Personality Types mapped to Positions on Origins: Student Survey Results

This is a guest post by Marlowe C. Embree. Marlowe teaches psychology at the University of Wisconsin Colleges and published the 7-part series The Social Psychology of the Origins Debate last fall. He is currently conducting some original research on whether personality differences affect a person’s conclusions regarding creation and evolution, and how likely they are to change their views. This post is the second in a 3-part series where Marlowe shares some of the findings of his research.

In my first post, I presented some introductory data relating to the prevalence among college students of four different views of origins (creationism, theistic evolution, secular evolution, and “other”). In this post, I will address the question of personality type and its possible influence on which view a given student might choose to adopt.

In reviewing the material below, a few significant points should be clearly understood. My research should not be construed as an attempt to dismiss the validity of any of the views of origins on the grounds that they are in some way a mere artifact of personality. Psychological research can never, within its own proper universe of discourse, pass judgment on the validity of a person’s ideas; what it can do is elucidate reasons why different people have a tendency to gravitate to different views. Social psychologists speak of the Verstehen-Erklären distinction to distinguish between an attempt to understand something “from the inside” (sympathetically or emically) and an attempt to explain away something “from the outside” (critically or etically). Philosophically and personally, my sympathies are with the former. Those who seek to use my work to disparage or discredit the worldview perspectives of others have completely missed the spirit of my research.

A) Personality Diversity and Cognitive Styles

Many different factors likely influence the viewpoint an individual comes to hold on the origins debate, including but not limited to cultural socialization, religious or nonreligious self-identification, and level and type of education, just to name a few. One potential influence that, to date, has not been extensively explored has to do with personality differences and the possible link between these differences and variations in information processing and cognitive styles. My research examines potential relationships between personality diversity, as viewed from a Jungian perspective and operationalized by means of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, and student views of the origins debate.

a. Background on the Jungian Model
Jung proposed that four irreducible functions underlie all mental activity. In the standard Myers-Briggs terminology, they are known as Sensing (S), iNtuition (N), Thinking (T), and Feeling (F).

Both Sensing and iNtuition are means of gathering information about the world without otherwise analyzing or prioritizing it. As such, they are opposing forms of Perceiving (P). Sensing involves a here-and-now, observant focus on present realities as they present themselves to the five senses; hence, individuals who emphasize Sensing as their means of information-gathering tend to become practical, detail-minded, concrete, and application-oriented. In contrast, iNtuition involves a broad-brush, conceptual or imaginative focus on future possibilities as they arise from the unconscious mind or by means of a “sixth sense”; hence, individuals who prefer iNtuition are likely to become creative, big-picture, abstract, and theory-oriented.

Once information is gathered, it can be evaluated or assessed using either of two so-called Judging (J) functions, either Thinking or Feeling. Thinking involves an impersonal, objective analysis with a focus on causes and effects, leading to an orientation among those who prefer Thinking that is calm, consistent, logical, and efficient. Feeling, on the other hand, involves a personal, subjective assessment focused on personal and collective values, producing among those who prefer Feeling a style that is sensitive, individualizing, empathic, and harmony-seeking. However, it should be carefully noted that Thinking does not mean intellect (there are no correlations between T-F and IQ, for instance) and Feeling does not have emotion (both Ts and Fs have emotions, but manage them differently).

Each of these functions can be expressed either in an outward-looking, Extraverted fashion or an inward-looking, Introverted manner, and one of these two modes dominates the entire personality. Finally, a person can either be drawn to closure and structure (a so-called Judging type) or to openness and flexibility (a so-called Perceiving type) in the conduct of their outer lives. Thus, the four possible preferences (E or I, S or N, T or F, J or P) together yield 16 possible psychological types (e.g., INFP). The relative prevalence of the sixteen psychological types in my research sample is presented in Table 3. Isabel Briggs Myers and others have confirmed that liberal arts students tend to be disproportionately NF, so this type distribution is not surprising.

b. Current Consensus of relationship between Personality Types and Religion
The existing type literature strongly suggests a consistent relationship between Feeling and religion (formal citations are not provided in this overview, but are readily available upon request). Most religious leaders and most self-identified religious persons have a higher probability of a Feeling preference than the general population, whereas secularists tend to prefer Thinking. The Sensing-iNtuition preference appears to relate to the conservative-liberal disparity within religious circles, with Sensing types more likely to adhere to conservative forms of religion and iNtutive types more likely to identify with liberal forms. Thus, the main hypotheses of this study refer to the four so-called functional combinations (Sensing-Thinking, Sensing-Feeling, iNtution-Thinking, and iNtuition-Feeling). It would be expected that creationists would be disproportionately SF, theistic evolutionists disproportionately NF (and perhaps NT), and secular evolutionists disproportionately ST (and perhaps NT).

B) Relationship between Personality Type and Attitudes to Origins: Initial Results

The Thinking-Feeling and Judging-Perceiving dimensions yielded statistically significant differences among the four worldview groups (see Table 4).

CR and TE respondents were statistically higher in Feeling, and SE and OT respondents higher in Thinking, suggesting that theists vs. nontheists utilize strikingly different ways of turning inputs (data) into conclusions. This may suggest an underlying genetic propensity to view the world in either personal or impersonal ways.

CR and SE respondents, though opposite in many respects, were statistically higher in Judging, while TE and OT respondents were higher in Perceiving. This makes sense given that Judgers seek closure and certainty (whether theistic or atheistic certainty) that might preclude seeing any value in their opponents’ positions, while Perceivers seek openness and flexibility (which might include a desire to find value in both sides of a debate or a tendency to presume that no simple answers can be correct).

By a Self-Selection Ratio (SSR) criterion (a common comparative statistic utilized in typological research), each worldview was characteristically adopted by different types (see Table 5). Creationists are most likely to be ISFJ or ESFJ, among the most traditional and group-minded of the types. Secular evolutionists are most likely to be INTJ or ENTJ, among the most iconoclastic and individualistic of the types. Theistic evolutionists are most likely to be ISFP or INFP, among the most tender-minded and harmony-seeking of the types. Thus, individuals’ core motives may shape their worldview preferences in interesting ways.

C) Next Post

This research may suggest that some (by no means all!) cultural disputes about origins may reflect “arguments about the shape of the table”, in which each disputant defaults to his or her dominant cognitive posture (as determined by her/his personality type). This may encourage a greater willingness to find value in the ideas of others with whom one disagrees, and may suggest a way to disagree more respectfully. Indeed, one goal of my research is to demonstrate that what appear to be disputes about specific issues are often meta-disputes in disguise, in which each party is really defending his or her own characteristic mental process. If the real issue is one of process (how one thinks), apparent disputes about content (what one thinks) will be permanently unresolvable. My last post will address questions about the relationships between mental process and mental content among students.