Many people are skeptical about personality
typing systems. Some complain about their over-generality. Others simply dislike being categorized. Personally, I have found them very useful for
thinking about my own patterns of behaviour. They also help me to understand a
person whose style is different from mine, and might otherwise be mystifying.
One of the most commonly used personality
typing systems is the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) . It has four parameters with two settings for
each: Extraversion vs Introversion (E vs I), Sensing vs Intuition (S vs N),
Thinking vs Feeling (T vs F), and Judging vs Perceiving (J vs P). Each personality type is composed of four
letters, one from each pair. For
example, I am an ENTJ (Extraversion-Intuition-Thinking-Judging).
I want to focus in on one of these pairs,
Sensing vs Intuition (S vs N). If you
take a look at MBTI type statistics,
you will notice that most of the pairings are pretty close to 50-50, with a
little bit of skew for T vs F and J vs P, but that there is a very noticeable
bias in the S vs N category: 75% of the population are Sensing (S).
With a majority that big on the other side
of the divide, it is pretty much guaranteed that anyone in the N camp is going
to be perceived as slightly odd relative to the personality norms of society. If you add N and T together, you get the NT
temperament (sometimes known as “Rationals”
), which make up less than 10% of the population. It is not surprising that some members of
this group (especially the introverts) have sometimes been stigmatized as
“nerds” by the majority.
The summary explanation of N vs S
characteristics is this: the N is more oriented toward abstract ideas, the big
picture, the past, the future and general theories of things. If you need proof that I’m an N, this blog is
proof enough: it is characteristic for an N to lump together superficially
disparate areas such as, for example, philosophy, software development, and personality
system, while presenting them as a coherent subject matter.
The S is a more concrete thinker, deeply
rooted in their own direct experience, present circumstances, the nitty-gritty. They tend to characterize
particular things by visible attributes.
They tend not to like the kind of vague categorizations that Ns
prefer. My experience is that S types
don’t think that much of personality type systems, except as a kind of game or
as handy stereotypes, since they don’t really think in terms of systems and
tend to be annoyed by generalization that goes beyond their experience.
Steve Jobs, whose recent passing has caused
such a vast cultural effect, was almost certainly an N. He saw beyond the current situation,
persisted through some difficult times (such as the early days when Macs had a
very small market share and his NeXT years) by focusing on what could be. Ironically, he also now appeals to Ss since
his vision has become concrete and present in their lives in an obvious way: an
S does not argue with clear and present success.
In some ways, I think it makes sense that
most people are S. Paying attention to
the here and now pays off more regularly, even though it has less potential to
pay off big the way truly original and disruptive vision can. Intuition is a high risk/high reward
proposition. The conditions that make it pay off are more remote and less
certain, but the advantage of being ahead of the game when change comes can be
enormous. A society without N would
never progress, but a society with too much N might change too fast or fly off
in too many directions.
As an N, I have found that understanding
that most people don’t think like I do makes me a more effective communicator
in practical situations. For example,
when I detect the tell-tale signs of scepticism or confusion when I’m
explaining an idea or plan to someone, I find that giving concrete examples
with illustrative detail is often a good place to start. (This can help
communicate with Ns as well, since another N might want to detect the patterns
for themselves in your data.) When
talking to an S, the trick is to choose examples that aren’t too different, to
add in “irrelevant” detail for each, and then point out what the shared
relevant details are that make the pattern.
To give an example, let’s say you want to
make a point about luxury sports cars.
This is a simple enough abstract category that it likely won’t cause
much communicative difficulty, but it would nonetheless be more effective to
give a specific example, such as mentioning a Porsche, or even a better, a
specific model, such as Porsche 911. The
extra detail, which can seem arbitrary to an N, helps to anchor the idea more
concretely for an S. An N’s instinct is
to leave the question open, since the particular model doesn’t matter to the
point, but for the S choosing an appropriate example with the right specifics
does matter.
The flip side of this technique can be used
in rapport building or social conversations when you find that the person you
are speaking with is giving a lot of specific detail. Instead of getting bored and tuning out, it
can be helpful to pick out a particular detail that sounds interesting to you
and ask for more context about it. To
pick up on our previous example, suppose an S is discussing sports cars, most
likely mentioning a specific make, the Porsche 911. You can ask the S what makes that particular
make better/worse/special, depending on the context. To make this more meaningful, you could
provide a different specific make as a comparison example. This helps to make the detail relevant to the
N, while also engaging the S in a mode of conversation that is comfortable.
Careful observation of such interactions
will lead to better results and more techniques. Armed with knowledge of this phenomenon, I
hope all Ns will learn to better cope in a world in which they are a minority.
