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Beren's Interaction Styles

Athenian200

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How many of you have heard of Beren's Interaction Styles, and what do you think of them? Here's more information on them:

Understanding Berens' Interaction Styles

Interaction Styles - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Understanding Yourself and Others®: An Introduction to Interaction Styles 2.0 | Interstrength Associates

People constantly cite temperament as the most easily observable component of a person's behavior, but I haven't had the same experience. In my experience, interaction styles are much more observable in real people. And this is coming from a person who normally can't type people at all from seeing them in the real world, so I think it must be pretty obvious if I can see it so readily in people.

So, what do you think? Can you see these patterns in people? Do they make sense, and are they useful?
 

FDG

pathwise dependent
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Yes, I think they're useful.
 

Little Linguist

Striving for balance
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I agree; however, I think two interaction styles work for me. If you think of a grid with an x and a y axis and in-charge is x positive, chart the course is x negative, get things going is y positive and behind the scenes is y negative, then I would be something of a (4,5) plotted.
 

Eric B

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This is all along what I have been emphasizing, and both four group systems correspond to the ancient temperaments. The Interaction Styles are surface social skills, and the Keirsey groupings are more action or leadership skills. So every type is a combination of two temperaments (four of them being "pure" types with the same temperament in both areas blended together).

Most of those who have taken four and five temperament "humour" tests (and one person, the actual APS!) actually came out on or close to what this view predicted.

If a person thinks they have two Interaction Styles or two temperaments, it may be that they are seeing the mixture of both groups. Like I know of an ISFP who thinks she's more NF than SP, but being Behind the Scenes (ISF) will give a surface NF appearance (they won't quite live up to the typical SP "active" stereotypes).

To translate, "x" would be Directing, "y" would be Informing, "negative" would be Introvert, and "positive" would be extravert.

To expand it to the temperaments, NT is x positive, SJ is x negative, SP is y positive and NF is y negative. x=structure focused, y=motive focus, negative=cooperative, positive=pragmatic

So (4,5) as both positive then would be Get Things Going (Sanguine), but then x is slightly lower, meaning not as "extraverted" as you are "informative". I would say that is the influence of the NF-Supine, which would be just as much in the "y" as GtG, but would be lower on the positive-negative axis. So if you put them together, you would have high y, slightly lower x.

Also, of interest, Keirsey has apparently adopted the Interaction Styles by dividing his eight intelligence types to yield what he calls "four differing roles that people play in face-to-face interaction with one another" in his new book Brains and Careers (2008). (Keirsey Temperament Website)

Initiators: (Extraverted and Directive)
Coworkers: (Extraverted and Informative)
Contenders: (Introverted and Directive)
Responders: (Introverted and Informative)

The idea supposedly was introduced in PUMII, but never caught on like temperament did.
 

The_Liquid_Laser

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I find interaction styles to be very useful, especially in task oriented situations. Also when I'm trying to type someone my first impression is often their interaction style. After getting to know them a bit I can usually figure out their Keirsey temperment, and when I put the two together I have a pretty good idea what their type is.
 

NewEra

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Yeah, when I viewed the first link itself, I felt I was Chart-the-Course, so it's accurate for me, at least.
 

dimane

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what causes interaction styles cause their grouping seem arbitrary
does lenore thomson ever talk about them cause I know she touched on temperament
 

Eric B

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Temperament was originally based on a matrix of expressiveness and responsiveness (under different labels). Expressiveness is represented by I/E, and it turns out that responsiveness is connected to some of the behavioral properties of T/F and J/P. So the Interaction Styles become connected with those, but in an intertwined way.

I discuss the correlation in more detail here: http://www.erictb.info/erica.html

Lenore Thomson does not believe in "the temperaments" as we describe them; in terms of type groups. (If she mentions temperament, it will be either to criticize Keirsey on an aspect of it, in the book, or elsewhere, it would be the more current mainstream psychological concepts, with the factors of mood, distractibility, energy level, etc; not grouped into four or however many "temperaments").
 
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