Yeah, my mistake. But how can such person be considered boring? In my mind the are the persons that tackle the data, find connections where others don't see it, good at observing patterns...
What is surprising from this shotty paper is that they conclude boring people are perceived as "less competent".
Seems counter-intuitive, considering accounting and taxes.
They did two different studies. One took a list of occupations, and asked the respondents “Joe is an accountant. How boring does that make him seem, 1-7?”
The other study then created a vignette combining attributes that were individually rated into a bigger description, then asked “how competent (skilled, hard-working) does this person seem?”
So the connection is boringness -> low competency, and not necessarily all data analyst -> boring.
Data analyst was down the list a bit on boringness - less than accounting, law, and a few others. Mathematics on the other hand had the lowest boringness rating of the occupations.
Consider a continuum from Boring to Exciting. Now place these jobs on them:
- Firefighter
- Rocket Scientist
- Data Analyst
They are more boring, ergo, they are the boring jobs.
People don't seem to find being an Uber driver boring, because you talk to people all day. This sounds extremely boring and tiresome to me.
Have you met my constant companions, Dunning and Kruger?