[alicebot-general] Personality models (was: Big Fivepersonalitytraits)

[Chris Lofting]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: alicebot-general-bounces at list.alicebot.org [mailto:alicebot-general-
> bounces at list.alicebot.org] On Behalf Of Dr. Rich Wallace
> Sent: Wednesday, 24 May 2006 2:03 AM
> To: Alicebot and AIML General Discussion
> Subject: Re: [alicebot-general] Personality models (was: Big
> Fivepersonalitytraits)
> 
> One thing I looked into for a while was statistical distributions of
> personality types.  MBTI for example has 16 possible types, but when
> they do their studies, all 16 are not equally distributed in the
> population.  Not surprisingly, there is a Zipf curve of types.  One or
> two are most prominent, one or two are very rare.  Which leads me to
> wonder, have they got the theory right?
> 

The 1/f dynamic is a property of recursing an asymmetric dichotomy. When we
categorise we use TWO forms of dichotomy, symmetric and asymmetric. The
symmetric form will give you results expressed in Gaussian, aka Normal,
Distribution form. The asymmetric form will give you results expressed as a
spectrum/power-law.

Our brains reflect the asymmetric form (WHAT/WHERE aka
differentiating/integrating) in general and then we zoom-in to get symmetric
analysis. Mathematically it is the difference between 0/infinity vs +1/-1.
The latter is symmetric and works to identify difference (+/-) from sameness
(1/1). The former is asymmetric and works to map out sameness across
differences, there is a hierarchy of levels as such. Thus a symmetric
analysis covers a common context and so an analysis at one level in the
hierarchy.

With the asymmetric dichotomy there are issues in precision in that the
self-referencing will elicit a dimension that moves from the
vague/approximate/qualitative to the crisp/precise/quantitative. These are
in fact manifest in the MBTI mappings, as in being traits of the types, when
we map MBTI onto a dimension. In IDM we have identified the core
temperaments as NF/SP and recursion gives an ordering of:

XNFP,XNFJ,XSFJ,XSTJ,XNTP,XNTJ,XSFP,XSTP

This ordering is qualitatively isomorphic to categories of emotion,
categories of number types, categories of socioeconomics, and categories of
yin/yang. The shared emphasis is 1/f due to the asymmetric nature of the
dichotomies used in making the categories.

More so, from a meaning perspective, the movement from a general focus on
semantics to a very concentrated form means we relabel semantics as syntax.
This is mapped above in moving from right to left. This relabelling of
semantics to syntax is due to the increasingly hierarchic format (needs to
establish high precision) where all that matters is one's place in the
hierarchy, one's position becomes central to establishing identity. (also
reflects movement to an increasingly charismatic manner). The
self-referencing means that all of the above types will emerge in EACH type
with continued recursion.

There is a specialist dichotomy covering this - control/flux; the more
hierarchic so the more a focus on control/regulation and so precision.
Self-reference the dichotomy and you will get a 'spectrum' of types of
collectives where the types are identified and discussed in such material
as:

Bradley, R.T. (1987) "Charisma and Social Structure : A Study of Love and
Power, Wholeness and Transformation" New York : Paragon House

Bradley, R.T., & Pribram, K.(1998) "Communication and Stability in Social
Collectives" IN Journal of Social and Evolutionary Systems 21(1):29-81

The dichotomy fits all of the others such that, for example, the XNFP will
be more 'flux' oriented when compared to a more 'control' focus of XSTP etc.

The "Structure of Personality" is in all of us members of the species.
Biases of genetics and nature will 'select' one type over the others where
that nature element includes the 'type' of the context in the form of the
collective. Note that all of the types are not 'discrete', they are all
connected, entangled, in the whole that is the structure. It is that WHOLE
that interacts with reality and in so doing sorts the types into
'best-fit/worst-fit' order.

Thus in the USA there is a bias at the temperament level of 70% S (sensing,
NOW focused), 30% N (intuitive, PAST/FUTURE focused) Thus the sensing when
considering past/future will be 'rigid' about that consideration. We can map
this as "WHAT WAS, WHAT IS, WHAT WILL BE" as compared to the intuitive bias
of "WHAT COULD HAVE BEEN, IS NOT, WHAT COULD BE".

The IDM material can take the MBTI types to give us 64 or 4096 or 16+million
categories and so move way beyond the 'usual' types based on four
dichotomies (we initially derive structure over function by focusing on
three dichotomies where when we extend the types so the functional
dichotomy, I/E, emerges naturally)

> Kiersey Temprements are a simplified version of Myers-Briggs.  I have
> an interesting video called "Please Understand Me" that describes 4
> basic personality types.  Kiersey also mentions that the types are not
> equally distributed, two are more common, two more rare.  He also goes
> into the typical problems in relationships when people marry between
> types or within their own type.
>

The differences mentioned are due to contextual differences that 'favour'
types.


> In the Enneagram community, there are often claims that some types are
> more dominated by females and others by males.   Once I signed up for
> an Enneagram panel of 4's, and the organizer was so pleased to have me
> because she said it was so rare to find a man who was a type Four.
> There could be other factors at work, because I know several  homeless
> men who could be Fours, but they don't show up on the radar because
> they don't have jobs, careers, or the kind of lives that would lead
> them to Enneagram panels.
>

The enneagram is focused on humans in particular where it encodes the
mediation function as if a 'universal' property. For us it is, for nature it
appears not to be - in nature maintaining such a position is too costly from
an energy conservation perspective. Thus dyadic perspectives fit 24/7
universally (and includes our sense of autopilot). The triadic perspective
fits when required - thus our primate nature is to use consciousness to
process the new/complex and once a habit is created, we fall back to
stimulus/response.

This issue with the triadic is also present in Mathematics in the realm of
complex numbers etc where once used we have to conjugate to get back to a
'real' number; complex numbers allow for representation of mediation whilst
we calculate some 'value' - the imaginary numbers cover issues of
cyclic/morphic change etc and combined with real allow us to map dynamics
and then convert the values back to some 'point' value - a real number.

In the enneagram that baseline trichotomy is of types 6-9-3 where 9 is the
mediation agent (labelled by some the 'peacemaker'). 3 is the 'showbiz',
high expression element (differentiating - positive feedback) and 6 is more
integrating (negative feedback).

>From this baseline, rotating the 'triangle' formed by the trichotomy around
a circle of other types will bring out the relationships through the other
types (and so allow for bringing out the mediation nature of 3 or 6 etc)

Each arm of the triangle points to directions of positive/negative dynamics
in behaviour in relation to the current 'type' under review. (9 goes to 3 or
9 goes to 6 etc) Thus we map both structure and process.

The IDM material shows that using self-referencing of dichotomies, bit
representations, and the XOR operator we can extract similar forms of
information. 

> I tend to agree with you that an experienced "reader" can get
> someone's personality within a few minutes, even without a formal
> personality test, maybe with only two or three key questions.  What
> you don't want to do is tell someone their personality type, which is
> a kind of personality-ism akin to racism or telling someone their
> religion.  If you guess someone's type, keep it to yourself (even if
> they ask, unless they've paid you for an analysis).    It's up to them
> to figure it out and self-identify.  The best you can do is point them
> in the right direction.
> 

Jung would disagree. The idea from a singular perspective is to map-out the
Structure of Personality, identify one's "preferred" position on the
resulting dimension that comes from the mapping, and then find contexts that
will 'push the buttons' of the structure and 'select' the expression of
other types present 'in' you. What this allows is for your unique
consciousness to then 'refine' these types.

This is what happens when we move out of our familiar context and into the
unfamiliar - that context will elicit 'child like' behaviours as we try to
familiarise ourselves with this new context and the part of us it is
bringing out! ;-) Jung's focus was on becoming an XXXX rather than, for
example, a rigid ESTP. The X means allowing context to select which element
of the dichotomy represented in X to express. Doing this makes one more
adaptable to changing conditions (so far I have mine down to XNXP! ;-))

On the other hand, the formal MBTI and other typologies (e.g. the HBDI -
Hermann Brain Dominance Indicator) are aimed at team formation in getting
one's particular, preferred, type and STAYING as that type so as to fit-in
with a team. This is fine for a focus on the collective, not for a focus on
self-actualisation.

All the typologies focus more on our PARTICULAR nature and so the
hard-coding element; their derivation from statistics denies any
'uniqueness' since they only cover 3 to 5 dichotomies. 

Note that types can be born as well as made. In these sorts of scenarios we
are covering hardware (neural connections), firmware (hormonal activity) and
software (psychological/sociological influences).

The particular is governed more by the hardware/firmware influences. The
singular by firmware/software influences.

>From a historical position, the types encoded into each of us cover the
needs of, the goals of, the collective. This goal can be hundreds,
thousands, even millions of years away and the 'random' nature of the
intervening context is delt with by production in numbers. Thus in the USA
there are 3% of the population, about 3 million people, of type INTP. From
the collective perspective they are all 'the same' and that group has a
'goal' and if individuals are killed or 'distracted' from their goal it does
not matter since there are so many of them.

Thus the determinism of types is a collective focus, it does not cover what
consciousness can do when interacting as a 'random' agent with a
particular's preferred type.

That said, the methodology for typing used in consciousness is the SAME as
that used in speciesness - self-referencing of a dichotomy. The differences
are that the hardware focus stamps a type universally whereas consciousness
allows for mediation and CHOICE of type/purpose.

This difference is implementable in VR environments by:

(a) identifying a particular type from the range of types as the 'baseline'
and so GENERAL traits etc. This gives the particular perspective.

(b) using a random process to select from the range of types some type to
express, at the moment, a singular perspective. This 'mix' is mappable and
so the 'choice' will in fact come with a degree of determinism but it is the
relation of this to context that can make things interesting - this reflects
positive feedback dynamics where it works brilliantly or else fails
miserably (or is treated as a 'joke')

Our particular nature favours fitting-in and so negative feedback biases.
Our singular nature favours self-autonomy and so setting one's own context -
to push away others, to distance oneself from others and that is a positive
feedback process.

There is a 'bigger picture' going on here from the position of the species.
The use of positive feedback by collectives/individuals acts to increase the
information processing skills of the species. We can interpret the species
as a 'sense' and each of us as specialist elements - this is reflected in,
for example, the development of the sense of taste. The tetrahedron-shaped
meaning space of our sense of taste reflects (a) negative feedback in the
sense working as a whole integrated with the rest and (b) positive feedback
in the form of each 'universal' - sweet, sour, bitter, salt - being clearly
differentiated by distancing themselves from all of the others.

In us the main difference is the geometry changes by the second through
death of unique individuals and the birth of new ones not yet
differentiated, and the coming of age of others in need of 'training' -- and
so one can see the control/flux (aka differentiating/integrating) dynamic at
work.

Chris.