Hello again! 🙂 Welcome back for the pivotal climax to understanding the cognition process! Now we can finally put together all the pieces we’ve accumulated over the course of the past four posts (1, 2, 3, 4). We’re going to complete the cognition processes! :O Let’s do it!
And as I always say, *don’t* start here! You’re going to be so ridiculously confused if you do! Are you one of those people that flips to the end of the book?! Well, you can’t do that with this! 😛
Hey! Welcome back! How was your between-posts intermission? Did you get everything you need? Hydration? Nourishment? Bladder relief? Well then, let’s move on. 🙂
Oh and of course, if you haven’t read Parts 1, 2 and 3 yet, then I love you but you really shouldn’t be here yet. Go read those first and then come back. Don’t worry, I’m patient. 😉
Alrighty, I’m really excited for this part too because there’s a lot about why Functions function the way that they do that I really haven’t gotten the opportunity to explain to the whole class, and they are really pretty frickn’ awesome!
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Hello again! Welcome back to Cognition – The Super Simple Series! If you missed Part 1: Cognition and the Four Types of Information, go check it out now. 🙂 Otherwise you’re going to be super lost instead and no one likes that!
I’m very excited for this post as there is sooo much confusion and stereotyping about what functions really are. In this post we’re looking at just how simple and straightforward cognitive functions are, and yet how they’re complex in application and, when understood correctly, should help us understand our complexity as humans more, not limit us into boxes. But I’m getting ahead of myself, as usual. 😉
If we define “Cognition,” as we did in Part 1, as the action of your mind acquiring and processing information, “Functions” are the tools our minds use to acquire and process that information.
Hey! This is Justin! Since I’m gonna be doing a lot of Phase 2, it’s probably good for me to say hi. It’s been awesome getting to talk to you guys over chats and emails, and I’m excited to finally get to do some character spotlights!
For this first one, we’re going to be focusing especially on how to type people. A lot of you have asked for help with typing people yourselves, so let’s walk through the process!
We’ve also convinced a couple of stick people, Gwen and Phil, to sacrifice their dignity and show us how *not* to type. They’re going to do their best to type correctly, using oversimplified, stereotypical methods and definitions, and we’ll see how they do.
For this tutorial, we wanted to type a cool, engaging character who’s also kinda obscure. That way, we shouldn’t have to worry much about preconceptions of the character’s type. We wouldn’t want to start out with Darth Vader, say. (We’ve seen Lord Vader typed as pretty much every single type :P)
That’s exactly the sort of subjectivity that we’re excited to get past here! Regardless of whether we’re typing someone’s behavior or their cognition, if it all ends up coming down to subjective arguments over what type they are, then there’s something wrong with our methodology. A reliable, repeatable, useful science needs to be objective, no matter who’s looking at it.
This kind of independent objectivity isn’t something a lot of people would associate with personality typing. All too often, personality typing gets misused as a vague, horoscope-ish way of boiling people down to a simplistic little list of traits that could really be true of almost anyone. Gwen and Phil are gonna demonstrate how this vagueness doesn’t work. Aren’t you, guys?
We, on the other hand, are all going to show these two the consistent roots of cognitive typing. We’re going to walk through how the cognitive definitions of the letters leave no wiggle room for subjective fudging; once we know how the letters work at their root, then every typing becomes clear.
So who’s our lucky, obscure victim for this demonstration? Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, I give you…
…a peacock.
But not just any peacock. This is the nefarious Lord Shen, the brilliant and, in my estimation, very charming villain of Kung Fu Panda 2. Yes, there really is a movie called Kung Fu Panda, if you didn’t know. Two of them, actually, with a third on the way. And they’re really fantastic, with excellent themes told in a skillful way, and very good plot structure, and also very pretty. Continue reading
For over a year I’ve had an impending fear. It lurks in the back of my mind, nagging at me whenever I go to type anyone, real or fictional, whenever My INFJ and I have worked on nailing down just which facial patterns follow human cognition, and it pulls on me whenever I get excited about just how uncannily well Facial Typing works and how the facial similarities between people of the same cognitive type just can’t be unseen! It seems silly, that the reason I’m scared is because Facial Typing works so well; shouldn’t I be more scared if it *didn’t* work? So why does fear haunt my Facial Typing days?
Because I know that in mere months (if schedule goes according to plan, which I’ve totally stopped counting on), I’ll be ready to release a series of posts full of scientific, photographic evidence that *so many people* aren’t the type they think they are. And then I’m readying myself for the pitchforks and torches, because I know they’re coming for me.
And you know what? It’s understandable (to a point) that people get so up-in-arms when I tell them they’re not the type they thought they were. It makes sense that when we have to correct people about their type, or what defines types in general, that they often react as negatively as if we’d corrected them on their religion, politics, sexuality or gender. Continue reading
Tips for an ENTP about communicating with an INTP, and tips for Perceivers in general. (Along with a bunch of other stuff about N/S, Type Specializations… and Halo ;))
Happy Thanksgiving everyone!!!
There’s an age-old outlook, put blatantly by Syndrome of The Incredibles in his Moriarty Fear, that if everyone is special, then *no one* will be. To this longstanding catch-22, I offer the following rebuttal: What if everyone is special in a way that is both utterly unique and utterly essential?
What if, like colors, genders or flavors, Personality Types create a beautiful cornucopia of complexity and balance, where each member contributes to the whole, an equal and necessary component, without which there would be a gaping hole? And what if becoming special is simply a matter of owning who you are and choosing to pursue the very thing *you* love most?
These are Type Specializations.
This topic is one of my very favorite things about personality typing because it’s so wrapped up in what every type *is* and not only what every type specializes in, but what *drives* every type. It’s easy to focus on cursory traits that may or may not come with a certain type – yes, ISTJs are usually fond of rules and yes, ENTPs often like taking risks; yes, INFPs spend a lot of time exploring inside their own heads and yes, ESFJs can often be found being great hosts and hostesses – but why? What is that common thread that laces itself through a personality type? What means the world to *your* personality?
Type Specializations are made up of two components, Scope and Objective. Continue reading
So, once upon a time, you stumbled upon a really cool website. It had interesting pictures combining all your favorite characters in ways you weren’t sure made sense, but it was also pretty cool to read, even if the girl who wrote it liked to use lame phrases like “Rock-awesome,” used too many ellipses and was a little too fascinated by crossdressing. Despite her obvious strangeness though, the things she had to say made pretty good sense and you found yourself pulled in by her unique approach to humanity, obvious geekishness and adorable stick figures 😉
But, whether you were completely new to this personality stuff and wondering what the heck she was talking about, throwing letters around willy-nilly, or if you’re an absolute pro who has been studying this stuff since you and Jung were eating bratwurst together, you need to know what I mean when I throw out a four variable combination, whether it’s ENTP or Unicorn-Daisy-Tomato-Orange. Personality Typing means squat if you have an incomplete or inaccurate understanding of what the variables mean in the first place.
And so here, boys and girls, is where I define my terms… in no uncertain terms 😉
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Hi everyone! Blog interest, emails, etc. has *jumped* up lately, and I wanted to thank you all for coming to read these things I’ve poured so much of my love into 🙂 And thanks to everyone who has sent me emails 😀 it’s been great to hear from you!!! Apologies if I haven’t gotten back to you yet! I swear I will reply to everyone… but I’m a little backed up and I want to give everyone the attention they deserve… plus, you know, I still have a blog to write 😉 And laundry to catch up on…
But I really do enjoy hearing from you and replying to you, so don’t let any of that scare you away 🙂 Being correctly typed can make a world of difference in your life and I’d be happy to help… if you’re patient 😉
Emails have also shown me areas of information I could stand to cover better. For example, I had an awesome girl whom I typed as a Sensor ask me why I typed her that way, and how to tell the difference between Sensors and iNtuitives, especially because she didn’t feel good at the types of things Sensors are “supposed” to be good at. Here is some of my response (made generally applicable through the use of handy-dandy brackets), because I think these are common concerns. I said:
“Well, to start with, Sensors don’t have to be athletic and iNtuitives can be (though I’m not lol) and Sensors can really enjoy school and learning etc. and some iNtuitives don’t. I really believe that any type can get good at any skill, they don’t have to be limited to a certain branch of interests…
“Like I said last email, Sensors think in puzzle pieces, where everything has a spot and snaps into place. iNtuitives think more in a web or word-cloud [I meant word-net], where one thought connects to lots of others through little strands of patterns. They’re both equal, but they look different when you know what to look for. So when Sensors talk, they focus on a single puzzle piece, be it a situation or information of whatever kind, that’s whatever they’re dealing with at that moment, and figure out where that piece fits. They don’t have to look at all the pieces at once because they can look at pieces in isolation, without them being attached to all the other pieces. An S will pick up one ‘piece’ of information, and just evaluate that piece by itself to figure out where it goes. An N can’t pick up one part of their information ‘web’ without everything attached to it coming too; they have to orient all the strands at the same time because otherwise they have no reference point and their web totally falls apart.
“Was that a really weird analogy? So, when [a Sensor talks, they] hold up individual ‘puzzle pieces’ of topics or information, and discuss basically, ‘I have this piece. It has this picture and is this shape. Hmm… I think it goes here; do you agree?’ and [the Sensor puts] it in [their] mind where [they] think it fits in the puzzle 😀 Then [they] move on to the next piece. As long as a piece is working where [they] put it, and the picture looks like the puzzle box, [they] don’t have to worry about what all the other pieces are doing; [they] can take the puzzle one piece at a time. [They] can focus on the puzzle piece right in front of [them] (i.e. the piece of information or whatever [they’re] doing at the moment) and as long as that piece was put in the right place, it’ll line up with later pieces.”
I focused in this email on the Sensor side of it, because that was who I was talking to so the other side wasn’t especially relevant, but I’d like to elaborate on the iNtuitive version now. When an iNtuitive talks, they don’t stay in one place or on one thought. Everything is connected and one string leads to a million others. Now, this could easily be confused with the randomness of Perceivers, trying to explore a million different options. SPs can certainly be random. 😉 No, I’m talking about forays into the conceptual where every thought connects to every other, looking over the whole at once. iNtuitives will constantly be looking for how one thought applies to another and how everything fits into place based on how it connects to everything else.
Now, iNtuitives’ method widely gets viewed as more superior, which ends up causing arrogant iNtuitives and recursively arrogant Sensors, and makes everyone feel defensive of the way they operate. Like I just said, the two methods are equal, but different. Healthy, developed Sensors bring such meaning to looking at the puzzle-piece right in front of them, and I’m always in awe at the enlightenment that Sensors can pull from the world at their fingertips. Likewise, as iNtuitives appreciate and admire Sensors for their abilities and thought processes, they can better value their own abilities.
So when trying to type someone as N or S, or when trying to understand how an N or S thinks, remember:
Sensors will talk in ‘puzzle pieces’—one piece at a time, everything has a place where it snaps in, so there is no need to look at every piece at once. Emphasis is centered on correct placement of each piece, rather than on how it connects to other pieces.
iNtuitives will talk in ‘webs’ or ‘word-nets’—each piece of information connects to all the others and *has* to be viewed in context or things are missed.
Both are necessary and neither N nor S can afford to roll their eyes at the other, pretending that either context or in-the-moment-ness are invalid or irrelevant.
*We need both.*
The other day, I got a fantastic comment on Type Heroes: INFJ – The Paladin by a cool INFJ named Match. In addition to comments about liking the blog in general, he brought up some great questions about why I typed some of the characters in the INFJ collage the way I did. Because it was a fantastic and well thought out comment, I thought it deserved a well thought out response. I started typing and this behemoth came out. Rather than try and fit it into like 50 comments all broken up, which would end up feeling like I was spamming everyone on my own blog -_-, I decided to turn it into a post that might set the precedent for future response posts that deserve this kind of care and attention.
I hope you really wanted that reply you asked for, Match 😀
Intro and Principles of Typing
Okay, important things first: Match is a really cool name! Can I just say that?
Also, I’m *so* happy you’re enjoying the blog! The things you said about Hercules Syndrome and the stick figure post make me feel giddy 😀 This is exactly why I write and it thrills me to know it’s working and that I’m touching individual people. That’s really my purpose as an ENTP, helping people see their own individual potential and know how to reach for it; helping people be awesome in their own unique ways 🙂
You brought up really excellent points about those individual characters. I also *loved* what you said about people making personality typing about cut-and-paste horoscopes! I couldn’t agree more. I think the one principle I’d like to bring up before going into specific character typings is that, while you’re obviously looking past the surface of types and I can tell you don’t type shallowly at all, it’s important to remember that personality types are a measure of the way a person *thinks* which ends up resulting in their actions, but *isn’t* their actions. I know you know that principle, but it’s easy to forget that when other people are judging by the surface. It’s easy to forget that two people may make the *exact same* decision for *entirely* different reasons. Make sense?
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10 Years
Sorry, Not Sorry (Where We’ve Been and Novel!)
aLBoCal, and a Post about Depression, Hope, and Foo Fighters
aLBoP is not MBTI
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