There is a famous personality model that sets four main characteristics of people’s behavior. We can go really deep with this model dig into metaphysics because that means that all humans are connected in some way. The precursor of this idea was Carl Jung, so you can imagine easily how esoteric things can get. I am only interested in the general concept of having a statistical model of how people react and decide, and we can leave the collective consciousness with snakes and doors for a while.
As a scientific and technologist, I consider that it is just as important as we study how silicon chips that we study humans. We have all these increasingly faster processors and a huge amount of information that we are not able to process yet, but the analytical model that is leading technology to new discoveries is very well defined. We collect data, we process it, we propose a model and we test it. Not much more than that, at the end. What I am saying, in other words, is that we don’t understand anything of what is going on in the real world. But we are able to observe it, measure whatever we can and predict how it will behave in the future.
There is a test for analyzing this behavior in people and it is called Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. What is amazingly useful because we don’t need to talk about vague personality concepts that are loosely tided to the scientific method. We have a tool with the MBTI that give us four parameters to evaluate a human’s core seems too optimistic, but it is a pragmatic decision that ends being amazingly useful for people involved, for example, in taking human resources decisions. No more of wondering if somebody will spread out the voice, will be a leader or will remain focused in their job. Knowing the result of a series of tests and adding a bit of experience gives one of sixteen common human behaviors. As simple as that. What I call a pragmatical approach.
We know from other approximations of physics and statistical studies that a model is just that. Something that we suppose and that let us understand which kind of output a system will have for certain inputs. For instance, simplifying a human to four bi-state variables is like trying to estimate a weather forecast measuring the wind speed and humidity. But it works. Under certain conditions and with many limitations, it works. My own interpretation is that each one of these characteristics corresponds to a statistical model, whose function depends on each person. Both extremes of the function are the normal states that each particular variable can have.
Following the nomenclature of the MBTI, the variables are Extroversion/Introversion, Sensing/Intuition, Feeling/Thinking, Perception/Judging. As I am not a psychologist and I am not familiar with each set of test to determine these four parameters, I cannot explain in great detail each one of them. The basic idea is that there are four dichotomies that humans tend to have a preference when we make decisions. But it is the combination of these preferences what allow to determine a model of behavior. The fact that somebody talks a lot might be an indicator that he has Extroversion as variable 1. Somebody completely focused in a task and that is attached to concrete things, it can be somebody that has a Sensing for variable 2. If an individual tends to be interested in things instead of the relation with other people, it can be a Thinker for variable 3. And somebody that waits to collect information in order to make a decision, the variable 4 could be Perception.
The tests and how one of the parameters are determined might be strange and it can trigger in my head the question of how scientific is all the model as a concept. For example, to determine the T/F characteristic you can ask the preference between a car and a train. All these letters and their combination might be tricky to analyze because they are not isolated parameters. As any array of probabilities, there is an unique position for each combination. For each combination, a general behavior can be determined. And to this you need to add, of course, other parameters to have a more accurate result: gender, age, maturity level, intelligence, background, etc.
With all this mathematical concept of four bi-state parameters that define the output, I find fascinating the idea of having each human as a function. Their behavior is the output of the function. The environment is the input that we all have. Two people with similar educational backgrounds and other characteristics will take different decisions. Interactions between individuals can be estimated in the same way, and that is saying that the output of one function will give a negative feedback to other function. The functions might be similar in their core because the individuals can have the same desire and comparable tools to achieve it, they might even react in a similar way to many stimulus. But if their set of inner characteristics are different, their decision process will be very different and they will show this in an overall response to the environment. What we normally call the personality.
I am used to link people’s personality to a moral factor. I normally dare to say that people are either good or bad. Like if there is an universal rule that can judge each individual behavior. May be it’s time that I re-think how moral influences the way I judge people.
