Dario Nardi's Neuroscience of Personality

[Zarathustra]

^ Yeah, completely agreed with your point.

I mean, as Nardi says, if you take a middle-aged INTJ, his/her brain tends to looks like an ISFP's more than any other.

Same goes for ENFP and ESTJ, and on and on (I mean, we've talked about this shit plenty on here, so it's nothing new really).

Obviously, when he says this, it's the version of our shadow with the same orientation (I/E) that we look more like (i.e., same "dominant loop").

But for an INTJ, when we have to extrovert, I think that that SFP shadow version will basically just have a more extroverted orientation.

I've wondered for a long time, and not been able to settle on an answer, whether our shadow is of the same or opposite orientation.

I've come to think it can probably be either/or, depending on what the situation calls for (more extroverted, or more introverted?).

I had lunch with someone I hadn't seen since high school the other day, and she remembered me as being "bubbly".

I thought it was hilarious, cuz I know exactly why she remembers me that way (I'd even thought about it before).

It's just, if you said that to some other people, they'd be like, "Wtf are you talking about? Him?? Bubbly???"

The fact of the matter is, when I am comfortable with people, I can almost be bubbly like an ESFP.

But the occasions when I'm actually like that are pretty few and far between.

Whereas ESFPs are like that, well, most the damn day.

 

[uumlau]

Whereas ESFPs are like that, well, most all the damn day.

Exactly. It's overall how you spend your time, not any particular snapshot.

But it's saying something that the tert and inf are just as obvious as the dom and aux, when looking at the snapshots.

 

[Zarathustra]

But it's saying something that the tert and inf are just as obvious as the dom and aux, when looking at the snapshots.

For sure.

They're just way less conscious.

(and, ftr, when I made fun of Nardi's collar earlier, it's, in part, because a friend of mine posted a picture of us on facebook recently in which my collar [mine just isn't nearly as large] is similarly fucked up by my jacket. i'm pretty sure SFPs would have the sensory intelligence to realize this, and wear their clothes more sharply. we have the same [albeit less conscious] desire to pull off what they do; we just end up with crooked collars. )

 

[Jaguar]

Looks like Nardi borrowed John Travolta's shirt from Saturday Night Fever.

 

[ygolo]

I think this is a very good direction in research. Getting away from self-report, the reading of descriptions, and the lexical hypothesis, in general, seem like a good thing.

However, I am concerned about how small a sample size is being used in there studies. I think heard Nardi say 7 INFPs in that latest video.

Presumably, like Myers-Briggs, he is still doing a "classification" of some sort based on observations of which of the EEG signal. However, that means sixteen waveforms from which to pick "signals" from to act as a means of classification. People are very good at seeing the patterns they want to see.

If Nardi picked his EEG classification scheme with no prior knowledge of the data, and then found that the data and classification matched quite well, I would be quite impressed, indeed.

However, if he looked for patterns that were common to the people sharing particular types in the EEGs, and reported them, this is another thing entirely. Even if there was a thorough leave one out cross-validation, it seems like a classification scheme this complex provides ample opportunity to overfit the data, rather than extracting what is actually predictable from that data.
[MENTION=9310]uumlau[/MENTION] , [MENTION=8413]Zarathustra[/MENTION] , since both of you are enthusiastic about these developments, and well trained in analyzing data, can you speak to what Nardi actually did in his studies?

I am guessing it is somewhere between the two extremes I outlined above.

 

[Zarathustra]

Uumlau will have to answer you on that one. I haven't even read the book.

From what I can tell, he's not really that far along in the scientific process.

He's only really making observations and hypotheses at this point.

Not proving shit beyond the shadow of a doubt.

 

[ygolo]

Actually, I just watched the Google Talk, and he said what he was reporting was a "pilot study" run over 5 years, and in the next steps he is looking at trying to collect a lot more data on people by creating a wireless version that a lot of people can wear.

When, I listened to his actual conclusions and how he reached them, I am rather satisfied with how he is exploring things. I've generally liked Dario Nardi's research efforts. Like Martin Seligman on Positive Psychology years back, I think he is taking steps to make sure he isn't fooling himself...even if they aren't "definitive" experiments, yet.

Certainly, proving to typology skeptics that the conclusions are real are a long way off. But some of the things I noted were that his patterns are not nearly as complicated as I imagined them to be, and his conclusions not as cut-and-dry as I imagined after I read the first post in this thread. Simplicity and probabilistic forms of statements are both pluses, when compared to complexity and definiteness, from my point of view, when dealing with small sample sizes.

 

[highlander]

Yeah, I've noticed this about his clothes (in the Google video too).

He's clearly tapping into that inferior Se. And it's clearly inferior.

Gotta love that collar stickin out one side...

When I was in my 20s and working in Northern California, I wore hawaiian shirts most days at work. I also had a "lucky" fleece jacket thing that I wore all the time too. There was one guy who tended to not wear shoes and a woman that wore sort of outlandish stuff, so I didn't think it was horribly out of the norm to be a bit different. With my present job, I have to dress relatively conservatively, so that rubs off into what I wear on a daily basis otherwise.

 

[Mole]

What next? The neuro science of homeopathy? Or perhaps the neuro science of star signs?

Mary Baker Eddy tried this American weeze in 1879 with Christian Science and Jesus Christ, Scientist. Of course today it would be Jesus Christ, Neuro Scientist.

And so we have the Typologist as Neuro Scientist.

 

[Zarathustra]

What next? The neuro science of homeopathy? Or perhaps the neuro science of star signs?

Mary Baker Eddy tried this American weeze in 1879 with Christian Science and Jesus Christ, Scientist. Of course today it would be Jesus Christ, Neuro Scientist.

And so we have the Typologist as Neuro Scientist.

So what do you think about Ne dominants displaying the christmas tree pattern on the EEG?

 

[uumlau]

Actually, I just watched the Google Talk, and he said what he was reporting was a "pilot study" run over 5 years, and in the next steps he is looking at trying to collect a lot more data on people by creating a wireless version that a lot of people can wear.

When, I listened to his actual conclusions and how he reached them, I am rather satisfied with how he is exploring things. I've generally liked Dario Nardi's research efforts. Like Martin Seligman on Positive Psychology years back, I think he is taking steps to make sure he isn't fooling himself...even if they aren't "definitive" experiments, yet.

Certainly, proving to typology skeptics that the conclusions are real are a long way off. But some of the things I noted were that his patterns are not nearly as complicated as I imagined them to be, and his conclusions not as cut-and-dry as I imagined after I read the first post in this thread. Simplicity and probabilistic forms of statements are both pluses, when compared to complexity and definiteness, from my point of view, when dealing with small sample sizes.

This is my takeaway, too. The main promising aspect is while there is a lot of individuality between instances of the type, his observations note new aspects that are common between types that hadn't been hypothesized or previously observed, such as all the Fi doms being "good listeners," as he describes in Z's video above. In fact, I think his Neuroscience of Personality book has some of the best descriptions of Ni and Fi I've ever read, and those are the functions that are perhaps most difficult to describe. The EEG really does let us "take a look under the hood" as it were, and see what's going on in a concrete way, such that now we have some concrete descriptions of what Ni and Fi actually do.

EDIT: It is also interesting to note that his EEG observations tend to confirm that each type has a "toe-hold" (as he puts it) into one's opposite type. An ISFP will occasionally show patterns emulating those of an ENTJ or INTJ, but will never have the "Christmas tree pattern" of an Ne type. He says that this appears to be the case across all of the types. Note that this would appear to be a demonstration that the tertiary function is not in the opposite attitude as the secondary, as some Jung theorists have asserted. I.e., a competing theory was that ISFP = Fi-Se-Ne-Te, not Fi-Se-Ni-Te. Nardi is observing Ni, not Ne, in the EEGs.

 

[Cellmold]

Is his book worth a look-in? I was thinking of getting it.

The google talk certainly was interesting.

 

[uumlau]

Is his book worth a look-in? I was thinking of getting it.

The google talk certainly was interesting.

I think it's worth getting. I compared it with his prior book, 8 Keys to Self-Leadership, and as I mention in my prior post, the Ni and Fi descriptions in his latest book are much more refined than those in his prior work. There is definitely information being gleaned from the EEGs that is affecting our understanding of the functions.

 

[RaptorWizard]

How were cognitive functions invented? I'm not saying that people 'made them up', but rather I'm wondering how human development created them in our brains. Is it perhaps some natural product of evolution, or maybe even a higher spiritual process we don't yet even understand? Clearly, there are many more mysteries we have yet to uncover! The scary thing is though, what if EEGs or some other illuminating device showed us that we are really not the types we proclaim ourselves to be (I could after all easily be an ISTP), or if enneagrams (newly discovered ones included) were to be observed along instinctual stackings? Crazier yet, it also seems possible that if some valid reincarnation research were done that different individuals might change type upon different reincarnations, all in the realization of some ultimate type(s) slowly emerging that may not even be in existence yet! That sounds ludicrous to many I would guess, but you never know until you look. Another possibility is that each and every personality type in existence (or yet to be) are all roles of vital importance that come together to form a unified system.

 

[Mole]

So what do you think about Ne dominants displaying the christmas tree pattern on the EEG?

The same as I would think about the EEG patterns of star signs.

 

[Zarathustra]

The same as I would think about the EEG patterns of star signs.

In other words: you refuse to even look at the evidence.

Not very scientific of you.

 

[Thalassa]

In other words: you refuse to even look at the evidence.

Not very scientific of you.

Omg it's Victor. He really comes across with a pointed depth when he's expressing something about our most intimate or intricate humanity, but refrain from trying to reason with him about why people might have a belief system he's completely rejected.

When Victor does this, his Te is showing but through the filter of his dominant Fi ethics, which apparently have told him that boxing people into MBTI types or astrological houses limits their potential as individual human beings, and he's not hearing that there's any evidence to the contrary, using this inferior Te as if it were actual fact-collecting Te.

I know. I do it too. Just, in my case, about any political system that might threaten the wellness and stability of human and animal communities. I can't seem to find any facts that logically support any political system that justifies doing this, and it's because my inferior Te has to be filtered through my Fi.

People might say well this or that, but I'll start arguing ethics about it, and say they're missing the big picture if they aren't factoring in long-term views of human community ethics as well.

So don't waste your breath on Victor. If he ever accepts Dario Nardi, it will have to be on his own time, in a non-threatening way, and he's probably going to have to find a way to ethically justify it before he could ever embrace it.

 

[Mole]

In other words: you refuse to even look at the evidence.

Not very scientific of you.

And I refuse to look at the evidence for perpetual motion machines.

 

[Thalassa]

The thing I find most enlightening about Nardi (other than my original self-evaluation, which surprisingly matched up PERFECTLY with Fi dom when I peeked under the spoiler after)...is that F8, or remembering a lot of details, is linked to Fi/Te types instead of Si.

 

[OrangeAppled]

Is his book worth a look-in? I was thinking of getting it.

The google talk certainly was interesting.

The most interesting part of the book to me was the descriptions of the brain regions & then the type brain maps which showed how much an individual of a type used the regions (heavily, moderately, etc).

I think it also discusses a tiny bit how different types may use the same regions quite differently, or in different situations which are rather consistent with how you'd expect a type to be (ie. ESTJ shows some indepth Fi listening, but only with a perceived authority ). If you think about how near opposites (ie. ENFP & ESTJ) show similar thinking especially near middle age, this suggests how their visible personality may still be very different. The thinking is not necessarily applied the same way in the same contexts. Personally, I know lots of old people & most are still easily identifiable as types (some seem more like caricatures than young people). It's not like ENFPs & ESTJs would become indistinguishable as personality types.

Most of the thinking patterns he describes are discussed in the video, I believe.

The book is nothing in-depth, just an overview of something more like a workshop than a proper study. It's kind of like he was experimenting with an experiment, to find a good way to go about it, see if it's even worth anything, etc.