ANYONE PREFERRING SENSING to intuition is interested primarily in actualities; anyone preferring intuition to sensing is mainly interested in possibilities.
This preference is entirely independent of the EI preference. Intuitives do not have to be introverts. Their possibilities can be external possibilities, pursued in the outer world of people and things. Sensing types do not have to be extraverts. They can be just as matter-of-fact in the world of ideas.
The sensing types, by definition, depend on their five senses for perception. Whatever comes directly from the senses is part of the sensing types’ own experience and is therefore trustworthy. What comes from other people indirectly through the spoken or written word is less trustworthy. Words are merely symbols that have to be translated into reality before they mean anything, and therefore they carry less conviction than experience.
The intuitives are comparatively uninterested in sensory reports of things as they are. Instead, intuitives listen for the intuitions that come up from their unconscious with enticing visions of possibilities. As stated earlier, these contributions from the unconscious processes vary from the merest masculine “hunch” and “woman’s intuition,” through the whole range of original ideas, projects, enterprises, and inventions, to the crowning examples of creative art, religious inspiration, and scientific discovery.
The common factor in all these manifestations of intuition is a sort of ski jump—a soaring take-off from the known and established, ending in a swooping arrival at an advanced point, with the intervening steps apparently left out. Those steps are not really left out, of course; they are performed in and by the unconscious, often with extraordinary speed, and the result of the unconscious processes pops into the conscious mind with an effect of inspiration and certainty. To the intuitives, these inspirations are the breath of life. The only fields that interest intuitives are those that give inspiration some play. They abhor the routine because it leaves nothing for inspiration to accomplish.
Thus the innovator, the pioneer in thought or action, is likely to be an intuitive. In the early days of colonial America, the appeal of the New World’s possibilities were probably felt so much more strongly by intuitives than by sensing types that it introduced a potent factor of selection. If the American colonies (and after them the Dominions) drew off a disproportionate share of the intuitives and left an unusually large majority of sensing types in England, some of the commonly attributed national characteristics might be explained. The solidity, conservatism, and dogged patience of the English, their love of custom and tradition, their unhurried addiction to afternoon tea and the long weekend belong to the sensing types, who know how to accept and value their world as it is. Our “American individualism,” “Yankee ingenuity,” and cult of “bigger and better” belong just as surely to the intuitives with their enthusiasm for what is just around the corner. The direction that the intuitives have imparted to our national life does not, however, mean that they are in the majority. Even in the United States the intuitives seem to make up only about one-fourth or less of the general population.
The proportion of intuitives varies widely from one educational level to another. It is particularly low among students in vocational and general high school courses, and at least twice as high in academic high school classes, and still higher in college, especially in very selective colleges. A sample of National Merit Finalists was 83 percent intuitive. (To compare various samples, see Chapter 3, Figures 3–23.) The preference for intuition appears to conduce to the pursuit of higher education, but the difference may be as much in interest as aptitude.
Whether an applicant is admitted to a given college may seem to rest entirely on the admissions committee’s evaluation of the student’s record, including grades and scholastic aptitude scores. Actually, for twelve years, the student has been casting a silent, unconscious vote whether to go to that or any other college. For example, after studying as hard as possible but without interest in academics, a student might not want four more years of school. This sentiment would be reflected in the student’s grades. On the average, sensing children have less scholastic interest than intuitive children. (What might be done about this tendency is discussed in Chapter 13.)
Sensing children also make lower scores on the average than intuitive children on intelligence tests and scholastic aptitude tests. It would be grossly mistaken but easy to conclude that sensing types are less “intelligent”; such tests do not take into account the legitimate choice between two rival techniques for the application of intelligence to life.
The sensing child’s native language is the reality spoken by the senses. The intuitive’s native language is the word, the metaphor, the symbol, spoken by the unconscious. Most mental tests are of necessity couched in the intuitive’s language. The sensing child has more translating to do, and translating takes time.
Although intelligence tests are usually speed tests for the sake of convenience, it is debatable whether speed has any rightful place in the basic concept of intelligence. Intuitives tend to define intelligence as “quickness of understanding” and so prejudge the case in their own favor, for intuition is very quick. The intuitive’s technique is a lightning referral of the problem to the unconscious, which works very rapidly, and an immediate pounce upon the answer.
The sensing types are not in such close communication with their unconscious. They do not trust an answer that suddenly appears. They do not think it prudent to pounce. They tend to define intelligence as “soundness of understanding,” a sure and solid agreement of conclusions with facts; and how is that possible until the facts have been considered? Therefore in reaching a conclusion they want to make sure of its soundness, like an engineer examining a bridge before deciding how much weight it can safely bear. They will not skim in reading, and they hate to have people skim in conversation. Believing that matters inferred are not as reliable as matters explicitly stated, they are annoyed when you leave things to their imagination. (Intuitives are often annoyed—if not actually bored—when you do not.)
Thus, a sensing child taking an intelligence test tends to read each question slowly and thoughtfully several times and, of course, answers fewer questions than the intuitive. Sensing people confirm this. An ISFJ, working in a personnel office that used the Type Indicator, was asked about her own technique for taking tests. She said, “Oh, I always read a question three or four times. I have to!” She does not have to in order to understand, but she does have to in order to be satisfied that she understands. So she goes slowly, and her slowness is the drawback. Some able sensing people manage to sacrifice their natural deliberation in taking tests, but it goes against their grain. An ISTJ psychologist, who had had an unbroken series of surprisingly low test scores until he came to his Graduate Record Exams, recalls he was so disgusted with his performance that he decided he could do no worse if he “raced through like an idiot.” For the first time in his life, he scored high.
The choice between the two rival techniques of perception has a profound effect upon school work from the very start. Sensing children just out of kindergarten, with no instinct for symbols, are not likely to divine for themselves that a letter means anything beyond what it obviously is—a shape on a page. If nobody explains to them what it means, they may still be seeing shapes on a page long after the intuitive children are seeing sounds, words, and meanings; and when they begin to read, they will seldom read for pleasure until they find a book containing facts they want to know.
Often the sensing children are equally betrayed in the field of arithmetic. Before they start school, they need to get a soundly quantitative notion of number so that they know threeness as a quality for which three is a handy symbol; otherwise, in too many schools they will learn that “three” is a squiggle on the blackboard. They have a good eye and they learn their squiggles thoroughly. Presently they are told that when a twisted line called two appears beneath another shape called three, they must remember to put at the bottom a more complicated figure called five. They generally have a good memory, and they learn that. With flashcards and much drill, they learn by rote all the “addition facts” and “subtraction facts” about squiggles, but there is nothing inherent in the learning to make them suspect that the twisted lines mean anything. For many of these children, two-plus-three is entirely different from threeplus-two, and has to be learned separately.
The sensing children are accurate in simple computations as a rule, because they are more careful than the intuitives; but when they reach algebra or problems presented in words, many of them have difficulty in seeing what to compute. One twelve-year-old girl said of a percentage problem, “Here! I’ve done it all three ways, but I don’t know which is right!” Most of the intuitive children, who understand symbols, recognize the meaning of figures in the beginning and are ready to work on the problems without too much difficulty. The contrast can make the sensing children feel stupid, which is discouraging.
Sensing types, of course, are not stupid at all—but someone should have shown them the significance of numbers before they were six years old. If they are given the meaning of numbers in a form that they comprehend from the start so that they understand what they are doing, they will enjoy the fact that two-plus-two can be depended on to make four. They may even want to make a lifework of dealing with figures. Sensing types are sound and accurate and enjoy exactitude, so they make fine accountants, payroll administrators, navigators, and statisticians.
For sensing children to exercise their special gift of realism, they must have access to the facts and time to assimilate them. Whereas the intuitive children like to learn by insight, the sensing children prefer to learn by familiarization. The sensing types are most likely to shine in courses involving many solid facts, like history, geography, civics, or biology. They are at a corresponding disadvantage in subjects based on general principles. Often the trouble may be simply that the teacher has been too brief and abstract in referring to the principles and has passed over them so quickly that the sensing students have not had time to relate them to the facts. Physics, for example, can be a nightmare to the factually minded.
One case in point may be cited for its irony. An earnest and hardworking “B” student who wanted to be a doctor and was an excellent type for it, an ISFJ, flunked a pre-medical course because he could not keep up in physics with the engineers. Now he is a doctor and his patients do not care about the speed of his diagnosis, so long as it is sound. The very reliance upon sensing that made physics difficult is useful now. He is dealing with immediate realities—the rhythm of a heartbeat, the sound of breathing, the shade of flush or pallor—the myriad details a doctor must note and weigh. Touch, sight, and hearing must be his ultimate guides in applying either his own experience or the wisdom of his books. Research medicine, the medical school faculties, and the complex specialties need the intuitives; but as family doctors the sensing types come into their own, and their aptitude for physics has little if anything to do with their competence. Johns Hopkins University long ago recognized this discrepancy and instituted a special physics course for premedical students. The regular course had been disqualifying valued students.
When the time comes that educators take into account the SN preference and try to meet the divergent needs of students, beginning with kindergartners, there will be a much happier and more effective use of human resources. Young realists will no longer be penalized for their reliance on direct observation and first-hand experience—as Charles Darwin was in his boyhood, when his classical schoolmasters rated him below average in mental power.
A summary of the contrasting traits resulting from the SN preference is given here in parallel columns in Figure 25. These traits are most evident in the EP types, whose perceptive process is both extraverted and dominant and consequently most visible and least restrained. When the perceptive process is merely the auxiliary, it is subordinate to the judgment of the dominant process, and its manifestations tend to be more moderate.
Intuitive Types | |
Face life observantly, craving enjoyment. | Face life expectantly, craving inspiration. |
Admit to consciousness every sense impression and are intensely aware of the external environment; they are observant at the expense of imagination. | Admit fully to consciousness only the sense impressions related to the current inspiration; they are imaginative at the expense of observation. |
Are by nature pleasure lovers and consumers, loving life as it is and having a great capacity for enjoyment; they are in general contented. | Are by nature initiators, inventors, and promoters; having no taste for life as it is, and small capacity for living as it is, and small capacity for living in and enjoying the present, they are generally restless. |
Desiring chiefly to possess and enjoy, and being very observant, they are imitative, wanting to have what other people have and to do what other people do, and are very dependent upon their physical surroundings. | Desiring chiefly opportunities and possibilities, and being very imaginative, they are inventive and original, quite indifferent to what other people have and do, and are very independent of their physical surroundings. |
Dislike intensely any and every occupation that requires the suppression of sensing, and are most reluctant to sacrifice present enjoyment to future gain or good. | Dislike intensely any and every occupation that necessitates sustained concentration on sensing, and are willing to sacrifice the present to a large extent since they neither live in it nor particularly enjoy it. |
Prefer the art of living in the present to the satisfactions of enterprise and achievement. | Prefer the joy of enterprise and achievement and pay little or no attention to the art of living in the present. |
Contribute to the public welfare by their support of every form of enjoyment and recreation, and every variety of comfort, luxury, and beauty. | Contribute to the public welfare by their inventiveness, initiative, enterprise, and powers of inspired leadership in every direction of human interest. |
Are always in danger of being frivolous, unless balance is attained through development of a judging process. | Are always in danger of being fickle, changeable, and lacking in persistence, unless balance is attained through development of a judging process. |