A question to the personality theorists… :-)
WARNING – the following blog entry contains dangerous tongue-in-cheek HUMOR. If you are known to be humorless (definition 1), please stop reading now. I did not include much self-deprecating humor, so those of you who do not understand that type of humor (you know who you are!) can proceed safely 
without feeling the need to attack the author.
“Did the tendency to form rapid judgments convey survival value to “linear thinkers” during evolution, resulting in the co-selection of these traits?”
(Or… was the strongly judging personality type co-selected with some other trait(s) of linear thinkers, e.g., hair color or shoe size? Or, was there some other process going on…?)
This interdisciplinary question crossed my mind (believe it or not!) on the way to an assignment last week. Since then, a few preliminary searches about the NATURAL selection of personality types have come up empty. The “unnatural selection” of personality types, e.g., by personality cloning in corporations, has received more study, showing the increased frequency of the ESTJ Myers-Briggs type as one climbs the corporate ladder. BTW, the organizational form most preferred by ESTJs is “bureaucracy.”
I have read that Myers Briggs “Sensing” types (70% of the general population! Wow!) like to “Go step by step” and are “Practical and literal,” that “Thinking” types (around 50%) “Analyze it,” “Organize it,” and “Criticize it,” and that “Judging” types (slight majority) “Prefer to live life in a planned way” (Amazingly, we still have a lot of these in California.),”Prefer an orderly way,” and make and use lists. Some of these types sound pretty linear to me.
Regular readers of this blog probably have guessed by now that I am not a linear thinker. I am what some people (linear thinkers? 😉 ) call a “random” (others also, mercifully, “global”) thinker, but it is, of course, not random but more of a “network” type of thinking. To me, the thinking is exemplified in the “Connections” documentary TV series that was created and narrated by science historian James Burke, which took an interdisciplinary approach to demonstrate how various discoveries, scientific achievements, and historical world events were interrelated and interconnected.
I recall my surprise when one of my past managers could not INFER the logical conclusion of a series of statements in a paragraph and asked me to re-write the paragraph. I went back to my desk, added one final sentence “spelling out” the (obvious) conclusion, and returned it to him two minutes later. He was “surprised that such a small change improved the paragraph so much!” Since then, I have “spelled out” conclusions for the benefit of folks who cannot draw inferences. Regrettably, it does not affect their salaries or abilities to be promoted.
But I digress….
The ability to come to quick and decisive judgments (or “jump to conclusions” (1, 2) ) MAY have had REAL SURVIVAL VALUE in human history (and prehistory), especially in linear thinkers, whose (slow, methodical) step-by-step approach to the world may have proved detrimental in an ancient world of “(run/fight)-or-be-eaten” dangers. In such a world, there would have been real biological selective pressure for jumping to the RIGHT conclusion, because those who jumped to the WRONG conclusion may not have gotten to pass their genes to the next generation.
Nowadays, certain organizations that attract highly-skilled linear thinkers (military, police and fire, etc.) practice extensive TRAINING (sadly, Mr. Lysenko (1), not inherited), which cuts response time and makes reactions to stimuli almost a reflex. You hear this described sometimes as “in this sort of (dangerous) situation, the training kicks in.” In a true reflex arc, sensory neurons do not pass directly into the brain but synapse in the spinal cord, allowing relatively quick action without the delay of routing signals through the brain, although the brain is informed while the reflex action is in process.
But what about corporations, governments, and other bureaucracies…? Does the ability to make “snap judgments” make biological sense anymore, in these highly protected and sheltered environments?
Partially (maybe)….
Without the ability to come to snap judgments, some aspects of business might never be accomplished (especially with plodding linear thinking and the necessary [for these types] combative argument). And face it, many decisions made in business are relatively unimportant. But SOME ARE NOT…. There does not appear to be any natural selection for coming to the RIGHT snap judgment anymore! The WRONG snap judgments are no longer punished, but merely covered up or blamed on a scapegoat. (Scapegoating is prevalent is some of these personality types, and “…scapegoating in various types of organization is not only permitted but an essential feature of organizational process….”) And, darn it, those linear thinkers making WRONG snap judgments aren’t eaten by carnivores anymore….
The plodding thinking of bureaucratic linear thinkers was lampooned by the writer, Douglas Adams, in his creation of the Vogons in his five-part “trilogy” The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Most of us meet “Vogons” every day and suffer their effects even more frequently.
It is probably distressing to many of us to think in evolutionary time frames for the genetic elimination of some of the more odious of these personalities. But short of introducing higher carnivores into their ecosystem, there seems to be little that we can do.
-Bill at
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