If Books Could Kill

The airport bestsellers that captured our hearts and ruined our minds

If Books Could Kill

Surrounded By Idiots

September 01, 2026

0:00 | 1:09:05

Peter and Michael discuss "Surrounded by Idiots," a book that dares to ask: Can the mystery of human relationships be unraveled by a workplace personality assessment?

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Michael: What do we have?

Peter: Surrounded by Idiots? What am I-- at a meet and greet with my fans? [Michael laughs]

Michael: Let's go super toxic right off the bat

[laughter]

Peter: What if you just went super lib coded and you were like, "Surrounded by idiots? What am I-- What am I at the Republican National Convention?"

Michael: Ooh, the Trump administration. That's what I'm doing. I'll say Drumpf the entire episode.

Peter: I must be in the White House.

Michael: Let's try that. Let's do that. Let's try that.

Peter: Michael.

Michael: Peter

Peter: What do you know about Surrounded by Idiots?

Peter: 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.

[If Books Could Kill theme]

Peter: This is a 2014 book by Thomas Erikson, who is a Swedish author. It was a worldwide success. It sold millions of copies, but it was a mega hit in Sweden.

Michael: [laughs] Really?

Peter: If you ask most people about this book, they'll be like, "Yeah, I've heard of that." But if you ask someone from Sweden, they'll be like, "This book ruined my life."

Michael: It is the most toxic of the Scandinavian countries, so it makes sense.

Peter: This is a book about personality types. It divides people into four personality categories.

Michael: Oh, I was hoping it was going to be two idiots and not idiots.

[laughter]

Peter: The bummer about this book is that the Surrounded by Idiots title is a little bit tongue in cheek. The idea is that-- you think you're surrounded by idiots, but actually it's just people of different personality types you need to understand that.

Michael: [unintelligible 00:01:30] clickbait title for a more nuanced typology.

Peter: Unfortunately, it's a very reasonable top line.

Michael: I'm getting ready for a really boring episode. [laughs]

Peter: Erikson is not a psychologist. He is not a medical professional or expert of any type. He is just a guy. He comes out of nowhere with this book emerging from relative obscurity from what I can tell with his bestseller. Like many of our If Books Could Kill authors, his idea is not his own.

Michael: Nice.

Peter: It's an existing idea that he has repackaged for public consumption. That means we need to go 100 years back in history to really understand it.

Michael: To Friedrich Nietzsche.

Peter: We start with Plato's The Republic. [Michael laughs] So, back in 1928, there's a psychologist named William Moulton Marston, and he publishes a book called Emotions of Normal People. [laughs]

Michael: Also, something said only by the worst person you've ever met.

[laughter]

Peter: Among other things, it established a personality framework called DISC. It stands for dominance, inducement, submission, and compliance.

Michael: I only know these from Grindr. [Peter giggles] Can you explain a little bit more? Can you spell it out a little bit?

Peter: I don't really want to get into the framework as Marston understood it in 1928. But here is a little bit from a critique of Erikson that explains what Marston was doing. It says, "Marston hypothesized that our behavior is influenced by psychonic energy that is transferred through a web of nerve cells that he called psychons. The four personality types arise, he claims, as variations between different people in the structure of their psychonic network."

Michael: I love it when they make up scientific sounding words.

Peter: Look, it was 1928 and psychologists were just spitballing even more than they are now. Right? They were just like, "Yeah, I don't know, psychons"

Michael: Satans. Yes, you take a stress test? Yes, I'm familiar.

Peter: So, this was not originally created as a personality assessment. It was meant as just a theory to describe emotions. Right? His basic idea is that there's a primary set of emotions, a set of primary emotions similar to primary colors, where every other emotion is comprised of these basic four emotions. The idea is basically ignored by the broader academy. There's only one favorable review written of his book and it is by his girlfriend.

Michael: Nice.

Peter: But then 15 years later, one of his former students takes it and turns it into an assessment called the Activity Vector Analysis, which he starts selling to businesses. The assessment is just a checklist of 81 words. You check a word if anyone has ever used that word to describe you and also if you think that a word describes you.

Michael: Oh, okay.

Peter: At the end, you use the results to map yourself along four vectors similar to the ones established by Marston. One last fun fact about Marston before we move on. He was relatively important in the invention of the lie detector. He held himself out as the father of the lie detector, although it's a little more complicated than that. And also, he also created Wonder Woman.

Michael: Wait, what? The hero?

Peter: The comic book character, Wonder Woman was created by the guy who came up with the lie detector test-

Michael: What?

Peter: -and also the personality framework that forms the basis of this book.

Michael: Is that why she does the honesty lasso?

Peter: Dude, that's why she's got the fucking lasso, dude. It all clicked.

Michael: Because he was trying to invent the lasso for his entire career. [giggles]

Peter: Right.

Michael: Like people trying to discover alchemy. He's like, "Damn it, [Peter giggles] another rope that doesn't work."

Peter: So, you have this company, the Activity Vector Analysis company, which is selling a revamped version of this to businesses. Then a guy who was employed by that company creates his own spinoff. And then, in the 70s, a third dude creates his own version, and they're all still using this DISC framework. This basic trend where someone takes this assessment and then slightly modifies it to sell to businesses has essentially continued uninterrupted until today. Now, there are literally hundreds of companies that sell DISC assessments to managers. There are many more that sell what's basically the same thing, just repackaged with different terminology. I've seen estimates as high as 75% of Fortune 500 companies using something like this internally.

Michael: This is the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator too. It's also just basically made up by two random people, and then it catches on.

Peter: Yeah. 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 DISC assessment or some knockoff version of it.

Michael: If your boss has been telling you that you're a sub bottom, that comes from the DISC assessment. [Peter giggles]

Peter: His initial version said dominance, inducement, submission, and compliance. All of the later versions are less horny.

Michael: Unfortunately, yeah. Too bad.

Peter: It's a bummer.

Michael: Bummer. Also, an identity on Grindr.

Peter: I realized I took something like this back when I was at a law firm.

Michael: Oh, yeah?

Peter: It wasn't exactly the same, but I was trying to remember it and I started Googling stuff I remembered and found out that what I took was the Deloitte Business Chemistry test.

Michael: What?

Peter: This is a test proprietary to Deloitte. They said that they brought in various experts in biology to help put it together.

Michael: Nice.

Peter: And yet what they come up with is extremely similar to an assessment that you see [giggles] in hundreds of different companies. They say that there are four work styles across two axes: pioneers and guardians, drivers and integrators. Pioneers are risk-taking dreamers. Guardians are analytical pragmatists. Drivers push for results. Integrators bring people together.

Michael: Do you remember what you got?

Peter: Yeah. I remember because it was clearly wrong.

Michael: Okay. Yeah, yeah.

Peter: So, I was a guardian, which is the analytical pragmatist type. I immediately knew I was in the wrong group because they were like, "All right, are you a guardian? Then you're blue, so go with the other blues." Then they were like, "All right, so discuss. What are your pet peeves?" Everyone was like, "I hate it when someone has a typo in an email." I was like, "Okay, I'm in the wrong group. [Michael laughs] I don't know what the fuck is going on."

Michael: And yours was like white supremacy or something.

[laughter]

Peter: So, that is the super broad history of this concept. The basic premise of this book and really of all of these workplace workshops is that people have these different personality types. The key to having better relationships with them is to understand your type and theirs and how they work together best.

Michael: Which on some level is fine.

Peter: It's a very defensible high-level thesis. You believe that everyone around you is an idiot, but really, they just have these different personality types. Their brains work differently, whatever.

Michael: It's a nonjudgmental way to talk about difference.

Peter: Yes. [unintelligible 00:08:04] read part of his intro here? "I was in high school when I first noticed that I got along better with certain people rather than others. It was easy to talk to some of my friends in any conversation. We always found the right words and everything just flowed smoothly. There were never any conflicts and we liked one another. With other people, however, everything just went wrong. What I said fell on deaf ears and I couldn't understand why."

Michael: Relatable, relatable.

Peter: Aside from the fact that he's saying he was in high school when he first noticed that he got along with some people more than others, [Michael laughs] his story is that he starts looking into this and he comes across this DISC idea. Although his version is DISA: dominance, inducement, submission, and analytic ability. Much to his credit, he does not pretend to have invented this idea. He does not try to repackage it with different terminology, which is more than I can say about Deloitte. [Michael giggles] He, in fact, expressly says that he borrowed a lot of the book from the materials of one of these companies that sells talent assessments to managers: TTI Success Insights, headquartered in Scottsdale, Arizona. The CEO of TTI Success Insights writes the foreword for the version of the book I read.

Michael: I wonder if he read Tim Ferriss' book where he's like, "Find someone else's idea and steal it and write a quickie self-help book."

Peter: Here is Thomas.

Michael: "Since I began studying how people function and painstakingly strove to understand the differences in the way we communicate, I've never been the same. I'm not as categorical anymore, judging people just because they are not like me. For many years now, my patience with people who are the complete opposite of me has been far greater. I wouldn't go so far as to say that I never get involved in conflicts, just as I wouldn't try to convince you that I never lie, but both these things happen very seldom now." Honestly, good shit. Whatever framework is making you be a more agreeable and nice person, I really don't have a problem with the fact that the framework is arbitrary if it's making you nicer.

Peter: This broad-- we're starting off perfectly fine and inoffensive. He wants to improve interpersonal dynamics and maybe alleviate anxiety that results from interpersonal disputes. Right? And that remains, I think, the most positive element of this all throughout, even as we get into the details and it begins to fall apart to an astounding degree.

Michael: Okay. [giggles]

Peter: So, in one of the opening chapters, Why Are We the Way That We Are?. He says, "The temperament and character traits we have inherited affect our behavior, a process already begun at the genetic stage. Exactly how this works is still a bone of contention among scientists, but all are in agreement that it does come into play. Not only do we inherit traits from our own parents, but also from their parents, also in varying degrees from other relatives."

Michael: Yes. I inherited lots of genes from my brother.

Peter: This is a great little capsule of the book where he's just like saying something totally inoffensive. He's like, "We inherit traits from our parents." And you're like, "Yeah, man." And then he's like, "Also from other people." Who knows? No.

Michael: Aunts, uncles, cousins. You're getting genes from everywhere. Yep.

Peter: Just fully whiffing on ninth-grade bio in the first chapter, [Michael giggles] it's like, "No, you're not--"

Michael: That's germs. You're [unintelligible 00:11:06] talking about germs, not genes. [Peter laughs] Look, if you're going to call your book Surrounded by Idiots, we're going to be a little nitpicky about the text.

Peter: Then he talks about core values and attitudes. He says, "My core values are found deep within me, values so deeply embedded in my character that it's almost impossible to change them. These are the things that I learned from my parents as a child or that I learned in school when I was very young. Attitudes are things I have formed opinions about based on my own experiences or on conclusions that I have drawn from encounters in the latter part of my schooling." I guess he's saying you have genes, you have your core values, and you have your attitudes, and those comprise your personality. Right?

Michael: Fundamentally inoffensive. You have some inherited stuff, you have some stuff that you learn over time. Fine.

Peter: I've sent you a diagram.

Michael: It's a two-by-two thing. You're either task-oriented and issue-oriented or relation-oriented.

Peter: That's one axis.

Michael: And then the other axis is introvert, passive, reserved on one end and extrovert, active, implementer on the other. What if we're introverted and implementing, Peter?

Peter: And then there's also this chart that has the various colors. There are four personality categories: red, yellow, green, and blue.

Michael: But basically, you're task oriented or relationship oriented, and you're introverted or extroverted. That's like the two-by-two.

Peter: That's right. That's really it.

Michael: So, I think, based on this, I think I'm blue. What does it say for blue?

Peter: Blue is the-- that's the one that Deloitte said that I was.

Michael: Oh really?

Peter: Conscientious, analytical, detail oriented.

Michael: You're not introverted, though.

Peter: No. It's not correct, Michael. No. [Michael laughs]

Michael: Okay. Because I think it's correct for me. But I'm also not very detail oriented.

Peter: Right.

Michael: As people can tell from this podcast.

Peter: I will send you his summary of this.

Michael: "About 80% of all people have a combination of two colors that dominate their behavior. Approximately 5% have only one color that dominates behavior. The others are dominated by three colors. Throughout the book, I focus on the single colors individually because they are the fundamental components of a person's behavior." It's like a recipe. We need to understand all the ingredients before we bake the cake. "Entirely green behavior or green in combination with one other color is the most common. The least common is entirely red behavior or red behavior in combination with one other color."

Peter: Am I stupid? The colors reflect quadrants across two axes. How can you be dominated by three colors?

Michael: I know. Yeah.

Peter: I don't entirely get it.

Michael: Also, if your framework is splitting people into four different types and you're dominated by three of them, that doesn't give you a way as a manager, as an employee, of helping your relationship or help you click with that person.

Peter: You're reading off. If you look at the chart of all the traits that he lists under each color, you're just looking at so many words.

Michael: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Peter: [giggles] How is this clarifying? Greens are patient, loyal, modest, thoughtful. Reds are timekeepers, they're fast, they're results-oriented, they're performance-oriented. It's a jumble by the time you start absorbing it all.

Michael: Right.

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

Michael: Hell, yeah.

Peter: This is where the book really starts to fall apart.

Michael: Also, wait, wait, wait. Maybe you said this before. Is this test the way that you determine whether you're whatever color you are? Is this by circling the words that apply to you, or is there a list of questions like there is for the MBTI?

Peter: Different companies do them different ways. But generally speaking, they'll describe a personality trait like, "I prefer to get hands-on," and blah, blah, blah. Then you do a strongly agree to strongly disagree sort of thing.

Michael: Oh, it’s that. Okay, okay.

Peter: That's, I think, the most common version of the DISC personality assessment. But there is no single standardized version of this necessarily. It can be done in different ways.

Michael: That's interesting actually. There isn't a standardized assessment that comes with the diagnosis, basically.

Peter: It's not real, so it could be-- [giggles]

Michael: Good point, good point.

Peter: One thing you need to remember is that-- [giggles]

Michael: Tapping my nose and pointing at you right now. Yes.

Peter: So, we're going to start with reds.

Michael: You're being such a fucking red right now, alpha. Is the chapter called Red Dead Redemption?

Peter: The red chapter is titled Red Behavior: How to Recognize a Real Alpha and Avoid Getting in His Way.

Michael: Red behavior sounds racist. [laughs]

Peter: There is a way in which it becomes weirdly offensive sounding. It sounds like it should be problematic. By the end of the book, he's just like, "You know how greens are." [Michael laughs]

Peter: All right. So, I just sent you a little bit about reds.

Michael: Okay.

Peter: “Red, by the way, is someone who is very task and issue oriented and also extroverted and active.”

Michael: He says, "Nowadays you might call a red person bold, ambitious, driven, but also potentially hot tempered, rash or dominant. You quickly notice a red person because he doesn't make the slightest effort to conceal who he is. People who have lots of red in their behavior are task-oriented extroverts and they enjoy challenges. They make quick decisions and are often comfortable taking the lead and taking risks." A common perception is that reds are natural leaders. These are people who willingly take command and go to the fore. They are so driven that they will get through despite any obstacle in their path. Their disposition is ideal in competitive situations. It's not unusual for a CEO or president to have lots of red in his behavior.”

Peter: The downsides, he says, "When they get going, they become control freaks and they repeatedly trample on people's toes." Now for my favorite part of every color chapter. Here is where he speculates wildly about what famous people might fall-

Michael: Oh, hell. Yeah.

Peter: -into this category.

Michael: Although to be fair, I was doing that in my head. I was like, "This is a Ronald Reagan type." So, [Peter giggles] I can't talk shit. He says, "If you want to get to know some famous red people, consider Steve Jobs, FDR, Venus Williams, or Margaret Thatcher. There's also Barack Obama and Mother Teresa. Oh, yes, it’s true. 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. A typical red profile.”

Peter: When I first read that, I was just like, "Are you pretending that you gave Mother Teresa a workplace personality assessment?" [Michael laughs]

Michael: Like, here's a form. Yeah.

Peter: The Catholic Church had one day where they were like, "Deloitte is here." [Michael laughs] All right. Yellow behavior: How to Recognize Someone Whose Head is in the Clouds and Get Him Back to Reality Again. Stop laughing. I know you think it's racist. [Michael laughs]

Michael: What if it was red, yellow, black and white? Real black behavior. You'd be like, "Whoa, hey."

Peter: It would be a good bit to do it as not very subtly, but just subtly enough. Racially coded.

Michael: I'm talking about personality types here. I'm judging people by the content of their character obviously.

Peter: “Yellow is extroverted and active, but relation oriented rather than task oriented.” These are, of course, words that make sense. He says, "These are people who live to live, always finding opportunities for enjoyment. Life is a banquet, and yellows will see to it that they savor every bite. They are driven by merriment and laughter, and why not? The sun is always shining somewhere.”

Michael: They're jolly. Okay.

Peter: He's just saying “They're optimistic, they're outgoing, they're charming, and they're enthusiastic. Downsides: When they are given unlimited space, they will consume all the oxygen in the room. They won't allow anyone into a conversation, and their stories will reflect reality less and less.”

Michael: That seems like a leap from being people oriented and extroverted to you're basically a sociopath.

Peter: Are you a scientist? [Michael laughs] Are you a scientist? Are you a scientist?

Michael: I’m sorry. I’m sorry. [laughs] I defer to the experts. I defer to the author. Sorry.

Peter: I'm sending you something.

Michael: I was about to be like, "Shut up, Peter. Give me the famous people." He says, [Peter giggles] "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." I feel like Han Solo was pretty task oriented.

Peter: Huge mistake to leave that in for you to discuss. [Michael laughs] Green: Why Change is So Difficult and How to Get Around It. “Greens are relation oriented and introverted.”

Michael: Okay. That's me, that's me. That's me.

Peter: Okay, yeah.

Michael: He says, "The green person is the most common. You'll meet him virtually everywhere. What's the easiest way to explain who he is? Well, I would like to describe him as being the average of all the other colors. Greens are more passive than others. They're not as driven as reds, not as resourceful as yellows, and not as orderly as blues."

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

Michael: I'm actually three colors, Peter, so we haven't got to my other colors yet, so--

Peter: Also, how is it a spectrum but you're also the average of the others? I can't--

Michael: I don’t know.

Peter: I hate when you try to talk it out and you're just like, "What? I thought it was a spectrum." All right. Never mind.

Michael: “Green people are kindness personified.” Thank you. “You can expect a helping hand whenever you need it. They are pronounced relational people who will do everything within their power to save your relationship. And they will invest lifelong. They will keep track of when your birthday is, when your partner's birthday is, when your children's birthdays are, etc.”

Peter: Michael, when's my birthday?

Michael: Well--

Peter: Michael? Michael? [giggles]

Michael: Listen. I was about to say they don't need to keep track of birthdays because you can schedule texts in advance. So, it's pretty easy to be like, "Happy birthday, bud," and send it for 9:17 AM on somebody's birthday. I like doing this. I do this constantly. Does he mention that?

Peter: That is psychopathic behavior.

Michael: No. That is nice. That is fucking nice. People like getting a happy birthday text or a gooey New Year's text.

Peter: Not nice because you're not even really doing it. [giggles]

Michael: I'm doing it. I'm just doing it in advance.

Peter: This is the same thing as asking AI to send your--

Michael: No, it's not because I'm doing it. I'm the one typing it. It's not AI. I'm not telling a chatbot.

Peter: Originally, you're typing it six months in advance. And you're probably doing it for the next five years.

Michael: Not six months in advance, but a week in advance because I have it in my calendar. I'm like, "Oh, next Wednesday is so and so's birthday."

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

Michael: Because I have ADHD and I'm afraid that I'm going to forget, Peter. This is like one of my little tasks. [laughs] Whatever I was worried about forgetting.

Peter: This is one step from like, "AI, please fuck my wife." [Michael laughs]

Michael: No, it's not. It's at least four steps from that, Peter. It's at least four steps from that. [Peter giggles]

Peter: All right. Downsides about greens. See if this resonates with you, Michael.

Michael: There are none. There are none.

Peter: “They can be too wishy washy and unclear. They can downplay trauma.” [Michael laughs] That's interesting.

Michael: Fuck off. Fuck off. People are going to think you're being serious. Fuck you.

[laughter]

Michael: Everything you say now really like, "Wow, clocked." Really, really got clocked by this trash book.

[laughter]

Peter: He says, "Anyone who never takes a stand eventually becomes difficult to handle. You don't know where they really stand. And indecision kills the energy in other people."

Michael: Indecision, true. The taking a stand thing is not true at all. There's like 600 hours of my opinions on the internet at this point.

Peter: I like how you self-diagnose and now you're already disagreeing with your own self-diagnosis.

Michael: And now I'm debunking it. Yes.

Peter: All right. I'm going to send you the people. It's my favorite one.

Michael: Okay. “Mr. Rogers, Gandhi, Michelle Obama, and Jimmy Carter are some well-known people with elements of green and yes, Jesus. I'm always saying this. Jimmy Carter and Jesus are the most Hobbesian of public figures.”

Peter: Whenever I'm reading these books, I'm trying to imagine someone who likes the book reading it. I'm trying to fathom them getting to this part [Michael giggles] where he's like, "You know who else is a green personality? God."

Michael: It's like the best people alive. Also Mr. Rogers.

Peter: Mr. Rogers.

Michael: One of the most beloved public figures in American history.

Peter: You just described these people as being afraid of change, never taking a stand, [Michael laughs] and indecisive. And you're saying that Jesus--.

Michael: Or like Gandhi is too afraid to take a stand.

[laughter]

Michael: That's the one thing you always hear about Gandhi. He never took a stand on anything.

Peter: And finally, Blue: In Pursuit of Perfection. Of course, this is what our friends at Deloitte think I am more or less.

Michael: I know that risk averse is how I would describe someone who started a podcast about how the Supreme Court sucks while working at a law firm.

Peter: It’s a good point.

Michael: I know that's super risk averse necessarily.

[laughter]

Peter: Yeah, but to be fair, before that I just became a lawyer which is like--

Michael: That’s true. That is risk averse.

Peter: If you have any potential and you become a lawyer, that is inherently risk averse. Right?

Michael: That’s true.

Peter: You've really capped your ability to do any good in this world. All right, here he goes about blues.

Michael: “These people are task oriented and introversion?”

Peter: Yeah.

Michael: Okay. “A green will just go with the flow. A blue has all the right answers. In the background, he analyzes, classifies, evaluates, assesses. You know you've met a blue if you visit someone's home and everything is organized in a particular way. Clear labels and names on each hook so the children will know exactly where to hang up their jackets. Dinner menus divided into six-week intervals to ensure a balanced diet stuck on the refrigerator door. If you look at his tools, you'll find that everything has its own spot and nothing is out of place. He's also a pessimist. Sorry, a realist. He sees errors and he sees risks. He's the melancholic who closes the circle of behavior. Reserved, analytical and detail oriented are some words you might associate with a blue.” So, like the most annoying friend that you have.

Peter: The pessimistic part resonates with me. Seeing risks, I kind of get that analytical. I get a little bit of that for myself. The idea of being hyper organized in my personal life such that I had--

Michael: Like labels.

Peter: Labels on the children's hooks or whatever. But that is the opposite of how I live. That's not how I live at all.

Michael: It sounds like he is a green. And so, he says a lot of nice things about green and he's not a blue. And so, he says kind of mean things about blue.

Peter: I think he says that he's three colors, but I forget [crosstalk] they are.

Michael: Just say you are all four then. So, are his famous people for this, like Tito, Stalin, and Satan.

Peter: He says, “Have you identified some blues in your life? Bill Gates and Albert Einstein both use their attention to detail and meticulous nature to build their success.”

Michael: Maybe.

Peter: “We also have Sandra Day O'Connor and Condoleezza Rice. [Michael giggles] And of course, from the fictional world, Mr. Spock from Star Trek is the perfect blue.”

Michael: There you go.

Peter: “All logic, rationality and intellect. Even if a few of the jokes slip past him.” And now he's just like, it's actually autism.

Michael: We all know how good Condoleezza Rice is at assessing information, like looking at evidence and coming to the right conclusion, being like very organized, very thorough and robust.

Peter: Not a risk taker.

Michael: Yeah.

Peter: So, those are the four chapters, obviously condensed a bit. The fact that this whole system divides people neatly into four categories is both part of the appeal of the system and why it immediately reads as bullshit to me. Okay, Myers Briggs is pseudoscientific, but at least it has 16 categories, which feels less insulting. There can't be four types of guys. [Michael laughs] Even as you're reading this, you'll be like, “Okay, yeah, I've got a little bit of green or blue.”

Michael: Sure.

Peter: But then you look at the whole description and you're like, “Oh, no.”

Michael: Right. Because you're classifying people on this introvert versus extrovert, which I think is a real distinction, but of course a spectrum and situational.

Peter: Sure.

Michael: And also this like task-oriented versus relationship-oriented thing, which does feel a little bit muddy.

Peter: Yeah. I think one of the big problems with this is that it treats personality as static. I am very introverted in certain settings and very extroverted in other settings. He describes personality as being like genetic and then also core values that you learn early in life and then attitudes which are a little more malleable. But it's like unclear how static he thinks it is. He treats it as if, like people are just a certain way.

Michael: At work, I'm very task oriented, typically. Like when I used to have an office job, I was very much like, okay, what are our indicators? What are our deadlines? What do we need to do? But that's just like a function of work. I feel like this does seem like a meaningful distinction, but it's very difficult to measure. And also at work, I feel like people would mostly lean toward task oriented. Right? Because, that's like why you're at work.

Peter: I would think that whether or not you are prioritizing relationships versus tasks is also completely situational. We can talk a bit about the science here. Like, what is there, what isn't there? And it really is a story of what's not there. Erikson makes different representations about the scientific validity of DISC at different times. 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.

Michael: Okay.

Peter: They love to say science backed. That's like there's science in the background supporting it somewhere. Not that it's like directly supported by research or something, but that it's science backed. It's science-ish. So, TTI Success Insights, the company that Erikson seems to have worked with here, says on their website that they offer science-backed talent assessments. The reality of this is that there's just no research establishing the validity of DISC. There's a lot more research on similar tests like Myers Briggs, which tend to show that they have low validity. And there's no serious evidence that you could like, predict something like job performance with these types of tests. Right?

Michael: Right.

Peter: If you look at the type of test that DISC is, it's what's generally called an ipsative test, one that measures your traits against one another. You're less outgoing, more introverted. That's as opposed to a normative test which would benchmark against peers. These types of tests, and I'm speaking very broadly here, tend to struggle with validity. But again, the real bottom line, there's just no good research here. So, any claim that it's supported by science is going to be very thin. There's a blog post a few years back by a guy named Dan Katz, a licensed psychologist and psychotherapist really going after Erikson. One thing he points out is that a lot of frameworks like this foster the idea that personality is a causal mechanism. Like you have XYZ personality and therefore you act in a certain way. But the model of personality that experts generally use is it's not a thing in your head that causes you to act in a certain way. It's just a description of how you act. That might seem like a subtle difference, but it's important if you want to understand why people act the way they do. A lot of what you might describe as personality is situational. People are reacting to their environments. You might be quiet in one setting, loud in another. Some behavior might be the result of a disorder in one person and the same behavior might not be in another. It can be useful to categorize people just for convenience, but you can, like very quickly go off track here. And, Erikson describes personalities like they're hard coded. Right?

Michael: Right.

Peter: In speeches, he has described personality as existing on a deeper level than behavior, which seems to imply that there's this thing called personality that causes your behavior rather than your personality just being a description of how you behave.

Michael: Also, aren't there very powerful structural forces in specific workplaces that produce certain behaviors? Some workplaces are very task oriented. Right? You get fired if you don't reach your targets by the end of the quarter or something whereas other places are more slow. The nature of the work is more relational.

Peter: There's also a question here of whether there are personality types at all, meaning that people can be sorted into a handful of discrete and usually static groups based on their personality. Right?

Michael: Right.

Peter: A subtopic here is like “do personality traits appear in clusters?” Like Erikson was saying, “blues are analytical but also hyper-organized.” Do those traits generally come together? Do they always come together?

Michael: I was going to mention this. Those two things don't necessarily seem all that linked. That you're good at analyzing a situation, but you also like meal prep every week. Those just seem like different things.

Peter: Are people who are organized generally less ambitious?

Michael: Right.

Peter: This is another idea that there's just not a ton of support for. You can go really deep on this. This traces back to Jungian archetypes, at least, and there have been some studies that tried to bundle people into categories. Some of those studies claim to have shown some results. There are other studies contesting those results. We don't need to get into this too deeply. But I think, to put it very lightly, the idea that there are personality types at all is a controversial one.

Michael: Right.

Peter: Even the research that tends to support personality types often shows that those types have a ton of overlap with one another. And then large segments of the population don't fall cleanly into any type. There's generally more support for dimensional personality traits, traits that exist on a spectrum. So, you have the Big Five personality traits. These are very popular. There's some research showing decent validity. What those are doing is mapping several traits along a spectrum rather than trying to take a ton of traits and then funnel you into a personality type.

Michael: Saying there's no such thing as personality types isn't the same thing as saying people don't have different personalities. But any effort to separate people into types, even if it's like 100 different types, any type is going to have elements that don't really apply to you. Boiling it down to four is like the lower the number of types, the more silly it's going to be.

Peter: If you look at a lot of the color categories that Erikson's providing here, a lot of them are just describing the same one or two traits several different ways. Right?

Michael: Yeah, yeah.

Peter: Yellows are enthusiastic, outgoing, charming. Blues are systematic, structured, analytical. It feels sometimes like he's describing one thing, but he's trying to give you the impression that he's not.

Michael: Because I find this with a lot of these personality tests include as synonyms introverted and shy. But I'm not shy. I'm introverted. I get burned out by doing a lot of socializing, but I like socializing, and I'm very social when I'm with other people. I'm just fucking exhausted after like two hours.

Peter: Right.

Michael: And I think for each of these things, it seems like it's a very clear cluster, but it's actually distinct for different people.

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

Michael: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Peter: Right?

Michael: Because they're asking you, "How are you? Are you social? Are you courageous? Are you organized?" And people are not good narrators of their own personalities.

Peter: And there is some research showing that especially in workplace settings, there are problems with dishonesty with these types of assessments which makes sense.

Michael: Of course. Yeah.

Peter: Obviously, if your boss is giving you an assessment, you might give answers that you think they want to hear.

Michael: Right.

Peter: So big picture with DISC, you have this, what's basically a completely unproven idea, mostly an untested idea. And it's stacked on top of a theory of personality that's already very shaky. And so, there's just not a lot there. As I mentioned, Erikson, no scientific background, but his author bio, which you can find in several versions of the book, describes him as a Swedish behavioral expert. His website describes him as a behaviorist. He also self-describes as a behaviorist at times in interviews. He's admitted that he has no relevant degree. Some skeptics of his work did some digging a few years back and couldn't find any evidence that he attended any university in Sweden.

Michael: Wait, really?

Peter: Yeah.

Michael: He's like a random high school graduate who just started saying, "I'm an expert"?

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

Michael: Fascinating. Okay.

Peter: His background was in sales. He was a management consultant.

Michael: A couple months ago, I was looking up a random wellness person for Maintenance Phase, and instead of listing any credentials on their website, they described themselves as a medical news expert, [Peter laughs] which is like the fakest thing I've ever fucking heard in my life. [giggles]

Peter: I thought that's how you self-described. Is that not?

[laughter]

Michael: Aren't we all behavior experts? I'm around people who exhibit behaviors all the time.

Peter: I was like, "Is behaviorist like a specific field?" And the answer is not exactly. It's a subcategory in Psych, but there are groups of people who describe themselves as behaviorists who have no expertise, but they seem to have-- It's like they've just found a word.

Michael: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Peter: I can say that I'm a behaviorist without technically running afoul of any psychologist, because they don't use that exact terminology.

Michael: Because you're not technically claiming anything.

Peter: Erikson's been confronted with some of this stuff. He was asked about his critics once, and he says, "In Sweden, [giggles] we can't have successful people. We bring them down because we're an envious society." [Michael laughs]

Michael: Yes, my haters. Yes. Do it. [laughs]

Peter: He was asked to describe his background. He says, "I'm a behaviorist, which means I studied behaviors. I've read the literature back and forth, up and down, and I know a lot when it comes to behaviors and personalities. I have no ambition to call myself a psychologist and no time for the five and a half years it takes to get the degree in Sweden." [Michael giggles] He says he has never held himself out as a psychologist, which I think is true. But I do think he's using language that is basically-

Michael: Yeah, come on.

Peter: -designed to trick you into thinking that he has formal expertise.

Michael: It's like putting MD in your email signature. And then when people are like, "Wait a minute, you're not a doctor," being like, "Yeah, I'm from Maryland. I never said I was a doctor. [Peter giggles] It's you guys who said I was a doctor."

Peter: It's funny to be like, "Look, I'm an animal expert." And then someone's like, "But you have no degree in biology." And you're like, "Right. I would never call myself a biologist-

Michael: Right, I have pets.

Peter: -I'm just an expert of the body." [Michael giggles] Most of the rest of the book is just expounding on different elements of the personality types. There's a chapter on body language. He says, "Reds lean forward aggressively and have powerful handshakes. Yellows gesture expressively. Blues speak without gesturing."

Michael: Sure.

Peter: One of my favorite lines in the book, he says [giggles] that blues “either sit or stand." [Michael laughs] I was like, "Yeah. I guess the other colors spend a meaningful amount of time horizontal, just like in normal day.”

Michael: They're doing wall sits like Tim Ferriss at a restaurant.

Peter: I'm going to send you some of the body language stuff because it's funny. Sorry. [Michael laughs]

Michael: Also, is this one of these books where he runs out of things to say halfway through, but he needs to hit his word count?

Peter: Absolutely.

Michael: So, he's just like, "Have some body language stuff."

Peter: A lot of it is like, "All right, I've introduced these colors to you, these personality types, and now we're going to talk about in a little more detail how to identify them and then deal with them." And the body language thing is a good example of just like, "Well, what else is there?"

Michael: He says, "A simple handshake can reveal a lot about a person. Limp and feeble handshakes often indicate a submissive behavior. So, if you have such a handshake, it might be a good idea to press a little harder. If a handshake is firm, it probably suggests that the person is determined. Anyone who squeezes way too hard belongs more than likely to the former category, but would prefer to belong to the latter." I like how he's like, "You can tell a lot about somebody from their handshake. Also, you can alter your handshake to give people the particular impression that you want."

Peter: A lot of guys, and I'm including myself, I'm not being judgmental, at some point in their life, have been like, "Am I doing handshakes with the right firmness?"

Michael: It's a weird sort of circular thing because this myth of you can tell something about someone from their handshake is so popular, everyone thinks they have to have an overly firm or a perfectly firm handshake.

Peter: I have met interview candidates who have incredible-- who just put their hand there and you squeeze it and you're like ah.

Michael: I've met people like that too.

[laughter]

Michael: Just like wet, warm fish. [Peter laughs]

Peter: That’s right. You’re just squeezing a limp body part. I don't think it says anything either, but it does feel like one of those things where it's like, "Please just follow the social norms."

Michael: Well, exactly. Yeah. To me, it doesn't say anything about them as a person. It's just like, "Can't you fake this?"

Peter: I love that we immediately were like, "Actually, this is how I judge people."

Michael: No, no. It's judging people on whether they can perform these little social niceties that we all do all the time to get along with people at work.

Peter: If you're not willing to squeeze my hand a little bit, are you even washing your ass? [Michael laughs] What is going on? I like this part too.

Michael: "A more effective way to spot a liar is to notice if he puts the palm of his hand on his chest, preferably his right hand over his heart, and sighs indignantly when he's been accused of lying. 'Would I lie? How can you say that about me?' This gesture is intended to strengthen his honest intentions, but it immediately puts those around him on their guard because it is so unnecessary and excessive. There's definitely something fishy going on there." Do people do that? They're like, "Who, me?"

Peter: Fucking FBI over here. [Michael giggles] This is like how cops think about this shit. [Michael laughs] Also, yeah, who has ever done this? "Would I lie? How can you say that about me?"

Michael: That's something you do in animated movies to exaggerate everybody's body language.

Peter: I feel like that's what was. He was watching a movie from 1961 where someone did this, and he was like, "That person's lying. I know it."

Michael: Gee willikers. I would never lie again.

Peter: We don't need to go through the rest of the book piecemeal. It's the same thing over and over again. Right? And I promise that I found the funniest bits. There are chapters at the end of the book that are like, "Once I was at a party and there were too many yellows."

Michael: Oh, my god. [laughs]

Peter: And here's just like, "Just give me a fucking break."

Michael: Oprah Winfrey and Han Solo were there. It was crazy. [Peter giggles] People talk about the reading crisis in America, but there's also a writing crisis in America where people write these fucking books.

Peter: It's the writing crisis, dude. Everyone's like, “Oh, my God, no one reads books anymore.” But how many would you read if there were 80 pages, I bet you'd be flying.

Michael: Dude. [laughs] Charge me half as much and have the book be like, a quarter as long.

Peter: There are a couple later chapters that are very one booky. There is a chapter titled A Short Reflection Through History. And this is Erikson's attempt to pretend that, like, what he's describing in the book is, like, ancient wisdom-

Michael: Oh, my god.

Peter: -which we've seen so many times.

Michael: Oh, yes.

Peter: So, he says, like, Hippocrates viewed the human body as a balance of four humors. The Aztecs viewed people as embodied by a spectrum of fire, water, earth, and air. And he's like, does that sound familiar? [Michael laughs] Red, blue.

Michael: Avatar, the last, last Airbender had four nations. We're cooking, we're cooking.

Peter: So, he's saying, the idea of four traits in balance has deep roots in our intellectual tradition. And this framework is just building on that. By the way, he starts off that chapter by saying, “This chapter explains how I arrived at the research that forms the basis of the information in this book.” It's like, “Okay, wait, you're saying that you read Hippocrates and you read about the Aztecs, and that's how you got here?” Because early in the book, you were like, “Oh, this comes from TTI Success Insights in Scottsdale, Arizona.” [Michael laughs] And then the last chapter is, like, interviews with a couple of business leaders about it.

Michael: Hell, yeah. Oh, that's good.

Peter: She's the CEO of a private equity company, and she says, “Now my staff know that I'm not an evil despot, just red.”

[laughter]

Michael: That's also the dark side of personality test, though, too. It's like, objectively toxic behavior can then be recast. It's like, “Oh, I'm just a red.”

Peter: “Yeah, I'm a bit of a red.” Then she says that she learned that greens talk behind her back and therefore she does not employ them anymore.

[laughter]

Peter: By the way, that was the Jesus color.

[laughter]

Michael: Gandhi was a catty little bitch. People are always saying that.

Peter: So, Erikson publishes this in 2014. In 2020, he publishes a follow up, Surrounded by Psychopaths. [Michael giggles] The premise of that book is that the DISC model doesn't apply to psychopaths.

Michael: Wait, what?

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

Michael: It seems like psychopaths are pretty task oriented rather than relationship oriented. I think that's an easy one.

Peter: Great point. So that's 2020. In 2021, he puts out two books. Surrounded by Bad Bosses and Lazy employees and Surrounded by Setbacks. In 2022, he puts out Surrounded by Narcissists. In 2023, he puts out Surrounded by Energy Vampires. In 2024, he puts out Surrounded by Liars. So, there's like an initial six-year period where he's just coasting off this book and then he just churns out.

Michael: When was ChatGPT released again? Sorry, what's the year?

Peter: [laughs] Great question, but he appears to have beaten it to the punch.

Michael: Okay. [giggles]

Peter: I imagine that you've encountered this, but if you're-- When you're doing like a quick Google for a book like this, you'll find like someone's medium post where they're like, “Here's my review of Surrounded by Narcissists.” And I found one. And they were like, “I did find that it was the same thing over and over again, but perhaps he just wants to emphasize these ideas.”

[laughter]

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

Peter: So, I got curious about this not as a substantive thing, but as like a cultural phenomenon. Like, how did it come to be that these personality assessments are such a big workplace thing.

Michael: Yeah. Yeah.

Peter: So, I read a book and I read a bunch of articles. Most of the sources I look at trace modern personality tests back to World War I. Obviously there have been various attempts to describe personality types before, but World War I was the first time you see a standardized personality assessment done at scale. And the primary reason is that soldiers were returning from war with shell shock.

Michael: Right.

Peter: As a society, we didn't really understand trauma like this. Right? The military even less sensitive to trauma than you were in our body-- [crosstalk]

Michael: All right, all right, all right.

[laughter]

Michael: Although they were in a position to provide horses to many more people so.

Peter: They basically thought that, like, anyone with shell shock was the product of an emotionally unstable person being exposed to war. And so, they were looking for a test to assess emotional stability for troops. So, this guy, Roger Woodward and his team, they go about mapping symptoms they see, they compare them against who they consider to be normal people, and they come up with a questionnaire that is meant to measure neuroticism.

Michael: Oh, yeah.

Peter: Sample questions from this assessment. “Do you usually feel well and strong? Are you troubled with dreams about your work? Do you ever have the sensation of falling when going to sleep? Do you have trouble walking in the dark? Have you hurt yourself by masturbation?” [Michael laughs]

Michael: No. No. Yes, yes, yes. I was [crosstalk]

Peter: Do you have trouble walking in the dark is fucking hilarious. It's like, "What do you mean?" I do find it harder than walking in the light, if that's what you're asking. [Michael giggles] And then they're like, "Have you ever fucking jacked it so hard that--" [Michael laughs]

Michael: And also, that feeling of falling when you're about to go to sleep is literally a universal human thing.

Peter: Yeah, that's super normal. I love that. Like a 1918 colonel or whatever was like, "You ever feel like you're falling when going to sleep? That's because you're a coward." [Michael laughs] And also, have you ever just hurt your dick by jacking so furiously?

Michael: That's also universal. There's hypnic jerks and there's injurious jerks. [Peter giggles] Everybody knows this.

Peter: Another 40 years before television's invented. So, time to jerk off for the eighth time today. [Michael laughs] Almost right away, people start modifying this test and coming up with similar tests with broader applications and most of those early tests [Michael giggles] were designed to locate maladjustment.

Michael: Right.

Peter: The tests are very rudimentary. The questions they asked are often based more on the test maker's intuition about what a neurotic person would answer. There's a book about the history of personality tests from about 20 years ago by Annie Murphy Paul, who's a journalist. It's called The Cult of Personality. Send you a little bit from that.

Michael: She says “Robert Bernreuter was a Pennsylvania State University psychologist who designed one of the era's most popular tests, the Bernreuter Personality Inventory. In it, he posed the question, ‘Are you critical of others?’ surmising that a positive response suggested psychosocial difficulties.” Oh, come on. “As it turned out, more than two-thirds of normal people taking the test answered yes, a reply given much less frequently by neurotics and psychotics. Likewise, the query, ‘Do you daydream frequently?’ assumed by Bernreuter to be a sign of psychological instability, was endorsed more often by healthy individuals than by the mentally ill. ‘Are you critical of others?’ is just a test of whether you're a liar.”

Peter: Yeah. And so, these guys were just spitballing it, right? "What do I think a neurotic person is?" And they're getting it wrong very frequently. There was this guy, Elton Mayo, an Australian psychologist. In 1926, he's hired to head up industrial research at Harvard Business School. He becomes a pioneer in workplace psychology. He is primarily concerned with the impact of worker psychology on productivity. I'm reading from some research here. “Mayo believed that problems at work were most often due to mental disintegration and maladjustment. These maladjusted workers could cause problems by lowering work morale, fomenting workplace violence, and agitating for unions. [Michael laughs] The premise almost immediately after these assessments sort of pop up is like, ‘Maybe we can filter out problematic workers from our employee pool.’”

Michael: Right.

Peter: “That continues to be a very popular framework for understanding unproductive or unruly workplaces,” which is a big problem at this time because we're in a period of labor unrest, right? It's in the early 30s when you get major pieces of labor legislation because there's so much labor unrest in the late 20s. Then in the 30s and 40s, you start to see the rise of multidimensional personality tests. The question moves from “how do we identify personality disorders” to “how do we categorize normal personality types?” There's the MMPI, the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory. You had the Humm-Wadsworth Scale, which measured personality along multiple dimensions, including hysteroid, manic, depressive, autistic, paranoid, epileptoid.

Michael: Commie, pinko.

[laughter]

Peter: The [crosstalk] special folks.

Michael: Humm-Wadsworth sounds like what I call it when I injure myself masturbating. [laughs]

Peter: I knew that you would think Humm-Wadsworth was funny. [Michael laughs] You couldn't even resist giggling. So, with The Humm-Wadsworth guys, they immediately start to sell it to companies to use on their employees, and it gets quite popular. In 1942, Time Magazine writes an article about it. They say “It's been applied to 2 million people across 225 companies.” Apparently, an article about the test inspires Isabel Briggs to start up with Myers-Briggs. Over the next couple of decades, these workplace assessments become quite popular. It's not just these tests. It's all matter of aptitude tests. They start gearing them towards aptitude. In 1939, there is a survey of businesses showing that 14% use these tests. In 1963, it's 90%. But then in the following years, the use of assessment falls off a cliff. Couple reasons for that. One, cultural backlash. In the 1960s, the federal government had started to implement personality assessments into their hiring on government employees. So, there's a lot of resistance to that. Senator Sam Ervin says, "Clearly the government should not send out an investigator to peer through an employee's or an applicant's bedroom window. Neither should the government ask, through subtle psychological questioning, what a person does and thinks after he draws the curtains.”

Michael: That's always the issue with these things because they're not about your work performance. They're about who you are as a person which is supposed to not be a factor in a capitalist system where they're purchasing your labor. You should have a private sphere.

Peter: Sending you a little bit from The Cult of Personality book.

Michael: “I can injure myself masturbating as many times as I want and my boss shouldn't know about it. [Peter giggles] The number of times I'm Humm-Wadsworthing is none of your business.”

Peter: Hold on. Okay, maybe it doesn't work. I was trying. "She hums on my wad till I work."

[laughter]

Michael: I hum on my own wad, then it works, then it works. [Peter giggles] “Unease about the increasingly prevalent use of personality tests like the MMPI had been growing for more than a decade. In 1956's The Organization Man, William White sounded a warning about the stifling conformity such tests impose on American executives. More explicit critiques with titles like The Brainwatchers and The Tyranny of Testing appeared in the early 1960s. Newspapers and magazines ran investigative exposés under such headlines as ‘The Snoops’ and ‘The I Love My Mother’ tests. There were even reports of public burning of test data by parents angry that their children were given the questionnaires at school.” It sounds like it was very obvious at the time that they were like, "Are you a fucking weirdo?" was the purpose of the test.

Peter: Right. So, Senator Ervin introduces legislation to forbid the use of personality assessments in government. There are congressional hearings. There's a big public PR fight that takes place in popular magazines and newspapers. The bill never passes and everything dies down. But this combination of scientific skepticism and public outcry puts a damper on all of this. 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 functionally discriminate based on race or gender or whatever else.

Michael: Right.

Peter: 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. In the early 1970s, there's a Supreme Court case, Griggs v. Duke Power Company. This company had restricted black employees to one low-paying department. 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.

Michael: Yeah, I learned about this from a podcast.

Peter: So, the Supreme Court says, "No, you can't do this." This test has a disparate impact on black employees and it's still considered discrimination. It's at this time in the 70s that you start to see the rise of a different type of personality assessment. One that is meant to categorize people in a less judgmental way. Instead of trying to determine whether someone is socially adjusted or not, the tests are just trying to place people on a spectrum of normal personality traits. Right?

Michael: Injured self, masturbating (non-derogatory).

Peter: In the early 90s, you start to see a bunch of research coming out that seems to demonstrate that personality tests can actually be a good predictor of success in the workplace. That's very useful to companies because now legally you can show that the test has a validated use which can be enough to overcome a claim of discrimination in certain situations.

Michael: Right.

Peter: In the early 1990s you see the first big class actions about this. Target gets sued for its personality tests, which are a combination of the MMPI and another test, they were trying to screen for turnover risk and competence. But I'm going to send you some of the questions which you're meant to answer with a yes or no.

Michael: What? Okay. "I believe in the second coming of Christ. I believe there is a God. I am very strongly attracted to members of my own sex. Maybe some minority groups do get rough treatment, but it's no business of mine. My sex life is satisfactory. I have often wished I were a girl. My eyesight is as good as it has been for years. I hardly ever feel pain in the back of my neck. Many of my dreams are about sex matters. [Peter giggles] I am worried about sex matters."

Peter: This is why I say it's a hybrid era. Target is not trying to figure out if you're a Christian, but the old personality tests were. [giggles] And so, they're pulling from these old personality tests that have this shit in them. This gets settled out of court and the industry is put on notice that if you use these super old-fashioned tests, you're risking liability. Annie Murphy Paul's book covers a lawsuit brought in the late 90s by some employees of Rent-A-Center. I am going to send this to you.

Michael: “One morning, the managers were herded into a chilly conference room. They had been scheduled to participate in a budgeting workshop, but company leaders instead announced an abrupt change in plans. Employees would immediately begin taking the management test, a five-hour battery of nine separate examinations. An anxious hush fell over the room as the exams were passed out. Within minutes, however, the silence was breached by a stir of astonishment. The questions in front of them had nothing to do with renting furniture or managing employees or keeping the books.”

Peter: Okay. [giggles] I'm going to send you some of the questions.

Michael: Oh my God. "My sex life is satisfactory. I have diarrhea once a month or more. I would like to be a florist. Everything tastes the same. My mother was a good woman. I am a special agent of God." Arriving at the question, "I liked Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll. The managers might well have felt that they had slipped down the rabbit hole. The test, of course, was the MMPI. Things only got worse when the test results were returned. Rent-A-Center hired an outfit in Kansas, Associated Personnel Technicians, to produce an extensive personality description of each manager. How self-sufficient, self-confident and dominant he or she was, how fearful, depressive and impetuous. Most needed work in one or more of these areas, APT advised. And so, each profile included a specific plan for improvement. Employees who were restless and impatient should lay off nicotine and caffeine. They counseled workers with the tendency to retreat from reality should drink lots of water.” Yes, this is like a surveillance state where they're looking at your, like, internal frame of mind.

Peter: I have diarrhea once a month or more, is fucking like-- [Michael laughs] It's so funny. That's so funny. Like we can't go into every ridiculous question in all of these and there are so many. And like picking out the funniest ones was really hard for me, [Michael giggles] but everything tastes the same.

Michael: I know.

Peter: There's something so funny about it to me where, like, in middle of it, it's like they're asking these personal questions and then they just, like, insert everything tastes the same. Which I would imagine is the sign of, like, some kind of severe chemical imbalance. [giggles]

Michael: Right. Like a physiological issue that you're having.

Peter: Right.

Michael: Yeah. Also, my mother was a good woman. I mean, maybe your mom was trash.

Peter: Yeah, why not?

Michael: Some moms have bad vibes.

Peter: That case gets settled too. A lot of companies are basically taking these personality tests and modifying the questions to determine how likely people are to follow rules or be on time to work, how friendly they'll be to coworkers, how prone they are to slacking off. Right? And this is obviously being sold to companies as a way to glean insights into applicants that, like, you otherwise couldn't. Right? In the mid-90s, there's a lawsuit against Contra Costa County in California because they were using a personality test on welfare applicants to determine whether or not they were abusing substances.

Michael: Oh, nice.

Peter: It had questions like, “I believe everything is turning out the way the Bible said it would.”

Michael: Hell, yeah.

Peter: “And pornography and obscenity have become serious problems and must be curbed. Anyone who failed it was deemed chemically dependent.”

Michael: Oh, my God.

Peter: “They had to enter a six-month rehab program if they wanted to receive benefits.”

Michael: No way.

Peter: It turned out that the test was classifying 44% of all applicants as chemically dependent. [Michael laughs]

Michael: Not even based on questions of like, “how often do you use drugs?” Just like other random ass questions.

Peter: Right.

Michael: Like, “What was your mom like?” And it's like, you're on crack.

Peter: Like, “What's your diarrhea situation? Yeah, get to rehab.”

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

Peter: Do they? Is it better to have more or less diarrhea? [Michael laughs] Do you think they like it if all food tastes the same? That would mean that they could give you really bad tasting food. It wouldn't matter to you.

Michael: Yeah, that's the only reason it's on there. They're like, the food here sucks. [laughs]

Peter: So, in the 2000s and 2010s, you see even more legal attention start to get paid to these assessments. And this is where companies are really ratcheting up the volume of use because of computers. The ACLU filed a complaint against CVS in 2009. CVS had a questionnaire in its application process that asked applicants if they agreed with statements like, “you change from happy to sad without any reason”, “you are unsure of what to say when you meet someone” and “your moods are steady from day to day.” The ACLU pointed out this could function as discrimination against people with certain mental health conditions. Right? Or anxiety.

Michael: Also, just like everyone's mood changes. I mean, so many of these questions is like universal human behavior. Like, yeah, sometimes it's hard to meet people. I don't know.

Peter: Target had to settle with the EEOC about a decade ago because it was alleged that their application tests were disproportionately filtering out women and people of color.

Michael: It's like, how angry do you get when you see a pride display? [Peter giggles] 707, baby.

Peter: All of this litigation made these types of personality assessments less popular in workplaces. But it seems like instead of companies eliminating them altogether, it just accelerated this shift toward the so-called normal personality tests.

Michael: Right.

Peter: And so, you have these tests like DISC, which are inoffensive ways to group people into personality types. Right? So, from the 80s through now, you're basically seeing this big shift from these old-style tests to this weird, goofy, but not horrifying version that you see in DISC.

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

Peter: Yeah. So, DISC is meant to like aid managers in managing employees. Right? It's like everyone's different. Here's how you manage this type. Here's how you manage this type. If you're an employee, here's how you get along with your colleagues who are a little different from you. It's after the hiring process. But if any company is still doing a hiring assessment that is obviously designed to filter out people who they think are less likely to be quality employees, that is less common these days. But you see it, it's not gone.

Michael: Yeah. Now they just do it in person. They're like, for legal reason we can't ask you whether you have kids. But what is the diarrhea situation?

Peter: “What was your mom like?” “And have you ever jacked it so hard that--” [Michael laughs] The lingering question in my mind is why. Why are companies doing this? I understand the hiring assessments. Right? Even if they are problematic, they have a clear goal. They are trying to filter out shitty employees. But why DISC? Why something like this? Why this color-coded bullshit where everyone knows there is no real scientific validity.

Michael: I wonder if they just see it as like another form of team building. Right? Like any other activity you do with your coworkers is going to be arbitrary.

Peter: First, there has been some New York Times reporting on this. Here is a bit from some reporting in 2023.

Michael: “Nearly one-third of the respondents to the Society for Human Resource Management's 2017 survey of its members said they use personality tests to fill executive roles. At McKinsey & Company, some consultants do due diligence when staffing projects, which often means looking at the balance of introverts and extroverts on a team. College fundraising offices love The Color Code, which, among other things, tells you who can best work the phones (Yellows).”

Peter: You are like, "What is The Color Code?" it is literally the same bullshit as DISC.

Michael: Because of course, that is the only thing companies are going to be concerned with, right? is your productivity at work, like, your ability to do the job. So, of course they are using it for the same purposes as when they ask, like, "Are you a commie?" or whatever on the questions.

Peter: All right, here is another bit from The Times.

Michael: “Often the tests aren't a diagnosis, but are more of an opening for people to talk about the softer parts of office life, their relationships. Identifying as a blue through The Color Code might not feel all that relevant to quarterly sales quotas, but at least among teammates, it can be a conversation starter.” Yeah, I mean it is typically our defense of these things. It is like, "It is an opening of a conversation. You can talk about how people are different."

Peter: It is pseudoscience as team building. It is like, "Here is something for you guys to talk about." And maybe you find some commonalities with some people you didn't talk to before or think you had much in common with before, maybe you get a little bit of insight into some of your colleagues.

Michael: Which honestly, I don't think is totally implausible. Like, it probably does work for them.

Peter: Maybe it does. I certainly didn't find any research about this, but I would be shocked if there is lasting impact to organizations about this.

Michael: Well, how much efficacy does trust falls have or these days out that they will do with your colleagues where you all go bowling together or whatever. It is the same kind of thing. It is not clear to me how much those are doing either, but given the other options, this might be fine.

Peter: Yeah. The basic idea that people think and work differently is important to reinforce. Even if you are doing it on the back of some bullshit-ass personality assessment, it is good to know, like, Kathy doesn't prioritize the same things as I do, but that doesn't mean she is stupid.” Right? The New York Times had a similar piece in 2019. They said Myers-Briggs provided a shorthand to talk about a whole range of personal needs. How much you like to fill your calendar, how you want your manager to give feedback, how personal you want to get with colleagues at the water cooler. I think it is maybe just a way to get people to talk about themselves. And maybe that has some benefits.

Michael: Yeah. Because, as an icebreaker, I've often done, like, "Hey, Kathy, when is the last time you injured yourself masturbating?" [Peter giggles] And then she tells a story. I can tell a story. And then we have some anecdotes to show.

Peter: “How often do you guys-- how often are you guys having diarrhea.” Just like you are sitting around a circle with 20 people. [Michael laughs]

Michael: "What was your mom like?"

Peter: I will also say, as often as you see companies get sued for racial discrimination for using these. There also have been, like, some examples of companies implementing hiring assessments that do improve diversity. Most of the time, it seems to me at a glance, and I didn't look too deep. That is because they are so not diverse in the beginning that, like, the introduction of any objective criteria of any type will make them more diverse. If your number of black hires is at 1%-

Michael: Right.

Peter: -then just any change to your process is probably going to improve that.

Michael: You get up to like 2% or 3%, you are like, "We tripled the diversity of the company." [Peter giggles]

Peter: Right, right. I think that is like the good faith read on what these things are doing. Maybe they are just like an excuse to get people chatting and maybe sometimes even, like, the hiring context. They might have some positive impacts here and there. I think the more cynical read, which obviously, as a blue, I buy into-

Michael: You are a real Condoleezza.

Peter: -is that these types of assessments, like the DISC assessment in particular, is a pitch to managers that your problems are really from mismatched and misallocated employees rather than structural or organizational issues. So, if you are a manager and you are like, "Why doesn't my team function well?" Deloitte is there to be like, "That is because you've got the greens working with the blues to win whatever” Right?

Michael: As opposed too, like, your incentives give people a reason to be toxic to each other. Or, like, “You are not clear about tasks. So, most of the people on the team are not task oriented”, stuff like that.

Peter: I think it sells something to managers that they want to hear, which is like, "Your problems are actually the result of these personality types."

Michael: "And you can solve them without any structural changes." Yeah.

Peter: Here is another bit. This is Emma Goldberg from The Times piece in 2019.

Michael: “Personality assessments, short circuit, the messiness of building is now referred to as a culture. They deliver on all the complexities of interpersonal office dynamics, but without the intimate and expensive process of actually speaking with employees to determine their quirks and preferences. They appeal also perhaps for the same reason astrology, numerology, and other hocus-pocus systems do, because it is fun to divide people into categories. They tap into the angst of the "Where are y'all sitting?" meme. The hunger to know where you belong in the lunchtime cafeteria scene.

Peter: I think this is right. This is like half cynical. This is a way to create culture, but it is a cheap, weird, pseudoscientific way to create culture. But my-- what I can't stop coming back to, my real, like, "Why do companies do this?" is, I think these organizations are just suckers.

Michael: Because there is a huge industry selling these tests to them.

Peter: Yes. Massive industry. Hundreds of companies sell this shit. And I think they want to believe that there are shortcuts for efficiency and culture. They have these companies who are like, "We're backed by science." And I think they buy it. I think they fundamentally are like, "Ooh, that looks good." So, I don't think that the people making these decisions at large companies, to hire a company like this to do a DISC assessment. I don't think they are like, "Look, this is all bullshit, but this is a good way to get these people interacting and talking about their work styles or whatever." I think that they are just like, "Oh, this is going to make us more efficient. It is going to improve our culture." They are literally receiving a sales pitch by TTI Success Insights in Scottsdale, Arizona. And they are like, "Oh, that sounds fantastic."

Michael: And they are typically large corporations who have fairly large budgets.

Peter: Right. This is not like the CEO of most companies deciding, "Oh, we're going to bring this guy in." It is like some department that is put in charge of, like, workplace culture and events.

Michael: Exactly.

Peter: And they have a massive budget and they are like, "Well, what are we going to do with it?" And they get pitched on something like DISC. And they say, "That sounds great." It was either this or, like, we all go to a baseball game.

Michael: This is also, I mean, a bunch of the other team building stuff they do at work, do escape rooms together or something. I don't know if there is great ROI on that either. But it is just somebody's job to do this. On the other hand, just getting people interacting probably is good for culture. And so, it is arbitrary what you are actually interacting about.

Peter: I think that that is probably true, that it doesn't really matter what you get people doing, as long as you get them a little bit off their guard and interacting in a friendly manner. That said, as an employee, this has to be the worst one, right? Like, "Just please put me in an escape room. I don't even care if there is no escape, [Michael giggles] just anything but this fucking assessment."

Michael: The escape room one drives me nuts because then you are basically like, reformulating the same work dynamics. Like, somebody has to lead, somebody has to follow. It is like the same potential for, like, conflict as you have in the actual workplace.

Peter: But I feel like that is what stupid managers think. And they are like, "We're going to find secret leaders."

Michael: I can't remember if I told this story on the show before, but a friend of mine did one of these, like, icebreaker exercises. These, like, team building things, and everybody got, like, a little index card, and they went around the circle of their, like, icebreaker question. And the person next to him got, "What is your favorite sandwich?" And then my friend got, "When was the last time you felt alone?"

[laughter]

Michael: He is like, "What the fuck?"

Peter: I will also say, and this is probably obvious, I crush in these settings. There is nothing that I like more than a company being like, "By the way, this is a space for jokes." [Michael giggles] Maybe this is proof that personality types aren't real. But I would say in 50% of these workplace things, I'm just dead silent, ready to die. And in 50%, I'm just like, "When was the last time I felt alone? Why the fuck are you asking me this? Right folks? [Michael giggles] Folks, let's all team up against this company that is doing this to us."

Michael: But just like the handshake thing, they're almost a measurement of “How well do you fit into a corporate environment.” Like, you just need to come up with something quippy. If I got the horrific alone question, I would just come up with some dumb quip to move on. I wouldn't, like--

Peter: Right.

Michael: There is no fucking way I would even consider that question and, like, answer it in anything, like, an honest way.

Peter: Dude, it would be so funny to answer that in a serious way. [Michael laughs]

Michael: I know. The day of my mother's death. [laughs] What are you going to say?

Peter: I wouldn't have it in me to do it. But if someone just pulled it together and, like, knowingly answered that sincerely, like, knowing that it would be a good bit. God, that would be funny. [Michael laughs] God, that would be funny.

Michael: Just ruin the tone of the entire rest of the day. [laughs]

Peter: I guess it was probably when I had diarrhea three times in a day [Michael laughs] and then jacked myself so hard that I was injured. [laughs]

Michael: The third time I injured myself masturbating.

[laughter]

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Michael Hobbes

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