If Books Could Kill - Surrounded By Idiots

00:00:00.000 What do we have? 1.00

00:00:01.160 Surrounded by idiots. 1.00

00:00:02.020 What am I at a meet and greet with my fans? 1.00

00:00:05.780 Let's go super toxic right off the bat. 1.00

00:00:09.280 What if you just went super lib coded and you were like, surrounded by idiots. 1.00

00:00:12.680 What am I at the Republican National Convention? 1.00

00:00:15.340 Oh, the T-Rump administration. 0.99

00:00:17.800 That's what I'm doing.

00:00:18.440 I'll say Drumpf the entire episode.

00:00:19.960 I must be in the White House.

00:00:21.420 Let's try that.

00:00:21.820 Let's try that.

00:00:22.940 Michael.

00:00:23.620 Peter. 1.00

00:00:24.140 What do you know about Surrounded by Idiots? 1.00

00:00:26.300 All I know is that it's brave to base a book on the three words you only hear from the worst person you know. 0.99

00:00:44.440 This is a 2014 book by Thomas Erikson, who is a Swedish author.

00:00:49.660 It was a worldwide success.

00:00:51.320 It sold millions of copies, but it was a mega hit in Sweden.

00:00:55.320 Really?

00:00:55.800 If you ask most people about this book, they'll be like, yeah, I've heard of that. 1.00

00:00:59.420 But if you ask someone from Sweden, they'll be like, this book ruined my life. 1.00

00:01:02.160 It is the most toxic of the Scandinavian countries, so it makes sense. 0.96

00:01:05.280 This is a book about personality types. 0.99

00:01:07.180 It divides people into four personality categories. 1.00

00:01:10.780 Oh, I was hoping it was going to be two, idiots and not idiots. 1.00

00:01:15.060 The bummer about this book is that the Surrounded by Idiots title is a little bit tongue in 1.00

00:01:20.540 cheek. 0.98

00:01:20.980 Right. 1.00

00:01:21.180 The idea is that, you know, you think you're surrounded by idiots, but actually it's just people of different personality types. 1.00

00:01:27.620 You need to understand that. 1.00

00:01:30.400 Yeah.

00:01:30.760 So it's basically a clickbait title for like a more nuanced typology.

00:01:34.060 Unfortunately, it's a very reasonable top line.

00:01:37.260 I'm getting ready for a really boring episode.

00:01:39.280 Erickson is not a psychologist.

00:01:41.560 He is not a medical professional or expert of any type.

00:01:44.840 He is just a guy.

00:01:45.840 OK.

00:01:46.040 He sort of comes out of nowhere with this book, emerging from relative obscurity, from

00:01:50.500 what I can tell, with his bestseller.

00:01:52.500 Like many of our If Books Could Kill authors, his idea is not his own.

00:01:56.540 It's an existing idea that he has repackaged for public consumption.

00:02:00.580 That means we need to go 100 years back in history to really understand it.

00:02:05.640 To Friedrich Nietzsche.

00:02:07.120 We start with Plato's The Republic.

00:02:08.760 so back in 1928 there's a psychologist named william malton marston and he publishes a book

00:02:16.520 called emotions of normal people also something said only by the worst person you've ever met

00:02:23.380 so among other things it established a personality framework called disc d-i-s-c

00:02:30.300 it stands for dominance inducement submission and compliance i only know these from grinder

00:02:36.200 Can you explain a little bit more?

00:02:37.540 Can you spell it out a little bit?

00:02:38.760 I don't really want to get into the framework as Marston understood it in 1928, but here

00:02:44.960 is a little bit from a critique of Erickson that sort of explains what Marston was doing.

00:02:51.780 It says, Marston hypothesized that our behavior is influenced by psychonic energy that is

00:02:57.480 transferred through a web of nerve cells that he called psychons.

00:03:01.080 the four personality types arise he claims as variations between different people in the

00:03:07.740 structure of their psychonic network i love it when they make up scientific sounding words well

00:03:12.560 look it was 1928 and you got like psychologists were just spitballing even more than they are now

00:03:17.640 right they were just sort of like yeah i don't know psychons satans yes you take a stress test

00:03:22.140 yes i'm familiar so this was not originally created as a personality assessment it was meant

00:03:28.020 It's just like a theory to describe emotions, right?

00:03:31.320 His basic idea is that there's like a primary set of emotions, a set of primary emotions

00:03:37.460 similar to primary colors, right?

00:03:39.320 Where like every other emotion is comprised of these basic four emotions.

00:03:43.580 Okay.

00:03:43.760 The idea is basically ignored by the broader academy.

00:03:47.680 There's only one favorable review written of his book and it is by his girlfriend.

00:03:53.820 But then 15 years later, one of his former students takes it and turns it into an assessment

00:03:59.800 called the Activity Vector Analysis, which he starts selling to businesses.

00:04:05.240 The assessment is just a checklist of 81 words, and you check a word if anyone has ever used

00:04:10.840 that word to describe you, and also if you think that a word describes you.

00:04:14.960 And at the end, you use the results to map yourself along four vectors similar to the

00:04:20.700 ones established by Marston.

00:04:22.940 One last fun fact about Marston before we move on.

00:04:26.340 He was relatively important in the invention of the lie detector.

00:04:30.740 He held himself out as the father of the lie detector, although it's a little more complicated

00:04:34.560 than that.

00:04:35.220 And also, he created Wonder Woman.

00:04:38.680 Wait, what?

00:04:39.240 The hero?

00:04:40.620 The comic book character Wonder Woman was created by the guy who came up with the lie detector

00:04:45.580 test and also the personality framework that it forms the basis of this book.

00:04:50.640 Is that why she does the honesty lasso? 1.00

00:04:52.940 Dude, that's why she's got the fucking lasso, dude. 1.00

00:04:55.340 It all clicked. 1.00

00:04:56.140 Because he was trying to invent the lasso for his entire career.

00:04:59.620 Right.

00:05:00.140 Like people trying to discover alchemy. 0.99

00:05:01.620 He's like, damn it. 0.99

00:05:03.180 Another rope that doesn't work. 0.99

00:05:04.440 So you have this company, the Activity Vector Analysis Company, which is selling a revamped

00:05:09.240 version of this to businesses, right?

00:05:11.420 Then a guy who was employed by that company creates his own spinoff.

00:05:15.860 And then in the 70s, a third dude creates his own version.

00:05:19.340 And they're all still using this disk framework.

00:05:21.620 And this basic trend where someone takes this assessment and then slightly modifies it to

00:05:26.420 sell to businesses has essentially continued uninterrupted until today.

00:05:30.960 Now there are literally hundreds of companies that sell disk assessments to managers.

00:05:35.400 There are many more that sell what's basically the same thing, just repackaged with different

00:05:40.960 terminology.

00:05:42.120 I've seen estimates as high as 75% of Fortune 500 companies using something like this internally.

00:05:47.940 I mean, this is the Myers-Briggs type indicator too.

00:05:49.780 It's also just like basically made up by two random people and then it catches on.

00:05:53.600 Yeah.

00:05:53.860 If you've ever been given a personality assessment at work that maps you across four different personality types, especially if they were color coded with red, blue, yellow and green, chances are that this was a disk assessment or some knockoff version of it.

00:06:06.960 If your boss has been telling you that you're a sub bottom, that comes from the disk assessment.

00:06:11.020 So his initial version said dominance, inducement, submission and compliance. 0.72

00:06:15.360 All of the later versions are less horny. 0.78

00:06:17.160 Unfortunately. 0.61

00:06:18.000 Yeah, too bad.

00:06:18.640 Yeah, it's a bummer.

00:06:20.060 Bummer, also an identity on Grindr.

00:06:22.040 I realized I took something like this back when I was at a law firm.

00:06:24.800 Oh, yeah?

00:06:25.160 It wasn't exactly the same, but I was like trying to remember it.

00:06:28.520 And I started Googling stuff I remembered and found out that what I took was the Deloitte

00:06:33.140 Business Chemistry Test.

00:06:34.980 What?

00:06:35.380 This is a test proprietary to Deloitte.

00:06:37.200 They said that they brought in various experts in biology to help put it together.

00:06:42.740 And yet what they come up with is extremely similar to an assessment that you see in hundreds

00:06:47.300 of different companies.

00:06:48.220 Yeah, yeah.

00:06:48.600 They say that there are four work styles across two axes, pioneers and guardians, drivers and integrators.

00:06:56.680 Pioneers are risk-taking dreamers.

00:06:58.820 Guardians are analytical pragmatists.

00:07:01.600 Drivers push for results.

00:07:03.440 Integrators bring people together.

00:07:05.080 Do you remember what you got?

00:07:06.120 Yeah.

00:07:06.620 I remember because it was like clearly wrong.

00:07:09.520 Okay.

00:07:09.840 Yeah.

00:07:10.140 So I was a guardian, which is like the analytical pragmatist type.

00:07:13.500 And I immediately knew I was in the wrong group because they were like, all right, are you a guardian?

00:07:18.300 then you're blue so go with the other blues then they were like all right so discuss what are your

00:07:24.120 what are your pet peeves and everyone was like i hate it when someone has a typo in an email and 0.87

00:07:28.780 i was like okay i'm in the wrong group i don't know what the fuck is going on and yours was like 0.83

00:07:32.820 white supremacy or something so that is like the super broad history of this concept the basic 0.89

00:07:40.880 premise of this book and really of all of these workplace workshops is that people have these

00:07:45.160 different personality types. And the key to having better relationships with them is to understand

00:07:49.200 your type and theirs and how they work together best. Which on some level is fine. It's a very

00:07:54.480 defensible, high-level thesis, right? You believe that everyone around you is an idiot, but really 1.00

00:07:59.460 they just have these different personality types. Their brains work differently. Yes. Whatever. 1.00

00:08:03.080 It's a non-judgmental way to talk about difference. Yes. All right. Why don't I read

00:08:06.480 part of his intro here? I was in high school when I first noticed that I got along better

00:08:10.540 with certain people rather than others. It was easy to talk to some of my friends

00:08:14.000 in any conversation we always found the right words and everything just flowed smoothly

00:08:17.720 there were never any conflicts and we liked one another with other people however everything just

00:08:22.340 went wrong what i said fell on deaf ears and i couldn't understand why relatable aside from the

00:08:28.220 fact that he's saying he was in high school when he first noticed that he got along with some people

00:08:32.040 more than others his story is that he starts looking into this and he comes across this disc

00:08:37.880 idea, although his version is DISA, D-I-S-A, Dominance, Inducement, Submission, and Analytic

00:08:45.040 Ability.

00:08:46.060 Okay.

00:08:46.240 Much to his credit, he does not pretend to have invented this idea.

00:08:49.800 He does not try to repackage it with different terminology, which is more than I can say

00:08:54.480 about Deloitte.

00:08:55.920 He, in fact, expressly says that he borrowed a lot of the book from the materials of one

00:08:59.820 of these companies that sells talent assessments to managers, TTI Success Insights, headquartered

00:09:06.320 in Scottsdale, Arizona. The CEO of TTI Success Insights writes the foreword for the version of

00:09:12.680 the book I read. I wonder if he read Tim Ferriss's book where he's like, find someone else's idea and

00:09:16.940 like steal it and write a quickie self-help book. So here's Thomas. Since I began studying how

00:09:21.840 people function and painstakingly strove to understand the differences in the way we

00:09:25.680 communicate, I've never been the same. I'm not as categorical anymore, judging people just because

00:09:30.060 they are not like me. For many years now, my patience with people who are the complete opposite

00:09:33.980 of me has been far greater. I wouldn't go so far as to say that I never get involved in conflicts,

00:09:38.400 just as I wouldn't try to convince you that I never lie. But both these things happen very

00:09:42.440 seldom now. Honestly, good shit. Whatever framework is making you like be a more agreeable and nice 1.00

00:09:48.780 person. I really don't have a problem with the fact that the framework is arbitrary if it's

00:09:53.020 making you nicer. Yeah, this broad part, you know, we were starting off perfectly fine and

00:09:56.740 inoffensive. He wants to improve interpersonal dynamics and maybe alleviate anxiety that results

00:10:03.840 from interpersonal disputes right yeah and that remains i think the most positive element of this

00:10:10.200 all throughout even as we get into the details and it begins to fall apart to an astounding degree

00:10:15.060 okay so one of the opening chapters why are we the way that we are he says the temperament and

00:10:21.600 character traits we have inherited affect our behavior a process already begun at the genetic

00:10:26.860 stage exactly how this works is still a bone of contention among scientists but all are in

00:10:31.980 agreement that it does come into play not only do we inherit traits from our own parents but also

00:10:37.140 from their parents also in varying degrees from other relatives yes i i inherited lots of genes

00:10:43.060 from my brother this is a great little capsule of the book where he's just like saying something

00:10:47.960 totally inoffensive he's like we inherit traits from our parents and you're like yeah man yeah

00:10:51.900 and then he's like also from other people who knows uh no aunts uncles cousins you're getting

00:10:57.280 genes from everywhere. Yep. Just fully whiffing on ninth grade bio in the first chapter. It's

00:11:03.440 like, no, you're not. That's germs. You're talking about germs, not genes. Look, if you're going to

00:11:08.200 call your book Surrounded by Idiots, we're going to we're going to be a little nitpicky about the 0.99

00:11:11.600 text. And then he talks about core values and attitudes. He says, my core values are found 0.99

00:11:16.780 deep within me, values so deeply embedded in my character that it's almost impossible to change

00:11:21.560 them. These are the things that I learned from my parents as a child or that I learned in school

00:11:25.480 when I was very young. Attitudes are things I have formed opinions about based on my own

00:11:30.500 experiences or on conclusions that I have drawn from encounters in the latter part of my schooling.

00:11:35.820 Okay. So I guess he's saying you have genes, you have your core values, and you have your

00:11:40.920 attitudes and those sort of comprise your personality, right? Fundamentally inoffensive.

00:11:45.740 Yeah. You have some inherited stuff. You have some stuff that you learn over time. Fine.

00:11:49.400 I've sent you a diagram. So it's a two by two thing. You're either task oriented and

00:11:55.260 issue oriented or relation oriented. That's one axis. And then the other axis is introvert

00:12:00.940 passive reserved on one end and extrovert active implementer on the other. What if we're introverted

00:12:07.660 and implementing, Peter? And then there's also this chart that has the various colors. Right.

00:12:14.340 So there's four personality categories, red, yellow, green, and blue. But basically, yeah,

00:12:19.120 it's like you're task oriented or relationship oriented and you're introverted or extroverted.

00:12:22.940 That's like the two by two.

00:12:23.960 That's right.

00:12:24.400 That's really it.

00:12:25.120 So I think based on this, I think I'm blue.

00:12:28.840 So what does it say for blue?

00:12:29.920 Blue is the, that's the one that Deloitte said that I was.

00:12:32.560 Oh, really?

00:12:33.160 Conscientious, like analytical, detail oriented.

00:12:37.080 You're not introverted though.

00:12:38.360 No, I mean, it's not correct, Michael.

00:12:40.380 No.

00:12:42.100 Because I think it's correct for me, but I'm also not very detail oriented.

00:12:46.260 Right.

00:12:46.660 As people can tell from this podcast.

00:12:48.040 I will send you his sort of summary of this.

00:12:50.080 About 80% of all people have a combination of two colors that dominate their behavior.

00:12:55.300 Approximately 5% have only one color that dominates behavior.

00:12:58.820 The others are dominated by three colors.

00:13:01.300 Throughout the book, I focus on the single colors individually because they are the fundamental

00:13:05.060 components of a person's behavior.

00:13:06.920 It's like a recipe.

00:13:07.980 We need to understand all the ingredients before we bake the cake.

00:13:11.420 Entirely green behavior, or green in combination with one other color, is the most common.

00:13:16.400 The least common is entirely red behavior or red behavior in combination with one other color. 0.98

00:13:21.740 Am I stupid?

00:13:22.840 The colors reflect quadrants across two axes. 0.96

00:13:26.780 So how can you be dominated by three colors?

00:13:29.620 I don't entirely get it.

00:13:31.400 Also, if your framework is splitting people into four different types and you're like dominated by three of them,

00:13:36.420 that doesn't give you a way, like as a manager, as an employee, of like helping your relationship or help you click with that person.

00:13:42.700 You're reading off, if you like look at the chart of all the traits that he lists under each color, you're just looking at so many words.

00:13:51.780 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:13:52.260 It's like, how is this clarifying?

00:13:54.460 Like greens are patient, loyal, modest, thoughtful. 1.00

00:13:59.080 Reds are timekeepers. 1.00

00:14:00.580 They're fast.

00:14:01.200 They're results oriented.

00:14:02.040 They're performance oriented.

00:14:03.160 Right.

00:14:03.400 It's a jumble by the time you start absorbing it all.

00:14:05.920 Right.

00:14:06.240 But nonetheless, because we're professional journalists, we're going to go through each color, which gets a chapter from him.

00:14:12.280 Hell yeah.

00:14:12.860 This is where the book really starts to fall apart.

00:14:15.220 Also, wait, wait, wait.

00:14:15.980 Maybe you said this before.

00:14:17.220 Is this test, the way that you determine whether you're whatever color you are, is this by

00:14:21.820 circling the words that apply to you or is there like a list of questions like there

00:14:25.220 is for the MBTI?

00:14:26.200 Different companies do them different ways.

00:14:28.600 Oh, okay.

00:14:29.060 But generally speaking, they'll describe a personality trait like, I prefer to get hands

00:14:36.640 on and blah, blah, blah.

00:14:38.120 And then you do like a strongly agree to strongly disagree sort of thing.

00:14:42.000 Oh, it's that. Okay, okay.

00:14:43.060 That's, I think, the most common version of the DISC personality assessment.

00:14:47.400 But there is no single standardized version of this necessarily.

00:14:51.360 It can be done in different ways.

00:14:52.960 That's interesting, actually.

00:14:53.740 There isn't a standardized assessment that comes with, like, diagnosis, basically.

00:14:57.060 Well, it's not real, so it can be...

00:14:58.880 Ah, good point, good point, yes.

00:15:00.160 One thing you need to remember is that...

00:15:01.340 Yes.

00:15:02.220 Tapping my nose and pointing at you right now, yes. 1.00

00:15:04.360 So we're going to start with reds. 1.00

00:15:06.100 You're being such a fucking red right now. 1.00

00:15:07.760 Oh, fuck. 1.00

00:15:08.460 Is the chapter called Red Dead Redemption? 1.00

00:15:10.240 The Red chapter is titled, Red Behavior, How to Recognize a Real Alpha and Avoid Getting

00:15:15.960 in His Way.

00:15:16.840 Red behavior sounds kind of racist.

00:15:19.320 There is a way in which it becomes like weirdly offensive sounding.

00:15:23.580 It sounds like it should be problematic because like by the end of the book, he's just like,

00:15:27.940 you know how greens are.

00:15:29.980 All right.

00:15:30.560 So I just sent you a little bit about reds.

00:15:33.000 Okay. 0.87

00:15:33.220 Red, by the way, is someone who is very task and issue oriented and also extroverted and

00:15:40.920 active.

00:15:41.860 He says, nowadays, you might call a red person bold, ambitious, driven, but also potentially

00:15:46.960 hot tempered, rash or dominant. 0.58

00:15:49.240 You quickly notice a red person because he doesn't make the slightest effort to conceal 0.84

00:15:53.360 who he is. 0.57

00:15:54.580 People who have lots of red in their behavior are task oriented extroverts and they enjoy

00:15:58.540 challenges.

00:15:59.020 They make quick decisions and are often comfortable taking the lead and taking risks. 0.90

00:16:03.220 A common perception is that reds are natural leaders.

00:16:06.180 These are people who willingly take command and go to the fore.

00:16:09.200 They are so driven that they will get through despite any obstacle in their path.

00:16:13.980 Their disposition is ideal in competitive situations.

00:16:17.080 It's not unusual for a CEO or president to have lots of red in his behavior.

00:16:21.220 So the downsides, he says, when they get going, they become control freaks and they

00:16:26.380 repeatedly trample on people's toes.

00:16:30.160 So now for my favorite part of every color chapter, here is where he speculates wildly

00:16:36.200 about what famous people might fall into this category.

00:16:40.120 Although to be fair, I was doing that in my head. 0.99

00:16:41.880 I was like, this is a Ronald Reagan type, so I can't talk shit. 0.97

00:16:46.500 He says, if you want to get to know some famous red people, consider Steve Jobs, FDR, Venus 0.98

00:16:52.460 Williams, or Margaret Thatcher.

00:16:54.120 There's also Barack Obama and Mother Teresa.

00:16:56.840 Oh yes, it's true.

00:16:57.920 If you consider Mother Teresa's deeds, the strength she needed, and whom she had to deal with to achieve what she did, then you'll realize she was extremely determined and forceful. 0.96

00:17:07.340 A typical red profile.

00:17:09.320 I was just like, are you pretending that you gave Mother Teresa a workplace personality assessment?

00:17:14.700 Like, here's a form.

00:17:16.000 Like, the Catholic Church had one day where they were like, Deloitte is here.

00:17:20.940 All right. 0.99

00:17:21.660 Yellow behavior.

00:17:22.900 How to recognize someone whose head is in the clouds and get him back to reality again.

00:17:27.520 Stop laughing.

00:17:28.260 I know you think it's racist.

00:17:31.000 What if it was red, yellow, black, and white? 1.00

00:17:34.020 Real black behavior. 1.00

00:17:35.280 You'd be like, whoa, hey. 1.00

00:17:36.860 That would be a good bit to do it as like not very subtly, but just subtly enough racially

00:17:42.360 coded.

00:17:43.100 You're like, I'm talking about personality types here.

00:17:44.640 I'm judging people by the content of their character, obviously.

00:17:47.540 Yellow is extroverted and active, but relation oriented rather than task oriented.

00:17:54.640 These are, of course, words that make sense.

00:17:57.400 He says, these are people who live to live, always finding opportunities for enjoyment. 0.99

00:18:03.040 Life is a banquet, and yellows will see to it that they savor every bite.

00:18:07.060 They are driven by merriment and laughter.

00:18:09.460 And why not?

00:18:10.400 The sun is always shining somewhere.

00:18:11.960 They're jolly.

00:18:12.700 Okay.

00:18:12.860 So he's just saying, you know, they're optimistic.

00:18:14.440 They're outgoing.

00:18:15.100 They're charming.

00:18:15.640 They're enthusiastic.

00:18:16.680 Yeah.

00:18:17.220 Downsides, when they are given unlimited space, they will consume all the oxygen in the room.

00:18:22.120 They won't allow anyone into a conversation, and their stories will reflect reality less

00:18:26.500 and less. 0.94

00:18:27.020 That seems like a leap from being, like, people-oriented and extroverted to, like, you're basically a sociopath.

00:18:32.480 Are you a scientist?

00:18:33.260 Are you a scientist?

00:18:34.480 I'm sorry.

00:18:36.020 I defer to the experts.

00:18:37.260 I defer to the author.

00:18:37.960 Sorry.

00:18:38.320 I'm sending you something?

00:18:39.180 Yes. 0.99

00:18:39.440 I was about to be like, shut up, Peter. 0.73

00:18:40.960 Give me the famous people.

00:18:42.360 He says, famous people who exhibit clear yellow traits include Oprah Winfrey, Robin Williams, Ellen DeGeneres, and, to take some fictional examples, Pippin from The Lord of the Rings, and Han Solo from Star Wars.

00:18:55.600 I feel like Han Solo was pretty task-oriented.

00:18:58.120 Huge mistake to leave that in for you to discuss.

00:19:01.220 Green, why change is so difficult and how to get around it.

00:19:05.100 Okay. 0.96

00:19:05.460 Greens are relation-oriented and introverted. 1.00

00:19:08.840 Okay, that's me, that's me, that's me.

00:19:09.860 Okay.

00:19:10.140 Okay, yeah.

00:19:10.900 He says, the green person is the most common.

00:19:13.460 You'll meet him virtually everywhere.

00:19:15.540 What's the easiest way to explain who he is?

00:19:17.980 Well, I would like to describe him as being the average of all the other colors. 1.00

00:19:22.020 Greens are more passive than others. 0.96

00:19:23.880 They're not as driven as reds, not as resourceful as yellows, and not as orderly as blues. 0.99

00:19:28.620 See, Michael, you described yourself like this, and it turns out you're just the ordinary loser. 0.51

00:19:32.360 I'm actually three colors, Peter, so we haven't got to my other colors yet, so.

00:19:35.160 Also, how is it a spectrum, but you're also the average of the others?

00:19:37.940 You know, I can't.

00:19:38.460 I don't know.

00:19:39.060 I hate when you try to, like, talk it out, and you're just like, what?

00:19:42.240 I thought it was a spectrum.

00:19:43.220 All right, never mind.

00:19:43.920 Green people are kindness personified.

00:19:46.380 Thank you.

00:19:47.380 You can expect a helping hand whenever you need it.

00:19:49.780 They are pronounced relational people who will do everything within their power to save your relationship.

00:19:55.540 And they will invest lifelong.

00:19:57.720 They will keep track of when your birthday is, when your partner's birthday is, when your children's birthdays are, et cetera.

00:20:03.560 Michael, when's my birthday?

00:20:05.080 Well.

00:20:05.400 Michael?

00:20:05.900 Michael?

00:20:06.580 I was about to say they don't need to keep track of birthdays because you can schedule texts in advance.

00:20:11.880 And so it's pretty easy to be like, happy birthday, bud, and send it for like 9, 17 a.m. on somebody's birthday.

00:20:18.440 I like doing this.

00:20:19.780 I do this constantly.

00:20:20.800 That is.

00:20:21.400 Does he mention that?

00:20:22.140 That is psychopathic behavior.

00:20:23.700 No, that is nice. 1.00

00:20:24.600 That is fucking nice. 0.97

00:20:25.440 People like getting a happy birthday text or like a gooey New Year's text. 0.98

00:20:28.200 It's not nice because you're not even really doing it.

00:20:29.640 I'm doing it.

00:20:30.300 I'm just doing it in advance.

00:20:31.620 This is the same thing as asking AI to send your.

00:20:34.020 No, it's not because I'm doing it.

00:20:35.480 I'm the one typing it.

00:20:36.500 It's not AI.

00:20:37.340 I'm not like telling a chat bot.

00:20:38.940 Originally, you're typing it like six months in advance and you're probably doing it for

00:20:42.180 the next five years.

00:20:43.020 Not six months in advance, but like a week in advance because I have it on my calendar

00:20:45.720 and I'm like, oh, next Wednesday is like so-and-so's birthday.

00:20:47.960 If you're doing it a week in advance, why not just do it the day of?

00:20:50.600 Because I have ADHD and I'm afraid that I'm going to forget, Peter.

00:20:52.740 This is like one of my little tasks that I'm most worried about forgetting. 1.00

00:20:56.420 This is one step from like, hey, I please fuck my wife. 1.00

00:20:59.500 No, it's not. 1.00

00:21:00.540 It's like four steps from that, Peter.

00:21:02.800 It's at least four steps from that.

00:21:04.820 All right.

00:21:05.340 Downsides about greens.

00:21:06.500 Let's see if this resonates with you, Michael.

00:21:07.940 There are none.

00:21:08.440 There are none.

00:21:09.040 They can be too wishy-washy and unclear.

00:21:12.020 They can downplay trauma.

00:21:14.280 Well, Peter.

00:21:15.720 That's interesting. 1.00

00:21:17.960 Fuck off. 1.00

00:21:19.080 Fuck off. 1.00

00:21:19.680 People even think you're being serious. 1.00

00:21:21.040 Fuck you. 1.00

00:21:23.300 Everything you say now, people are like, wow, clocked. 1.00

00:21:25.860 Really got clocked by this trash book. 0.84

00:21:32.180 He says, anyone who never takes a stand eventually becomes difficult to handle. 0.95

00:21:36.600 You don't know where they really stand, and indecision kills the energy in other people.

00:21:41.720 Indecision true.

00:21:43.080 The taking a stand thing is not true at all.

00:21:44.780 There's like 600 hours of my opinions on the internet at this point.

00:21:48.480 I like how you self-diagnosed and now you're already, you're disagreeing with your own

00:21:51.460 self-diagnosis.

00:21:52.520 And now I'm debunking it.

00:21:53.720 Yes.

00:21:53.980 All right.

00:21:54.180 I'm going to send you the people.

00:21:55.360 It's my favorite one.

00:21:56.300 Oh, okay.

00:21:57.860 Mr. Rogers, Gandhi, Michelle Obama, and Jimmy Carter are some well-known people with elements

00:22:03.940 of green.

00:22:04.560 And yes, Jesus.

00:22:05.940 I'm always saying this.

00:22:06.980 Jimmy Carter and Jesus are the most Hobbesian of public figures. 0.91

00:22:10.540 Whenever I'm reading these books, I'm trying to imagine someone who likes the book reading it, and I'm trying to fathom them getting to this part, where he's like, you know who else is a green personality? God. 0.71

00:22:22.560 Yeah, it's like the best people alive. Also, Mr. Rogers, one of the most beloved public figures in American history.

00:22:28.260 You just described these people as being afraid of change, never taking a stand, and indecisive. And you're saying that Jesus-

00:22:38.000 Or like Gandhi is too afraid to take a stand.

00:22:40.540 fame that's that's the one thing you always hear about god he never took a fan on anything and

00:22:46.280 finally blue in pursuit of perfection of course this is what our friends at deloitte think i am

00:22:52.320 more or less so i know that risk averse is how i would describe someone who started a podcast about

00:22:56.560 how the supreme court sucks while working at a law firm it's a good i know that's super risk

00:23:00.300 averse necessarily yeah but to be fair before that i just like became a lawyer which is like

00:23:05.720 sure that is risk averse if you have any potential and you become a lawyer that is it's inherently

00:23:09.720 risk averse, right? You've just sort of... That's true. You've really capped your ability to do any

00:23:14.300 good in this world. All right, here he goes about blues. So these people are task-oriented and

00:23:20.700 introversion? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Well, a green will just go with the flow. A blue has all the right

00:23:25.780 answers. In the background, he analyzes, classifies, evaluates, assesses. You know you've met a blue 0.93

00:23:31.380 if you visit someone's home and everything is organized in a particular way. Clear labels and

00:23:35.900 names on each hook so the children will know exactly where to hang up their jackets.

00:23:39.380 Dinner menus divided into six-week intervals to ensure a balanced diet stuck on the refrigerator

00:23:43.960 door.

00:23:44.660 If you look at his tools, you'll find that everything has its own spot and nothing is

00:23:48.260 out of place.

00:23:49.200 He's also a pessimist.

00:23:50.520 Sorry, a realist.

00:23:52.120 He sees errors and he sees risks.

00:23:54.140 He's the melancholic who closes the circle of behavior.

00:23:57.200 Reserved, analytical, and detail-oriented are some words you might associate with a blue. 0.50

00:24:02.180 Okay, so like the most annoying friend that you have. 0.87

00:24:04.420 The pessimistic part resonates with me.

00:24:06.660 You know, seeing risks, I kind of get that.

00:24:08.820 analytical i get a little bit of that for myself the idea of being hyper organized in my personal

00:24:14.640 life such that i had um like labels labels on the children's hooks or whatever that is the opposite

00:24:19.960 of how i live that's not how i live at all it sounds like he is a green and so he says a lot

00:24:23.780 of nice things about green and he's not a blue and so he says kind of mean things about blue 0.89

00:24:27.120 i think he says that he's three colors but i forget for fuck's sake well just say you're all

00:24:31.180 four then so are his famous people for this like tito stalin and satan he says have you identified 0.58

00:24:38.260 some blues in your life bill gates and albert einstein both use their attention to detail and

00:24:43.040 meticulous nature to build their success maybe we also have sandra day o'connor and condoleezza rice

00:24:48.580 and of course from the fictional world mr spock from star trek perfect blue all logic rationality

00:24:56.580 and intellect even if a few of the jokes slip past him and now he's now he's just like it's

00:25:01.600 actually autism we all know how good condoleezza rice is at assessing information like looking at

00:25:05.260 evidence and coming to the right conclusion being like very organized very thorough and robust not

00:25:09.620 a risk taker yeah so those are the four chapters obviously uh condensed a bit the fact that this

00:25:16.460 whole system divides people neatly into four categories is both part of the appeal of the 0.53

00:25:20.680 system and why it like immediately reads as bullshit to me yeah okay myers-briggs is

00:25:25.580 pseudoscientific but at least it has 16 categories which feels less insulting yeah there can't be 0.90

00:25:29.960 four types of gods. Even as you're reading this, you'll be like, okay, yeah, I've got a little bit

00:25:36.380 of green or blue. But like, then you look at the whole description and you're like, oh no.

00:25:40.500 Right. Because you're classifying people on this introvert versus extrovert, which I think is a

00:25:44.660 real distinction, but of course a spectrum and situational. And also this like task oriented

00:25:48.380 versus relationship oriented thing, which does feel a little bit muddy. Yeah. I mean, I think

00:25:52.520 one of the big problems with this is that it treats personality as static. You know, I am

00:25:58.700 very introverted in certain settings and very extroverted in other settings, right?

00:26:02.520 Yeah, yeah.

00:26:02.920 He describes personality as being like genetic and then also core values that you learn early

00:26:08.660 in life and then attitudes, which are a little more malleable.

00:26:12.140 Right.

00:26:12.440 But it's like unclear how static he thinks it is.

00:26:16.240 He treats it as if like people are just a certain way.

00:26:18.780 At work, I'm very task oriented, typically.

00:26:20.860 Like when I used to have like an office job, I was very much like, okay, what are our indicators?

00:26:24.200 What are our deadlines?

00:26:24.780 What do we need to do?

00:26:25.840 But that's just like a function of work.

00:26:27.120 I feel like this does seem like a meaningful distinction, but it's very difficult to measure.

00:26:31.460 And also at work, I feel like people would mostly lean toward task-oriented, right?

00:26:35.500 Because that's like why you're at work.

00:26:36.780 Right.

00:26:36.860 I would think that whether or not you are prioritizing relationships versus tasks is

00:26:41.700 also completely situational.

00:26:43.460 Right.

00:26:43.760 We can talk a bit about the science here, right?

00:26:46.580 Like what is there?

00:26:47.460 What isn't there?

00:26:48.020 And it really is a story of what's not there.

00:26:50.540 Erickson makes different representations about the scientific validity of disk at different

00:26:54.920 times.

00:26:55.460 He says in the book that it's not an exact science, but then a lot of the companies that sell this sort of testing explicitly say that it's science-backed.

00:27:05.700 They love to say science-backed, right?

00:27:07.940 That's like there's science in the background supporting it somewhere, right?

00:27:11.160 Not that it's like directly supported by research or something, but that it's science-backed.

00:27:16.080 It's science-ish.

00:27:17.420 So TTI Success Insights, the company that Ericsson seems to have worked with here,

00:27:21.580 says on their website that they offer science-backed talent assessments.

00:27:26.140 The reality of this is that there's just no research establishing the validity of DISC.

00:27:30.100 There's a lot more research on similar tests like Myers-Briggs,

00:27:33.040 which tend to show that they have low validity.

00:27:35.580 And there's no serious evidence that you could predict something like job performance

00:27:39.400 with these types of tests, right?

00:27:41.020 If you look at the type of test that DISC is, it's what's generally called an ipsitive test.

00:27:46.240 one that measures your traits against one another. You're less outgoing, more introverted.

00:27:53.160 Right.

00:27:53.400 That's as opposed to a normative test, which would benchmark against peers. These types of tests,

00:27:58.360 and I'm speaking very broadly here, tend to struggle with validity. Right. But again,

00:28:02.160 the real bottom line, there's just no good research here. Right. So any claim that it's

00:28:06.940 supported by science is going to be very thin. There's a blog post a few years back by a guy

00:28:11.980 named Dan Katz, a licensed psychologist and psychotherapist, really going after Erickson.

00:28:17.160 One thing he points out is that a lot of frameworks like this foster the idea that

00:28:22.140 personality is a causal mechanism. Like you have XYZ personality and therefore you act in a certain

00:28:28.660 way. But the model of personality that experts generally use is it's not a thing in your head

00:28:35.100 that causes you to act in a certain way. It's just a description of how you act. That might

00:28:40.600 seem like a subtle difference, but it's important if you want to understand why people act the way

00:28:44.800 they do. A lot of what you might describe as personality is situational. People are reacting

00:28:49.440 to their environments. You might be quiet in one setting, loud in another. Some behavior might be

00:28:54.440 the result of a disorder in one person, and the same behavior might not be in another. It can be

00:28:59.220 useful to categorize people just for convenience, but you can very quickly go off track here.

00:29:05.360 Erickson describes personalities like they're hard-coded, right? In speeches, he has described

00:29:10.120 personality, it's existing on a deeper level than behavior, which seems to imply that there's

00:29:15.660 this thing called personality that causes your behavior rather than your personality just being

00:29:20.240 a description of how you behave. Also, aren't there like very powerful structural forces in

00:29:24.340 specific workplaces that produce certain behaviors? I mean, some workplaces are very

00:29:28.760 task oriented, right? You get fired if you don't reach your targets by the end of the quarter or

00:29:32.080 something. Yeah. Whereas other places are more slow. The kind of the nature of the work is more

00:29:35.900 relational. There's also a question here of whether there are personality types at all,

00:29:40.940 meaning that like people can be sorted into a handful of discrete and usually static groups

00:29:47.620 based on their personality, right? A subtopic here is like, do personality traits appear in clusters?

00:29:53.420 Like Erickson was saying, blues are analytical, but also hyper-organized, right? Do those traits

00:29:59.040 generally come together? Do they always come together? I was going to mention this. Yeah,

00:30:02.180 Those two things don't necessarily seem all that length, that you're good at analyzing

00:30:05.900 a situation, but you also like meal prep every week.

00:30:08.640 Those just seem like different things.

00:30:09.740 And yeah, are people who are organized generally less ambitious?

00:30:13.260 Right.

00:30:13.440 This is another idea that there's just not a ton of support for.

00:30:16.500 You can go really deep on this.

00:30:17.940 This traces back to like Jungian archetypes, at least.

00:30:21.560 And there have been some studies that tried to like bundle people into categories.

00:30:26.380 Some of those studies claim to have shown some results.

00:30:29.400 There are other studies contesting those results.

00:30:32.180 We don't need to get into this too deeply, but I think to put it very lightly, the idea that there

00:30:36.280 are personality types at all is a controversial one. Even the research that tends to support

00:30:41.020 personality types often shows that those types have a ton of overlap with one another, and then

00:30:45.820 large segments of the population don't fall cleanly into any type. There's generally more

00:30:50.560 support for dimensional personality traits, traits that exist on a spectrum. So you have like the big

00:30:58.020 five personality traits. These are very popular. There's some research showing decent validity.

00:31:04.080 What those are doing is mapping several traits along a spectrum rather than trying to take a

00:31:10.320 ton of traits and then funnel you into a personality type. Right. Because saying there's no such thing

00:31:14.660 as personality types isn't the same thing as saying like people don't have different personalities.

00:31:17.740 Right. But any effort to separate people into types, even if it's like a hundred different types,

00:31:23.960 Any type is going to have elements that don't really apply to you.

00:31:27.280 Boiling it down to four is like, you know, the lower the number of types, the more silly

00:31:30.940 it's going to be.

00:31:32.060 And yeah, I mean, you'll actually, if you look at a lot of the color categories that

00:31:35.780 Erickson's providing here, a lot of them are just describing the same one or two traits

00:31:40.100 several different ways, right?

00:31:41.300 Yeah, yeah.

00:31:41.740 It's like yellows are enthusiastic, outgoing, charming, blues are systematic, structured,

00:31:46.380 analytical.

00:31:47.260 It feels sometimes like he's describing one thing, but he's sort of like trying to give

00:31:51.340 you the impression that he's not.

00:31:52.500 Because I find this with a lot of these personality tests include, as synonyms, introverted and shy.

00:31:58.840 But I'm not shy.

00:32:00.280 I'm introverted.

00:32:00.960 Like, I get burned out by doing a lot of socializing.

00:32:03.300 But I like socializing.

00:32:04.320 And I'm very social when I'm with other people. 0.96

00:32:06.120 I'm just fucking exhausted after, like, two hours.

00:32:08.480 And I think for each of these things, it's like, it sort of seems like it's a very clear cluster. 0.95

00:32:12.080 But it's actually distinct for different people.

00:32:13.640 Even if personality traits or types are real phenomena, that doesn't mean that these types of assessments can actually identify them.

00:32:20.980 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:32:21.360 Right?

00:32:21.560 Because they're asking you.

00:32:22.980 Right.

00:32:23.460 How are you?

00:32:23.980 Like, are you social?

00:32:24.700 Are you courageous?

00:32:25.520 Are you organized?

00:32:26.460 And people are not good narrators of their own personalities.

00:32:29.100 And there is there's some research showing that especially in workplace settings, there

00:32:33.420 are problems with dishonesty with these types of assessments, which which makes sense.

00:32:36.940 Obviously, if your boss is giving you an assessment, you might give answers that you think they

00:32:40.600 want to hear.

00:32:41.400 Right.

00:32:41.600 So big picture with this, you have this what's basically a completely unproven idea, mostly

00:32:47.900 an untested idea.

00:32:49.140 And it's sort of stacked on top of a theory of personality that's already very shaky.

00:32:53.780 And so there's just sort of not a lot there.

00:32:55.940 And as I mentioned, Erickson, no scientific background, but his author bio, which you

00:33:01.360 can find in several versions of the book, describes him as a Swedish behavioral expert.

00:33:06.820 His website describes him as a behaviorist.

00:33:09.780 He also self-describes as a behaviorist at times in interviews.

00:33:13.200 He's admitted that he has no relevant degree.

00:33:15.740 Some skeptics of his work did some digging a few years back and couldn't find any evidence

00:33:19.420 that he attended any university in Sweden.

00:33:22.220 Wait, really?

00:33:22.980 Yeah.

00:33:23.220 He's like a random high school graduate who just like started saying I'm an expert?

00:33:26.060 They said that the most likely situation is that he only holds a high school diploma.

00:33:30.480 Fascinating.

00:33:31.060 Okay.

00:33:31.360 His background was in sales.

00:33:33.620 He was a management consultant.

00:33:35.360 A couple of months ago, I was looking up a random like wellness person for maintenance

00:33:39.900 phase.

00:33:40.720 And instead of listing any credentials on their website, they described themselves as 0.74

00:33:44.200 a medical news expert which is like the fakest thing i've ever fucking heard in my life i thought 0.51

00:33:49.600 that's how you self-described is that not i mean aren't we all behavior experts like i i'm around 0.86

00:33:55.340 people who exhibit behaviors all the time well so i was like well is behaviorist like a specific

00:33:59.980 yeah field and like the answer like not exactly like it's a subcategory in in psych but like

00:34:05.260 there are groups of people who describe themselves as behaviorists who have no expertise but they

00:34:11.680 seem to have like, it's like they've just found a word. Like I can say that I'm a behaviorist

00:34:16.460 without technically running afoul of any like psychologist because they don't use that exact

00:34:21.960 terminology. Because you're not technically claiming anything. Erickson has been confronted

00:34:25.440 with some of this stuff. He was asked about his critics once and he says, in Sweden, we can't have

00:34:31.640 successful people. We bring them down because we're an envious society. Yes, my haters. Yes,

00:34:37.380 do it. He was asked to describe his background. He says, I'm a behaviorist, which means I studied

00:34:41.780 behaviors. I've read the literature back and forth, up and down, and I know a lot when it

00:34:46.940 comes to behaviors and personalities. I have no ambition to call myself a psychologist and no time

00:34:51.900 for the five and a half years it takes to get the degree in Sweden. He says he has never held

00:34:55.640 himself out as a psychologist, which I think is true, but I do think he's using language that

00:34:59.620 is basically designed to trick you into thinking that he has formal expertise. Yeah, it's like

00:35:03.560 putting MD in your email signature. And then when people are like, wait a minute, you're not a

00:35:07.040 doctor being like, yeah, I'm from Maryland. I never said I was a doctor. It's you guys who said I was

00:35:11.680 a doctor. It's funny to be like, look, I'm an animal expert. And then someone's like, but you

00:35:15.360 have no degree in biology. And you're like, right. I would never call myself a biologist. Right. I

00:35:19.020 have pets. I'm just an expert of the, of the body. Most of the rest of the book is just expounding

00:35:26.160 on different elements of the personality types. There's a chapter on body language. He says

00:35:32.100 reds lean forward aggressively and have powerful handshakes yep yellows gesture expressively 0.98

00:35:38.900 blues speak without gesturing sure one of my favorite lines in the book he says

00:35:44.460 he says that blues quote either sit or stand

00:35:48.400 i was like yeah yeah i guess the the other colors spend a meaningful amount of time horizontal

00:35:56.500 just like in normal day they're doing wall sits like tim ferris at a restaurant i'm gonna send

00:36:01.080 do some of the body language stuff because it's funny sorry also is this one of these books where

00:36:06.820 he kind of like runs out of things to say like halfway through but he needs to hit his word

00:36:09.660 count so he's just like have some body language stuff i mean a lot of it is sort of like all

00:36:13.880 right i've introduced these colors to you these personality types and now we're going to talk

00:36:17.660 about like in a little more detail how to identify them and then deal with them okay and like the

00:36:22.540 body language thing is a good example of just like well what else is there he says a simple

00:36:26.840 handshake can reveal a lot about a person. Limp and feeble handshakes often indicate a submissive

00:36:32.100 behavior. So if you have such a handshake, it might be a good idea to press a little harder.

00:36:36.740 If a handshake is firm, it probably suggests that the person is determined. Anyone who squeezes way

00:36:41.780 too hard belongs more than likely to the former category, but would prefer to belong to the latter.

00:36:48.040 I like how he's like, uh, you can tell a lot about somebody from their handshake. Also,

00:36:51.920 you can alter your handshake to give people the particular impression that you want.

00:36:55.080 A lot of guys, and I'm including myself, I'm not being judgmental, at some point in their

00:37:00.220 life have been like, am I doing handshakes with the right firmness?

00:37:03.240 It's a weird sort of like circular thing because this myth of like, you can tell something

00:37:07.420 about someone from their handshake is so popular.

00:37:10.800 Everyone thinks they have to have like an overly firm or like a perfectly firm handshake.

00:37:14.780 I mean, I have like met interview candidates and who have incredible, like who just like

00:37:19.220 put their hand there and you squeeze it and you're like, ah.

00:37:21.180 Yeah, I've met people like that too.

00:37:22.500 just like wet warm fish you're just like you're just like squeezing a limp body part it's like i

00:37:29.380 don't i don't think it says anything either but it does feel like one of those things where it's

00:37:33.420 like please just follow the social norms well exactly yeah to me it doesn't say that like

00:37:37.360 anything about them as a person it's just like can you fake this i love that we've we immediately

00:37:41.580 were like actually this is how i judge people well no it's judging people on whether they can

00:37:45.500 perform these little social niceties that we all do all the time to get along with people at work

00:37:50.880 Right. If you're not willing to squeeze my hand a little bit, are you even washing your ass? 1.00

00:37:54.300 Like, what is going on? I like this part too. 1.00

00:37:57.240 A more effective way to spot a liar is to notice if he puts the palm of his hand on his chest,

00:38:02.680 preferably his right hand over his heart, and sighs indignantly when he's been accused of lying.

00:38:08.320 Would I lie? How can you say that about me? This gesture is intended to strengthen his honest

00:38:13.580 intentions, but it immediately puts those around him on their guard because it is so unnecessary

00:38:18.100 and excessive there's definitely something fishy going on there do people do that they're like who 0.98

00:38:23.620 me fucking fbi over here this is this is like how cops think about this shit right also yeah who has 0.96

00:38:29.640 ever done this would i lie how can you say that about me that's me doing like animated movies to 0.99

00:38:35.620 like exaggerate everybody's body language i feel like that's what was he was watching a movie from

00:38:40.080 like 1961 yeah right where someone did this and he was like that person's lying i know it gee

00:38:45.020 willikers i would never lie again we don't need to go through the rest of the book piecemeal

00:38:49.060 it's the same sort of thing over and over again right and i promise that i i found the funniest

00:38:54.480 bits okay there are chapters at the end of the book that are like once i was at a party and there 0.92

00:38:58.900 were too many yellows and here oh my god like it's just like oh just give me a fucking break 0.81

00:39:04.020 oprah winfrey and han solo were there it was crazy people talk about the reading crisis in america 0.98

00:39:08.800 but there's also a writing crisis in america where people write these fucking books it's the 0.92

00:39:12.200 writing crisis dude everyone's like oh my god no one reads books anymore but how many would you 0.98

00:39:16.320 read if there were 80 pages i bet you'd be flying charge me half as much and have the book be like

00:39:21.640 a quarter as long some of the there are a couple later chapters that are very one bookie there is

00:39:26.760 a chapter titled a short reflection through history and this is erickson's attempt to

00:39:31.340 pretend that like what he's describing in the book is like ancient wisdom oh my god we've seen so

00:39:35.340 many times oh yes so he says like hippocrates viewed the human body as a balance of four

00:39:40.960 humors the aztecs viewed people as embodied by a spectrum of fire water earth air and he's like

00:39:47.260 does that sound familiar like red red blue avatar the last airbender had four nations we're cooking

00:39:54.540 we're cooking so he's saying like you know the idea of four traits in balance has deep roots in

00:39:59.900 our intellectual tradition and the this framework is just building on that by the way he starts off

00:40:05.140 that chapter by saying this chapter explains how i arrived at the research that forms the basis of

00:40:10.160 the information in this book. It's like, okay, wait, you're saying that you read Hippocrates

00:40:14.980 and you read about the Aztecs and that's how you got here? Because early in the book, you were

00:40:19.080 like, oh, this comes from TTI success insights in Scottsdale, Arizona. And then the last chapter is

00:40:25.140 like interviews with a couple of business leaders about it. Hell yeah. Oh, that's good. There's the

00:40:30.000 CEO of a private equity company. And she says, now my staff know that I'm not an evil despot,

00:40:36.940 just red. That's also the dark side of personality test, though, too. It's like

00:40:42.160 objectively toxic behavior can then be recast. It's like, oh, I'm just a red.

00:40:46.200 Yeah, I'm a bit of a red. And then she says that she learned that greens talk behind her back,

00:40:51.000 and therefore she does not employ them anymore. By the way, that was the Jesus color. 0.79

00:40:58.920 Gandhi was a catty little bitch. People are always saying that. 1.00

00:41:01.360 So Erickson publishes this in 2014.

00:41:04.860 In 2020, he publishes a follow-up surrounded by psychopaths.

00:41:08.980 The premise of that book is that the disc model doesn't apply to psychopaths.

00:41:13.040 Wait, what?

00:41:13.540 Which seems like even more like something you'd need expertise to be talking about.

00:41:17.380 It seems like psychopaths are pretty task-oriented rather than relationship-oriented.

00:41:20.800 I think that's an easy one.

00:41:21.700 Great point.

00:41:22.780 So that's 2020.

00:41:23.940 In 2021, he puts out two books, surrounded by bad bosses and lazy employees and surrounded by setbacks.

00:41:29.960 in 2022 he puts out surrounded by narcissists in 2023 he puts out surrounded by energy vampires

00:41:37.940 in 2024 he puts out surrounded by liars so there's like an initial six-year period where

00:41:44.360 he's just coasting off this book and then he just churns out when was a chat gbt released again

00:41:49.700 sorry what's the year uh great question but he appears to have beaten it to the punch okay i

00:41:55.080 imagine that you've encountered this but if you're uh when you're doing like a quick google for a

00:41:59.360 book like this, you'll find like someone's Medium post where they're like, here's my review of

00:42:03.640 Surrounded by Narcissists. Yeah. And I found one and they were like, I did find that it was the

00:42:08.880 same thing over and over again, but perhaps he just wants to emphasize these ideas. Yep.

00:42:15.980 It's like how the Pale King is boring on purpose because it's about the boredom of work life. Yes.

00:42:20.400 So I got curious about this, not as a substantive thing, but as like a cultural phenomenon. Like,

00:42:26.420 How did it come to be that these personality assessments are such a big workplace thing?

00:42:32.240 Yeah, yeah.

00:42:32.660 So I read a book and I read a bunch of articles.

00:42:36.000 Most of the sources I look at trace modern personality tests back to World War I.

00:42:41.140 Obviously, there have been various attempts to describe personality types before, but

00:42:44.640 World War I was the first time you see a standardized personality assessment done at scale.

00:42:50.160 And the primary reason is that soldiers were returning from war with shell shock.

00:42:54.500 Right.

00:42:54.860 As a society, we didn't really understand trauma like this, right?

00:42:57.740 The military, even less sensitive to trauma than you were in Our Body Keeps subscribe.

00:43:03.660 I'm right, I'm right, I'm right.

00:43:06.580 Although they were in a position to provide horses to many more people.

00:43:10.200 They basically thought that like anyone with shell shock was the product of an emotionally unstable person being exposed to war.

00:43:17.940 And so they were looking for a test to assess emotional stability for troops.

00:43:22.320 so this guy roger woodworth and his team they go about mapping symptoms they see they compare them

00:43:29.480 against who they consider to be normal people and they come up with a questionnaire that is

00:43:33.500 meant to measure neuroticism oh yeah sample questions from this assessment do you usually

00:43:39.780 feel well and strong are you troubled with dreams about your work do you ever have the sensation of

00:43:46.020 falling when going to sleep oh do you have trouble walking in the dark have you hurt yourself by 0.99

00:43:52.780 masturbation no no yes yes yes i was getting track do you have trouble walking in the dark 1.00

00:44:00.720 is fucking hilarious it's like well what do you mean i do find it harder than walking in the light 0.94

00:44:04.940 if that's what you're asking well yeah and then they're immediately and they're like have you 0.95

00:44:08.040 ever fucking jacked it so hard i know and also that like feeling of falling when you're about

00:44:12.900 to go to sleep is literally a universal human thing. 0.96

00:44:14.800 Yeah, that's super normal.

00:44:16.180 I love that like a 1918 colonel or whatever was like, you ever feel like you're falling

00:44:21.880 when going to sleep? 0.99

00:44:22.520 That's because you're a coward. 1.00

00:44:23.360 Yeah. 1.00

00:44:24.080 And also, have you ever just hurt your dick by jacking so furiously? 1.00

00:44:28.420 That's also universal. 1.00

00:44:29.300 There's hypnic jerks and there's injurious jerks. 1.00

00:44:31.740 Everybody knows this. 1.00

00:44:32.680 Another 40 years before television is invented. 0.97

00:44:34.480 So time to jerk off for the eighth time today.

00:44:37.340 So almost right away, people start modifying this test and coming up with similar tests 0.76

00:44:42.200 with broader applications. And most of those early tests were designed to locate maladjustment.

00:44:48.480 Right. The tests are very rudimentary. The questions they asked are often based more on

00:44:52.640 the test maker's intuition about what a neurotic person would answer. Right. There's a book about

00:44:57.860 the history of personality tests from about 20 years ago by Annie Murphy Paul, who's a journalist.

00:45:02.920 It's called The Cult of Personality. Send you a little bit from that. She says, Robert Bernreuter

00:45:07.960 was a Pennsylvania State University psychologist who designed one of the era's most popular tests,

00:45:12.800 the Bernd Reuter Personality Inventory. In it, he posed the question, are you critical of others?

00:45:18.160 Surmising that a positive response suggested psychosocial difficulties. Come on. As it turned

00:45:23.360 out, more than two-thirds of normal people taking the test answered yes, a reply given much less

00:45:28.260 frequently by neurotics and psychotics. Likewise, the query, do you daydream frequently, assumed by

00:45:34.200 Bernreuter to be a sign of psychological instability was endorsed more often by healthy

00:45:38.780 individuals than by the mentally ill. Are you critical of others as just a test of whether

00:45:43.020 you're a liar? Yeah. And so these guys were sort of just spitballing it, right? What do I think a

00:45:47.500 neurotic person is? And they're getting it wrong very frequently. Right. There was this guy, Elton

00:45:51.440 Mayo, an Australian psychologist. And in 1926, he's hired to head up industrial research at

00:45:57.780 Harvard Business School. And he becomes a pioneer in workplace psychology. He is primarily

00:46:03.860 concerned with the impact of worker psychology on productivity. I'm reading from some research

00:46:08.600 here. Mayo believed that problems at work were most often due to mental disintegration and

00:46:13.860 maladjustment. These maladjusted workers could cause problems by lowering work morale,

00:46:18.960 fomenting workplace violence, and agitating for unions. So the premise almost immediately 1.00

00:46:24.320 after these assessments sort of pop up is like, maybe we can filter out problematic workers from

00:46:30.280 our employee pool. That continues to be a very popular framework for understanding unproductive

00:46:35.700 or unruly workplaces, which is a big problem at this time because we're in a period of labor

00:46:40.740 unrest, right? Where it's in the early 30s when you get like major pieces of labor legislation

00:46:45.660 because there's so much labor unrest in the late 20s. So then in the 30s and 40s, you start to see

00:46:53.460 the rise of multidimensional personality tests. So the question moves from like, how do we identify

00:46:59.920 personality disorders to how do we categorize normal personality types right there's the mmpi

00:47:06.640 the minnesota multiphasic personality inventory you have the hum wadsworth scale which measured

00:47:13.360 personality along like multiple dimensions including hysteroid manic depressive autistic 0.94

00:47:19.360 paranoid epileptoid commie pinko you folks could kill listener special folks hum wadsworth sounds 1.00

00:47:28.180 like what I call it when I injure myself masturbating. I knew that you would think 1.00

00:47:30.960 Hum Wadsworth was funny. You couldn't even resist giggling. So the Hum Wadsworth guys,

00:47:36.960 they immediately start to sell it to companies to use on their employees and it gets quite popular.

00:47:41.220 In 1942, Time Magazine writes an article about it. They say it's been applied to 2 million people

00:47:46.600 across 225 companies. And apparently an article about the test inspires Isabel Briggs to start

00:47:55.280 up with Myers-Briggs. Over the next couple of decades, these workplace assessments become

00:48:00.400 quite popular. And it's not just these tests, it's all matter of like aptitude tests, right?

00:48:05.340 They start gearing them towards aptitude. In 1939, there is a survey of businesses showing that 14%

00:48:11.620 use these tests. In 1963, it's 90%. But then in the following years, the use of assessment

00:48:19.040 falls off a cliff. A couple of reasons for that. One, cultural backlash. In the 1960s,

00:48:25.840 the federal government had started to implement personality assessments into their hiring on

00:48:30.400 government employees. So there's a lot of resistance to that. Senator Sam Urban says,

00:48:35.580 quote, clearly the government should not send out an investigator to peer through an employee's

00:48:39.860 or an applicant's bedroom window. Neither should the government ask through subtle psychological

00:48:44.360 questioning, what a person does and thinks after he draws the curtains.

00:48:48.500 That's always the issue with these things because they're not about your work performance.

00:48:51.460 They're about who you are as a person, which is supposed to not be a factor in a sort of

00:48:56.020 capitalist system where they're purchasing your labor.

00:48:57.740 Like you should have a private sphere.

00:48:59.820 Sending you a little bit from the Cult of Personality book. 0.99

00:49:02.640 I can injure myself masturbating as many times as I want and my boss shouldn't know about 0.99

00:49:06.540 it. 0.99

00:49:06.960 The number of times I'm hum wads worthing is none of your business.

00:49:10.080 Hold on.

00:49:10.980 Okay.

00:49:11.240 Maybe it doesn't work.

00:49:11.920 I was trying to, she hums on my wad till I work.

00:49:14.360 i hum on my own wad yeah then it works then it works unease about the increasingly prevalent

00:49:22.660 use of personality tests like the mmpi had been growing for more than a decade in 1956's the

00:49:27.960 organization man william white sounded a warning about the stifling conformity such tests imposed

00:49:32.420 on american executives more explicit critiques with titles like the brain watchers and the

00:49:37.000 tyranny of testing appeared in the early 1960s newspapers and magazines ran investigative

00:49:41.500 exposés under such headlines as the snoops and the I love my mother tests. There were even reports

00:49:47.800 of public burning of test data by parents angry that their children were given the questionnaires

00:49:52.320 at school. Yeah, I mean, it sounds like it was very obvious at the time that they were like,

00:49:56.200 are you a fucking weirdo? Was like the purpose of the test. Right. So Senator Urban introduces 0.98

00:50:01.180 legislation to forbid the use of personality assessments in government. There are congressional

00:50:05.960 hearings. There's a big public PR fight that takes place in popular magazines and newspapers.

00:50:10.800 The bill never passes and everything sort of dies down.

00:50:14.120 But this combination of scientific skepticism and public outcry puts a damper on all of this.

00:50:20.200 The other big development is the Civil Rights Act of 1965, which makes racial discrimination illegal, which results in the EEOC and courts suggesting that these tests might like functionally discriminate based on race or gender or whatever else.

00:50:32.840 Many companies run by pretty expressed racists were just using personality and aptitude tests to come up with an excuse to discriminate against black applicants after the Civil Rights Act passes.

00:50:44.820 In the early 1970s, there's a Supreme Court case, Griggs v. Duke Power Company.

00:50:50.340 This company had restricted black employees to one low-paying department.

00:50:54.760 Then the Civil Rights Act is enacted. And on the day of, they changed the policy to allow employees to transfer out of that department. But in order to do so, they needed to pass certain aptitude tests that white people were much, much more likely to pass.

00:51:11.640 Yeah, I learned about this from a podcast.

00:51:13.320 So the Supreme Court says, no, you can't do this.

00:51:16.080 This test has a disparate impact on black employees and is still considered discrimination.

00:51:20.900 It's at this time in like the 70s that you start to see the rise of a different type

00:51:27.520 of personality assessment, one that is meant to categorize people in a less judgmental

00:51:33.060 way instead of trying to determine whether someone is socially adjusted or not.

00:51:37.120 The tests are just trying to place people on a spectrum of normal personality traits, right?

00:51:43.020 Right. Injured, self-masturbating, parentheses, non-derogatory.

00:51:46.200 In the early 90s, you start to see a bunch of research coming out that seems to demonstrate

00:51:50.420 that personality tests can actually be a good predictor of success in the workplace.

00:51:54.920 That's very useful to companies because now legally you can show that the test has a validated use,

00:52:01.900 which can be enough to overcome a claim of discrimination in certain situations.

00:52:05.200 Right. So in the early 1990s, you see the first big class actions about this. Target gets sued

00:52:12.780 for its personality tests, which are a combination of the MMPI and another test. They were trying to

00:52:18.740 screen for turnover risk and competence. But I'm going to send you some of the questions which

00:52:24.700 you're meant to answer with a yes or no. What? Okay. I believe in the second coming of Christ.

00:52:30.940 i believe there is a god i am very strongly attracted to members of my own sex maybe some

00:52:36.860 minority groups do get rough treatment but it's no business of mine my sex life is satisfactory

00:52:41.620 i have often wished i were a girl my eyesight is as good as it has been for years i hardly ever

00:52:47.700 feel pain in the back of my neck many of my dreams are about sex matters i am worried about sex

00:52:54.060 matters this is why i say it's sort of a hybrid era target is not trying to figure out if you're

00:52:58.260 Christian, but the old personality tests were. And so they're pulling from these old personality

00:53:04.460 tests that have this sort of shit in them. This gets settled out of court. And the industry has 0.99

00:53:09.020 sort of put on notice that if you use these super old fashioned tests, you're risking liability.

00:53:14.480 Annie Murphy Paul's book covers a lawsuit brought in the late 90s by some employees of Rent-A-Center.

00:53:21.240 Oh, okay. I am going to send this to you. One morning, the managers were herded into a chilly

00:53:26.460 conference room. They had been scheduled to participate in a budgeting workshop, but company

00:53:30.420 leaders instead announced an abrupt change in plans. Employees would immediately begin taking

00:53:34.920 the management test, a five-hour battery of nine separate examinations. An anxious hush fell over

00:53:40.920 the room as the exams were passed out. Within minutes, however, the silence was breached by a

00:53:45.340 stir of astonishment. The questions in front of them had nothing to do with renting furniture

00:53:49.560 or managing employees or keeping the books. Okay. I'm going to send you some of the questions.

00:53:55.020 Oh, my God.

00:53:56.780 My sex life is satisfactory.

00:53:58.660 I have diarrhea once a month or more. 0.84

00:54:00.880 I would like to be a florist.

00:54:02.520 Everything tastes the same.

00:54:04.280 My mother was a good woman.

00:54:06.060 I am a special agent of God.

00:54:08.240 Arriving at the question, I liked Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll,

00:54:12.200 the managers might well have felt that they had slipped down the rabbit hole.

00:54:15.360 The test, of course, was the MMPI.

00:54:17.880 Things only got worse when the test results were returned.

00:54:20.200 Rent-A-Center hired an outfit in Kansas, Associated Personnel Technicians,

00:54:23.320 to produce an extensive personality description of each manager.

00:54:27.180 How self-sufficient, self-confident, and dominant he or she was,

00:54:30.320 how fearful, depressive, and impetuous.

00:54:32.480 Most needed work in one or more of these areas, APT advised,

00:54:35.700 and so each profile included a specific plan for improvement.

00:54:39.480 Employees who were restless and impatient should lay off nicotine and caffeine, they counseled.

00:54:43.860 Workers with the tendency to retreat from reality should drink lots of water.

00:54:48.280 Yeah, it's basically like a surveillance state where they're looking at your internal frame of mind. 0.97

00:54:52.400 i have diarrhea once a month or more is fucking like it's so funny that's so funny like we can't 0.98

00:54:58.560 go into every ridiculous question and all of these and there are so many and like picking out the 0.98

00:55:02.900 funniest ones was really hard for me but everything tastes the same there's something so funny about

00:55:08.800 it to me where like in the middle of it it's it's sort of like they're asking these personal

00:55:13.360 questions and then they just like insert everything tastes the same which i would imagine is the sign

00:55:17.660 of like some kind of severe chemical imbalance right like a physiological issue that you're

00:55:21.640 having. Yeah. Also, my mother was a good woman. I mean, maybe your mom was trash.

00:55:25.580 Yeah. Why not? 1.00

00:55:26.120 Some moms have bad vibes. 1.00

00:55:27.320 That case gets settled too. A lot of companies are basically taking these personality tests

00:55:31.940 and modifying the questions to determine how likely people are to follow rules or be on time

00:55:38.440 to work, how friendly they'll be to coworkers, how prone they are to slacking off, right?

00:55:43.140 And this is obviously being sold to companies as a way to glean insights into applicants that

00:55:48.100 like you otherwise couldn't, right?

00:55:49.900 In the mid-90s, there's a lawsuit against Contra Costa County in California

00:55:54.340 because they were using a personality test on welfare applicants

00:55:58.380 to determine whether or not they were abusing substances.

00:56:02.380 Oh, nice.

00:56:02.880 It had questions like,

00:56:04.300 I believe everything is turning out the way the Bible said it would.

00:56:07.500 Hell yeah.

00:56:07.800 And pornography and obscenity have become serious problems and must be curbed.

00:56:13.000 Anyone who failed it was deemed chemically dependent.

00:56:15.900 Oh, my God.

00:56:16.360 They had to enter a six-month rehab program if they wanted to receive benefits.

00:56:20.660 No way.

00:56:21.440 It turned out that the test was classifying 44% of all applicants as chemically dependent.

00:56:28.120 Not even based on questions like how often do you use drugs, just like other random-ass questions.

00:56:32.380 Right.

00:56:32.840 Like, what was your mom like?

00:56:33.920 And it's like, you're on crack.

00:56:35.260 They're like, what's your diarrhea situation?

00:56:37.440 Yeah.

00:56:37.740 Get to rehab. 0.71

00:56:38.320 Because the funny thing about these tests is it's so fucking obvious what they want you to say. 0.81

00:56:42.100 Do they? 0.98

00:56:42.540 Is it better to have more or less diarrhea?

00:56:45.120 Do you think they like it if all food tastes the same?

00:56:47.960 Because that would mean that they could give you really bad tasting food and it wouldn't matter to you.

00:56:52.180 Yeah, that's the only reason it's on there. 0.97

00:56:53.660 They're like, the food here sucks.

00:56:55.400 So in the 2000s and 2010s, you see even more legal attention starting to get paid to these assessments.

00:57:00.500 And this is where companies are really ratcheting up the volume of use because of computers.

00:57:07.300 The ACLU filed a complaint against CVS in 2009.

00:57:11.500 CVS had a questionnaire in its application process that asked applicants if they agreed

00:57:15.880 with statements like, you change from happy to sad without any reason.

00:57:19.860 You are unsure of what to say when you meet someone and your moods are steady from day

00:57:24.840 to day.

00:57:25.420 Oh.

00:57:25.700 The ACLU pointed out this could function as discrimination against people with certain

00:57:29.840 mental health conditions, right?

00:57:31.080 Or anxiety.

00:57:31.800 Also, just like everyone's mood changes.

00:57:33.320 I mean, so many of these questions is like universal human behavior.

00:57:36.100 Like, yeah, sometimes it's hard to meet people.

00:57:37.900 I don't know.

00:57:38.200 Target had to settle with the EEOC about a decade ago because it was alleged that their

00:57:41.840 application tests were disproportionately filtering out women and people of color.

00:57:45.620 It's like, how angry do you get when you see a pride display? 0.62

00:57:48.700 Seven out of seven, baby.

00:57:49.980 All of this litigation made these types of personality assessments less popular in workplaces.

00:57:55.280 But it seems like instead of companies eliminating them altogether, it just sort of accelerated

00:58:00.400 this shift toward the so-called normal personality tests.

00:58:04.100 Right.

00:58:04.240 And so you have these tests like DISC, which are like sort of inoffensive ways to group people into personality types, right?

00:58:12.780 Right.

00:58:12.980 So from the 80s through now, you're basically seeing this big shift from these old style tests to this sort of like weird, goofy, but not horrifying sort of version that you see in DISC.

00:58:28.320 Although companies are probably still doing analysis on, like, who's the most likely to be late to work and stuff based on various test questions, I'm assuming.

00:58:35.260 Yeah.

00:58:35.440 So DISC is meant to, like, aid managers in managing employees, right?

00:58:39.300 It's like everyone is different.

00:58:41.120 Here's how you manage this type.

00:58:42.080 Here's how you manage this type.

00:58:43.200 If you're an employee, here's how you get along with your colleagues who are a little different from you.

00:58:47.540 It's after the hiring process.

00:58:49.820 But if any company is still doing a hiring assessment, that is obviously designed to filter out people, right, who they think are less likely to be quality employees.

00:59:01.040 That is less common these days, but you see it.

00:59:04.240 It's not gone.

00:59:05.760 Yeah.

00:59:05.880 Now they just do it in person.

00:59:07.000 They're like, for legal reasons, we can't ask you whether you have kids, but what is the diarrhea situation?

00:59:12.720 What was your mom like?

00:59:13.680 Have you ever jacked it so hard at that?

00:59:17.140 The lingering question in my mind is why?

00:59:19.820 Why are companies doing this?

00:59:22.360 I understand the hiring assessments, right?

00:59:25.800 Even if they're problematic, they have a clear goal. 0.98

00:59:28.760 They're trying to filter out shitty employees. 0.96

00:59:31.940 But why DISC? 0.99

00:59:33.840 Why something like this? 0.99

00:59:35.020 Why this color-coded bullshit where everyone knows there's no real scientific validity? 0.99

00:59:41.240 I wonder if they just see it as like another form of team building, right? 0.96

00:59:43.800 Like any other activity you do with your coworkers is going to be arbitrary.

00:59:47.660 So first, there's been some New York Times reporting on this.

00:59:51.320 Here's a bit from some reporting in 2023.

00:59:55.620 Nearly one third of the respondents to the Society for Human Resource Management's 2017

00:59:59.600 survey of its members said they used personality tests to fill executive roles.

01:00:04.320 At McKinsey & Company, some consultants do due diligence when staffing projects, which

01:00:08.540 often means looking at the balance of introverts and extroverts on a team.

01:00:12.300 College fundraising offices love the color code, which among other things tells you who

01:00:16.700 can best work the phones parentheses yellows because you're like what's color code it's

01:00:21.140 literally the same bullshit as disk because of course that's the only thing companies are going

01:00:24.340 to be concerned with right is your productivity at work like your ability to do the job so of 0.97

01:00:28.340 course they're using it for the same purposes as when they ask like are you a commie or whatever

01:00:32.600 on the questions all right here's another bit from the times often the tests aren't a diagnosis

01:00:35.960 but are more of an opening for people to talk about the softer parts of office life their

01:00:39.740 relationships identifying as a blue through the color code might not feel all that relevant to

01:00:44.480 quarterly sales quotas, but at least among teammates, it can be a conversation starter.

01:00:49.040 Yeah, I mean, it's typically our defense of these things. It's like, it's an opening of

01:00:52.020 a conversation. You can talk about how people are different. It's pseudoscience as team building,

01:00:56.380 right? It's like, here's something for you guys to talk about, right? And maybe you find some

01:01:00.960 commonalities, some people you didn't talk to before or think you had much in common with

01:01:04.980 before. Maybe you get a little bit of insight into some of your colleagues, right? Which honestly,

01:01:08.980 I don't think is totally implausible. Like, it probably does work for that.

01:01:12.500 Maybe it does. I mean, I certainly didn't find any research about this, but I would be shocked

01:01:17.260 if there is like a lasting impact to organizations about this, right?

01:01:20.960 Well, how much efficacy does like trust falls have? Are these like, you know, these like days

01:01:25.200 out that you'll do with your colleagues where like you all go bowling together or whatever.

01:01:28.420 Yeah.

01:01:28.600 It's sort of the same kind of thing. It's not clear to me how much those are doing either,

01:01:31.380 but given the other options, this might be fine.

01:01:33.920 Yeah. The basic idea that people think and work differently is important to reinforce,

01:01:38.940 right? Even if you're doing it on the back of some bullshit ass personality assessment, 0.99

01:01:42.500 It's good to know, like, Kathy doesn't prioritize the same things as I do, but that doesn't 1.00

01:01:47.120 mean she's stupid, right? 0.91

01:01:48.940 The New York Times had a similar piece in 2019. 1.00

01:01:52.320 They said, Myers-Briggs provided a shorthand to talk about a whole range of personal needs,

01:01:57.180 how much you like to fill your calendar, how you want your manager to give feedback, how

01:02:01.240 personal you want to get with colleagues at the water cooler.

01:02:04.560 So, yeah, I think it's maybe just a way to get people to talk about themselves, right?

01:02:08.860 And maybe that has some benefits.

01:02:10.280 Yeah. Because like as an icebreaker, I've often done like, hey, Kathy, when's the last time you

01:02:14.620 injured yourself masturbating? And then she tells a story. I can tell a story. And then like we have 0.99

01:02:19.200 some anecdotes to share. How often are you guys having diarrhea? Just like you're sitting around

01:02:23.840 a circle with 20 people. What was your mom like? I will also say as often as you see companies get

01:02:29.680 sued for racial discrimination for using these, there also have been like some examples of

01:02:35.100 companies implementing hiring assessments that do improve diversity, most of the time,

01:02:40.280 it seems to me at a glance, and I didn't look too deep, that's because they're so not diverse in

01:02:45.480 the beginning that like the introduction of any objective criteria of any type will make them

01:02:50.820 more diverse. If your number of black hires is at 1%, then just like, yeah, any change to your

01:02:56.660 process is probably going to improve that. You get up to like 2% or 3%. You're like, 0.98

01:03:00.520 we triple the diversity of the company. Right, right. I think that's like the good faith sort

01:03:05.800 of read on what these things are doing, right? Maybe they're just like an excuse to get people

01:03:10.060 chatting. And maybe sometimes even like the hiring context, they might have some positive

01:03:14.900 impacts here and there. I think the more cynical read, which obviously, as a blue, I buy into

01:03:21.460 is that these types of assessments, like the DISC assessment in particular, is a pitch to managers

01:03:28.340 that your problems are really from like mismatched and misallocated employees rather than like

01:03:35.420 structural or organizational issues.

01:03:37.460 So if you're a manager and you're like, why doesn't my team function well? 0.99

01:03:41.780 Deloitte is there to be like, that's because you've got the greens working with the blues

01:03:46.080 to whatever, right?

01:03:47.300 As opposed to like your incentives give people a reason to be toxic to each other or like

01:03:51.300 you're not clear about tasks.

01:03:52.540 So most of the people on the team are not task oriented, stuff like that.

01:03:55.100 You know, I think it sells something to managers that they want to hear.

01:03:59.140 Yeah.

01:03:59.400 Which is like, your problems are actually the result of these personality types.

01:04:03.840 And you can solve them without any structural changes.

01:04:05.800 Here's another bit.

01:04:06.740 This is Emma Goldberg from a Times piece in 2019. 0.71

01:04:11.360 Personality assessments short-circuit the messiness of building what is now referred to as a culture.

01:04:15.980 They deliver on all the complexities of interpersonal office dynamics,

01:04:19.060 but without the intimate and expensive process of actually speaking with employees

01:04:22.440 to determine their quirks and preferences.

01:04:24.720 They appeal also, perhaps, for the same reason astrology, numerology, and other hocus-pocus

01:04:29.620 systems do, because it's fun to divide people into categories.

01:04:33.160 They tap into the angst of the where-are-y'all-sitting meme, the hunger to know where you belong

01:04:37.500 in the lunchtime cafeteria scene.

01:04:39.480 I think this is right.

01:04:40.360 This is like half cynical.

01:04:41.500 Yeah.

01:04:41.720 This is a way to create culture.

01:04:45.100 Yeah.

01:04:45.260 But it's sort of a cheap, weird, pseudoscientific way to create culture.

01:04:50.980 But what I can't stop coming back to, my real like why do companies do this is I think these 0.99

01:04:59.840 organizations are just kind of suckers. 0.91

01:05:01.560 Because there's a huge industry selling these tests to them. 0.98

01:05:03.520 Yes.

01:05:04.020 Massive industry. 1.00

01:05:05.060 Hundreds of companies sell this shit. 1.00

01:05:06.800 Yeah. 1.00

01:05:07.120 And I think they want to believe that there are shortcuts for efficiency and culture.

01:05:12.560 Yeah.

01:05:12.780 And yeah, they have these companies who are like, we're backed by science.

01:05:16.120 Yeah.

01:05:16.340 And I think they buy it.

01:05:17.260 I think they fundamentally are like, ooh, that looks good.

01:05:21.580 So I don't think that the people making these decisions at large companies to hire a company 0.93

01:05:26.780 like this, to do a disk assessment, I don't think they're like, look, this is all bullshit,

01:05:30.580 but this is a good way to get these people interacting and talking about their work 0.83

01:05:34.300 styles or whatever.

01:05:35.480 I think that they're just like, oh, this is going to make us more efficient.

01:05:39.000 It's going to improve our culture.

01:05:40.300 They're literally receiving a sales pitch by TTI Success Insights in Scottsdale, Arizona.

01:05:44.660 And they're like, oh, that sounds fantastic.

01:05:46.600 And they're typically large corporations who have fairly large budgets.

01:05:50.540 Right.

01:05:50.700 This is not like the CEO of most companies, right, deciding, oh, we're going to bring

01:05:55.460 this guy, this guy in.

01:05:56.440 It's like some department that is put in charge of like workplace culture and events.

01:06:02.380 Exactly.

01:06:02.840 And they have a massive budget.

01:06:04.180 And they're like, well, what are we going to do with it?

01:06:05.380 And they get pitched on something like DISC and they say, that sounds great.

01:06:09.440 It was either this or like we all go to a baseball game.

01:06:11.740 Because also, I mean, a bunch of the other like team building stuff they do at work,

01:06:14.680 you know, like do escape rooms together or something. I don't know that there's great

01:06:17.680 ROI on that either, but yeah, it's just somebody's job to do this. On the other hand,

01:06:21.960 just getting people interacting probably is good for culture. And so it is arbitrary what you're

01:06:26.280 actually interacting about. Right. I think that that's probably true, that it doesn't really

01:06:30.520 matter what you get people doing as long as you get them a little bit off their guard and

01:06:36.520 interacting in a friendly manner. That said, as an employee, this has to be the worst one,

01:06:42.300 right like just please put me in an escape room um i don't even care if there's no escape just 0.96

01:06:46.460 anything about this fucking assessment the escape room one drives me nuts because then you're 0.93

01:06:49.960 basically like reformulating the same work dynamics like somebody has to lead somebody 0.97

01:06:53.960 has to follow it's like the same potential for like conflict as you have in the actual workplace 0.99

01:06:57.860 but i feel like that's what stupid managers think and they're like we're gonna find secret leaders 0.97

01:07:02.660 like i can't remember if i told this story on the show before but a friend of mine did one of these 0.99

01:07:06.320 like icebreaker exercises these like team building things and everybody got like a little index card

01:07:10.640 and they went around the circle of their like icebreaker question and the person next to him

01:07:14.320 got what is your favorite sandwich and then my friend got when was the last time you felt alone 0.95

01:07:19.560 he's like what the fuck i will say and this is probably obvious i crush in these settings 0.96

01:07:26.420 uh i uh there's nothing that i like more than a company being like by the way uh this is a space 0.98

01:07:34.260 for jokes maybe this is proof that personality types aren't real but i would say in 50 of these

01:07:40.900 sort of workplace things i'm just dead silent ready to die yeah and in 50 i'm just like when

01:07:46.440 was the last time i felt alone why the fuck are you asking me this right folks folks let's all 0.66

01:07:51.700 team up against this company that's doing this to us but just like again kind of like the handshake 0.92

01:07:56.360 thing they're almost a measurement of like how well do you fit into a corporate environment like

01:08:01.580 you just need to come up with something quippy. If I got the horrific alone question, I would just

01:08:05.760 come up with some dumb quip to move on. I wouldn't like, there's no fucking way I would even consider 0.99

01:08:09.780 that question and like answer it in anything like an honest way. Dude, it would be so funny 0.86

01:08:14.320 to answer that in a serious way. The day of my mother's death. Yeah. I wouldn't, what are you

01:08:20.120 going to say? I wouldn't have it in me to do it, but if someone just pulled it together and like

01:08:26.340 knowingly answered that sincerely, like knowing that it would be a good bit, God, that would be

01:08:31.300 funny god that would be funny just ruin the tone of the entire rest of the day i guess it was

01:08:36.920 probably when i had diarrhea three times in a day and then jacked and then jacked myself so hard 0.96

01:08:42.660 that i was injured the third time i injured myself masturbating 0.98

01:09:01.300 Thank you. 0.98

If Books Could Kill - September 01, 2026

Surrounded By Idiots

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