What causes happiness?

[Little_Sticks]

It seems some of that will be shaped by type, since Thinking types will tend to be more "detached".
So I wonder if that relates in any way to the Big Five. "T/F" is generally correlated with "Agreeableness", but those correlations are not absolute, and I think T/F also figures a lot in Neuroticism; the missing fifth factor.
But I wondered how it fit. Thinking's "detachment", at least as characterized by MBTI and Keirsey discussions, appears to be the more "calm" or "stable" while Feeling is more "limbic" (neurotic).
In my own correlations, because Eysenck originally defined Neuroticism by association with the Melancholic and Choleric (and I figure fifth temperament Supine would by definition be neurotic as well) I associated Neuroticism with any "low" score in expressiveness or responsiveness (introversion, cooperativeness, directiveness and structure-focus), and Feeling would fall on the "high" responsive side (informative for S's, motive focus for N's, and thus "Agreeable" for FFM), then it seems Feeling would be less neurotic, or more stable. (P, also).

So this association of "connecting" with "happiness" would seem to go along with that. (And F+P would be even more "happy" than F+J, because of the internal standard that does not depend on others, whose behavior we cannot really control anyway).

I probably don't really understand all that well what you're getting at, since I honestly don't understand myself all that much in terms of personality theories; so I can't comment, I guess. But I can give an account of my personal experiences. Then again, I've said before that I think I either have aspergers or am on the autistic spectrum, so maybe this won't mean much to you.

But.
I consider my introversion to be highly attached to everything going on around me, although I appear very detached to do so. It used to overstimulate my mind with thoughts and a lot of the conclusions I formed ended up being out of context for the situation I was in. The reason being, I don't think anyone can really read anyone because the queues that people give off, usually aren't in line with their goals or motivations. If someone is nervous about something or they put a strange intonation on a word, there are a million associations or recollections that could have happened to cause that intonation that have nothing to do with what is being discussed or what they are aiming to do.

Because of that, I've become highly aware of how people can very easily make an assumption about other people. The same goes with different types of rationalizing people and politics - how people will categorize things in such a way as to impose a conflict or competition between two ideas that aren't even necessarily contradictory.

My neuroticism stems (stemmed?) from this mis-reading of people, that although not fitting for the context, was and is usually right concerning the emotion I'm reading from the person, even if I can't make assumptions about how that emotion connects to anything. It took me a while to figure this out and now that I have, it's usually very easy for me to see when other people do this, not get offended, correct it, and notice and correct my own assumptions rather quickly when they happen. In this case, what you say about responsiveness and neuroticism fits because my responsiveness has improved, lowering the neuroticism.

The detachment I have is somewhat more innate. I've noticed a discrepancy between thinking as a problem solving attitude/style-of-thinking and thinking that simply entertains thoughts for the purpose of attaining some kind of knowledge and/or wisdom. The former fits right with Jung's definitions of Ti and Te and fits most other definitions of the functions (I'm not big on MBTI or Kiersey because their focus seems to be generalizing, rather than conceptualizing, which is imbiguous and stigmatizes personality typology). My thinking is the latter. And I am aware enough of different types of people to distinguish the more Jungian Ti and Te, functional definitions, that I can't ignore it if someone wants to suggest my way of thinking is Ti or Te. But, point is, because my detachment is of the latter kind (thinking that simply entertains thoughts for the purpose of attaining some kind of knowledge and/or wisdom), I am actually very concerned and mindful of the people around me, although to do so it requires some major amount of "distance" or "detachment"; because once I'm engaged to a person or thing, my attention becomes focused on them to the exclusion of other things and I do not really like that.

That said, I think my detachment is experientially Ni related, more than anything else. I do feel I am an F type, although that would make me Ni+Fe. From this, I think my feeling when I used to misread people by making the wrong conclusions about them, was neurotic. Now that that's changed, it is agreeable more than anything else. My thinking functions, Te/Ti, are kind of a slave to my Fi/Fe now, whereas before it was the other way around, which might make sense from a shadow point of view.

Of course, whether any of this makes any sense objectively, I don't know. But the beliefs are small and loose, founded mostly upon fact, so if the beliefs are wrong, my personal experiences are still there and still going to be just as meaningful, no matter how it's logically connected. But maybe you can do a better job than me of connecting them.

Wow, this post got long, quickly. Wonder if you'll read it.

 

[Eric B]

Neuroticism and Agreeableness (Responsiveness) as I used them are personality factors that would be apart of type or temperaments, so they are not like skills that go "up" or "down".

Not sure how such focus on a person (which would be "connection") to the exclusion of others figures in "connection vs detachment".