THE ESSENCE OF type development is the development of perception and judgment and of appropriate ways to use them. Growing up is much easier with adequate perception and adequate judgment. By definition, people with adequate perception see the relevant aspects of any situation; if they also have adequate judgment, they make good decisions and carry them out. Whatever problems young people may face, adequate perception and judgment make it possible to face the problems in a mature and creditable manner It is worthwhile, then, to consider how type theory and type research may contribute to the development of these faculties.
Types differ fundamentally in the kind of perception and the kind of judgment they can best develop. These preferences are inborn and no attempt should be made to reverse them; otherwise development may be blocked. Knowledge of type should be used to encourage and to increase opportunities for members of each type so they can develop in their own directions to the peak of their own powers.
Type research has shown that the types differ in their interests, values, and needs. They learn in different ways, cherish different ambitions, and respond to different rewards. The present system of public education succeeds with particular types but fails to bring many students to a satisfactory state of maturity.
The possible effects of research and type theory on fostering maturity can be considered from two lines of attack. One is to research what motivates the different types in practical situations. The more that is known about what matters to each type, the easier it is to predict which objectives will most fully enlist their energies in the growing-up years. The second is to study the normal course of type development from babyhood through adulthood, in order to discover what circumstances enhance the development of perception and judgment.
Van der Hoop’s discussion of the stages of type development does not include the ages at which they may be expected to occur.
In every type there is a simple form, in which the differentiation of the prevailing function has only just begun, and its modes of adaptation are still being tentatively tried out, although a clear preference for typical forms of adaptation can already be observed. At a later stage the dominating function has found its forms, controlling these with great assurance. Anything which is not in accord is, at this stage, suppressed. With a few people there follows a still further stage, in which the other functions are permitted more development, to compensate for any one-sidedness, and the pronounced typical picture is again modified to some extent by the unfolding of a fuller and richer expression of human nature. (1939, p. 92)
The last stage comes only to people who live their type fully but continue growing. Through the completeness of their type development, they come face to face with the inevitable deficits of their particular type. Without abandoning the values of their best-developed processes, they can use their self-understanding to recognize and cultivate the values of the previously neglected third and fourth processes. Thus, they ultimately transcend their type. This is admirable, but if it is attempted before the person has achieved full development of the best two processes, it may merely divert the person from that development and have a negative effect.
Type development starts at a very early age. The hypothesis is that type is inborn, an innate predisposition like rightor left-handedness, but the successful development of type can be greatly helped or hindered by environment from the beginning.
Probably the most deeply rooted preference, and the one that appears earliest, is that for extraversion or introversion. Even an infant may show a decided bias in favor of the sociable or the contemplative life. In three-year-old twin sisters whose environment has always been identical though the twins are not, the difference between the extravert and the introvert may be obvious to the most casual beholder. Their needs will be different, too. The extravert needs plenty of action, people, variety, conversation, and opportunity to make a satisfying amount of noise. She is a part of all that she has met, and her grasp of the world depends on how much of it she has met. The introvert can use the same things, but not in such quantity. Too much togetherness leaves her drained. She needs a place where she can be alone and quietly concentrate on what interests her. For her sense of security, she needs to be told about the underlying principles that hold the world together, even when her parents think she is much too young to understand. She will be much more at home in the world that seems to be held together, rather than a world that seems to lie around in unrelated pieces.
The TF preference, and the resulting family conflicts, can also show up at a very early age. A six-year-old feeling type said in dismay after a week’s visit from a five-year-old thinker, “He doesn’t care about pleasing, does he?” Basically, he does not. He has to have reasons. The young thinker, even at two years old, will do things for reasons but sees no point in doing them for love. The young feeling type will do things for the sake of pleasing but is unmoved by logic. To be influenced, thinking types and feeling types must be motivated by something meaningful to their own type. If no one shows appreciation of young extraverted feeling types, they may behave obnoxiously just to get a reaction so they can be in contact with others. If no one gives young thinkers reasons to consider, their thinking will spend itself largely in dissent and be labeled negativism.
The SN preference can show up early, too. The sensing child is enchanted with what is; the intuitive with what is not, or at least not yet. “The Little Man Who Wasn’t There” is a strictly intuitive conception. Imaginative play, fairy tales, fiction of all sorts, fascinating new words hoarded away with half-guessed meanings for future delight—these nourish the intuitive child’s zest and wonder. But the intuitive child born into a very matter-of-fact family, who has no time for books and no talk about anything except obvious realities, will go half-fed.
Sensing children vastly prefer actuality. They get satisfaction out of “really” cooking or tinkering like their parents and are tirelessly interested in things that can be touched and handled, taken apart and put back together, but not at all in things that seem to have no existence except in words or other symbols. Sensing children are likely to dismiss Mother Goose as silly when they ascertain that the cow did not, in fact, jump over the moon.
By the time children reach seventh grade, their types can be identified with a useful degree of accuracy by the Type Indicator. From then on, the degree of type development prevailing in a group can be roughly assessed by using the split-half reliability of the Type Indicator scores. Each scale is split into equivalent halves and the results from the two halves are compared. The more consistently the responses are governed by type, the greater will be the agreement between the halves and the higher the reliability.
Although no direct criterion of maturity is available, the split-half reliabilities, taken as reflecting a sample’s general level of type development, can be used to compare the relationship between type development and a particular indirect indicator of maturity. This approach was used in studying the records of three junior-high samples, which differed widely in achievement. Because maturity is an important factor in achievement, the three samples probably represented three levels of maturity. The groups were similar in having an above-average IQ, and on EI and JP, they showed average reliabilities equal to those of college-prep twelfth-graders, which suggests that the junior-high students had EI and JP preferences as well established as older students able to do college-prep work.
On SN and TF, however, the reliabilities for the three groups varied in an interesting way. The first group, potentially collegebound seventh graders with IQ above 107, had markedly lower reliabilities on SN and TF than the group of twelfth-graders. This suggests that the perceptive process and the judging process are not ordinarily as well developed in seventh-graders as they will be five years later.
The second and third groups had higher IQs. The second group consisted of gifted students (IQ of 120 and above) in the seventh to ninth grades, with very high achievement. Their reliabilities on both SN and TF were as high as those of the group of twelfth-graders. This suggests that they had attained an early development of both perception and judgment.
An alternative explanation is that the second group might have higher SN and TF reliabilities simply because of their higher IQ, but this explanation is negated by the evidence of the third group. The third group was composed of underachieving eighth-grade boys with IQ above 120. They produced a very low reliability on TF—much lower than that for the first group, the potentially collegebound seventh graders. The very low reliability on TF suggests a marked immaturity of the judging process, that is, a deficit of judgment.
It is reasonable that perception and judgment should be harder to develop than mere attitudes and that judgment often seems to be the hardest part of growing up. The first group, the regular seventh-graders, presumably had reached a level of perception and judgment that was normal for their age and intelligence. The gifted students who made up the second group gave evidence of more than routine maturity of perception and judgment when all members of the group scored high on all the standard achievement tests they took; such results do not automatically follow from a high IQ but require a superior accomplishment of a number of requirements. The third group, the underachieving eighth-grade boys, failed to meet even those requirements that were well within their abilities and thereby gave evidence of less than routine maturity.
This evidence suggests that the Type Indicator split-half reliabilities on SN and TF, when taken as a measure of the average maturity of perception and judgment in a group, could be used in determining which curricula and teaching methods contribute most to growing up.
The evidence also indicates that there are wide differences in type development between groups of effective people and groups of ineffective people and that these differences can be detected as early as seventh grade.
Some of the reasons for such differences are examined in the following chapters.