Intuition and Sensing, Left and Right Brain (dichotomies I hate)
So I am (slowly) working on a MBTI-related thing for my Disney post series and so am reminded once again how much I dislike the sensing vs. intuition dichotomy, so here's a rant about it. (This post is public because I'll probably be linking it when I actually post my Disney MBTI thing.)
( Intuition and Sensing, Left and Right Brain (dichotomies I hate) )
( Intuition and Sensing, Left and Right Brain (dichotomies I hate) )
Re Sherlock Holmes: I've never tried to figure out his MBTI, but I would gauge that his method of collecting data is very S but the Science of Deduction he's known for is actually very N, if that makes sense? It's the chain of logic that's so fast as to appear as if he knows it based on feeling alone:
From long habit the train of thoughts ran so swiftly through my mind that I arrived at the conclusion without being conscious of intermediate steps. (Study in Scarlet)
I'd compare this to that earlier definition you gave, actually:
Strongly intuitive people add meaning to their perceptions so rapidly that they often cannot separate their interpretations from the raw sensory data. Intuitives integrate new information quickly, automatically relating past experience and relevant information to immediate experience. Because it often includes unconscious material, intuitive thinking appears to proceed by leaps and bounds.
And that's why everyone tends to stare at him, astounded, going HOW DID YOU DO THAT?! It's definitely possible for a S to seem like they're more N, or vice-versa; I could say that he's learned to explain the X Y Z of things to people over the years.
So yeah, to me that's a very intuitive way of processing data; but again, well, that's my N-inclined way of looking at it. (Apparently I am a 'moderately strong Intuitive' so, uh, whatever that means to you, I guess?)
And I'm very sorry about the tl;dr, I think you got me started as well. I nearly wrote more, but... you know, it got long so ^^;
ETA: I'm really really sorry. I just realised something and had to add more: it's also true that Sherlock Holmes is very detail-oriented, but that's explicitly pertaining to his area of interest - investigation. Outside of that, though, he doesn't even know that the earth goes around the sun. So it may be a result of his interest in the topic.
Reply
The way I see it (and I should admit I consider myself more S, but am never really sure where I stand because of the issues I have with the S vs. N definition), if S vs. N is about taking in information, then how does that lead to the conclusion that S is empirical while N is theoretical? What's the relation there? (I find this conversation kind of funny because you're holding the whole picture in your mind already and I'm here trying to figure out how the individual dots connect.)
By "adding meaning immediately" and "seeing patterns" I'm guessing that they mean a tendency to extrapolate and predict, instead of focusing on raw data and putting things together.
The thing about this, though, is that I think S people extrapolate/predict frequently as well. I mean, what use is data if you don't do anything with it, right? Or are you saying that S people tend to interpolate and describe rather than extrapolate and predict? (Also, does this tie into empirical/theoretical too or no?)
And a lot of this is predicated on past experiences: as you said, intuition as a better estimate of how good you are at something. I don't think that counters the definition at all; in fact, I think that's pretty much what it's driving at: because you have the experience that makes you good at something (or the inner talent, or whatever you choose to believe drives it), you come to the conclusion, well, intuitively. Hence the word "appears": seems to, but does not.
But then by this, does this mean that intuitive people are naturally good at things (i.e. right off they bat they are able to use intuition whereas sensing people only develop the same skill after much practice), or that they just use intuition more frequently regardless of their skill level?
I think right brain/left brain is very much a fusion of the T/F and S/N dichotomies. From the list above, about a third of the qualities listed use the exact same language as what is used to describe S/N differences (detail oriented/"big picture" oriented (probably not a T/F dichotomy), facts rule/imagination rules (T/F?), words and language/symbols and images (not T/F), present and past/present and future (not T/F), reality based/fantasy based (not T/F?), forms strategies/presents possibilities (not T/F)). Although whether all those are actually S/N differences is
I'm classifying left-brain/right-brain as more T/F dichotomy simply because of the traits associated with it (though, uh, I don't get the past/future thing either, what?)
Hm... I thought T/F was more about whether or not you take into account people and subjective factors when making decisions, which to me doesn't seem AS close to left brain/right brain things (although I think about the same number of the list items fit: uses logic/uses feeling (not S/N), facts rule/imagination rules (S/N?), math & science/philosophy & religion (maybe, assuming the latter two are more humanistic), knowing/believes (not S/N), acknowledges/appreciates (not S/N)).
So the whole sexism issue, I think, is founded more on the T/F dichotomy than the S/N one: women can't think, they feel; they cannot prove what they say empirically, therefore they're irrational. That's very problematic, and that's the sentiment, I think, that goes into the whole 'Women can't do math and science' mentality.
I think, though, the S/N has the similar issues. If I'm right about T/F, I think T/F is connected to the way society traditionally devalues the decisions women make (they take feelings into account when making decisions! they can't be trusted!) whereas S/N is related more to like... explaining away how women arrive at a correct answer when they don't make a satisfactory explanation of their thought process (like, I'm assuming that's where the idea of women's intuition comes from? *woman makes observation* "how did you know that?" "I don't know, I just had a hunch that it was that way." -> okay so it was just her intuition). Of those two, I think the "women rely on feelings" one is worse, just generally speaking. But I'm not sure which of the two is more involved in the "women can't do math and science" mentality.
Reply
Hm... yeah, I see the similarity in Sherlock's thought process and the N description. But like... it says "from long habit" i.e. earlier when he does deduction it would look like A -> B -> C -> D -> conclusion, and now because he's practiced at it, it looks like A -> [blur] -> conclusion. This gets me back to the question of "So... if you're a fast thinker you're an N? And if you're slow you're an S?" That doesn't make any sense to me. Or is it that N's tend to go from A -> [blur] -> conclusion in most situations, regardless of accuracy, meaning that Sherlock is most likely not an N?
I've never tried to figure out his MBTI, but I would gauge that his method of collecting data is very S but the Science of Deduction he's known for is actually very N, if that makes sense? It's the chain of logic that's so fast as to appear as if he knows it based on feeling alone:
And here too, I would disagree that the science of deduction is an N thing. To me it seems highly S, although I'm still operating on my original psychological definition of S and N. Similar to what I said at the beginning of this comment, I don't see the connection between deduction/critical thinking and N, since I think it's more like an "everybody does it" thing. Like, for me, what makes Sherlock an S is not his deduction ability (this is S/N-neutral) but his attention to minute details of the physical world. But is that really an S thing...?
(Lol, this is kind of why I'm like FACEPALM at the whole S/N thing because two people can take the same definitions and arrive at opposite conclusions.)
Whew, long reply!
Reply
Attention to minute details of the physical world... I have no idea on that one. He picks up on a lot of things, but that could be both N and S; he could just be genuinely easily overloaded and unable to switch it off (in which case it's purely a physical thing that happens to serve him well in his work; that would be like asking if eidetic memory is S/N.)
Reply
(I find this conversation kind of funny because you're holding the whole picture in your mind already and I'm here trying to figure out how the individual dots connect.)
I think that may sum my point of view up more succinctly than I did. I don't mean to say that if you're an S you don't make extrapolations, because that's obviously untrue: you can and you do. But you are perfectly right: I've got the whole picture in my head, and I'm working backwards (in that sense) to tell you the way I'm making the connections. My guess is that that's the Jungian interpretation of the N-type: the connections are there, I have made them, but elucidating them is a bit of a problem; you, on the other hand, have the necessary data, and you're trying to see the big picture in your head. (Which I suppose can be summed up as the S 'details' vs. N 'big picture' thing.)
or that they just use intuition more frequently regardless of their skill level?
If I had to pick between the two, the above would be my guess. The skill level is going to determine the accuracy of the 'big picture', because knowing the details is going to lend itself to accuracy. If I have a major misconception about a crucial detail, the picture I'm intuitively drawing is likely to have errors due to that misconception. But I think... people tend to notice correct hunches more than incorrect ones? Like, if I drew a conclusion and it had an error, someone might go "Oh, Mysti made a mistake because she didn't know [important information here]. If I drew a correct conclusion, that's when people go "Heeeeeey, hang on, how did you do that?!" And you'd only know that I intuited it if I went "Well, I had a hunch."
Re left/right-brained:
I have absolutely no idea where some of those comparisons come from, even. Like the past/present/future thing. I... don't get it. (It may be a comparison of STs to NFs, you're right; a lot of the right-brain thing actually does strike me as part of the description of my type, and I'm an INFP with moderate-high scores across the board.)
Math & Science vs philosophy & religion I think is actually a false comparison because critical thinking and arguing in an academic paper in the humanities also requires a great deal of elucidating your claims, connecting the dots, and explaining how you got to that conclusion, so I think it may be down to popular impressions of the sciences vs. the arts.
S/N and T/F sexism: I concede this, yes. I suspect part of it is conflation: I tend to react to the T/F one more myself, because it leads to 'you're making decisions on your feelings, that's irrational!' But I don't think you can get away from that one when you talk about 'women's intuition' either. I mean, another phrase that means "intuition" is "gut feeling", which can be construed as an emotional response. So if you can't explain why you got to that point, well, oh, you're just being emotional.
And with Math and Science being construed as 'cold hard science' kind of subjects? Well, that's against you either way. Either you're too irrational (T/F), or you can't explain your thought process because it's 'just' your intuition (S/N).
One last random caveat: I was re-reading all those descriptions, and I also think that they represent the extreme ends of the spectrum, which is problematic. Obviously most (if not all) people aren't going to be purely N or purely S, purely T or purely F, but many of the descriptions I've read seem to read that way, a little? Like, my INFP description told me that if I develop my logical facility, one day I might be "quite logical" - I don't know, I found that a little patronising.
Reply
Gotcha, that makes sense.
If I had to pick between the two, the above would be my guess. The skill level is going to determine the accuracy of the 'big picture', because knowing the details is going to lend itself to accuracy. If I have a major misconception about a crucial detail, the picture I'm intuitively drawing is likely to have errors due to that misconception.
I think in this case, I would argue Sherlock is S then. I don't see him using intuition to arrive at conclusions from the start -- he would want to know all the details and then work forward, eliminating impossibilities until there's only one left (even if it seems improbable), rather than intuit the answer from the start and work backward from there.
Math & Science vs philosophy & religion I think is actually a false comparison because critical thinking and arguing in an academic paper in the humanities also requires a great deal of elucidating your claims, connecting the dots, and explaining how you got to that conclusion, so I think it may be down to popular impressions of the sciences vs. the arts.
That's a really good point. Once you get to the world of academia, math, science, philosophy, and religion are basically the same in terms of what kind of thinking and skills you need. It's only really in high school that there's a difference (math is problem sets, science is labs, philosophy and religion are reading and papers).
One last random caveat: I was re-reading all those descriptions, and I also think that they represent the extreme ends of the spectrum, which is problematic. Obviously most (if not all) people aren't going to be purely N or purely S, purely T or purely F, but many of the descriptions I've read seem to read that way, a little? Like, my INFP description told me that if I develop my logical facility, one day I might be "quite logical" - I don't know, I found that a little patronising.
Lol yeah, definitely a shortcoming of the MBTI system. Like, the thing is, when they're trying to distinguish an INTP from an INFP, or an ESTJ from an ESTP or whatnot -- those pairs are actually really similar. So then in an attempt to explain how they're different from each other, they have to play up that one different letter a ton, which results in them giving you a description where they assume you're the F-iest person or the J-iest person ever and it's silly. I always find myself wishing there were personality descriptions for people who are IxSJ or ENxx or whatever -- descriptions for people who are pretty evenly balanced between the two because otherwise I have to look at 2-4 different types and, like, average them in my head. (It doesn't work.)
Also, the feeling I always got from the S/N dichotomy as well as T/F is that favoring one doesn't mean you lack the capacity to do the other. You can build up the strength of them separately and the only reason why you're categorized one way or the other is because of your preference, not your aptitude. So assuming you're not logical just because you lean Feeling (I assume?) doesn't even make sense...
Reply
Like, the thing is, when they're trying to distinguish an INTP from an INFP, or an ESTJ from an ESTP or whatnot -- those pairs are actually really similar.
Oh yeah, definitely. My Feeling score is actually extremely high: high 80%s, I think, last I checked, but I know that when it came to a lot of the questions I was actually stuck in a rut, and I picked one option over the other by a very slight margin. It's easy enough to imagine someone having the exact same problem and then picking a different option by an equally slight margin - resulting in a very high Thinking score. But we might actually act and maybe even think similarly given the same situation, just with different attributions for our reasons, as it were.
I always find myself wishing there were personality descriptions for people who are IxSJ or ENxx or whatever -- descriptions for people who are pretty evenly balanced between the two
I don't think they're capable of constructing those, unfortunately. The questions (I do admit these are the free ones and so not very well-phrased half the time) lack the nuance and subtly required for those descriptions in the first place; a lot of the tests I've taken aren't very good at recognising the existence of a spectrum.
You can build up the strength of them separately and the only reason why you're categorized one way or the other is because of your preference, not your aptitude.
Yeah. It encourages you to do so, actually! So I'm like 'Uh. Ok-aaaaaay?' (And yep, I lean Feeling.) Which goes back to the lack of personality descriptions, really. They encourage you to try to develop the other side (if you're F, learn the good sides of T! if you're T, try to relate to people! etc.) in every description I've seen, so it seems like they're not particularly good at acknowledging that well, it's possible that someone's actually done that or might naturally switch back and forth between two depending on situation.
I do think that's a general flaw in many personality tests, though; I've tried Enneagram as well and, uh, three-way tie.
Also it may be your fault that I ended up being all HMMMMM I wonder which FF characters would be in which MBTI type?
Reply
Leave a comment