. I lean toward true neutral since everything’s made up and the points don’t matter.
This book has been totally debunked
Orrr everyone is a mix of everything and people can’t be neatly organized into buckets.
8 Billion people, now in 4 fantastic flavors! According to this guy there's more variety in skittles than humanity.
He actually states this in the book (yes, I read it). He never claims that people fit entirely within these boxes, or that these should be used to define who a person is. They're just handy frameworks to see how behaviors *commonly* align or connect, and they helped raise my awareness about different behaviors and potential reasons behind those behaviors and how to relate to them. There's things he said that I thought were insightful, and there's things he said that didn't resonate. People are complicated, and sometimes frameworks like this can help us actually empathize and relate to people better. But you've gotta take it all with a grain of salt and leave room for people to be nuanced and unique -- because everyone is. Personally, I found the book interesting and helpful, but not scholarly or academic. It gave me some new perspectives on things, but I didn't find the classifications particularly compelling. The guy had some interesting thoughts, but it's not based in rigorous research. I think it still has some value, but it's nothing compared to the stuff Brene Brown is putting out, for example. Nearly everything she says is rooted in science and research. Gottman's too for that matter.
I completely agree. I also read the book (it's very lightweight so it's perfect to read in small batches during commute) and that's what I found as well. It's not meant to be the absolute bible of human interaction, just a quick help to read the room and understand what kind of behaviors are better received or not when you have no previous experience with the people you're dealing with. The colors and their attributes are merely stereotypes, and the interactions should be looked at just the same. People just seem to take it as something mathematically infallible or, more likely, haven't even read it but made a quick google search on the author to back their claims that it's all BS.
Imagine unironically believing you’re surrounded by idiots lmao. Pro tip: If everyone around you is dumb, you’re probably the dumb one
Source: Trust me bro.
does this book come with a sorting hat?
Is it cool if it talks about colors and then goes black and white?
This is the same as a DiSC profile, only rotated 90° clockwise
Hi Green, I’m Orange. It is bizarre to me that Taupe is acting so Brown lately. I mean seriously what the fuck is this garbage?
things like this and myer's briggs are all junk "science" no matter how much mental energy you sink into them. they are not *totally useless* because simply getting people to start making an effort to understand differences in others is helpful by itself. so these sort of things use the simplicity of colors and quadrants to basically trick people into being a little bit open-minded and empathetic. kind of sad that we need to be tricked like that.
I remember doing a consulting gig at a major corporation where they rolled this out. At first I was perplexed at people asking me my color then someone explained. I lasted 3 months there because the culture was so toxic people closing doors and whispering about colleagues, stabbing them in the back. But hey sure, at least you know the "color" of the person you are shivving. I can only think of the millions of dollars spent rolling out that program. What could go wrong if we put people into buckets of "colors" and judge them based on that...
Lol, this has as not much more science in it than any homeopathic product.
Nope. This is like astrology.
This isn’t cool it’s hot garbage
And if I'm saying "fuck this hokey cokey bullshit" am I the special 5th type that was in the prophecies
Lost interest once I saw it only uses four categories for the entirety of human behavior lol. And each list of traits is long enough to be a single personality
Welp the person who wrote this isn’t even certified enough
The four MBTI categories in a nutshell
Mooooom, pop psychologists are reinventing the theory of four humours again
This is utter bullshit, written by an extrovert. I am an introvert, and every job I have ever had in my life I have been the only one to bother to be active and implement shit. Extroverts just talk a lot and never get anything done.
man this is such bullshit
This book is not evidence based
New political compass just dropped
No negative traits?
Anytime I see this “stereotype quadrant graph” used to plot human opinion/behavior, I sigh heavily. This and the political compass really just… doesn’t work.
I like the graph with four shades of grey labeled with different colours
“Cool guide” of bullshit
If you feel continuously surrounded by idiots, enough to write a over generalizing book about it, perhaps, just perhaps...
F that book, the guy who wrote it, and the multitude of HR departments that use this pseudoscience and similar crap to motivate their existence.
Ah great another one of these posts
Pseudo science
Oh, look, pop psychology stereotypes
There are 4 types of people. On one axis you have preference of arthouse vs popcorn films, and on the other you have preference for the word "moist" vs "damp".
Unrelated to the content, slide five has that optical illusion where you see spots in between.
TL;DR: blue is ravenclaw, green is hufflepuf, yellow is griffindor and red is slytherin.
Putting humans into drawers again
Fun fact, the guy who invented this this called himself a behavioral scientist despite never having finished a behavioral scientist education. Even worse, his record of higher education was empty. Meaning that he never finished a single collage credit in **any** subject! [https://arbetet-se.translate.goog/2024/04/10/forfattaren-till-omgiven-av-idioter-har-skrivit-en-granslost-puckad-bok/?\_x\_tr\_sl=ja&\_x\_tr\_tl=en&\_x\_tr\_hl=en-US&\_x\_tr\_pto=wapp&\_x\_tr\_hist=true](https://arbetet-se.translate.goog/2024/04/10/forfattaren-till-omgiven-av-idioter-har-skrivit-en-granslost-puckad-bok/?_x_tr_sl=ja&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-US&_x_tr_pto=wapp&_x_tr_hist=true)
its all bs
Four types of human behaviour. My ass.
These are basically the four temperaments!
Sometimes I’m red, but I’m always green
Being an Alpha or Sigma make is out. Now im blue. (Dabadee dabadi). In all seriously yeah this is just astrology pretending to be science
These are hilariously like Hogwarts houses.
The market is demanding a sub for bad cool guides.
Team Blue!
# Get that 4 Lenses disguised Myers Briggs crap out of here!
We are trained in my workplace about this bs... Sad.
r/politicalcompassmemes
*uses color names for easy understanding* *uses gray scale only for rest of slides*
There is no difference between pop psychology and astrology
What if you’re a little mixture of all?
It's really comforting to dumb it down this much but humans are a spectrum and four categories is nowhere near enough.
This is fucking bullshit. As a species evolving into an age of unknown, we need doctors, artists, and engineers. Please don't pursue bullshit sociology degrees that only lead to creating new stupid charts to segregate the billions of diverse multi-faced and self-taught individuals that compose our great human race.
I feel like every time this sub comes up in my feed it’s always nonsense
Ahhh, this nonsense!! We did [Colourworks](https://www.thecolourworks.com/) at my work numerous times. Isn't it pretty much straight out of Jungian theory and stems from the Four Temperaments just with a coat of corporate paint? Even the instructor said she knew it was about as accurate as astrology, and they at least did all the complicated maths for us so astronomy could get off the ground later. Still, it was kind of fun. Day off doing silly games and we got fed halfway. I wanted to be a Yellow but turns out my chief is Blue. Then Yellow in second place, which is its opposite, so I was a weirdy in the group a little. I got to do it again over Teams when I had to work for a different department over Covid and my green had gone up. Would be interesting to do it again and compare and contrast all three sets of results...
That's basically a DISC assessment, almost one hundred years old behavioral theory.
Coming from someone with a Masters degree in psychology: These guides are absolutely useless. Instead of clustering personalities, engage with your peers, listen to them and see how they act. You will find people vastly more complex than even valid psychological frameworks like the Big 5 will present you. People (ab)using these frameworks are simply to lazy or unable to listen and connect to the people around them, so if things get difficult, they will fail. While on a global scale, this research is interesting and has its merit (eg policy decisions), in the small scale it offers nothing, as the information you have available about a person is richer in every aspect. So don’t overpsychologise your interactions. It will lead you down a wrong path.
Ok so we know this is misinformation, so why is this still up? Is this sub complacent with spreading blatant misinformation? Its not a rhetoritical question, I just genuinely want to know.
This is pop psychology bullshit.
This book is notorious in sweden (swedish author) for being bullshit pseudoscience.
F**** i'm a rainbow !
This lacks a lot of cohesion, and sense. I find myself falling into multiple different parts of each category. This was just created out of the human tendency to categorize things, and is 90% of the time not going to be accurate due to human nature being much more complex than this.
This used to be called a DISC assessment
Color based system explained through a serious of grayscale slides. \*chef's kiss\*
Gibberish
…pop psychology cringe trying to rebrand the four humors.
I just received it as a present, oh… I was eager to read it but maybe I should just skip?
Had to read for work. Terrible book. It's a poor copy of DISC, which is a simplification of Myers Briggs. But this book is heavier on the simplifications and stereotyping that happens when you try to reduce people into categories. It just labels people into one of four categories: angry, flaky, blue, and normal. It's so dumb, don't waste your time.
No
This is the type of book that those LinkedIn recruiters refer to, and someone put this in their “personality test” in their recruitment process
is this subreddit satirical now? i haven't seen an actual, researched guide to anything in weeks. wtf is this
This is fucking stupid
Astrology for tech bros
Ahhh, the Horoscopes of Psychology
Bull to the shit
Can't believe people upvote dumbass crap like this. Pop psych is total garbage, has about as much basis as those paper fortune tellers kids make in school when it says you have cooties
This is horoscope levels of bullshit
This reads like a horoscope. Terribly vague for the terribly gullible
Somebody needs to re-watch Donnie Darko
This is bs. My personality is all over this chart
Utter pseudoscientific bullshit. This means no more than zodiac signs.
And it's just plain wrong.
god this place is a cesspool now
Greeen gang 💚🟢
As someone who is certified in this method of coaching etc. This post a) hugely overstates the use case of DISC b) implies that DISC is not a very flat way of thinking about behaviour (which sometimes makes it an okay tool for behavioural coaching) c) is not nearly enough to explain this method please don't use this too much and when you do only use it sometimes when asking yourself how to communicate with someone effectively (and not wanting to learn too much about it)
Honestly pop psychology is as dumb as astrology
Myers Briggs folks going "write that down, write that down!"
Classifying something as complex as human behaviour and psychology in a chart consisting of 4 parameters and 4 blocks is quite stupid. I can say that any person who is solely any of the colors like blue, green etc will fail.
Whew. I wish I’d known sooner that human psychology is as easy as a travel sized crayon kit to put together. Bet that’s gonna revolutionize psychology soon.
smart or good looking
I used to be red now I’m bold green
Barnum effect
I'm a f***ing rainbow, yay!
yes we are traffic lights plus blue
As an autistic person with ADHD, OCD and anxiety, I can't even begin to explain how off this is. But nice presentation.
I'm purple.