Greg Kennedy's criticisms of Objective Personality

https://medium.com/@greg_p_kennedy/a-critique-of-objective-personality-72989099a4f2

-What OPS means by objective and no further: “you cannot type yourself”, to type yourself is inherently subjective, so you must be typed by an unbiased observer to achieve objective results

Well, Greg contradicts himself almost immediately by posting a chart where they explain their meaning of Objective: (Not overly excited, balanced) (Knows questions will be answered over time) (patiently builds knowledge and skills over time) (calmly works through the contradictions) (asks how others have done this successfully) (views this as skill that is developed over time) (humbly submits to the scientific method) (will steadily build over time and help others)… according to Greg, these definitions are incorrect and simply don’t make sense (and moreover, don’t fit the meanings of Objective that Greg likes such as unbiased, scientific, measurable via absolute methods)

-They mimic double blind testing, but don’t actually do it (CONSORT guidelines, these terms are ambiguous, they are blinding some information but not other)… they aren’t double blind in Greg’s view because they are pre-trained

how could we avoid this, we are testing how a pre-trained methodology works, the idea that you could type people without any pre-trained methodology seems obviously unrealistic and impatient).  CONSORT guidelines, these terms are ambiguous, they are blinding some information but not other.  As long as they are specific about the blinding that is taking place, then we can have realistic expectations.

-Operator apparently doesn’t note factual behavior or statements made by the subject, but rather attempt to divine motivation behind a statement or action, and the type is constructed only from interpretations.  Behaviorism-but-not, intense focus on observing the subject but the observations have nothing to do with what is happening on screen

Not true at all, in fact there is no standardized method offered on how to type: it is more or less observing the behavior/statements and then attempt to find patterns in it which correspond to the various coins and dichotomies used by OPS (observation is the basis and then with experienced practitioners you see how various observations can be interpreted in sophisticated ways, much like any other typology)… of course the interpretive part is the questionable component, but that is true in all typologies as far as I can see

-If the user thinks they are a certain type, it biases them against it and the subject is “clearly” trying to project something they’re not

Not necessarily, but they will be suspicious of it.  If the user is very attached to a certain type, that is definitely a red flag though

-self-reporting is a widely used method for conducting scientific research in a number of fields such as psychology, so denouncing it as worse than useless shows a distinct lack of understanding of scientific experiment and data collection

Not really, it just shows a disagreement with what the best methods are and how much those methods are to be trusted: there are equally widely acknowledged problems with self-reporting and even if it is widely used, a lot of that is just because it is easier than actual observation and not because it is necessarily a method that we shouldn’t try to improve upon by something more objective

-Getting OP operators to agree on a final typing is accurate but not valid

True to some extent, but the reality is more sophisticated (getting to a stage where we can actually share perceptions first even if these only mean some interpersonal patterns since they don’t necessarily get to the core of the personality but just some reasonably enduring tendencies on the axes studied by OPS, and then explore the phenomenon from there, but of course people might not agree who have better models in a variety of ways but they might be less consistent… nonetheless, comparing it to the shirt test is premature and disingenuous, because whether it’s as meaningless as the shirt test is up for debate and in fact many enthusiasts of the system find it to be meaningful and predictive

-Problem is that it hasn’t produced any scientific writing/essays/journal articles/whitepapers, no standardized test for OP, Wikipedia article was deleted for lack of notability, D and S focus instead of making more videos and trying to recruit to operator training, none of this is moving the ball forward into the realm of scientific acceptance

It would be nice to have some scientific papers in the future, but that’s hardly a strike against the system, and Greg’s focus is too much on words and believing in words over data, because as Matt Segall pointed out words are like a drug.  Institutional accepting is nice, but institutions are notoriously slow moving, have enormous self-interest and corruption, and are not the arbiters of truth and value.  Operator training does actually move the ball towards scientific acceptance because it gives the possibility of pairs and groups training to see OP types who aren’t Dave and Shannon, so we could potential get more confirmation of consistency without having to rely on Dave and Shannon and more distance for their biases (not only consistency, but correction)

-they have become clumsier in their observing techniques, example of one man having feminine function because they sometimes wear a dress in their stage act… use of anecdotes is okay because they are the experts

This seems like a really cherry picked example though and without any proof: having observed at least as many if not more typings than Greg has, I can see that Dave and Shannon’s methods are much more complex and nuanced and perceptive than that in the general case.  Maybe they were even making a joke, but this is extremely disingenuous and misrepresentative of their modus operandi

-The system is not as open for Peer Review as Dave and Shannon say it is because they don’t respond to criticisms in the way some people want them to

The internet is already the most wide open peer review arena in existence, anyone and their mother can come and say their opinion on OPS, and OPS is not suppressing this criticism by any means.  They are indeed very busy working on their research and typing people to respond to so many long questions from anyone who wants, but if we keep up these conversations about OPS, we’ll have better and better resources with which to address questions

-Dave and Shannon use the Grant stack to organize the functions in a type

But this seems obviously contradicted by jumpers, which Greg admits in the next paragraph, so I have no idea what he is talking about.  How is your stack Ti/Ne/Si/Fe if you jump to Si?  Aren’t your two saviors Ti and Si now?  So isn’t it Ti/Si/Ne/Fe in any meaningful sense?  How in any way have they ever been restricted to the Grant stack?  This criticism makes no sense.  Ever since they have used jumpers, they have abandoned the Grant stack.  They are simply wrong about the published class material in an almost silly way.

-The system is a massive conglomeration of ideas.  They don’t remove parts of their system that don’t stand up to scrutiny

Vortical thinking, trying what works, it is less systematic than Causal or Dialectical thinking, but it has the ability to make new discoveries because of its optimism in simply quickly trying new variants in practice, and this can lead to surprising results and adjustments.  People obviously disagree with what stands up to scrutiny, so it remains to be seen how willing they are to modify ideas in their system, because I agree that it is important to do so

-the animals come from questionable sources like watching nature documentaries about chimp interactions, and no cited scientific resources or sources backs this up.  Not clearly shown how the animals are distinct from the underlying functions groups by them

I agree that the direct application of material from animal/chimp behavior and making such extrapolations is not valid at all of a deduction, but nonetheless it may still work in practice better than expected.  I suppose that remains to be seen, and that was the point of testing the animals in their typing process and observations.  They serve as a way to account for the large differentiation between people of the same type.  Maybe people have found the animals unique and useful, but I agree that more analysis and testing is needed to see how consistent they are and how distinct from the mere superposition of the underlying functions.  The citing of sources seems irrelevant as we can also test new ideas.

-Peacocking can’t really be seen through because otherwise Dave and Shannon would have to use disproven information lie-detection techniques

They aren’t talking about telling whether people are “lying” or being dishonest in ordinary social interaction.  They are talking about self-deception (which isn’t a lie, at least not straightforwardly), and also about noticing systematic patterns in the behavior of people using a system that obviously wasn’t disproven in those studies, so they are not detecting that you are lying but detecting self-deception based on comparing you to thousands of people that they have typed.  That doesn’t seem to implausible.

-Peacocking is just a way for Dave and Shannon to cover their butts in the case of an incorrect typing, they can see your peacocking fooled them and retype you

True that they could do that, but just because something could be used in a deceptive way doesn’t mean that it is.  IF they did this practice systematically, then they would obviously lose the trust of many people, so it would be difficult to abuse too much.  In any case, peacocking may indeed be a thing, and it reminds me of the Mobilizing function in Socionics as used by Jack Aaron, or the third function in Psychosophy

-Alpha State: their image of this seems to be skewed to successful business people, youtube self-help gurus (basically, Central extroverts and people with developed Business Logic in SHS), and not a single female alpha

(not sure about that as they probably consider Oprah alpha and there were women we typed who they were impressed by)  However, there is a point here that their version of success is slanted heavily towards their own types and interests, so it remains to be seen how willing they are to acknowledge the alpha-ness of someone who lives a more unassuming life but nonetheless has well-balanced development in their systems without too many title ways.  Maybe it is just that they were interested in those people and they would be more than willing to acknowledge such things

-It can be hard to find and understand what terminology means, especially for those new to the system, and the pedagogy is disorganized in the library:

I agree that they could use more glossaries, and people with experience teaching what the concepts mean in practice more.  It’s not as well organized or streamlined as it could be at all.  But they do have some checklists and short videos out there that aren’t too bad, and the definitions tend to be pretty simple.  The problem is not so much the definitions but knowing how the apply in practice, and that takes some experience using the diagnostic system in practice.  In time, maybe we can reverse engineer better ways to see how things mean, but for now, seeing examples and practicing is the best way, and I admit that isn’t ideal (especially in our quick-fix society) but patience is required of those who want to be objective

-They claim to track Jungian functions and build on Jung’s work

It is true that they don’t really track Jung’s functions and that Ni and Si aren’t really about organizing in Jung’s work.  They would be wise to make a disclaimer about their Jungian associations, because there is similarity to Jung in the sense that lots of people on YT have their own informal interpretations of the JCF’s and it is probably in that sense that Dave and Shannon refer to Jungian functions, but in the sense of the original book psychological types which is still used by Jungian psychologists today it is not very similar, so they should make more effort to clarify this

-Dave and Shannon aren’t professional in behavior, cursing and poking fun at things, sometimes even their customers, they sling stereotypes when it serves a joke, but students point out that they are very kind and approachable

Personally, this doesn’t bother me.  Presentation does matter and business, but Dave and Shannon seem to be doing well and to appeal to a certain audience that suits them.  People overly concerned about super professional and polite behavior probably don’t concern them, since that is probably something they could stand to loosen up a little about.  But of course, if they do really have stereotypes, it would be good not to sling them too much or hurt the feelings of their customers.  But that seems rare and it’s not obvious the extent to which they really have a stereotyped understanding since they discover new things with their system all the time and point out how people can develop even their demon functions (i.e. just cause someone has really impressive thinking and logic doesn’t mean that thinking is a savior for them)