Posted by ABenis on December 29, 2011, 5:37 pm, in reply to "NPA Personality Submissive"
You are correct in your implication that personality theory has not lived up to being classified as a hard science. As the old adage goes, if there are many theories about something (like personality, cosmology or religion), this means that the subject is very poorly understood.
However, the NPA model is virtually alone in the personality arena in being based on genetics and being falsifiable (disprovable). There is very little work being done on theories of personality based on only a few important genes. The conventional wisdom is that there are many, many genes that determine personality, and each one of them contributes only a teensy percent of the total. But, at least there is much current research interest in the contributions of genetics to behavior (mostly to sort out abnormal genes for abnormal conditions), so it is only a matter of time that it will become clear whether or not the NPA approach is correct.
The result of your test, as "compliant submissive" sounds pejorative, and we have discussed on this Board the problem that virtually all terminology regarding behavior sounds pejorative, and this problem needs to be addressed by the psychological and psychiatric community. In a way, the NPA approach levels the playing field: we are all aggressive, or narcissistic, or submissive, or resigned, or...
With regard to "testing" by questionnaire (like the NPA personality test), this is fuzzy science at best, but such testing has been found, despite its limitations, to be useful in generating hypotheses in behavioral investigations. In the Brave New World of the future, behavioral profiles of individuals will be more objectively displayed by genetic profiles and biochemical tests, and "personality testing" by questionnaire will be regarded as a quaint amusement.
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