Jan 12, 2020

The meaning of words for rational and irrational types

Rational and irrational types seem to have different relationships to words. Rational types tend to "trust" words spoken by themselves and others, while irrational types "mistrust" them.

In conversation, rational types seem to pay more attention to words and treat them as accurate indicators of what a person really thinks, feels, and experiences. Irrational types seem not to focus much on words and pay attention to something entirely different. They treat words as approximate indicators rather than accurate reflections of subjective reality.

So, when an irrational type communicates with a rational one, the rational type will try to "latch onto" words spoken by the irrational type and will, in the irrational type's perception, misinterpret what the irrational type was trying to say. If the rational type repeats what the irrational type said, they will actually leave out certain words and end up distorting the message.

I suppose the same is true in the other direction, though irrational types seem less inclined to paraphrase and repeating verbal messages since they are seen as less important. Most likely, the irrational type will look for a way to sum up what was said—something like, "it sounds to me like you're saying X" or "so you're saying that X."

What I've written so far is probably obvious to most readers. But what is the reason for this different attitude towards words?

On the surface it would seem that in rational types the brain's verbal faculties are more closely linked to the subconscious mind than in irrational types. In other words, their words indeed are more accurate indicators of their subjective reality. Because of this, they spend much less energy trying to go beyond words, which is a perpetual interest of many irrational types.

With weaker links between their verbal faculties and the subconscious mind, irrationals feel that words are a kind of smokescreen which needs to be seen through in order to understand what's actually going on. It may be hard for them to fathom that rationals could actually mean what they say.

Another possibility is that irrational ("perceiving") functions are centered in the right hemisphere, while rational ("judging") functions are centered in the left, and that language is, by nature, more a tool of judging than of perceiving. If verbal faculties in all types are mostly centered in the left hemisphere, than rational types would, in fact, have greater verbal access to their "accepting" functions (#1, 3, 5, and 7) than irrational types. In irrationals, signals would have to jump from the right to the left hemisphere to be verbalized, creating an experience of distance between reality and verbalizations of reality.

But, of course, I'm a dilettante in brain physiology, and any neuroscientist would say, "well, it's more complicated than that."


1 comment:

Ibrahim Tencer said...

I tend to agree with much of this and I've written about the interpretation of rational/irrational as verbal/nonverbal or interpreted vs. raw information here: https://www.wholesocionics.com/articles/1-Information-Domains

-Ibrahim