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bentarm comments on Five-minute rationality techniques - Less Wrong
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Do you have any examples? That's a fascinating one.
(Corollary: if you're angry at someone, and they ask why you're angry, tell them. They might actually not know. Especially if they're a child. I know I'm not the only one who was punished by one or more elementary school teachers for reasons that they refused to explain, since they assumed that I already knew. Oh how I seethed.)
I think what got me into it was Psychetypes, a description of the Myers-Briggs types with some rather abstract theory about how they experience time and space differently than each other. [1] Anyway (and this should be a clue about how hard it can be to learn this sort of thing) when I first started reading the book, I got to the bit about there being many sorts of normal, and I put the book down for two years-- it was that hard to get past the idea that either I was crazy, or everyone else was.
Anyway, look at how a lot of people talk about taste-- a lot of them really believe that everyone should like and dislike the same things they do.
Or people who believe that if some diet/exercise method worked for them, therefore it would work for everyone if they'd just try hard enough.
Or that allergies they haven't got must be illusionnary.
[1] IIRC, SPs experience the present moment most vividly, NTs imagine time as evenly spaced along a ruler, NFs have vivid experience of past emotional moments, and someone (it's got to be another N, and I can't remember what SJs experience) are most aware of future possibilities. You double all this to get 8 types because some people think spacial boundaries are real and others don't.
I think we should probably be very wary of taking anything based on the Myers Briggs classifications seriously. They seem to be based almost entirely on Forer Effect type predictions and almost impossible to falsify.
If I remember correctly, the Big Five tests are slightly more robust (eg, a Big Five profile has fairly high predictive power, and is fairly stable over time).
I think skeptical people are too quick to say "Forer Effect" when they first do Myers-Briggs. They notice that their type only partially describes them and assume that something fishy is going on. But if you switch all the letters and read the description of the exact opposite type, there is almost nothing that could apply to you. That in itself means that there is some non-trivial classification going on. San Francisco may not be LA, but it sure isn't Moscow.
I don't take the specifics very seriously-- I don't try to analyze everyone in terms of MB-- nor the the Enneagram, which I also find somewhat useful. Occasionally, I find someone who seems to have a very strong tendency towards some of the traits described in a system, but most of what I get out of these systems is a clue that people are very varied, that it's normal for people to be different from each other, and some ideas about possible differences.