I always wondered why he didn't simply use his own factors, and the order of importance he outlined (S/N as most important, followed by Cooperative/Utilitarian, role-Directive/infoRmative, and then E/I .
His "four Temperaments" would be SU, SC, NU, NC; and the 16 "role variants" would be SCDI, SCRI, SCDE, SCRE, SUDI, SURI, SUDE, SURE, NCDI, NCRI, NCDE, NCRE, NUDI, NURI, NUDE, NURE.
He could have then mentioned in passing how they correspond to the MBTI types, and there would be little confusion. But it seems he wanted the MBTI codes because of the popularity.
Exactly what I think.
Yeah, but what about peoples' types on the left panel beside their posts? I always thought the lowercase letters were meant to be borderline 50%, but then they'll say something about how "ISTp" really means "ISTJ" or some shit, and now I'm confused as to when it's being used that way and when it isn't. I'm sure Socionics doesn't have an "EnTP," for instance.
I haven't noticed. In the MBTI often people do mean bordeline with lowercase, and I have no idea why anyone was putting their socionics type in the MBTI box. If they could explain it to you, then they surely knew the difference.
That's ridiculous. We're indivisible people, not a combination of separable qualities. Reality's way more complicated than just the parts that seem to make it up.
No, not really. I think all things are combinations of seperable qualities. There are many parts though, so it is extremely complicated. There are such a sea off traits that it is up to us to arbitrate which ones we want to measure and which traits we put under the same category. But before you leap and try to claim that's a flaw, I'll remind that you use that method to navigate reality.
Accuracy and validity, on whose terms, exactly? I think it's extremely flexible, give me your reasoning why you think it's not. Once you start trying to measure scales and how close you are to borderline, etc, you make things way too vague and confusing for its worth, imo. If you want to do that you should just start measuring chemicals in the brain.
We aren't measuring chemicals in the brain because we don't know how exactly they all work yet. People over emphasize the neuro-transmitters too. The actually wiring, bloodflow, etc... has a lot to do with your thoughts.
Accuracy and validity on basic, logical terms. As in, does your measure determine what you claim your system determines. One of my big complaints about Keirsey is his system is terrible for having even the slightest clue what people are thinking, kind of like B.F. Skinner (though the similarities end there).
Hm, well maybe since he's observed people he knows what he's talking about. I hate to say this since I'm not the intuitive one here, but you just might be losing sight of the forest for the trees on this one. From my viewpoint you're basically saying, "Well
that forest has three less conifers than the other one! Your classification is too
generalized!" Gimme a break already!
Actually, people who study forests really do that. The measure it's kind of trees, their spacing, it's kind of soil, etc... And acknowledge that when it gets down to it, they exist in a gradients between types, not as prestine types. They are rough estimations of their
quanitifiable aspects.
hahaha, that makes no sense? An ISTJ by any system would never come up with a theory like that. ISTJs are way too focused on their immediate duty.
Yes, I know, and they were either suits or army gear.
This is exactly what I'm complaining about. I guess for this to make a bit more sense to you, realize that I'm not typing Keirsey based on Keirsey's system, so don't be surprised if what I describe as ISTJ does not sound like what the temperament system would.
Try, he's more like a scientist and not an idealist who tries to tap into a person's psyche. Did you realize that Jung and Myers were both idealists?
It is frequently said. What's your point? Do you think psychology itself is an ideal?
He uses observation because that's the only thing that's ultimately reliable. And this is coming from someone who was big on the cognitive functions a few years ago. I even tried to talk about them on the Keirsey board several months ago until I realized what his theory was all about. I used to always wonder where you drew the line on distinguishing between them because it didn't make sense, and that's when I realized that the whole thing is subjective anyway, and trying to be technical about it is just a fool's paradise. At least observation gives you a modicum of objectivity about it (even though objectivity as a whole is ultimately a fantasy).
Thinking like that would seem to make any system invalid. Why even engage this discussion if that's your view? You say subjectivity is invalid (when it's actually not necessarilly), but you say objectivity is a fantasy. And then you say that getting technical is a waste of time, even though I don't there is such a thing as a system you can't get technical about.
For instance, where do you draw the line between thinking and feeling? When does something stop being a feeling and start being a thought, and how do you account for biased logic? Keirsey solves this by saying that everyone has thoughts and feelings, it's just that some are more tough-minded and others soft-hearted, which brings those wordings back to their original source of conception in the first place. Jung is the one who tried to elevate them to "archetypes" which is what created the whole mess of problems you see with systems such as MBTI.
Do you want me to actually try giving you the whole seminar on Thinking and Feeling? And I'm not sure what you mean by biased logic in this context.
Keirsey doesn't solve shit.
Who in the cognitive faction denies that everyone has Feelings and Thoughts? What would even give you the idea to mention that? I am baffled because my view of the situation is nearly reversed. Both systems accept that every person has all qualities. The cognitive approach at least accounts more for the interplay of all processes, while the temperamental system discard certain aspects of certain types so much that I feel like they are all caricatures.
And I know Jung came up with archetypes (though I think you're slightly confusing two aspects of his life's work). Jung however provided the initial parts for which could be divided into a logical system. Keirsey just chucked those parts away altogether.
I do see a tad bit of relevancy in the functions, but only if they aren't taken so seriously.
With the point of view you espouse, none of it should be taken seriously. You basically dismissed any and all ways to draw a conclusion about reality.
And btw, Jung based his functions off of observation as well, so I think you're standing on a shaky platform.
I think you and everyone else that responded to this completely failed to understand what I meant, and I'll get to that later in this post.
As for the ancient conception of temperaments, I did wonder about that at first but realized that he was referencing their long-standing foundation because of the fact that all those grey beards who talked about them were basing their thought off of observation as well. Basically he's saying, even though these are my observations, I'm not alone on them by any means.
That's only very slightly emperically sound, but not very. You'd need a lot more to have a strong case. Otherwise you just have appeal to tradition. There should be a reason that system is repeated over and over again, not just that one guy is following the other. Why was it ever right in the first place?
That being said, I don't even agree with Keirsey's view of the temperaments and I think he was shoehorning it all to make sense.
And that's the deal with the four letter combinations, they confuse the person dealing with them into thinking that two people can be just as alike as another two because of the fact that two letters are the same, regardless of which letters they are, even though they don't share the same "functions" even.
I agree, I don't like the four letters. I think people should label themselves as the dominant process pair. I'm Ti-Ne. It solves all of that confusion. It was one of Meyers's sillier ideas.
This is another thing I have to praise the Keirsey system for, that it creates the first and most important divide between abstract and concrete language users. This does seem to be the hardest barrier to cross between different types of people. Abstract types seem to group with each other just as concrete types do. Before you even get to trying to communicate between tough-minded and soft-hearted types, you have to deal with that fundamental difference.
There's a whole other thread there, so I'll leave it.
I don't see what's so offensive about forming theories on personal observations, especially if those observations were gathered over a course of 3 or so decades of working as a psychologist/counselor. To me, that which is observable, and that which can predict future behavior is the single most important aspect of typology.
Okay, let's make this clear. You guys are essentially asking for science. You're telling me, that what I'm coming up with, is too much of a logical abstract. Okay then, you want something more conrete, like science. Well, if that's what you want, no respectable scientific community would consider Keirsey;s books worth shit.
One man's personal observations carry little value. He, as one source, is too unreliable. He, as one man not even making this into a research program, probably has too small a sample. He, as one man, almost
surely has an unrepresentative sample. I shouldn't need to explain this. It's a standard rule that you don't rely on one guy's personal experience. So in my opinion, you are all floating in a useless limbo. You refuse the abstract theories, but you rely on something far too impotent in its empericism to be useful. For me, I don't see a problem with the abstract. These sorts of categorizations are like that, inately. If you really want a fools errand, than trying dray
objective lines between items in a set.
The arbitration is unavoidable, and frankly harmless.
Yep. That's why it's silly to rail against one person's system the way Poriferan does as if it's this other strange alien thing that needs to be fought.
If that were inherently silly, then I'd have be accepting some completely inaccurate and very detrimental systems.
And just because you don't WANT it to be compatible doesn't mean it isn't. It is obviously far more than just "in some built off" and for you to state that makes me think that you are among those people that hasn't actually read Keirsey's books or if you have, you paid little attention to them.
I own his work. I have read it multiple times. Don't question my education or make guesses about my intent. Stick to the subject.
I will state again, that there's no way a system that does not have the cognitive processes, is compatible with the conventional MBTI. How could it be? You have a negative and a positive a here. You have a system which is partly relying on the assertion that something does exist, and a system partly relying on the assertion that it doesn't. They are as compatible as theism and atheism.
And here you've just contradicted yourself. Because the MBTI does not ask questions about cognitive processes, it asks forced-choice questions to determine four either-or dichotomies.
First of all, those would still be question about congitive processes. Second of all, there are considerably more options than that in testing people for their type.
Once again, we have a system that is based on previous theories, and yet different from the original Jung writings. So in order for your position to be consistent, you would have to reject Myers' use of Jungian function terminology when she clearly came up with her own system. But you don't. You operate under the "This one is okay and the other one isn't because I say so" method.
No. I never said that
because one system is an alteration of another, the two are incompatible. I said that a system and its alternations
can be incompatible, and in the case of the congitive processes and the temperaments, they are.
The best method is to take all the valid theories into account and use them in whatever way is practical. Trying to make the case there is some sort of one "pure" system that no one should try to make understandable by providing other observations is just silly and borderline elitist.
And becomes even more silly when expressed by people with relatively little actual life experience compared to someone like Keirsey who has been observing and studying people for six or seven decades.
I've already explained why this is a sort of false reverence for empericism.
I am not phased in the least.
Any type system CAN be used to pigeon-hole people if someone chooses to use it that way, but if the author of such a system does not present it that way, you can't really blame the author for how it is misused.
Might seem like an odd exmaple but... I think I could blame the inventors of the atomic bomb more than the inventors of the airplane. Yes, they can both be used as weapons, and one was used in the process of using the other as a weapon. But it's really obvious that the inventors of the first were egging on destruction more. Yes, all systems can be used to pidgeonhole. Some more than others, though. I find that Keirsey's system really tempts that impules, especially with the four broader temperaments.
OMG NO NOT PERSONAL EXPERIENCE! Dude, what the hell else is there? Do you have some sort of divining rod where you take in the spirits of humanity? Otherwise, any study of humans you go by is based either on your own experience or somebody else's.
I explained this. And Keirsey uses insufficiently little oustide of himself, in a rather unprofessional way.
OF COURSE he's interested in observable behavior, you say that like it somehow discredits him or something. Theorizing is just raw speculation if you don't back it up with observation. And Keirsey does a heck of a lot of backing up his speculation. Some things more than others, obviously. In "Brains & Careers", he does a lot of guesswork about ancient tribal humans and their roles in primitive society, but at least he admits he is guessing, and differentiates those parts from the writings that are backed up by actual observations by other people and himself.
Of course, of course. It's obvious enough that you should have paused to question if you had understood me correctly. Even test results are observable behavior. They are very different, however, from watching how someone dresses or maintains their desk or what have you. They get more to the real point. They get to how the person is thinking, in the only way can prior to the development of direct brain reading. And this is through questions about it.
One big thing that I can say about the Keirsey system is that it's helped me tons more than MBTI ever has. It seems to be way more directly applicable and useful, and whereas I was easily mistyped by MBTI, Keirsey has helped me to get on track fast.
To be honest, I think it serves a placebo function. It changes your life by engendering you with confidence, which makes a difference, even if you have confidence in something that actually does not warrant the confidence.
So a system with tons of healthy, practical usage potential or an extremely technical purist system... hm, decisions, decisions
You sound like Republican congressman talking about healthcare.
And calling me purist is retarded because it's very obvious that I'm changing little things here and there throughout the MBTI.
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And I'll finish with another way of phrasing my views.
Let's take Keirsey, and a cognitive theorist, like Lenore Thomson, because she's my favorite.
Let's say instead of making a personality system, they were classifying colors.
I think Thomson would go about it the way we've come to commonly do it in computer graphics. We have 6 bars (which functional more like 5). We have luminance, saturation, and hue. We also have the three independent Red, Blue, and Green bars, which through their various combinations result in a different place on the hue bar (hence being like 5). Thus, we have a way of achieving millions of colors without any confusion or mystery, via combinations of smaller parts.
I would Keirsey's approach as one in which he says there are 12 colors. Red, Orange, Yellow, Chartreuse, Green, Teal, Cyan, Azure, Blue, Purple, Rose. And somehow, every possible shade and hue, will be one of those 12 colors, and nothing more. You just eyeball it to figure out which of the twelve you throw it in.
There are challanges to be had in making the cognitive system truly like the color bar system. We must stop using the four letter label, we should get in the habit of listing exact values rather than just saying I or E. And most important and difficult of all, we need consistent incrimentation like those colors have. As hard as this may be, it certainly can be done, and would become something very functional. I'd rather take a rough path than a dead-end, and Keirey's system is a dead-end.
Something which might change at any moment in time?
