Yes, agreed that this isn't necessarily getting at something deep that improves prediction relative to our intuitive models about people. I think as you suggest the value is maybe there for large orgs that want to get a broad strokes understanding of personality for a large population of individuals who they cannot…
Yes, agreed that this isn't necessarily getting at something deep that improves prediction relative to our intuitive models about people. I think as you suggest the value is maybe there for large orgs that want to get a broad strokes understanding of personality for a large population of individuals who they cannot assess individually/don't know.
As for the number of words thing - yes, there are many reasons that we could have more words as you say... and this is likely why Cattell didn't bother to consider this when performing the factor analysis. Still, I think it's intuitive that, while word count may be too noisy of a signal to be of much use in a range of situations, I still think that more words for a thing suggests that thing is important. Even in the example he gave, that word number is clearly not a good signal of importance since we always come up with new slang for inebriation, I take a different lesson... which is that people really care about inebriation-it's a way that we bond etc. Also, I can't remember where I saw this but if you ask men and women to choose the meaning of uncommon words by multiple choice women and men know different uncommon words.... women knew all these words for different types of fabric for instance, clearly this is because we care more about this subject, men may not have invented all those words. But still, I agree with you that frequency is a better metric - but it's probably not something they could have gotten good data on at the time.
Thanks for the comment!
Yes, agreed that this isn't necessarily getting at something deep that improves prediction relative to our intuitive models about people. I think as you suggest the value is maybe there for large orgs that want to get a broad strokes understanding of personality for a large population of individuals who they cannot assess individually/don't know.
As for the number of words thing - yes, there are many reasons that we could have more words as you say... and this is likely why Cattell didn't bother to consider this when performing the factor analysis. Still, I think it's intuitive that, while word count may be too noisy of a signal to be of much use in a range of situations, I still think that more words for a thing suggests that thing is important. Even in the example he gave, that word number is clearly not a good signal of importance since we always come up with new slang for inebriation, I take a different lesson... which is that people really care about inebriation-it's a way that we bond etc. Also, I can't remember where I saw this but if you ask men and women to choose the meaning of uncommon words by multiple choice women and men know different uncommon words.... women knew all these words for different types of fabric for instance, clearly this is because we care more about this subject, men may not have invented all those words. But still, I agree with you that frequency is a better metric - but it's probably not something they could have gotten good data on at the time.