I generally stay away from political topics, because...okay, you can guess why. I don't handle those well.
I have also answered Myers-Briggs questions by noting that MBTI results are not stable over time. Other than the I-E, which holds up somewhat, you might score entirely differently 3 months from now - or even 24 hours from now. Therefore, the test doesn't tell you anything. It's just another one of those ways of dividing human personalities into four groups that we love so much.* I do answer IQ questions, but a lot of people want to put in contrast-with-EQ questions, and I have to tell them that EQ is not really a thing. There are people skills in the world, and they have names: getting along, managing, charisma, leadership, understanding, kindness, manipulation, influence, tact. They don't measure well and they certainly don't cluster together and measure any better. People just want to shove that Quotient aspect in there in a sort of scientific envy, that they have something valuable as well, maybe even more valuable than IQ. Of course you do. Don't be so touchy about it.
So tonight's question was "Is increasing EQ beneficial to an INTJ - even though the INTJ might resist?" I think it's safer if I just don't answer. Though I am tempted.
*The astrological Fire/Air/Earth/Water; the four humors Melancholy/Sanguine/Phlegmatic/Choleric; Eysenck; Personality Style Inventory; Kretschmer; gold/blue/green/red. Not by accident, but by correct intuition of human nature, or at least Western Culture, did JK Rowling's sorting hat divide the world up into exactly four groups. At least the Enneagram has eleven (or is it nine?) possibles. Credit for breaking out of the mold anyway.
EQ probably isn't well defined, but what would you call the difficulty in reading people that Aspies have?
ReplyDeleteIt's good to know I shouldn't answer any Quora questions.
ReplyDeleteIQ turns out to be something you can usefully assign a number to, because it's a fairly straightforward capability along an identifiable spectrum with concrete relevance to a certain kind of performance with high social value. EQ isn't. It's like the difference between measuring the speed of a baseball pitch and trying to quantify what makes a superb ballet dancer or composer. Not everything important can usefully be assigned a numerical score, which doesn't mean that things which can be assigned a numerical score are meaningless.
ReplyDeleteIt's an intelligence quotient. It's not a moral superiority quotient or a human value quotient or even a number that tells you whether you'll be successful selling industrial plumbing supplies or happy in your marriage or blessed with clever children who adore you.
The Chinese have five elements (earth, air, fire, water, metal). Not sure why. But I always found their Zodiac to be a better fit than the Western one, which never struck me as even slightly insightful. Maybe it's just older, and thus has a wider field of data about human nature from which to work.
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