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Critiquing Keirsey

burymecloser

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David Keirsey is among the most influential and widely-read writers on personality typing, but he effectively ignores functions, and some members of this forum dismiss his work as elementary or even useless.

Keirsey was my primary background when I joined this site, and I would be very interested in a detailed critique of his work. Alternatively, if anyone wants to mount a passionate defense of Keirsey, I'd be interested in that, too.

if you think about E/I and P/J in Keirsey's terms, you get the meanings all wrong. "I plan and work hard" doesn't make you a J, and "I don't like to be outgoing with random new people a lot" doesn't make you an I.
Could you expand on this? When I joined this forum, Keirsey was my primary frame of reference. I spent over a decade thinking I was INTJ before I learned the basics of function theory, and now believe I'm probably INTP.

I'd be really interested in a detailed critique of Keirsey, though I still believe his work is important and has some value.
Ooh, ooh! Pick me! Pick me!
You're up, MP. :)
 

KDude

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I'm reading Lenore Thomson's book right now, and I thought it was interesting that she pointed out how Keirsey kind of wanted to dismiss the idea of there even being much difference between ESFP and ISFP... It's in the beginning of her chapter on IFPs..I can't recall what Keirsey text she is referring to, but that seems careless. Even though ISFPs are "sensate" experiencers too, being Fi dominant could be a huge difference. It is for me at least.
 

miss fortune

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I think that Keirsey's work is basically an example of a Lie to Children... an oversimplification of a more complex concept in order to make it more accessable to the masses than the origional theory was... Kind of like the difference between the Lion King and Hamlet :cheese:

The more you understand, the more useless Keirsey's concepts seem :)
 

highlander

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There are some interesting things in Kiersy - like the 4 types of leadership (tactical, logistical, diplomatic, and strategic) for example. A lot of it though seems fictionally romanticized to me. It is a bit like reading the fairy tale version of typology.

The success of the books probably has more to do with "first mover" advantage than anything else - making the concepts accessible to a broader audience as has been explained.
 

Jeffster

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I think that Keirsey's work is basically an example of a Lie to Children... an oversimplification of a more complex concept in order to make it more accessable to the masses than the origional theory was... Kind of like the difference between the Lion King and Hamlet :cheese:

I'm really glad you made this comparison. I like The Lion King a heck of a lot better than Hamlet!

The more you understand, the more useless Keirsey's concepts seem :)

False. I've found exactly the opposite to be true. The more I understand, the more I see his basic concepts play out in real life, and am aided in my communication with others tremendously.

Simplification is a GOOD thing, people!

Accessibility is a GOOD thing!

Complex does not equal better!

It seems to me that people that are more interested in mental masturbation that produces nothing but theoretical circles diss Keirsey. Those that appreciate the differences in people and the practicality of bridging those differences in communication praise him.

It's like they hate the fact that someone simplified their oh-so-intellectual club of I'm-so-smartness. Magic P has even admitted this before. That he wants this exclusive club of people who DEEPLY UNDERSTAND this theoretical cloud of gas rather than a mass of people having an effective tool for action.

The thing is, there's no reason you can't have both. If Fi'ing your Ni-Ne up your Te's Ti until the cows come home is what makes you happy, than knock yourself out. But don't bash Keirsey just because he doesn't join your circle jerk, and actually found ways to connect with people who are more interested in what's actually useful in reality.
 

miss fortune

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I just think that it's inadequate to explain differences, though it's adequate to explain similarities :)

I didn't say Keirsey was BAD, I just said that his version is the more accessable version of the theory to interest more people. I just don't see it as being as descriptive... for instance, why my ISTJ uses S in such a different way than I do... it might as well not be the same function :shock:
 

JocktheMotie

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Personally, I find Keirsey useful for on the spot, quick typing of behavior, not necessarily what I would consider personality. To me, personality encompasses psychological motivations and tendencies that may or may not lead to certain behaviors. Keirsey's method would suggest that your underlying motivations, or "why" you arrive at certain conclusions and behaviors are largely irrelevant in comparison to whatever behavior you express to the world.

I think in his goal, describing 16 expressed behavioral types, he is successful. The system must be judged both on its own merits and its ability to be applied. I found that his method was interesting and useful; abstract vs. concrete, and cooperative vs. utilitarian are good metrics for comparing behavior. However, I think he does his system a disservice borrowing the nomenclature of MBTI to name his types. It gives the illusion that the systems are compatible, when they are two very different things. Also, an individual's behavior changes a lot in different environments. You can probably be about 3 different Keirsey types throughout your day, depending on environmental demands. And without taking a cognitive approach, and only relying on external observation as judging criteria, the system is not useful in terms of self discovery and personal analysis, but more useful as a way to categorize those around you. The system seems far more outside oriented, than inner oriented.
 

Eric B

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I'm reading Lenore Thomson's book right now, and I thought it was interesting that she pointed out how Keirsey kind of wanted to dismiss the idea of there even being much difference between ESFP and ISFP... It's in the beginning of her chapter on IFPs..I can't recall what Keirsey text she is referring to, but that seems careless. Even though ISFPs are "sensate" experiencers too, being Fi dominant could be a huge difference. It is for me at least.
That was PUM 1, p. 203, where he says that the ISTP is more like the ESTP than the INTP. Lenore is coming from a more purer Jungian outlook, where there were really only eight types (the dominant function), and the auxiliary is a bit less prominent than in type as commonly viewed where the dom and aux seem to carry equal weight in shaping the behavior.

I can see it both ways. I might have the same dominant ego-goals as the ISTP, but that auxiliary in practice does make a signifficant difference, and I will be more like an ENTP in many ways.

Keirsey is simply a division of the types into leadership skill groups, while Interaction styles are social skill groupings, and cognitive processes are a third angle to group the types from, that is truer to Jung's original conception.
 

PeaceBaby

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But don't bash Keirsey just because he doesn't join your circle jerk, and actually found ways to connect with people who are more interested in what's actually useful in reality.

An excellent point and post, Jeffster.

I still find much relevant in Keirsey's work, and it is an engaging read for anyone new to the subject or someone you want to get acquainted with the subject, but has some inner resistance. It's engaging. Relates to real world examples. More people find that ... interesting.
 

Magic Poriferan

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You're up, MP. :)

[I wrote this quickly, so it's sloppy, probably not that well structure, and full of typos I would assume]

There's a line, it came from Mencken, that went like this: "For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong."

I always think of that one when discussions of Keirsey's temperament system arise.

Often, the proponents of Keirsey's work say it is easy to understand, and easy to apply quickly, and really makes the world nice and tidy. Perhaps so, but it does these things by making totally invalid inferences.

What are the problems with the temperament model?

Well, as you noted, Keirsey threw out the cognitive processes. What he is left with is a system where you can only categorize people based on their behavior. In a nutshell, it's a psychology measure that never questions how anyone thinks.

That obviously seems silly, but to elaborate, the problem is that what someone does, like how punctual they are or how cleanly they are, as well as what sort of tenets people subscribe to, like political ideology, are all things that can be arrived at through many different trains of thought. It means that merely observing that a person has certain habits and certain ideologies does not tell you how they perceived or reasoned their way to that point. Trying to type someone on these observable traits will quickly show people to be typological contradictions in Keirsey's system.

Now granted, you cannot know anything about a person by means other than observable traits, technically. But the cognitive model tries harder to get at someone's abstract thinking (often through words as much or more than deeds), and this also why questions on a cognitive test tend to be very general. Kerisey's approach is ridiculously specific. It actually suggests typing people on observations like whether or not they keep surfaces clear and clean. But that doesn't give you any understand of the person's mind. It basically only tells you what you already just observed.

And let's look at the reasoning in Keirsey's own writing. He has very little logical framework in his books. Much of what he wrote is based on his personal experience. That's inconistent, incomplete, and hard to apply. Personal experience alone is not very reliable. Furthermore, outside of that, he makes the odd choice to reach back to the antiquated temperament systems of people like Hippocrates. His reasoning (which strikes me as incredibly ISTJ) is that this is the pattern that has been passed down for ages, and he basically just figures from there that it has enough merit to imitated. I found this decision to also be poorly reasoned.

And there's the fact that, because of how his sytem works, the temperaments are very archetypical. I don't believe the cognitive types, if properly applied, pidgeonhole's anyone or leaves anybody unrepresented (though if you see the way SimulatedWorl applies it, it does in that case). Keirsey's temperaments do, on the other hand. They are inflexible archetypes which go into too much detail per type profile without accounting from all the range of possibilities. He's typing people on so many behavioral details that it should lead to far more than 4 binary variables, and that in turn should lead to far more than 16 types. But again, he's more content to just smash everyone into those details

And that being said, there aren't even really 16 types, because Keirsey gets so carried away with his temperament idea that it starts to devour the types. Some more than others. Perhaps because he fancies himself an NT, he gave the most comprehensive treatment to the NTs. The SJs he treats the worst. Each temperament follows a pattern akin to just one of its types. The Guardians are ESTJs, the Artisans are ESTPs, the NFs and NTs are more even, but they are basically INFJs and INTPs.

The types that are most different from the archetypical type of the temperament are therefore the most poorly accounted. ISFJs, ISFPs, ENFPs, and ENTJs are sort of poorly explained and represented.

So I stick with the cognitive processes. They are an ecompassing and consistent logical framework which can be worked out deductively and applied flexibly, and they actually reflect a person's thought processes, instead of making hasy conclusions from someone's lifestyle habits.
 

Eric B

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Furthermore, outside of that, he makes the odd choice to reach back to the antiquated temperament systems of people like Hippocrates. His reasoning (which strikes me as incredibly ISTJ) is that this is the pattern that has been passed down for ages, and he basically just figures from there that it has enough merit to imitated. I found this decision to also be poorly reasoned.

And there's the fact that, because of how his sytem works, the temperaments are very archetypical. I don't believe the cognitive types, if properly applied, pidgeonhole's anyone or leaves anybody unrepresented (though if you see the way SimulatedWorl applies it, it does in that case). Keirsey's temperaments do, on the other hand. They are inflexible archetypes which go into too much detail per type profile without accounting from all the range of possibilities. He's typing people on so many behavioral details that it should lead to far more than 4 binary variables, and that in turn should lead to far more than 16 types. But again, he's more content to just smash everyone into those details

And that being said, there aren't even really 16 types, because Keirsey gets so carried away with his temperament idea that it starts to devour the types. Some more than others. Perhaps because he fancies himself an NT, he gave the most comprehensive treatment to the NTs. The SJs he treats the worst. Each temperament follows a pattern akin to just one of its types. The Guardians are ESTJs, the Artisans are ESTPs, the NFs and NTs are more even, but they are basically INFJs and INTPs.

The types that are most different from the archetypical type of the temperament are therefore the most poorly accounted. ISFJs, ISFPs, ENFPs, and ENTJs are sort of poorly explained and represented.

So I stick with the cognitive processes. They are an ecompassing and consistent logical framework which can be worked out deductively and applied flexibly, and they actually reflect a person's thought processes, instead of making hasy conclusions from someone's lifestyle habits.
I believe the most complete model is Berens, which recombines Keirsey's temperaments with the cognitive processes, and adds another version of the four temperaments as well. The result is that each type is actually a combination of two of the temperament archetypes. This is what we see in some of the Hippocrates tests, such as Oneishy (which uses LaHaye's concepts) and 4 Marks.
Berens doesn't frame them this way, but she does compare both models to the ancient ones. In the old threads we have on the humors, they continue to enjoy relative success in the correlation I have revealed, as people occasionally still posting test tesults. Like we just had an ENFP who is Sanguine-SupinePhlegmatic (Sanguine=ENP [social]; Supine and/or Phlegmatic=NF [leadership]).

This would explain why Keirsey's model would seem to leave some out, or that certain types are more like the assigned temperament than others. SP is supposed to be Sanguine, which is very bright and expressive, and ISFP does not seem to fit that. That's because that type's social style is ISF, which is Phlegmatic. The two temperaments blend and temper each other. So if you only look at it as one temperament, then it will not appear to fit.
 

highlander

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I'm really glad you made this comparison. I like The Lion King a heck of a lot better than Hamlet!



False. I've found exactly the opposite to be true. The more I understand, the more I see his basic concepts play out in real life, and am aided in my communication with others tremendously.

Simplification is a GOOD thing, people!

Accessibility is a GOOD thing!

Complex does not equal better!

Good points.

It seems to me that people that are more interested in mental masturbation that produces nothing but theoretical circles diss Keirsey. Those that appreciate the differences in people and the practicality of bridging those differences in communication praise him.

It's like they hate the fact that someone simplified their oh-so-intellectual club of I'm-so-smartness. Magic P has even admitted this before. That he wants this exclusive club of people who DEEPLY UNDERSTAND this theoretical cloud of gas rather than a mass of people having an effective tool for action.

The thing is, there's no reason you can't have both. If Fi'ing your Ni-Ne up your Te's Ti until the cows come home is what makes you happy, than knock yourself out. But don't bash Keirsey just because he doesn't join your circle jerk, and actually found ways to connect with people who are more interested in what's actually useful in reality.

I don't entirely agree with these points - or at least it is not my personal experience. There is a lot of stuff in Keirsey which feels like it is made up to me. It's fun to read and interesting but I don't believe all that I'm reading. I don't get this feeling after reading Gifts Differing or Lenore Thompson.
 

citizen cane

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David Keirsey is among the most influential and widely-read writers on personality typing, but he effectively ignores functions, and some members of this forum dismiss his work as elementary or even useless.

i had to do a 6 page research paper on keirsey for my low-track english class with a teacher who completely believed in his works. having ADHD (keirsey believes it's a complete hoax, and to an extent i can see his points) and being an INTP with an extraverted guardian type of some sort- ESFJ maybe?- i thought she was a bitch who was hopeless under pressure, but then again so did most of the class.
 

OrangeAppled

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I think that Keirsey's work is basically an example of a Lie to Children... an oversimplification of a more complex concept in order to make it more accessable to the masses than the origional theory was... Kind of like the difference between the Lion King and Hamlet :cheese:

The more you understand, the more useless Keirsey's concepts seem :)

That's always how I viewed his books - oversimplification to appeal to the masses (and the Lion King is based on Hamlet?!! :eek: :D). And I agree with those who say he really types behavior, not thought process.

The thing is, I think that is what Isabel Myers aimed to do with Jung's theory in creating MBTI & writing Gifts Differing, but I think she tried to keep the integrity of Jung's theory intact, and it shows. It's definitely simplified & made to appeal to the masses though (by making it practical, of course). I understand why that is necessary, and if she didn't do it, how many of us would have discovered Jung's theory?
 

SolitaryWalker

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Let me briefly summarize the principal assumptions of Keirsey's work.

-People are different in nature and it is therefore inappropriate to subject them to the same kind of treatment in matters of education, business affairs and interpersonal relationships.
- People differ in their temperaments, a temperament is a collection of a person's salient character traits.
-16 Different temperaments exist.

The main problem with Keirsey's typological methodology is that he makes claims that are sociological and psychological in nature, but does not cite empirical support in favor of his findings.

At the very beginning of Please Understand Me, we have a Keirsey personality test. By answering his questions and reviewing his answer keys, we can determine which of the 16 of his temperaments we belong to. After we've discovered our temperament we may read the detailed description of our characters. However, Keirsey cited no empirical studies to prove that his tests have construct validity or that they truly do measure what they claim to measure.

Furthermore, his type descriptions are also unsupported by any empirical evidence, they are founded on mere arm-chair reasoning. Essentially, Keirsey abandoned the scientific method yet continued to propound answers to scientific questions. His claims could have been tenable if he recasted his assertions as mere hypotheses about people's behavior and motivations, however, he insisted on making a very strong claim that knowing a person's temperament necessarily predicts his future behaviors. Similarly, he could have focused his typological inquiry on cognitive tendencies rather than behaviors of people in common-place social situations that define their characters. By doing the former, he would have entered the territory of philosophy of mind where his conclusions would be unfalsifiable ( not testable and therefore unscientific), yet potentially supportable by future research in Neuroscience.
 
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