Thinking/Feeling game: Same Difference

[rivercrow]

This is a game to show how Thinking and Feeling can arrive at the same decisions, although how the decision is made can be very different. If you are not sure if you prefer Thinking or Feeling, you may find value in observing people with different judging preferences walk through their reasoning.

The problem/decision sets are limited to increase the chance that you will see both a Thinking and a Feeling response.

Participants:

• Active Players (people who are sure of your judging preference and are comfortable sharing)
• The Chorus (people who are unsure of your judging preference or who would simply prefer not to be an active player)

The game:

• Choose one of the problem/decision sets below.
• Show how you use your preferred judging process to reach the described decision.

Rules for Active Players:
In your post:

• Identify which problem/decision set you chose.
• Identify your Type, if it's not included in your profile.
• Show the decision-making process using your judging function. This could be the inner dialog you use to arrive at a decision.
• Keep the decision-making descriptions brief but clear, so the reasoning can be easily seen.

Rules for the Chorus:
Please let a few active players post before joining the discussion. After that, you’re welcome to comment and ask questions.

Problem/Decision Sets (choose one set only):

1. The Exam: You don't feel like you studied enough for your final exam. You must pass, or you have to retake the class. You're in your desk in class and you see a classmate's notebook open on the floor.

   You decide not to cheat.

2. The Project: You're a team lead on a very visible project at work. One of your team members has started turning in work late, which is causing delays. This team member is caring for his elderly parent who has become ill. This team member is the expert in his area, but he has an inexperienced assistant who has offered to fill in. Your boss keeps asking for updates.

   You decide to replace the expert with the assistant.

3. The Car: You need to buy a new car. You can afford either a conventional gas car that gets 28 mpg or diesel car that gets 50 mpg but will create three times the amount of air pollution. Both cars are the same otherwise (same size, age, wear, cost, etc).

   You decide to purchase the conventional gas car.

4. Laid-off: You've been laid-off due to a merger. You are not sure when you will find another job as you live in an economically-depressed area. While you are running errands, some obviously poor kids ask you for $20.

   You decide to give the money to them.

[bluebell]

Cool idea rivercrow. My main struggle with this is that I probably would have made a different decision for 2, 3 and 4. Decided to choose 2 because it's an easier thought experiment.

Originally Posted by rivercrow

2. The Project: You're a team lead on a very visible project at work. One of your team members has started turning in work late, which is causing delays. This team member is caring for his elderly parent who has become ill. This team member is the expert in his area, but he has an inexperienced assistant who has offered to fill in. Your boss keeps asking for updates.

You decide to replace the expert with the assistant.

I'll write this in the present tense. My first reaction is that I am annoyed and frustrated that my project was running late, even though I know why the expert is running behind. But then I tell myself to get over it, work something out.

Nobody should be indispensible, anyone can come down with a bad flu at any time, my team should be, and is, flexible. I talk to the expert and ask how his parent is and if he needs time off or a reduced workload while his personal crisis was happening. I tell him that it's ok to put his family first, we can make do until he is able to come back.

I think about the options and decide that it is better to replace the expert with his inexperienced assistant - much easier and less effort than trying to train up someone new to the project. Distracted workers can actually have a negative effect on productivity - correcting mistakes chews up valuable time. And I decide it would be good experience for the assistant. I am a bit aprehensive that the assistant will not be able to do a good job but assume that I and the rest of the team will be able to wing it and pull it together at the last minute.

(As it says in my profile, I'm a T)

[rivercrow]

The Project.
I would prefer to have the expert working directly on the project. He's distracted and his productivity is down. The whole team is suffering and the company is watching us closely. His assistant doesn't have the expertise, but the assistant is available in the current time frame. I will explain to the expert that I need to turn in timely reports and show progress so he will understand the decision is based on keeping the project moving. The assistant reports to the expert, so the expert's knowledge will still be available to us. At the same time, the assistant will become a more valuable asset to the company by becoming very familiar with the project. In the long run, the company will benefit by having more than one person comfortable with the expert's area.

[Maverick]

This is an excellent idea!

The Exam: You don't feel like you studied enough for your final exam. You must pass, or you have to retake the class. You're in your desk in class and you see a classmate's notebook open on the floor.

You decide not to cheat.

I don't cheat because:

If I didn't study, I deserve to have bad grades. It's my responsibility to ensure that I study. Cheating is the easy and weak option. If everyone cheated whenever they didn't study, then grades would not be a measure of people's competence anymore. There would be disastrous consequences to this. People could get diplomas they don't deserve. So called expertise would become relative.

But, what will my little action change to this, you will think? The ocean is made of little drops of water... You have to behave in a such a way that what you do can become a universal law. Having intregrity means living up to your principles. If I think that an efficient society must function with good measures of people's competence, then it is my personal responsibility to live up to that principle and contribute to this ideal.

[Langrenus]

Originally Posted by rivercrow

[*]The Exam: You don't feel like you studied enough for your final exam. You must pass, or you have to retake the class. You're in your desk in class and you see a classmate's notebook open on the floor.

You decide not to cheat.

I'm going to translate "don't feel like" into "know you haven't" - I always knew when I'd done enough (or hadn't)

I see the classmate's notebook...

[1] I know what I know, and I know what I don't know
[2] People choose numerous different ways to revise. My notes are perfect for me but useless for most other people. And vice versa.
[3] The odds of me finding the topics I don't know, in a form I can quickly process, in someone else's notes, and then making sense of that information so that I can memorise it is pretty slim (I'm assuming the test is pretty close at hand).
[4] It would, in fact, make more sense just to spend the time I would otherwise be wasting looking at their notebook on focusing inward. I've been to all of the classes, I have a good memory, and all of the information I need is locked away somewhere. I'll trust myself to find it when the pressure is on, and this is more likely to happen if I'm calm. It won't happen if I hurriedly try to cram.

[5] I will then leave the exam knowing that the grade I receive is reflective of the effort I've put in to the subject, and will not be kept awake at night wondering just how much of my mark I deserved and just how much was down to cheating. If I get a good grade despite the lack of revision, I can give myself a generous pat on the pack. If I don't it was probably a stupid subject anyway

[Park]

Great idea.

Originally Posted by rivercrow

The Project: You're a team lead on a very visible project at work. One of your team members has started turning in work late, which is causing delays. This team member is caring for his elderly parent who has become ill. This team member is the expert in his area, but he has an inexperienced assistant who has offered to fill in. Your boss keeps asking for updates.

You decide to replace the expert with the assistant.

Priorities:
1. I want what's best for the company.
Whether a leaders likes it or not, the private life of an employee can not be seperated from his/her workplace. Since my employee is a field expert (and therefore a presumably great asset for the company in generel), I'd rather give that person space to deal with things in the person's privatelife than creating further damage (stress, break down etc.) by creating a situation where the person is pushed to the limit both at work and at home.

IRL, the husband of one of my key employees is very sick with an incureable cancer at the moment. To being with, I've given her 37 free hours which she can use as she please and as things proceed, I will consider to give her more. *This is not a decision based on sympathy*. The employee is a great asset to my company and in the long run, I will benefit a lot more from an employee who is tempoarily absent then an employee who ends up with a long term break down. It is also a ways of telling an employee that he/she is valuable to the company, an encouragement which often leads to larger self-confidence and as such, to a better work performance.

2. I want what's best for my team.
When an employee isn't mentally present at work due to a homelife crisis, the persons performance isn't optimal which means that the person *expert status* drops. My choise between an employee with expert knowledge, who's in the middle of a crisis, and an inexperienced assistant (who could develop to become a greater asset with time and perhaps is hungry to prove his/her worth) would fall on the assistant.

3. I want what's best for me.
If things are best for my company, best for the team which I'm leading - chances are they'll be best for me both in the short and in the long run.

[cafe]

# The Exam: You don't feel like you studied enough for your final exam. You must pass, or you have to retake the class. You're in your desk in class and you see a classmate's notebook open on the floor.

You decide not to cheat.

1.) Cheating is wrong (a combination of both lying and stealing)
2.) If I cheat, I will feel guilty about it for years to come. (Like that time when that tutor showed me the questions on that algebra test. I've always felt like I didn't deserve the B I got in that class.)
3.) I'm probably going to do okay on the test even though I didn't study. I'm good at taking tests.
4.) It's my own fault I didn't study, so I deserve whatever grade I get.

[toonia]

Originally Posted by rivercrow

[*]The Exam: You don't feel like you studied enough for your final exam. You must pass, or you have to retake the class. You're in your desk in class and you see a classmate's notebook open on the floor.

You decide not to cheat.

1. The other student's notebook isn't mine. It doesn't represent what I know.
2. There is also no guarantee their answers are any more correct than mine.
3. If I fail the test and have to retake the class, it will be because I 'need' to, because I didn't learn what was required, and there may be an important reasons for me to learn this particular content.
4. I also have too much pride to be given credit for anything I haven't done myself. I have no desire to pass a class unless 'I' pass the class.
5. Retaking one class is not as high a price as having to remember my entire life that I copped out in a dishonest attempt to make myself look better than I am.
Edit: Also, cheating is like admitting that I'm not capable of understanding the class. After having a sketchy outline of it the first time around, chances are I would do quite well the second time. Then the reality of the situation would be that I am fully capable, it just took me longer.

Originally Posted by rivercrow

[*]The Project: You're a team lead on a very visible project at work. One of your team members has started turning in work late, which is causing delays. This team member is caring for his elderly parent who has become ill. This team member is the expert in his area, but he has an inexperienced assistant who has offered to fill in. Your boss keeps asking for updates.

You decide to replace the expert with the assistant.

1. The expert is not able to fulfill the task for whatever reason.
2. I wouldn't fire the person because long term they will continue to provide their expertise, but in the short term that expertise is compromised by personal problems. (Depending on specifics, I may attempt to help alleviate their personal problem by researching available services to assist them)
3. I don't see another option for the short-term.

Originally Posted by rivercrow

[*]The Car: You need to buy a new car. You can afford either a conventional gas car that gets 28 mpg or diesel car that gets 50 mpg but will create three times the amount of air pollution. Both cars are the same otherwise (same size, age, wear, cost, etc).

You decide to purchase the conventional gas car.

1. This decision has long-term consequences for both myself and the environment, so those effects should be taken into consideration.
2. There is no compelling reason to contribute to pollution whatsoever, and I have no special desire to pollute the world, so that is reason enough to go with the conventional gas car.
3. Diesel cars cost more to repair, are harder to find parts for, and the gas is more expensive.
4. There is simply no compelling benefit for the diesal car for myself or the environment.

Originally Posted by rivercrow

[*]Laid-off: You've been laid-off due to a merger. You are not sure when you will find another job as you live in an economically-depressed area. While you are running errands, some obviously poor kids ask you for $20.

You decide to give the money to them.

1. The kids' family will likely experience something similar.
2. I feel more capable to deal with it, while the children are merely victims.
3. I would feel sorry for the kids, but helping them would give me hope for them and me.
4. The act is worth more than $20 for the boost of hope it provides.

[raincrow007]

Type: INTP

Scenario: Exam/Cheating.

Having been in a large course where cheating was rampant, this is an easy one for me to explain.

Thought process:
1. Hey, there's an open notebook -- are THEY cheating? bastards, I bet they are...

2. Is anyone else possibly cheating? I bet so. *surveys the room for more cheat sheets or "accidentally" left open notebooks.*

3. I do not know if cheating is really going on, but I feel compelled to take action to cover the possible skewing of grades, which is statistically unfair, making my grade [good or bad] completely worthless as an indicator of my knowledge on the subject.

4. I decide not to cheat to have a socially acceptable "moral high ground" of sorts when approaching the prof after the exam to mention the cheating that might've been going on. If the prof doesn't adjust the grades or the exams accordingly, [some exams I'd encountered hadn't been rewritten in ages; 17 people around me in my class all had the same answer key to cheat from], I cheat my ass off next time -- just like everyone else.

[Metamorphosis]

Originally Posted by rivercrow

The Exam: You don't feel like you studied enough for your final exam. You must pass, or you have to retake the class. You're in your desk in class and you see a classmate's notebook open on the floor.

You decide not to cheat.

I know that I haven't studied enough for the test I'm taking and chances are I knew that it would not be enough when I stopped studying the night before. This means that I think that this test/class are of little practical value to me and I don't care enough about it to exert myself to the needed level (I saw this a lot this semester in rl ).

If I have to retake the class, that's not a problem. I like being in college and it's just a chance to meet new people (although, chances are that I won't be showing up as often next time). Simply by not studying enough, I acknowledged the fact that retaking the class is a possibility.

I don't cheat because of the risk:reward ratio. I have obviously established the importance of this class in my last two paragraphs and it isn't important enough to risk getting caught and facing severe consequences for cheating on a final exam. There are worse things than retaking a class.

Of course, none of this is relevant if this is a class that is important to me and I only realized that I hadn't studied enough once I'm actually taking the test.