It is harder to use personality styles to characterize something as multi-faceted and unwieldy as a market. Vinny's approach seems about right: Look for the unconscious grip of an ideology or quasi theology.

On the other hand, understanding personality styles is a good approach to evaluating forecasters and individual policy makers. It reminds me of Ralph Emerson's comment: "People don't seem to understand that their opinion of the world is a confession of character."

Got an article here that makes the case for the Enneagram in business:
http://www.mannaz.com/Mail.asp?MailID=193&TopicID=2123

That's why, in my household, we never let our subscription to Cosmo expire!

Cosmo treats its personality tests as "quizzes". And these quizzes are not exclusively for women, either. Just last month, I took advantage of Cosmo's own "Birth Order Compatibility Tool". This invaluable insight, coupled with the results of both "Are You Still in Love with Your Ex" and the vital "Who's You're Ideal Soulmate" led me to re-examine our relationship.

The results: She has NOT been validating my feelings! I couldn't believe I had been so blind for so long…..

As to the psychology of economic forecasting: There are way too many factors to consider before drawing any conclusions from Myers-Briggs, etc. Sure, Rationalists may be predisposed to be an economic forecaster. But are they a natural fit for promoting those predictions? [It's this promotion that gets closer to the problem.

I wonder what the psychological profile is of people who don't care about the accuracy of the predictions, yet promote them anyway….

Additionally, I wonder about the psych profile of Believers…who seem less interested in accuracy, and more interested in the affirmation of an impulse.

The interplay of the Prediction Promoters and the Prediction Believers reminds of that scene in "Little Shop of Horrors", where Steve Martin is the sadistic dentist and Bill Murray is his Masochistic patient.

Neither sadist, nor masochist could get enough of the other…. It's damn funny in the movie.

And damn sad in real life.

Sounds like a certain president of my acquaintance. Especially if "democratic" means "bipartisan", no matter what the silly voters said.

that is my experience too: Myers-Briggs useful, enneagram not as useful.

I'll leave it to psychologists to gauge whether it is pop psychology. But in practice, I have found it very useful.

I hope you're having a good time on vacation.

Edward

I took the Myers Briggs as if I were him, then looked up the leadership style of his type. It turns out that they value having a democratic process more than quality of results. And that also fit other actions he had taken So at least I understood where he was coming from.

By contrast, I have not found the Enneagram very useful.

Yep, definitely. That’s also why we need to treat economy (and economists in particular) via methods currently employed by psychiatry…:)

Vinny

Would you feel comfortable defining economics-as-it-should-be [and as it might have been] to be the study of a social system's REproduction of itself — from which we might leave behind the circularity of neoclassic economic's foundational assumptions and, maybe, uncover the actual dynamism and associated laws of motion, which is also to say why particular dominant social relations of production arise, reach absolute limits and transform. [So, systemic attempts to survive via change of form, recognizing that such transforms are not identical to transitional epochs.]

Certainly this entails much more than normally taken as economics and almost as certainly it is to appreciate the history of economic thought and a slice of classical political economy. But more.

Edward,

Let's recall some 'golden oldies':

- ‘by means of appropriately reinforcing monetary and fiscal policies, our mixed-enterprise system can avoid the excesses of boom and slump and look forward to healthy progressive growth’.
[Paul Samuelson, Economics, New York 1958] (Which happened to be a recession year)

- ‘full employment should now be regarded as an institutional feature of the British economy’.
[Roy Harrod, Money, London 1969]

- ‘It has often been said that a crisis such as the Great Depression could no longer take place today, given the progress made in techniques of state countercyclical intervention. These claims, presumptuous as they may seem, are not without foundation.’
[L. Stoleru, L’équilibre et la croissance économique, Paris 1970]

What is common to these? Belief in the ability to control an irrationally rational system and a belief not shared by, e.g, the economists of The Fourth International who, in July 1969, wrote:

'This [...] analysis reached three conclusions: first, that the essential motor forces of this long-term expansion would progressively exhaust themselves, in this way setting off a more and more marked intensification of interimperialist competition; secondly, that the deliberate application of Keynesian antirecessionary techniques would step up the worldwide inflation and constant erosion of the buying power of currencies, finally producing a very grave crisis in the international monetary system; thirdly, that these two factors in conjunction wuld give rise to increasing limited recessions, inclining the course of economic development toward a general recession of the imperialist economy. This general recession would certainly differ from the great depression of 1929-32 both in extent and duration. Nonetheless, it would strike all the imperialist countries and considerably exceed the recessions of the last twenty years. Two of these predictions have come true. The third promises to do so in the seventies.'

So…

John Michelau: Indeed, we agree on a lot of points. It’s a very complex and interconnected world, impossible to control or predict, that's why statistics is the best we can do to have a guess at that "may" occur next. Yet, that is its biggest flaw, but perhaps it also holds its greatest potential and beauty as well.

Edward Harrison: regarding this economist rehabilitation, may I volunteer my services? I have professional experience rehabilitating drug addicts and criminals of all sorts, in and outside of prisons. I am more than willing to rehabilitate Mr. Summers at no charge, whether he prefers it to take place in or outside of prison…lol

Vinny

Even an economist I rather like Krugman was wrong about free trade, his initial support for the TARP, silence over Bernanke, and failure to catch speculation in oil markets. His prediction about an end to the recession this summer is so hedged that I'm not sure you could call it a prediction at all.

So I am sure that some forecasters lose cred sometimes, but many go on as if nothing happened.