<p>I do not know whether such a test exist, and I also would be wondering how you could convince someone to take a "how offended do you get" - Test :P.</p>

<p>Anyway, this is a weird topic to quantify, because of your special "needs".
You have on the one hand the "Offendedness", the measurement of how a person is likely to respond negatively and get in a personal defense position when you give them criticism. This really depends a person's development, If someone as you said puts in 15 years of hard work to get a PhD they may be really defensive of criticism against their work. If you would criticise the same people maybe of their ability to play guitar which they have maximum 100 hours on, they may not react defensively. So you would need to determine special offendedness of criticism in some subject like Biology. Also the measurement is really hard. You may be able to diagnose people with emotional dysfunction by letting them look at eyes and guess the emotion (and even here, the error rate is probably high), but how are you assuring that people would honestly and self reflecting in a test of how offended they may get. People are biased against themselves and others, the human is not a objective living thing, if you would generalize it, in my experience even the most intelligent and even the most objective people I met are nearly the ones who are the most subjective / biased in the "right" direction. You often see such scientist debating against religious people and not finding arguments.</p>

<p>Then the second thing you touched on is the objectivity. Objectivity in itself is subjective, sounds weird but let me explain. 
People who think they are objective most of the time are subjective thinking. And objective people are the ones who know that they are subjectively thinking because they know it is really hard to not be subject to the mind-boggling biases of the human mind and perception.
That being said, it is non-sense to ask the people about their own objectivity, and the only opportunity is to do it through an indirect test.</p>

<p>But there lies another Problem. People are going to act differently if they are in front of a test. You can not expect to get the same answers like to kill their family for the life of humanity in a real situation and on a computer test. On the online test they are way more likely to say yes, but in reality they are surely not objective enough to overcome their subjectivity, who can you expect to kill their family for the greater good?</p>

<p>The Complexness of the tests makes it really hard to do them without the people acting differently like in the second example or being biased against themselves in the first example. You always are able on your own empirical data to determine the tendency of people being offended or not but I believe because of the complications it is near impossible to find a objective scale to determine it.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2016-12-02T09:12:21.760Z
Hi Maim - could you give references or sources to your information to allow other users to background read on your answer?
AliceD
CC BY-SA 3.0
2016-12-02T13:44:02.580Z
@Christiaan For the objectivity part you can read up on all the existing biases and find your own empirical representation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases
Maxim G
CC BY-SA 3.0
2016-12-02T13:54:16.613Z
@Christiaan For the offended part I think it is one, a mixture of confirmation bias because they worked that hard on it that they think their work is good, so they seek positive reinforcement / reject criticism, this one, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_truth_effect , they repeated their workings for over a decade, this effect is probably occuring. Also maybe this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escalation_of_commitment, because the first 2 links.
Maxim G
CC BY-SA 3.0
2016-12-02T13:57:55.080Z
@Christiaan this also to objectivity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bias_blind_spot
Maxim G
CC BY-SA 3.0
2016-12-02T14:06:42.827Z
@Christiaan for the different acting in different environment I did not find on the fast search a real back up but I did find some for general environment research http://www.takingcharge.csh.umn.edu/explore-healing-practices/healing-environment/what-impact-does-environment-have-us https://www.healthdesign.org/sites/default/files/Role%20Physical%20Environ%20in%20the%2021st%20Century%20Hospital_0.pdf http://ijbssnet.com/journals/Vol_3_No_24_Special_Issue_December_2012/14.pdf nevermind, found it https://www0.gsb.columbia.edu/mygsb/faculty/research/pubfiles/3532/Benz_Meier_EE_Final_Web-1.pdf
Maxim G
CC BY-SA 3.0
2016-12-02T14:50:18.683Z
Hi Maxim. Awesome work. Thanks and +1
AliceD
CC BY-SA 3.0
2016-12-01T22:34:18.727Z
2016-12-01T22:34:18.727Z
Maxim G
<p>This is my first post to Cognitive Sciences, i'm a Biologist by trade.</p>

<p>In Biological sciences, I have noticed more and more that people take criticism very personally. If I were to criticize a plumber's use of an 1/2" pipe when they should have used a 3/4" pipe, or a computer technician's use of a 600W power supply rather than a 1000W power supply, they might take it personally, but I feel they are far more likely to respond from a facts-based point of view. In biological sciences however, I more and more get the impression that people think attacking their work is a personal attack on their character.</p>

<p>Perhaps it's the high-stakes nature of a job. To have a paper retracted in the early stages of your career as a researcher is to essentially stop being a researcher. Which since most people get their PhD around 30 is a pretty big blow to anyone's life plans. Not so with a plumber who does a bad job one day.</p>

<p>So i'm wondering if this can be quantified. Some metric of how personally people take criticism, or how objective they can be. Does such a phycological test exist?</p>

<p>Thank you so much!</p>

<social-neuroscience>
A measure of how personally people take critisism
J.J
# A measure of how personally people take critisism

(Asked by: username_0 on 2016-12-01)

This is my first post to Cognitive Sciences, i'm a Biologist by trade.

In Biological sciences, I have noticed more and more that people take criticism very personally. If I were to criticize a plumber's use of an 1/2" pipe when they should have used a 3/4" pipe, or a computer technician's use of a 600W power supply rather than a 1000W power supply, they might take it personally, but I feel they are far more likely to respond from a facts-based point of view. In biological sciences however, I more and more get the impression that people think attacking their work is a personal attack on their character.

Perhaps it's the high-stakes nature of a job. To have a paper retracted in the early stages of your career as a researcher is to essentially stop being a researcher. Which since most people get their PhD around 30 is a pretty big blow to anyone's life plans. Not so with a plumber who does a bad job one day.

So i'm wondering if this can be quantified. Some metric of how personally people take criticism, or how objective they can be. Does such a phycological test exist?

Thank you so much!

**Tags:** social-neuroscience


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## 1 answers

### Answer by username_1 on 2016-12-01. Score: 1

I do not know whether such a test exist, and I also would be wondering how you could convince someone to take a "how offended do you get" - Test :P.

Anyway, this is a weird topic to quantify, because of your special "needs".
You have on the one hand the "Offendedness", the measurement of how a person is likely to respond negatively and get in a personal defense position when you give them criticism. This really depends a person's development, If someone as you said puts in 15 years of hard work to get a PhD they may be really defensive of criticism against their work. If you would criticise the same people maybe of their ability to play guitar which they have maximum 100 hours on, they may not react defensively. So you would need to determine special offendedness of criticism in some subject like Biology. Also the measurement is really hard. You may be able to diagnose people with emotional dysfunction by letting them look at eyes and guess the emotion (and even here, the error rate is probably high), but how are you assuring that people would honestly and self reflecting in a test of how offended they may get. People are biased against themselves and others, the human is not a objective living thing, if you would generalize it, in my experience even the most intelligent and even the most objective people I met are nearly the ones who are the most subjective / biased in the "right" direction. You often see such scientist debating against religious people and not finding arguments.

Then the second thing you touched on is the objectivity. Objectivity in itself is subjective, sounds weird but let me explain.
People who think they are objective most of the time are subjective thinking. And objective people are the ones who know that they are subjectively thinking because they know it is really hard to not be subject to the mind-boggling biases of the human mind and perception.
That being said, it is non-sense to ask the people about their own objectivity, and the only opportunity is to do it through an indirect test.

But there lies another Problem. People are going to act differently if they are in front of a test. You can not expect to get the same answers like to kill their family for the life of humanity in a real situation and on a computer test. On the online test they are way more likely to say yes, but in reality they are surely not objective enough to overcome their subjectivity, who can you expect to kill their family for the greater good?

The Complexness of the tests makes it really hard to do them without the people acting differently like in the second example or being biased against themselves in the first example. You always are able on your own empirical data to determine the tendency of people being offended or not but I believe because of the complications it is near impossible to find a objective scale to determine it.

> **Comments:**
> **username_2**: Hi Maim - could you give references or sources to your information to allow other users to background read on your answer?  
> **username_1**: @Christiaan For the objectivity part you can read up on all the existing biases and find your own empirical representation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases  
> **username_1**: @Christiaan For the offended part I think it is one, a mixture of confirmation bias because they worked that hard on it that they think their work is good, so they seek positive reinforcement / reject criticism, this one, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_truth_effect , they repeated their workings for over a decade, this effect is probably occuring. Also maybe this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escalation_of_commitment, because the first 2 links.  
> **username_1**: @Christiaan this also to objectivity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bias_blind_spot  
> **username_1**: @Christiaan for the different acting in different environment I did not find on the fast search a real back up but I did find some for general environment research http://www.takingcharge.csh.umn.edu/explore-healing-practices/healing-environment/what-impact-does-environment-have-us https://www.healthdesign.org/sites/default/files/Role%20Physical%20Environ%20in%20the%2021st%20Century%20Hospital_0.pdf http://ijbssnet.com/journals/Vol_3_No_24_Special_Issue_December_2012/14.pdf nevermind, found it https://www0.gsb.columbia.edu/mygsb/faculty/research/pubfiles/3532/Benz_Meier_EE_Final_Web-1.pdf  
> **username_2**: Hi Maxim. Awesome work. Thanks and +1  

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