1. Do you think that Eysenck’s use of only three types to describe personality functioning is an over-simplification? Why or why not?
Having been exposed to startup culture of west coast, I think it’s a question of value. What’s the problem that’s being solved? These are buckets of classifications of phenomena for the purpose of making predictions, and in that predictability offering ability to know what may or may not lead to what exactly? It’s precisely that what, that I think Eysenck was after. Regarding genius, I don’t think Eysenck was after a what, given his upbringing, taking his history as a case study.
If a psychologist or an organization representative of them, are after a Grand Unified Theory of psychology, then yes, it most likely is an over simplification, which is sort of the point of theories, it is a simplification of phenomena for the aforementioned in the previous paragraph. Regarding the concepts of extraversion/introversion, stability/neuroticism, and impulse control/psychoticism, these do seem to be very useful axis within which many social benefits have arisen. To be able to judge “over-simplification” implies that one knows the complete picture to judge it “over-simplified” and quite frankly I don’t think anyone that has the complete picture would be able to even put that picture into adequate words, since the reality is far more complex, and that scientists are discovering more and more, every day, we’re just scratching the surface, literally on the role of dendritic spines which shunt information and can do, not kidding, boolean calculations.
So in short, it depends on what the goal is, or the stated objective. Science is beautiful, it really is, yet I think models will always be incomplete to some, and good enough for many. Here comes a psychologist to the rescue, Horney and the tyranny of should. I think it is an ethnocentric masculine driven enterprise to think that a theory “should” cover all aspects of a system’s behavior, it might work for machinations, but the human body has evolved over billions of years of stuff, then a spark for life, then evolution, and presto, societies, then fast forward to this response, and the pressing of these keys. I think this question is just a matter of intellectual imperialism laying claim to any and all processes as colonialists staking claim to any and all matters of phenomena. And yes, this was written, why? Because it’s high time psychology itself as a field “eschews all party labels and doctrines” (Ryckman, 2013, p. 241). Just go out there, observe, hypothesize, test, and come back and report, and let’s continue. It’s quite lovely.
Lastly, and this is the easy answer — it fails to account for a complete set of human behaviors already known up until the writing of the book — like, altruism.
2. Why are extraverts more likely to engage in a wider variety of sexual activities than introverts?
According to research by Eysenck’s theory, extraverted functioning presents diminished arousal, and has been correlated to less dopamine carrying action potentials. Extraverted physiology thereby would require more stimulus to activate reward systems most likely, and thus are dubbed “stimulus hungry”. That said, the depletion of dopamine neurotransmitters is more rapid in categories of neural physiology classified as extraverted, this would imply that more frequent changes of positions would be necessary to utilize dopamine pools being drawn on by synapses to preserve action potential “waves” spreading through the Ascending Reticular Activating System (ARAS) in order to stimulate reward behavior etc.
3. Are you primarily introverted or extraverted? How does your personality orientation influence your study behavior and your personal relationships?
Neither actually, because like Wundt said, self is holding back the field of psychology. It’s not useful nor helpful to continue the profligation of “self” when it’s clearly apparent that this is an illusion as other theorists have proposed, and pretty much validated. That said, there is a localized bias toward introversion due to the value of the outputs of it historically and up until this date. The genetics of familial relations seem also predisposed to introversion. That said, extraversion is more work, and now it is done with the same interest as introversion, especially when taking the entire concept of “self” and “other” out of the equation, then taking the valence of it out as well, which is “we” and “they”.
Regarding personality orientation, there might be dissociative personality disorder in the past, as that is on the paternal side, and traumatic experiences occurred when I was young. I do prefer stability in sensory fields while studying, however music is used for entrainment correlated to the material that is being studied. For example right now, ambient electronic is playing. In some cases the lack of music is more helpful, and in some cases music is helpful, it depends on the scene being set for deeper penetration into neural connectivity, activating more action potentials across deeply interdisciplinary schemas and prototypes. I would equate this with “groking”, and after reading about Eysenck’s research of genius, this now makes perfect sense, because the dopamine pools are being managed for optimum replenishment in situations where maximum learning is being conditioned classically, operantly, and yes, by Bandura’s Vicarious Learning just reading about the very psychologists in the book set about imagination of their behaviors.
Regarding personal relationships, in hindsight, it appears that the diminishment of “self”, “other”, “we”, “they”, “brand”, and “herd” concepts has provided maximum benefit to both utilitarian and hedonic behavioral expressions. Now that I think of it, this seems to correlate well possibly with introverted and extroverted functions. For example, my two partners have departed to go to a bar, socially distanced, and I know their drive behavior moves toward these situations and after sufficient stimulation, they return. The reality is they don’t belong to me, because “me” is artificial, and so is “they”. It’s like Rotter said it was, and taken to heart I think requires letting go of the very thing that makes us, not human, but mechanical. Congnitions are like street signs, and the most valuable street sign? Helps. I don’t have a personality orientation, I find orientations, are just like the first question… variable, and comes in fixed interval, variable interval, fixed ratio, and variable ratio reinforcements. The trick is how to remain in the absolute middle to see the entire field at play without falling into any particular field — and that is meditation, going beyond conditioning.
Now then… this is where the proverbial “devas” step back, look at what was written and share this joy with partners and studies, for the purpose of resolving suffering in the world, rather than picking and choosing who to resolve it for, and rather than forcing preconceived notions of models upon a neural network that is, by very definition… superpositionally , and that’s called the Cognitive Superpositionality Theory, based on well, every bit of the science in this book, it all “fits” so well.
4. Do you see any problems with Eysenck’s proposed meritocracy in selecting individuals for higher educational opportunities? How would you ensure equal treatment for everyone, yet still make sure that society had the most competent people in the various occupations?
Not really, that’s Eysenck’s operational definition that is useful to remember when considering his other theories, because that context probably is useful in understanding the theories in more detail. It does however, come to issue most likely, when operationalizing his theories out in public, because the function of perceptions of merit in ordering governance, is fraught with many different opinions on what merit is and isn’t, and it most likely falls in line with perceptions of cultural perspectives, and that therein lies the problem. How does one have meritocracy when there are varying measures of merit? For example Eysenck’s operational definition relates to ability level, though I’m curious what he meant by ability level. What is ability, because now that sounds suspiciously “ableist”? Then there’s the whole issue of the percept that one or a stereotype may call out that a person or group may be not be able, when that person or group actually is.
The other problem is, who makes the selections, are they not biased in their thought of what merit is and isn’t too? I think there are arguments against meritocracy, however overall when stepping back, fiat currency is a currency based on the perception of debt, and notes representing this debt are traded, and what’s that debt for? Oh yes, the perception of value of goods or services provided, and what’s another measure of value, indeed… merit where the etymology of merit fits like a glove. So it’s not surprising that the very reality of meritocracy is traded daily in wages and income matched to the perceived value of one’s work vs. another.
How would I ensure equal treatment? Well, I think that’s the problem. It’s a question of where the most value is in the question, right there in the question. The problem is in “make sure”, that’s another clever cover for Tyranny of Should, it’s all over linguistic conditioning. It’s in the very language, unequal cognitions are being marketed, traded, and compounded; it’s baked right into language (Sapir-Whorf), earth is being “selfed” to death. I think that the cognitive play of the visio-spatial scratchpad and phonological loop is iterating subtle models; conditioning and maintaining conditioning through observational modeling. Regarding competence… that’s their decision, not mine – I think prior psychological theories are onto something regarding doing more harm than good trying to enforce compliance.
The planet is suffering tremendously, drastically, just fix it. Get the conceits out of the way, and fix the co-dependent relationship with self that’s consuming more than reasonable resources, and it’s conceit that’s in the way, it really is.
REFERENCES
Ryckman, R. M. (2013). Theories of personality (10th ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning. p. 261.