Personal Science Week - 240801 Humantelligence

Personality testing, plus followups and more links

Personal scientists like to measure everything, including our own psychology.

This week we look at an easy, free personality test that claims to help business colleagues work together more effectively.

While at an alumni networking event last week I learned about Humantelligence¹, a company that tries to improve workgroup effectiveness by helping people understand the different personality types. If you’ve ever worked at an organization with a reasonably-big HR department, you’re familiar with those various “employee development” programs that supposedly train you to be more sensitive to others’ working styles. Often that involves a take-home quiz from Myers-Briggs, Clifton StrengthsFinder, the DiSC Personality test and many others.

Humantelligence does something similar, but packaged around an AI model that claims to help with day-to-day office tasks, like choosing new teams or helping draft an email that fits better with an employee’s unique working style.

The tests, and most of the core features, are free for groups of under 10 people. Bigger companies can pay $10/month/employee for additional options like integration with Outlook, Slack, or Zoom. I was able to set up my own free account and get interesting, actionable insights in less than 15 minutes.

You don’t need to share much information to get started. No credit card, just a working email address. The registration process then walks you through a series of a dozen or so ranked-choice questions like these:

Many of the answer options are repeated with slight wording changes or matched against different questions. You can try to game the system by, say, always ranking the “pay is important” answers higher or lower, but it’s harder than it looks because the questions appear to change slightly based on previous answers. If you try to “cheat”, you’ll end up contradicting yourself, and then the system will adjust accordingly.

So how did I do? After about 10 minutes of questions/answers, I got a detailed summary of my personality, along with specific tips I should use when I communicate with others.

But the interesting part is the model Humantelligence uses to compare yourself to others. In a work group, you’d compare yourself to colleagues or to potential hires. But the company also offers a way to see how you compare to famous people. Here’s me vs. Steve Jobs:

For what it’s worth, I only had one face-to-face interaction with Steve Jobs back in the day. I didn’t detect any particular urgency in his responses to me, but then maybe I misread him. If I had followed Humantelligence’ suggestions, maybe my life would have turned out differently.

Following Up

Important followup to last week's speculation that some people can shake Long COVID by exercising more: Muscle abnormalities worsen after post-exertional malaise in long COVID. tldr; be careful before you try this.

And we noted the lack of evidence for face masks in PSWeek240613, but now a new randomized control study from Norway shows that they work! BMJ study followed 4500 Norwegian adults over 14 days, randomly assigned masks or not. Sure enough, the masked people reported fewer infections (9% vs 12%). Masks work! (See more details from Maryanne Demasi)

Several things to note:

• Roughly 10% of the participants self-reported “symptoms of respiratory infection”. Is it reasonable that 10% of any population is suffering from a cold on any given two-week period? Really?

• Is “self-reported” the standard we should use in a post-COVID world where people have been trained to think masks work? If you think they work, will you bother to report a tiny scratch in your throat despite your mask-wearing? And vice-versa, if you’re a mask believer in the study arm that doesn’t wear them, will you be more inclined to report something?

• The mask-wearers were significantly less likely to attend cultural events or visit restaurants. That difference in exposure alone could explain the effect.

As we keep reminding you, if face masks can really protect you against viral infections, then this is the biggest news in public health since the invention of antibiotics. Or... how much you wanna bet that wearing a garlic necklace works just as well?

More links worth your time

• The strange history of osteopathy: Do you know what an osteopath is? Something like 25% of all medical students are osteopaths (OD) and more than half will become primary doctors (most MDs go into a speciality). When they graduate they'll take the exact same licensing exam as MDs. In other words, they're doctors. Despite that, 20% of Americans have never heard of OD, and something like half say they wouldn't want to be treated by one. This seems like a classic example of the unjustified power of a credentialing organization—the American Medical Association—that for its own reasons has vilified a competitor.

• Adam Mostroianni says peer review and much of the rest of professional science is built around solving the "weak link" problem—ensure there are good filters for removing the weakest ideas. But a dysfunctional peer review system is actually worse than the alternative—no review at all—because it promises greater trust than is warranted.

• A ZOE interview with Kanchan Koya inspired me to think more about spices. In India, families often keep a spice box called a dabba containing tins of various different spices. The exact spices differ regionally but always include turmeric and chili powder. I’m now adding a shake of spice to everything: coffee, eggs, salads, vegetables… (We wrote lots more spice ideas in PS Week 221208)

• Some of the best self-trackers will be gathering at the Brain Summit on October 3-4, 2024 in Los Angeles. Uber productivity expert Tiago Forte and a cast of digital creativity experts will speak on how to use your computer as a second brain and more. Quantified Self co-founder Gary Wolf is planning to attend and says it'll be “closer to the QS spirit” than any other event in a long time.

About Personal Science

Why do you believe the things you believe? Whether it’s health, nutrition, safety, or matters of public policy, most of us rely on experts we trust. But how do you decide which experts? and how do you know if they’re right?

The scientific method, based on experiments, logical reasoning, and relentless questioning of assumptions, has proven over the long term to be among the most reliable ways to uncover the truth. Professional scientists do this for a living. Personal scientists think the same techniques should work for everyone.

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1. My regular reminder that I’m not paid to talk about any of the products or ideas mentioned here. I’m just one personal scientist sharing notes I thought might be helpful.