Flip-floppin' types

[entropie]

It's a shame that this is a MBTI site, if it were socionics, I already had XxX as type

 

[mlittrell]

i was talking about twins in an idealistic sense. and yes your "theory" would make sense if you bend your mind enough around it. all that to say, i know three sets of twins. one of those sets are literally the exact same type (ISFP) so really, anything is possible.

im just stating what is generally accepted by science. this is why we dont really follow what pavlov said anymore.

so what do you believe we are born with? are we born with personality? if not, can we change our personality now (like can i say, hey i wanna be an ISTP)? if we are born with personality? i just need a little more info on what EXACTLY what you believe before i can agree or disagree.

 

[gloomy-optimist]

Well, I believe that people are born with an innate ability to learn and adapt to their environment; they are not born with their types already set in stone, but they are born with an ability to naturally assimilate to their surroundings. In other words, people aren't born as a type, but they are born to be a type. They are born to learn.
I believe this is more feasible because, naturally, it would make more sense for a child to be born with the ability to adjust to their environment. That would also account for any cultural difference between types and frequency.
Now, that is not to say I think it's easy to change types; what a child learns in the first few years of his/her life is most crucial to development. It would be very difficult to change that, especially because it is the basic foundation of everything the individual would learn of society. However, that is why I believe that under extreme situations where they chemical balance or mental stability of the brain is altered, the personality can change.

And with the twins; some are raised to be "identical." There really is no exact way to tell how each person became their types, even in the sense of twins. Some sets are raised to be individuals; others are raised in a perfectly balanced environment that would result in more similarities between the two. It would actually be really intriguing to see a study on twins and type; I'd like to see how their type difference compares with the dynamics of their childhood environment.

But yeah; either way, this is a theory, but it seems to have more substance than just saying that the type is just somehow "there"

 

[Ilah]

Balancing and mistyping occur all the time, which can be mistaken for a change in personality type, but no.

Can you give an example of balancing being mistaken for a change in personality type?

I am not sure what balancing means with regard to MBTI. Does it mean, for example, that Ts must learn to use their F to be more balanced and Fs must learn how to use their Ts to be more balanced?

Ilah

 

[Jack Flak]

Can you give an example of balancing being mistaken for a change in personality type?

I am not sure what balancing means with regard to MBTI. Does it mean, for example, that Ts must learn to use their F to be more balanced and Fs must learn how to use their Ts to be more balanced?

Ilah

Balancing is, in my words, adjusting to the world. As we get older we get better at doing everything we do, in theory, and some of what we do relates to type, such as interacting with people and following schedules.

Example? I've balanced quite a bit...I've become more capable at acting E, S, F, and J in the past ten years without too much effort, but when left to my own devices I'm totally INTP.

 

[gloomy-optimist]

Balancing is, in my words, adjusting to the world. As we get older we get better at doing everything we do, in theory, and some of what we do relates to type, such as interacting with people and following schedules.

Example? I've balanced quite a bit...I've become more capable at acting E, S, F, and J in the past ten years without too much effort, but when left to my own devices I'm totally INTP.

Yeah, I do that a lot between E and T, and sometimes it's almost even confused me...

 

[mlittrell]

Well, I believe that people are born with an innate ability to learn and adapt to their environment; they are not born with their types already set in stone, but they are born with an ability to naturally assimilate to their surroundings. In other words, people aren't born as a type, but they are born to be a type. They are born to learn.
I believe this is more feasible because, naturally, it would make more sense for a child to be born with the ability to adjust to their environment. That would also account for any cultural difference between types and frequency.
Now, that is not to say I think it's easy to change types; what a child learns in the first few years of his/her life is most crucial to development. It would be very difficult to change that, especially because it is the basic foundation of everything the individual would learn of society. However, that is why I believe that under extreme situations where they chemical balance or mental stability of the brain is altered, the personality can change.

And with the twins; some are raised to be "identical." There really is no exact way to tell how each person became their types, even in the sense of twins. Some sets are raised to be individuals; others are raised in a perfectly balanced environment that would result in more similarities between the two. It would actually be really intriguing to see a study on twins and type; I'd like to see how their type difference compares with the dynamics of their childhood environment.

But yeah; either way, this is a theory, but it seems to have more substance than just saying that the type is just somehow "there"

so are you saying that basically if i have a kid tomorrow, with the right upbringing and environment i can make him/her into sayyyyy an ISTJ or hey i want an ENTP, with the right environment and such?

 

[gloomy-optimist]

so are you saying that basically if i have a kid tomorrow, with the right upbringing and environment i can make him/her into sayyyyy an ISTJ or hey i want an ENTP, with the right environment and such?

Well, technically, yes. I mean, you might have to alter your own behavior and that of the people around you, and you might have to be selective on what you teach and what you don't teach and what your child is exposed to...
But yes, in my opinion, it's definitely a possibility, although I think that would take the fun out of things

 

[mlittrell]

lol ok im going to hold my tongue till later...

just need you to answer a few more questions so i can completely understand your side of things.

well ive been looking into this a little more and i noticed that you mentioned freud. i was just wondering if you believe most of what freud believes? basically, do you believe that personality is derived from environment and such because of freud or pavlov or just personal experience?

some more input would be good from others...

 

[Wrath Mania]

I
Also, the director of student life at my school studies the difference between birth order and MBTI typology, as well as average behavior; there is a correlation between certain traits and the order of birth. That would be a learned trait.

I've been interested in that pattern for a while, since I've noticed it. What school do you go to? Has he published any of his stuff? I'm very interested.

As for this discussion...

There is no doubt temperament is a biological thing. While I'm sure extreme examples and people with illnesses can be exceptions, the evidence that personality generally stays the same in a person throughout their life is overwhelming. And more and more evidence links personality type with biochemistry.

But there's obviously a difference between biological factors and genetics in particular. Do I believe personality is, to some extent, genetic? Yes, I absolutely do. Do I think there's genes that literally code for, say, being an ENTP or an INFJ? No, of course not. Genetics itself is never that simple, and the biggest problem with that field has always been its reduction of phenotypes to single genes, when a systematic approach shows that can't be possible.

Such is the case with personality type. Your statement that a person is "born to be a certain type" intrigues me a lot; I think it's a fair proposition and explains what is likely the case. Though I am not at all open to the idea that you can mold a child in any way you want: temperament and type inherently destroy any attempt at a pygmalion project. If true personality, not outward appearance but true type, was so easily influenced by the environment, then there would hardly be any family conflicts to begin with.

I am certain that the foundation is set in each person at birth, but as you basically said, the intrastrengths of that person's type and how it is manifested outwardly will vary greatly on the environment. Obviously someone with a mental illnesses will see their brain chemistry falter, as will their type (e.g. someone who's bipolar or a schizophrenic). However, an NF raised in a family of Ss will vary greatly from an NF raised under N parents, but that doesn't mean the pattern of their brain chemistry won't be similar.

The brain is a self-organizing system with hundreds of millions of variables, different in everyone. It's also a two way street, and what happens in nurture will affect the nature (and vice versa). But on a conceptual scale, if we don't take personality types so concretely, they stay the same throughout life.

That said, the mere fact something like birth order is a recurring pattern with personality proves the biological issues are far more complex than mere genetics. But in the end, nurture is really just another section of nature.

 

[gloomy-optimist]

lol ok im going to hold my tongue till later...

just need you to answer a few more questions so i can completely understand your side of things.

well ive been looking into this a little more and i noticed that you mentioned freud. i was just wondering if you believe most of what freud believes? basically, do you believe that personality is derived from environment and such because of freud or pavlov or just personal experience?

some more input would be good from others...

Well, I actually have not studied Freud or Pavlov as indepth as I would like to have, yet anyways, because I don't have the time I would like to do so. However, I know Freud is a bit infamous for his ability to see sexuality in just about everything people do.
However, what drove me to say that is that Freud also believes that events in early life can be major factors in determining the way a person sees and reacts to the opposite sex. The child learns about sexuality from the parents; he/she sees the way the parents interact, identifies themselves with the parent of the same sex, and learns the behavior that parent exhibits towards the opposite sex. He also theorizes that if the opposite sex parent reacts negatively to the experimentation of the child trying to be like the same sex parent, then the child can be inadvertently taught that they are not right for that role, and that could be the cause of things like homosexuality.
In other words, Freud shows favor towards developmental psychology
Now, I also want to state that I am not nearly as sure of the exact outlines and details of this theory; I have been told this by a few people that I believe to be valid sources, but I have not myself had the time (or memory) to check

 

[gloomy-optimist]

I've been interested in that pattern for a while, since I've noticed it. What school do you go to? Has he published any of his stuff? I'm very interested.

As for this discussion...

There is no doubt temperament is a biological thing. While I'm sure extreme examples and people with illnesses can be exceptions, the evidence that personality generally stays the same in a person throughout their life is overwhelming. And more and more evidence links personality type with biochemistry.

But there's obviously a difference between biological factors and genetics in particular. Do I believe personality is, to some extent, genetic? Yes, I absolutely do. Do I think there's genes that literally code for, say, being an ENTP or an INFJ? No, of course not. Genetics itself is never that simple, and the biggest problem with that field has always been its reduction of phenotypes to single genes, when a systematic approach shows that can't be possible.

Such is the case with personality type. Your statement that a person is "born to be a certain type" intrigues me a lot; I think it's a fair proposition and explains what is likely the case. Though I am not at all open to the idea that you can mold a child in any way you want: temperament and type inherently destroy any attempt at a pygmalion project. If true personality, not outward appearance but true type, was so easily influenced by the environment, then there would hardly be any family conflicts to begin with.

I am certain that the foundation is set in each person at birth, but as you basically said, the intrastrengths of that person's type and how it is manifested outwardly will vary greatly on the environment. Obviously someone with a mental illnesses will see their brain chemistry falter, as will their type (e.g. someone who's bipolar or a schizophrenic). However, an NF raised in a family of Ss will vary greatly from an NF raised under N parents, but that doesn't mean the pattern of their brain chemistry won't be similar.

The brain is a self-organizing system with hundreds of millions of variables, different in everyone. It's also a two way street, and what happens in nurture will affect the nature (and vice versa). But on a conceptual scale, if we don't take personality types so concretely, they stay the same throughout life.

That said, the mere fact something like birth order is a recurring pattern with personality proves the biological issues are far more complex than mere genetics. But in the end, nurture is really just another section of nature.

Well, her name is Vicky Barton, but I'm honestly not sure if she has published anything on the topic; I wouldn't be surprised if she has though. But the school is on the Ball State University Campus.

Yes, I agree that nature is too elaborate and too complicated to make any definite conclusions without very extensive research of many different fields. That's one of the reasons why people are just "born" with their types; I don't see anything behind that. I know that genetics control the physical characteristics of people, even the chemicals in the brain, which would account for dynamics in temperament. I understand that would help influence some parts of type preferences to a degree; chemical activity could account for questions of who is more emotional, who is more prone to anger issues, who has trouble processing information, etc. There is definitely a chance that that might help to sway a persons preference one way or the other; I would like to see some statistics on whether certain preferences like T/F have certain chemical levels that help to determine that.

However, I still believe that, ultimately, environment influences preference enough that it is the "deciding factor", if you will. For instance; chemicals, as far as I know about their nature, would not do a whole lot in deciding whether a person is more prone to organization or more spontaneous, more J or more P. Certainly chemicals, in excess, may help that preference, but I think the way you're raised does more for that. The same with introversion/extroversion, N/S. That would explain better the occurance of a certain preference in a family of opposing preferences a bit better than genetics, as that wouldn't make sense unless it was some sort of genetic mutation or extremely recessive trait. But if it were recessive, then that would knock out the dominant trait because you must have both recessive traits present to show the tendency; if P tendencies were dominant and J tendencies were recessive, then two J parents could not give birth to a P.
Of course, that is in the consideration of it as a single gene, when it would probably be a group of genes, but generally it follows to a degree.

But, in an environmental dynamic, let's say that two people who were extremely disorganized, or extremely uncaring (for the sake of the arguement, we'll say they're unhealthy xxxPs), gave birth to two children, a couple years apart. If the children are left to their own devices and the parents don't pay much attention to them, then one of the children may actually need more organizing skills to help himself and his sibling get by, so they may be more J. Or let's say the parents are unhealthy Exxxs that let the children do their own thing; the kids might rely so much on each other and lack from others, especially if they lack parental affection, that they exhibit Ixxx characteristics instead. In fact, you could probably make changes to this scenario for each trait.

Now, that scenario showed how type might be brought out in extreme circumstances, but it is much easier to illustrate that way. In a "normal" situation, the influences would probably be much more subtle, much less easy to pin-point, and you'd also have to consider other factors; are the parents the ones doing most of the teaching? If they both work and some one babysits, then there might be a difference in what the child is learning. If they go to a daycare with other children, that might make a difference. If they watch more TV, that might make a difference. But no matter what, in the early years that child is learning what it means to be a person in a society, and they take cues from that society on how they should think and act.
I mean, genetics and being "born" with type is hard to imagine for me because humans are among the only animals that thing abstractly. If it were only genetics, then how could we think either emotionally or logically? How could we be intuitive or sensing? Nature, as we can see in other examples, does not account for that; it accounts most for instinct and biological build. But how we act as human beings is comprised in amazing degrees on our extraordinary ability to learn and to take from our environments.

And that's going to be a really long post, but that should kind of explain some of my reasoning on a more extensive level >.>

 

[mlittrell]

I've been interested in that pattern for a while, since I've noticed it. What school do you go to? Has he published any of his stuff? I'm very interested.

As for this discussion...

There is no doubt temperament is a biological thing. While I'm sure extreme examples and people with illnesses can be exceptions, the evidence that personality generally stays the same in a person throughout their life is overwhelming. And more and more evidence links personality type with biochemistry.

But there's obviously a difference between biological factors and genetics in particular. Do I believe personality is, to some extent, genetic? Yes, I absolutely do. Do I think there's genes that literally code for, say, being an ENTP or an INFJ? No, of course not. Genetics itself is never that simple, and the biggest problem with that field has always been its reduction of phenotypes to single genes, when a systematic approach shows that can't be possible.

Such is the case with personality type. Your statement that a person is "born to be a certain type" intrigues me a lot; I think it's a fair proposition and explains what is likely the case. Though I am not at all open to the idea that you can mold a child in any way you want: temperament and type inherently destroy any attempt at a pygmalion project. If true personality, not outward appearance but true type, was so easily influenced by the environment, then there would hardly be any family conflicts to begin with.

I am certain that the foundation is set in each person at birth, but as you basically said, the intrastrengths of that person's type and how it is manifested outwardly will vary greatly on the environment. Obviously someone with a mental illnesses will see their brain chemistry falter, as will their type (e.g. someone who's bipolar or a schizophrenic). However, an NF raised in a family of Ss will vary greatly from an NF raised under N parents, but that doesn't mean the pattern of their brain chemistry won't be similar.

The brain is a self-organizing system with hundreds of millions of variables, different in everyone. It's also a two way street, and what happens in nurture will affect the nature (and vice versa). But on a conceptual scale, if we don't take personality types so concretely, they stay the same throughout life.

That said, the mere fact something like birth order is a recurring pattern with personality proves the biological issues are far more complex than mere genetics. But in the end, nurture is really just another section of nature.

he said everything ive been trying to say...but better lol.

there is nothing more i need to state and i respect your opinion and the good argument you put up (though im still not convinced whatsoever). i also am interested in some of the birth order stuff.

/thread

 

[gloomy-optimist]

he said everything ive been trying to say...but better lol.

there is nothing more i need to state and i respect your opinion and the good argument you put up (though im still not convinced whatsoever). i also am interested in some of the birth order stuff.

/thread

Yes; you provided a lot of interesting points I'm not convinced either, but I definitely think this conversation has intrigued me a bit more about the topic, and I'm glad we had it~

 

[Ilah]

A question for the it's mostly nurture side:

My mother put pressure on me to change my type and was extremely unsuccessful. She didn't word it in terms of type (as far as I know she is not familiar with MBTI) but the criticisms seem to correspond to my type: too "daydreamy" (strong Ni), not social enough, too much time by myself reading (introvert), wasn't good at reponding to other people's feelings (weak Fe).

So if nurture is the primary factor, why was she unsuccessful? Did other factors in my environment that guided me toward my type? Was my type unconsciously selected as an act of rebellion against the pressure to act a certain way?

 

[gloomy-optimist]

A question for the it's mostly nurture side:

My mother put pressure on me to change my type and was extremely unsuccessful. She didn't word it in terms of type (as far as I know she is not familiar with MBTI) but the criticisms seem to correspond to my type: too "daydreamy" (strong Ni), not social enough, too much time by myself reading (introvert), wasn't good at reponding to other people's feelings (weak Fe).

So if nurture is the primary factor, why was she unsuccessful? Did other factors in my environment that guided me toward my type? Was my type unconsciously selected as an act of rebellion against the pressure to act a certain way?

Well, first of all, if anyone pressures you to change types when you've already have one fully established, then it's just not going to work. In developmental psychology, although habits may change while you get older, the basis of your personality is developed in the early stages of life; in other words, you were who you are probably by the age of 5, maybe earlier. If you try to change that later...well, it's probably not going to work. You can strengthen functions, but unless there's some very drastic changes, you probably won't deviate preferences.

I don't believe type is based on "unconcious rebellion" because it is basically learned at a very young age, before any real pressure of the type you're describing is probably put on.

As for environment, here's a few questions; were you an only child, or did you play a lot on your own? Did your parents give you a lot of rational exercises (like certain toys), and are your parents, guardians, or caretakers (such as babysitters or whatnot, if your parents work a lot) prone more towards rational thinking, or did they encourage those behaviors when you were very young?
There's a lot of things to consider when you're talking about developmental psychology; it's not really a case of "this happened, so now I'm like this." There are many factors that contribute.

 

[gloomy-optimist]

Okay, so I did a little bit of research because I actually had time today (hallelujah!)
Here's a good site about the development of a child's brain:
EDUCARER.org WORLD OF INFANTS - ARTICLE - EARLY BRAIN DEVELOPMENT

When a child is born, the brain has all the parts it needs, but the connections between those parts aren't yet established. "The brain is the only body organ incomplete at birth. " The "nurture" part comes in to make and establish these connections and is most crucial in the first three years of life.

 

[mlittrell]

lol at above link

 

[mlittrell]

"An SP is apt to be an active baby, although the introverted SP will be less so than the extraverted SP. Attempting to change an SP in any fundamental way leads only to maladjustment. He is not an SJ, nor an NT, nor an NF. His desire to perform supersedes his desire for responsibility, competency, and self-realization..."

-David Keirsey

once again, thanks dave.

 

[gloomy-optimist]

"An SP is apt to be an active baby, although the introverted SP will be less so than the extraverted SP. Attempting to change an SP in any fundamental way leads only to maladjustment. He is not an SJ, nor an NT, nor an NF. His desire to perform supersedes his desire for responsibility, competency, and self-realization..."

-David Keirsey

once again, thanks dave.

How old is the baby of question?