Psyched! MBTI

This is the last instalment of Psyched! (At least for a while...) To see the earlier posts, check out:

Psyched! Sensual Perception
Psyched! Learning Style

Today we'll be doing a little overview of personality type as defined by the MBTI. For more information on MBTI, hit up the wikipedia article.

MBTI stands for Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and it's a psychometric instrument wihch seperates people into sixteen personality types. It's the most widely used instrument for personality testing.

A LITTLE HISTORY

The research started out with Carl Jung, who determined that people perceived things in one of two ways and made decisions in one of two ways. He then added that they did these things either in an internal or external way.

A mother daughter pair, Katherine Cook Briggs and Isabelle Briggs Myers, started with Jung's research and determined 4 dichotomies. They were originally meant to help women enterign the work force for the first time to identify what sort of war-tim jobs they'd be best suited for.

THE DICHOTOMIES

E/I - Extroverted/ Introverted

The first thing to remember about the Myers-Briggs pairs is that the terms used have definitions which may not agree with their layman definitions. So just because you can be the life the of the party does not make you an extrovert, and reading a lot does not make you an introvert.

This pair has more to do with how you relate to the world and where you get energy. When an extrovert is tired, he/she needs to do something: go to a social event, a class, etc. An exhausted introvert needs to spend time in reflection: read a book, paint a picture, etc.

Extroverts act first
Introverts think first

Extroverts are energised by being with people but drained by being alone
Introverts are drained by being with people but energised by being alone

Extroverts prefer many interactions (ie many acquaintances)
Introverts prefer deep interactions (ie close to 2 or 3 bffs)

S/N - Sensing/INtuition

This has to do with how we perceive the world. Do you prefer what is or what could be? Do you look at your bank account and see $3000 or do you see a trip to Italy?

Sensers like ideas to be concrete
Intuitives like ideas to be abstract

Sensers focus on the here and now
Intuitives concentrate on what could be or what might have been

Sensers prefer to deal with lists of facts
Intuitives prefer to notice correlations

T/F - Thinking/Feeling

This is how we make decisions.

Thinkers decide with logic
Feelers decide with emotion

A thinker would buy a blue Tshirt because they have a pair of shoes it matches, and they don't have any other blue Tshirts. A feeler would buy a blue Tshirt, because they like it, even though they happen to have 12 other blue Tshirts.

J/P- Judging/Perceiving

This is about whether you lean towards your Judging (T/F)or your Perceiving (S/N) function.

Judgers prefer to have decisions made
Perceivers prefer to have outcomes open-ended

Judgers like order
Perceivers like chaos

HOW THIS AFFECTS YOU
Knowing your type can help you deal with just about everything in life. For example, I'm an ENFP. On the E/I scale, I'm near the middle. For all the other scales, I'm near the extreme. These things combine to mean that I get really enthusiastic about new ideas (and things and places, and even people), but I can't follow through. My entire life, I've been fighting to be 'normal', but since MBTI, I don't. I just accept that I'm not cut out for that life, and keep moving.

MBTI can also give you a framework for dealing with others. My 2 bff from school days to now, are both ESTJ. We only have the E in common. As you might guess, it means we have severely different views on pretty much everything (It's kind of a miracle we've never killed one another, actually!). For example, when I felt like I was meant to go volunteer in India, money was tight. My BFF, O, said forget it and do it another time. That's the T in her. The F in me was having none of that. In the end, it all worked out and I went to India. But not before we had a huge blowout. Now I've learned to appreciate how much she needs things to add up.

WHAT IT MEANS FOR YOUR CHARACTERS
There are a lot of character questionnaires out there with minuscule details. White or black? Beach or mountains? Cherries or strawberries? Frankly, I don't think a lot of that matters. I don't have a preference on two of those three. And while I prefer the beach to the mountains, I'm not sitting on a train for 3 hours to get to one. Plus, I don't know which of these my friends prefer. That does not make us any less friends.

Truth is the Pepsi/Coke question is only important if you're in a restaurant.

The dichotomies on the MBTI are much more important to knowing your characters.

If your MC is stressed, will she call up her friends and have an impromptu ice cream party? Or will she curl up with a book?
If she say a shoe heel on the ground, would she think that it's a hideous shade of green? Or would she wonder if the person had to cut a first date short when their heel came off?
Is she going to buy the black dress to have something sensible to wear to formal events? Or will she buy the pink one because she's feeling sparkles this week?
Does she prefer to have all the answers? Or will she leap before she knows where the next branch is?

I hope you enjoyed this miniseries, and maybe even learned a thing or two. Thanks for tuning in!

Psyched! Learning Style/ Perception Modality

Psyched! is a mini-series in which I will discuss some sociological/psychological theories, and how these affect you and your characters. If you missed the first instalment of Psyched! you can read it here.

Today on Psyched! we look at learning style, as it relates to perception modality.

There are 4 types of learning style:

Visual
Textual
Auditory
Tactile

As you may be able to tell from the names these learning styles are related to the sensual perception styles we looked at last time. You will probably need to use all 4 styles in a classroom, but you probably have a preference for one or the other.

VISUAL
Visual learners prefer to recieve their information pictorally- pictures, graphs, diagrams, videos, etc. Visual learners love colour and often dislike working in groups. When they think about a scenario, they often visualise it.

TEXTUAL
This person learns by reading and writing. This was the kid in school that read the text book and understood even before class started. Like the visual learner, textual learners don't like working in groups. Textual learners tend to do well in traditional school enviroments.

AUDITORY
An auditory learner learns through the spoken word. This person prefers small lecture classes, discussion groups and talking out ideas. They learn by saying things out loud, making jingles, putting sounds to rhythm, etc.

TACTILE (KINESTHETIC)
These people learn through doing. They need to be actively involve in something, and prefer to employ several senses at once. For example, they may walk around, ipod on, and read their notes. These people do well in lab-based classes, art, and drama.

WHAT THIS MEANS FOR YOU
While this could have some applications for your characters, I believe that the most important applications are for you, the writer. Perception modality, in my opinion, mainly affects two stages of the pre-writing process: research and outline.

RESEARCH
Some writers inhale everything they can their hands on when they research. When writing a book about Greece, they read all the books they can find on Greek history, they look up words in a Greek dictionary, find every picture of Greece on Flicker- heck, they even watch THE SISTERHOOD OF THE TRAVELLING PANTS.

Other writers dread research. They've never liked poring over tons of books and websites. They choose to write what they know or write fantasy. That way they can avoid research. (This is me- mainly because I'm convinced that if I write what I don't know, people will see through me.)

There is no reason that some of us should be researchers while others are not. You just haven't found a way that suits you yet.

PRACTICAL APPLICATION

Let's say you're writing a novel about a girl who is doing a cooking internship in Italy. Here's how different learning styles could go about researching.

VISUAL
Watch movies/tv programs on Italy, Italian foods, cooking and internships
Search online for images of Italy, Italians and Italian foods
Look at a map of Italy
Look up charts for the Italian demographic, climate, etc,

TEXTUAL
Read books and articles about Italy, Italian food, cooking and internships
Write lists (or flash cards or post its) of pertinent information while researching
Look up common words (like bongiorno: good morning) in an Italian dictionary
Compile a list of cooking terms


AUDITORY
Watch films/tv programs or listen to radio programs about Italy, Italian food, cooking and internships
Go to lectures about these topics
If you have to read, read out lead
Listen to music about Italy/ from Italy
Listen to broadcasts in Italian
Find an Italian restaurant and talk to the chef or owner
Record what you find and play it back

TACTILE
Go to Italy (Don't I wish!)
Go to an Italian culture or language class
Go to an Italian restaurant
Interview an Italian
Take a cooking class/ try to make Italian food
Make a model of important spaces/places- like the kitchen the MC works in, or the Leaning Tower of Pisa

OUTLINING
Writers often argue whether their they are outliners or pantsers (seat-of-the-pants writers). For a long time, I believed myself to be a pantser. Now I believe that every writer outlines. An outline which has not been written down is no less an outline.

VISUAL
Colour code your outline
Find pictures of people who look like you imagine your characters
Map your story progress with concept bubbles
Use a tree diagram or concept bubbles to show character relationships
Use Venn Diagrams to show similarities and differences between characters, locations, scenes, etc.

TEXTUAL
Write lists of characters, their characteristics, scenes, plot points, settings, etc in sequential order
Make columns with main ideas and add supporting details underneath
Create concept trees or bubbles

AUDITORY
Bounce ideas of friends round robin style
Turn on the recorder and talk about your characters, setting scene, the plot, etc
Think cause and effect- X happened so then Y happened, so then Z happened, and then we were back at A
Talk to characters- either out loud or in your head, give them different voices, tone, accents, etc (you might want to do this one out of the way of prying eyes and ears and save yourself a trip to the asylum)
Explain why and how things happen in the plot

TACTILE
Write main ideas on Post-its or flash cards that you can move around later
Act out scenes in your mind
Do something physical (preferably repetitive, like walking) and think about your characters
Write a first draft- for tactile learners, it's difficult to detail things without doing them, so a first draft is really a final outline.

So you see, we're all outliners, whether we have every single plot point on paper in words or pictures, whether we've only talked it out or it's only in our mind, whether or not a 60,000 word first draft is our only real outline.

CONCLUSION
If you're not immediately sure which type of learner you are, you can try this quiz. Textile seems to only recently have come into it's own as a category, so most tests and information lump it in with visual.

Once you know your learning type, you can use it to your advantage. Or you can just try out several of these techniques and see which one works for you. Personally, I lean towards Tactile, but I've also got some Auditory in me. I'm so bad at visual and textual that I fell asleep in every written exam I took until my final year of university! Only last Sunday, I discovered that tests are so much easier if I draw around the words and mouth them as I read. ( I fully expect mouthing what I'm reading will get me kicked of a test some day...)

I hope you find this information useful.

Psyched!!! Sensual Perception

If you're wondering how my Japanese test went, in a word, hilarious! There was one part where I had no clue what was going on, but I picked Answer #2, because that one was about butter and flour and we had cooking class last week. lol. It was funny :)

One of my random obsessions in life is social/personality theory. Why we are who we are and how we are. So for a couple of weeks, I'm going to be intruding on the "Mondays on My Mind" feature with "Psyched!" Psyched! will introduce to a little bit of social theory and I'll even tie it to how it can be relevant to you and your characters!

When you've finished with this post, feel free to check out the others in the series:
Psyched! Learning Style/Perception Modality

For the first installment of Psyched! we'll be looking at Sensual Perception. I know that sounds rather Rated Harlequin, but it's totally not.

Sensual Perception is about which senses you use to take in the world. This concept is actually new to me. I read about it last week in a Writers Digest article, and it resonated with me.

BASIC PREMISE
We all have a preference for our senses, a hierarchy, if you will. We each use all the senses we are capable of, but even for those of us who have full use of all 5 senses, we use some more than others.

THE PREFERENCES

VISION
A visual person notices visual details. They notice what people look like, what people are wearing. They see the colours of buildings. One of my closest friends, L, is a very visual person. When I bring up memories from our school days, she can often remember what clothes we were wearing.
I, on the other hand, can't remember what I wore yesterday. In fact, I am so out of tune with these things, that I often end up wearing the same to schools twice in a row. I only go to my Monday, Thursday and Friday schools once a week, and since I can't remember what clothes I had on last week, it must look like I only own one outfit!

If my friend and I witnessed a crime, and have to do composite sketches, her's would look like a photo. Mine would be like, "Um- dark hair, eyes, a nose, a mouth?"

HEARING
This person picks up on auditory details. They never mistake a voice on the phone, and they probably pick up song melodies (and sometimes lyrics) easily. I am very much more an auditory person. I can tell the difference between a scooter, motorbike, K-car ( a Japanese thing that I hope to remember to explain at some point), car, taxi, SUV, truck, bus and the two types of trains that come through town. All using just my ears. I know all my colleagues' voices, which is no small feat, since I work in 4 schools and an office and have about 80 colleagues, only 2 of whom are English speakers.

SMELL
A person who picks up on olfactory details. I have fairly bad sinus allergies. So, perfume makes me sneeze. Dust makes me sneeze. 50% of flowers make me sneeze. The other 50 make me stuffy. So I notice these smells. I'm not very in tune to people's natural body odors or mild stenches, like old garbage.

TASTE
One of my foreign colleagues here, has no sense of smell. And since taste is between 50 and 90% smell - depending on who you hear it from - this affects her sense of taste. For example, she doesn't like some fruits, because in the absence of smell, they just taste like sickly sweetness.

TOUCH
A tactile person likes tactile detail. As a kid, I used to love "feely" stuff. I would rub the material of my satin-y nightgown between my thumb and forefinger as I drifted off to sleep. In winter I pull my turtlenecks up over nose. Not because I'm cold- although I am- but because I like how stuff feels on my nose. It's so weird the other ALTs in my office call me "Textile Ninja."

HOW THIS AFFECTS YOUR CHARACTERS
People see the world in different ways. Another way that you can paint your characters is through what they relate. In books with multiple POV this can even be a way of differentiating characters.

For example, if I were to walk into an office for the first time, talk to the secretary, and take a seat, here are a few things I might notice:
The flowers in a bouquet on the centre table and how I'd have to sit in the corner of the waiting room to avoid sneezing
Why is this woman wearing so much danged perfume?
The music on the PA
The fabric on the arms of the chairs

My friend, L (the visual one), might notice these things:
The secretary's earrings
How her nail polish is clashing with her top
The nice fragrance she's wearing
Fashion magazines on the centre table
All the furniture matches
How many other people are in the waiting room

It's the same scene, but we've noticed different things. You could even try it with a few of your friends, if you like. If you go somewhere you've never been, ask your friend to describe anything they remember afterwards, and see which details stayed with them.

YOUR AUDIENCE
People identify with stories told with the senses they use most. I'm not a visual person. I live in a place that's quite possibly the definition of picturesque. I've got train tracks in front of my house, a river behind it and mountains on either side. You should see it in winter. I know it's beautiful, but in the same way I know 1 and 1 is 2. It doesn't take my breath away.

There's an abundance of visual details in books. I don't know if that's because most people are visual people or most artists are visual people. This is a perk for visual people, but for those who rely on other senses, it may actually get in the way of the story.

Weaving a wider web of senses can help define your characters, and it can also be useful in pulling in people who rely on the 4 less described senses.

ACTIVITY: Try writing a scene where vision is irrelevant, either because a character is blind or because it's dark. See what details come out. Good luck!