Stereotyping and Mbti Typing

[Mole]

We all know stereotyping is morally wrong, yet none of us know mbti typing is morally wrong.

Why is that?

 

[skimpit]

Stereotypes are natural crutches for people, and they make for good comedy. Ever heard of Axis Powers: Hetalia? How can making fun of people's ignorance be wrong? If it was, then we couldn't make fun of people, or have fun... much less correct ignorance...

And to be honest, I thought you were replying to a thread, Mole. Usually you don't start your own. But alright. Here's me, taking the bait like always. Or'er up ~

 

[Lord Lavender]

Stereotypes are natural crutches for people, and they make for good comedy. Every heard of Axis Powers: Hetalia? How can making fun of people's ignorance be wrong? If it was, then we couldn't make fun of people, or have fun... much less correct ignorance...

And to be honest, I thought you were replying to a thread, Mole. Usually you don't start your own. But alright. Here's me, taking the bait like always. Or'er up ~

I love sterotypes as they allow us to form understanding of things. Stereotypes while should be subject to analysis form the outer layer of a thing or concept and are typically based on truth to some extent. For instance you cannot deny that the 100m sprint is dominated by those of African descent and swimming by those of European descent.

 

[Mole]

Stereotypes are natural crutches for people, and they make for good comedy. Ever heard of Axis Powers: Hetalia? How can making fun of people's ignorance be wrong? If it was, then we couldn't make fun of people, or have fun... much less correct ignorance...

And to be honest, I thought you were replying to a thread, Mole. Usually you don't start your own. But alright. Here's me, taking the bait like always. Or'er up ~

And here you are: hooked - line and sinker.

Stereotypes and mbti types are both immoral because they reify. They turn persons into things. And we turn persons into things when we want to control them or worse.

And it is also a matter of taste. Persons are not things, and it leaves a bad taste when a person is reified.

Good taste is recognising a person as a person, just like ourselves. And surprisingly, good taste and morality go hand in hand.

 

[Abendrot]

All intelligent creatures recognize patterns. It is just as daft and tasteless to deny stereotypes completely as it is to rely on them too much.

 

[Pionart]

Does MBTI really stereotype by necessity? It can be done in such a manner, sure, but really it is a system of categorising based on observed traits.

Given that the traits are observed, it is therefore not necessarily stereotyping, however is a biased way of viewing a person as it filters traits based on those that fit the model.

Simplifying the way we view anything, including people, is standard and perhaps necessary.

However I do agree that there are problems with reifying, i.e. making the abstract concrete, in that we assume that a theoretical model has a tangible basis, whereas it is based on rational abstraction and analysis of empirical data*.

So, we can make use of MBTI types, for theoretical purposes at the very least, however it is in general a bad idea to assign a type label to a person. It can, under the right circumstances, however, foster a more efficient understanding of a person.

* interestingly, from what I've seen from Jung, rational abstraction versus analysis of empirical data portrays the introverted versus extroverted methods of science, i.e. the subjective and objective approaches.

 

[Tennessee Jed]

We all know stereotyping is morally wrong, yet none of us know mbti typing is morally wrong.

Why is that?

A stereotype is an oversimplified image or idea. A cliche.

For example:
--Women are nurturing and sweet, and men are brutal and angry.
--Cities are industrial wastelands.
--Women in detective novels are all femmes fatales

The opposite of a stereotype is categorizing or organizing by characteristics.

For example:
--Categorizing dogs or horses by breed and describing each breed in terms of appearance and temperament.
--Categorizing cities by size/population and describing them in terms of the kinds of employment opportunities they offer.
--Categorizing women by age and economic status in order to figure out what kinds of support services they will need from local government.

Soft sciences like psychology are soft; they aren't as driven by hard data as some of the other examples I mentioned. But they certainly aspire to belong to the categorizing/organizing group rather than the stereotyping group.

For example, people with mental illnesses or personality disorders can be categorized in terms of certain psychological traits, outlooks, and behaviors. Same with personality typing in a healthy population: Healthy people can be categorized in terms of the interplay of a few particular cognitive functions (MBTI) or personality dimensions (the Five Factor Model/Big Five), and so on.

The OP is just trying to create a false correspondence based on making the names sound alike (stereotyping vs. "MBTI typing"). But typology isn't a form of stereotyping.

 

[Psyclepath]

Stereotypes have been created out of MBTI though. A shit ton, which are very often misleading.

 

[Tennessee Jed]

Stereotypes have been created out of MBTI though. A shit ton, which are very often misleading.

Stereotypes are lazy thinking on the part of the user. Sometimes they can legitimately be used as a shortcut, if everyone understands the larger context. But either way, the use of a stereotype doesn't imply a flaw in the thing being stereotyped. It just implies that someone is being lazy and using a shortcut (a cliche) to explain something.

Or to put it another way:

As Molio said in the OP: Stereotyping is morally wrong. But then the OP continues on to imply that MBTI is morally wrong as well simply because it can be twisted into a stereotype. It's true that one can make stereotypes about MBTI. But one can also make stereotypes about everything else in the universe as well. Is everything in the universe morally wrong?

Or to paraphrase what you said:

If I make a stereotype about a particular racial group or women or men, I'm in the wrong to the degree that the stereotypes is vague or lazy. But then you add, "Stereotypes have been created out of racial groups and the sexes, though. A shit ton, which are very often misleading." So what's your point? Do we have to do away with all categorization and classification systems just so that no one will be tempted to stereotype people or things?

Anyway, OP seems dumb to me. Stereotyping is bad, or at least lazy. But what does that have to do with a categorization and classification system like MBTI?

 

[SpankyMcFly]

I love sterotypes as they allow us to form understanding of things. Stereotypes while should be subject to analysis form the outer layer of a thing or concept and are typically based on truth to some extent. For instance you cannot deny that the 100m sprint is dominated by those of African descent and swimming by those of European descent.

I agree completely. Are not men taller than women? Do women not have larger breasts than men?

 

[anticlimatic]

Wow, are we actually having a discussion about the functions vs morality of stereotypes instead of just SJW shouting it down as evil?
I can't believe how far we've come in just a few years. It's beautiful.

We all know stereotyping is morally wrong, yet none of us know mbti typing is morally wrong.

Why is that?

The short answer is that stereotyping is not actually morally wrong. Thoughts are not crimes against morality, that requires action.

 

[Kanra Jest]

Mbti is a system of understanding. We work to understand us creatures. We work to understand our surroundings. The things within our society. Genders. Orientations even. To say that the action of putting a label to describe that is somehow "Evil" is absolutely positively absurd. Seriously? Without that constructions we would never learn how to distinguish anything very well now would we? This is who we all are.

Mbti is categorization. This categorization however is based in observation. This observation is supported with pattern recognitions, reflections, groups that behave similarly. They exist and it's not a coincidence.

Stereotyping on the other hand is just lazy over generalizations. This is the individual human flaw of bunching together and painting the whole one color. The product of simple thinking.

 

[Mole]

It is normal in popular culture to deny morality, not to deny the morality of our opponents, but to deny morality in us.

We deny our morality by saying it is 19th century and not up to date. We deny our morality when we say it's all good. We deny our common morality when we stridently demand our individual rights, but somehow never mention our individual responsibilities.

 

[skimpit]

And here you are: hooked - line and sinker.

Stereotypes and mbti types are both immoral because they reify. They turn persons into things. And we turn persons into things when we want to control them or worse.

And it is also a matter of taste. Persons are not things, and it leaves a bad taste when a person is reified.

Good taste is recognising a person as a person, just like ourselves. And surprisingly, good taste and morality go hand in hand.

True. The last statement I mean. But is morality really useful in the end? We all die. And I bet you're thinking I think of morality as useless, which I don't. I find it quite compelling and necessary. But it is somewhat tiring to see, day after day, morality stubbornly refuted by the populace as it is seen irrational or not correct, when the further could be from the truth. The question is, are you moral if you are the only one in a society without it? Or, rather, are you immoral if you don't have morals? I ask this because most people don't seem to understand the concept of following morality to the end, whatever the cost.

Morality costs something to have, and ironically, people deny it because of that.

Morality however does force you to place persons into the things category. "All women and children" is an example of this. It is morality, but it is an objective and salty kind which must be taken as absolute if necessary. Titanic as a movie is a perfect example.

And if you think I find myself talking to a wall, no I don't. The question is, can you treat anyone lesser for not having morals? And this circles back to MBTI. If someone stereotypes, are they so wrong? Psychology itself stereotypes, as evidenced by its sweeping, grandiose statements found in gender studies and all. The trick is looking deeper into that. Stereotypes are crutches, like I said. Just because you can't comprehend morality on a grand, epic level does not mean you're stupid or awful. Once you realize most stereotypes only have certain uses, then you can be moral.

 

[Mole]

A stereotype is an oversimplified image or idea. A cliche.

For example:
--Women are nurturing and sweet, and men are brutal and angry.
--Cities are industrial wastelands.
--Women in detective novels are all femmes fatales

The opposite of a stereotype is categorizing or organizing by characteristics.

For example:
--Categorizing dogs or horses by breed and describing each breed in terms of appearance and temperament.
--Categorizing cities by size/population and describing them in terms of the kinds of employment opportunities they offer.
--Categorizing women by age and economic status in order to figure out what kinds of support services they will need from local government.

Soft sciences like psychology are soft; they aren't as driven by hard data as some of the other examples I mentioned. But they certainly aspire to belong to the categorizing/organizing group rather than the stereotyping group.

For example, people with mental illnesses or personality disorders can be categorized in terms of certain psychological traits, outlooks, and behaviors. Same with personality typing in a healthy population: Healthy people can be categorized in terms of the interplay of a few particular cognitive functions (MBTI) or personality dimensions (the Five Factor Model/Big Five), and so on.

The OP is just trying to create a false correspondence based on making the names sound alike (stereotyping vs. "MBTI typing"). But typology isn't a form of stereotyping.

The category is dead.

Don't believe me?

Go into any library and only a short time ago the card catalogue was the first and most important part of the library, but today there is no library, none at all, that have a card catalogue in pride of place right at the front of the library. In fact there is no card catalogue anywhere in the library. Yes, the catalogue is dead, dead, dead - dead and buried.

And cataloguing anything is now finished, except for the backward looking such as mbti.

So why at MBTI Central, disguised as Typology Central, do we drive forward looking in the rear vision mirror? What are we hiding?

 

[Mole]

Wow, are we actually having a discussion about the functions vs morality of stereotypes instead of just SJW shouting it down as evil?
I can't believe how far we've come in just a few years. It's beautiful.

The short answer is that stereotyping is not actually morally wrong. Thoughts are not crimes against morality, that requires action.

All action begins with thought, so all action begins in our psyche, so a moral psyche begets moral action.

And it is even deeper than that as we don't do anything without meaning, so all action begins with meaning.

And some meanings are moral and some are immoral, just as some actions are moral and some immoral.

 

[Tennessee Jed]

The category is dead.

Don't believe me?

Go into any library and only a short time ago the card catalogue was the first and most important part of the library, but today there is no library, none at all, that have a card catalogue in pride of place right at the front of the library. In fact there is no card catalogue anywhere in the library. Yes, the catalogue is dead, dead, dead - dead and buried.

And cataloguing anything is now finished, except for the backward looking such as mbti.

So why at MBTI Central, disguised as Typology Central, do we drive forward looking in the rear vision mirror? What are we hiding?

I grant that MBTI is a luxury. It's not medicine for the ill. It falls under a category called Positive Psychology. It's a way for healthy people to optimize their lives and feel even healthier yet. As such, it's a bit frivolous. Pop psychology for college kids. And it's hard to quantify or even prove its efficacy.

So I'm not going to put in a big effort defending MBTI. I was mainly just objecting to the false correspondence stated in the OP. But as for the rest of it: I enjoy your posts, Molio. So I'm not looking for an argument.

 

[Mole]

I grant that MBTI is a luxury. It's not medicine for the ill. It falls under a category called Positive Psychology. It's a way for healthy people to optimize their lives and feel even healthier yet. As such, it's a bit frivolous. Pop psychology for college kids. And it's hard to quantify or even prove its efficacy.

So I'm not going to put in a big effort defending MBTI. I was mainly just objecting to the false correspondence stated in the OP. But as for the rest of it: I enjoy your posts, Molio. So I'm not looking for an argument.

We have a hidden unconscious. Sometimes we hide it for good reasons and sometimes for bad. But it remains hidden, and we band together to keep it hidden. We have a visceral need to keep it hidden. Just as the disciples of Carl Jung hid his diary in a locked safe for more than 70 years.

Typology Central is our locked safe, and when we try to open Typology Central we find the first thing it is hiding is its own name, which is MBTI Central.

Our name is so fundamental to our identity, we can only presume hiding it, even from ourselves, is psychopathic.

So we start in bad faith with our name, so no wonder humiliation is our normal form of social control.

 

[Tennessee Jed]

So we start in bad faith with our name, so no wonder humiliation is our normal form of social control.

Reference to my use of Molio? Sorry, I like your posts but I'm unable to take you seriously. You're a caricature. Drop the attitude if you want to be taken seriously.

 

[Mole]

Reference to my use of Molio? Sorry, I like your posts but I'm unable to take you seriously. You're a caricature. Drop the attitude if you want to be taken seriously.

Don't tell me, I would never have guessed: 'I have a bad attitude'. Good God, I am a walking cliche, indeed a walking caricature.

But I am afraid your price for being taken seriously is too high.