Peter Geyer
Type Coaching and Training

Peripatetic Peter Geyer attended the second Multicultural Research Symposium on Type and Culture held at the University of Hawai’i from January 5-7,1996. Here are his impressions, experiences and evaluations.

When I desire company, I’ll leave my footprints in the sand by a wreckless sea
Hoping that you’ll come to me

And we’ll explore what might have been, leave the shore and give this tired old world a spin
When my ship will come in............

Van Dyke Parks: Sail Away (1995)

It may sound silly to go to Hawai’i during an Australian summer, but with perhaps the mildest Melbourne New Year on record, it didn’t seem such a bad idea, even given the High Season rates. The prospect of learning about some aspects of Type and Culture, meeting some familiar faces and encountering new ones made the journey enticing and a little intriguing. Hawai’i is an appropriate place for an investigation into Type and Culture: the community itself is ethnically diverse and the East-West Center at the University of Hawai’I has an impressive international reputation in cultural studies , as well as being host to the first Symposium on Type and Culture three years previously for which there is an excellent Proceedings available.

Rocky sea view - Oahu

One of the hardest things to do in getting to Hawai’i is to get out of Australia if you’re not from Sydney. Overall it took 4 to 5 hours between arrival at Melbourne Airport ant eventual takeoff from Sydney. Our national carrier didn’t do well on the ground; however their service was exemplary in the air.

Arriving in Hawai’i also gives the prospect of confronting US Immigration and Customs, a group of people who seem to have a unique brand customer service and a decided contrast to Hawai’ian friendliness and American friendliness overall. An early morning arrival at my Honolulu Hotel gave me time to settle in and sleep before looking around. I have a full day before the Symposium starts.

Buildings and breakwater

I prefer to walk rather than take organised transport, a tendency which continually astounds Americans I meet. However, this gives me an opportunity to go where I want (sometimes not a good idea) and also to directly experience what locals do. My long walk takes me to favourite places involving CDs (I recommend Brian Wilson and Van Dyke Parks’ Orange Crate Art) and books (Try Paracelsus, as edited by Jolande Jacobi), an excellent restaurant with typical American enthusiasm (I enjoyed the marlin) and a stroll near the sea not too far from Pearl Harbor. The University of Hawai’i at Manoa is reputedly walking distance from the centre of Honolulu and I test this out in the new morning, taking a longer way and arriving slightly late but in time to catch Mary McCaulley’s opening remarks. I never cease to be amazed at this woman who I am privileged to know on speaking terms. She is as old as my father yet unretired; her vision and understanding of Type and Isabel Myers’ work is unparallelled and her intellect throughout this learning event is equal to any task. Apart from this, she takes time to deal with issues of conflict and genuinely seeks and sees the good in anyone, no matter how difficult it may seem. That doesn’t seem too objective from this INTP, but I wish I had some of the wisdom and knowledge of Mary McCaulley at this time. I could do with it.

The Symposium is academic in format, with some familiar names attending. Gerry Macdaid is also here representing CAPT; Loren Letendre President of CPP is here; Linda Kirby and Sandra Hirsh are here to present as is Australia’s David Freeman and New Zealand’s John Bathurst. Another Australian, Helen Rajan is here to participate and observe. There are people from Finland, Korea, as well as the regular dose of North Americans. The majority of people at the Symposium though, were from Hawai’i, residents, if not natives.

Linda Kirby presented next on her interesting cross-cultural study of ESFJ and INTP females and ESTJ and INFP males, using interview data to suggest that type differences manifest across cultures. I have seen a variant of this presentation before and was impressed, but I have heard a critique of this method and interpretation of the given data which I will be pursuing later on this year. In the meantime, if you want to be part of Linda Kirby’s (and Nancy Barger’s) data on the above types get in contact with me and I will send you the required material.

Some of the most interesting papers were about type falsification and identification due to cultural issues. J.Sam Park suggested that cultural pressures meant that true type could only be exemplified by older people in Korea because they were allowed to be themselves at that time, but not before. American Jerry DeHart, who teaches in Japan suggested two places an Extravert could be so in Japan: at karaoke bars and late night drinking sessions. Gail Rivera made some connections between expatriate US women and Type in terms of coping and/or responding to a different cultural situation. John Bathurst depicted a Maori culture where there was no concept of Thinking in Type terms and outlined the difficulties for members of this group in answering the MBTI because of their cultural frameworks.

Solace under the palms. Borders Books in Honolulu

Many of the sessions were sociologists presenting their frameworks to the predominantly type oriented audience. Richard Brislin facilitated a workshop on picking cultural differences, type differences and other issues which underlined the need to understand both frameworks in assessing what type looks like. Dharm Bhawuk, originally from Nepal, spoke eloquently about his collectivist culture, comparing it with Western Individualist culture and thus with the cultural context of the MBTI. He professed interested ambivalence in type; for me his presentation style was clearly NT and he himself sounded like an INTP (language, arguments etc). His presentations and insights were among the most valuable throughout the Conference.

Loren Letendre opened the second day. Loren demonstrated CPP’s commitment to research by outlining their research programme. For instance, in instrument terms, he stated that maintenance and revision on the MBTI continues, in particular applying new methodological advances such as item response theory. With new initiatives, he spoke of the largest true type study in the history of the MBTI, Elizabeth Murphy’s longitudinal study in education. some cross cultural issues with type and African-Americans conducted by Pat Battle and the prospect of EAR leased software, a cross-cultural database utilising international MBTI distributors and a policy of nurturing the publication in refereed journals of MBTI related research. CPP were also establishing a criterion reference group of 7000 people, to test items, comparing well with Isabel Myers’ group of 120 people

Demanding we participate.... Polynesian Cultural Centre

In other data, Loren indicated that last year of 2.5 million MBTIs taken, 1 million were the self-score version. CPP also surfs the Internet regularly looking for pirated versions of the MBTI. There are lots to find, usually the Keirsey Temperament Sorter and the unreliable Form AV, unpublished since 1987. David Freeman followed this session with some preliminary results from a pilot study he’s doing with the intention of eventually establishing Australian norms – a brave task considering the cultural and methodological considerations. David’s sample was Year 10 females (he later said they were from a Queensland school). He chose that year because of dropout rates later on in schooling and he also invoked Isabel Myers as a reason for choosing people of this age group.

His described method was conventional in Australian cultural terms, using the self-score and a variety of means of validating type which were considered successful. He mentioned that 20% of his sample made calculation errors, but not enough to change preferences. His paper when published in the Symposium Proceedings will do more justice to his work than anything I can say. The modal type for all 3 years of his study was ES/NFP and a follow-up study of one group in Year 12 showed a drift to ES/NTJ, which he attributed to a VCE-style pressure (Victorianspeak:do they have something similar in Queensland?) David attested to the success of his programme in terms of career discussions from all concerned: parents students etc.

I must admit to being extremely pleased that David has presented some of his hard work in a public forum so that we can both benefit from and profitably assess his propositions. I said to him after his presentation that his work seemed to reasonably depict what students of that gender and age might look like and so was valuable for that alone.

On reflection, I do have some reservations about to what extent true type is involved, in particular because of the change in preference two years later for one of his samples. I also have a philosophical/scientific query about the issue of norms itself; to me it’s not feasible with type because it says something different about personality than more conventional trait theories (see Naomi Quenk APT Bulletin 1993), so I’m a little confused as to why anybody would use norms as a stated aim in research other than as an indicator. Then again, I’m not a psychometrician, but a historian/social scientist who follows different paradigms. The real point is that David has done the work. Get a hold of it when it comes out, take it as it is meant i.e. a pilot, evaluate it for yourself, give him feedback in the public or private arena. Type discussions were mediated by a fascinating description of cultural issues at a Zuni school (The Zuni are Native Americans located in the South-West of the United States) The Brislin exercise followed and then lunch, which was for me an appointment with Loren Letendre.

I had met and spoken with Loren at Kansas City and we had got on well. This meeting was about specific issues relating to Qualifying/Accreditation Programmes in Australia and the interaction of the two distributors, ACER and APP in part relating to the introduction of a common examination for all the aforementioned programmes worldwide. Loren was surprised at the number and variety of programmes in Australia and unaware of the general Australian history of offering such programmes. He expressed his satisfaction with there being two distributors in Australia, saying that this meant they worked harder on market share than if there were one distributor and that this seemed to be the case in terms of sales figures. We discussed how the common examination might be implemented in Australia and in general discussed Australia and type.

Rowing.... Rowing - Preparing for competition

The final day of the Conference started off for me with a presentation by Daniel Yalowitz on type and multiple intelligence theory, the work of educationist Howard Gardner. I had read most of Gardner’s work a few years ago and found it useful and challenging; the whole notion of different types of intelligence fits in well with psychological type, in particular given the tendency of IQ to reflect IN and/or INT preferred learning. Daniel, an ENFJ, wasn’t too far along the track with his study and wanted us to help him. Interestingly, he presented us with an exercise to do in game format, which surprised me, given certain types’ well publicised aversion to games as a means of learning. My group of INTP,INTJ and ISTP from three different cultures managed to avoid the task completely by first refusing to do it and then discussing the ideas around the task, which caused some mirth for many (my description to the group of what we did was sufficient for my type identification for some) and surprised others, including Daniel. But it was an informative session all round.

The morning also featured Sandra Hirsh and Sondra VanSant on their experiences with Indonesian managers. Neither clamed the status of researchers in representing their work which was interesting for me because their qualitative and phenomenological data certainly had some value. The group of managers was predominantly Chinese-Indonesian which, historically, was not unexpected and their type preferences concentrated around the four corners of the type table as is typical for similar positions world wide. The sample were predominantly E, which surprised, but this was verified by the participants (36 in all). What was also interesting for both presenters was that an exercise of Sandra’s using the temperaments asking groups to identify their favourite animals came up with similar results to other parts of the world, including Australia. I found this interesting for a number of reasons, one in particular being Linda Berens’ suggestion that animals associated with temperaments were in some senses archetypal. It’s not only the animals, of course, it’s what the participants said they represented that confirmed the similarities. This of course is supportive rather than confirmatory data, but in this postmodern world that sometimes makes more sense than quantitative data often based on hidden paradigms.

Danielle Poirier, speaking on behalf of but , in true Gallic style, disagreeing with the absent Eduardo Casas , gave some thoughts on social desirability or popularity of various attributes having an impact on type, so that reported type may actually reflect cultural norms or at least give a picture of the culture. This can be useful in that, like Bill Bridges’ “Character of Organisations”, type can be used as a descriptor of culture. Some of the broad data presented for culture related type looks like this:

I like this sort of suggestive data because it can help understand different cultural perspectives and perhaps enable us in multicultural Australia to understand and value the different sorts of cultural influences we have

The Conference concluded with some discussion about research issues in this field and collaboration between the two separate disciplines of psychology (particularly psychometrics) and sociology or ethnography. Jerry Macdaid drew the conference activities together comprehensively and looked to more activities of this sort and ways and means of encouraging work in this area. All in all a positive end and some thoughts about how we Australians can contribute to this reaearch and the next type and culture conference.

Your correspondent’s cultural adventures continued the next day visiting the Polynesian Cultural Center with Sandra Hirsh, her daughter Elizabeth and John Bathurst. Genial general discussion on type issues dominated the drive up to the venue. The Center is operated by the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints and I had been there before and saw it more as entertainment than cultural data. There are mock villages of various Polynesian groups and at scheduled times “natives” say something about their culture in general terms, try and get the audience to participate and usually produce some music.

The Polynesians in the Center do actually come from Polynesia and they study at Brigham Young University next door. However, it was clear early that not all the Tahitians and other groups were actually natives of that area, a fact confirmed during the evening cabaret style extravaganza in the evening. Before that there was a short unimax film depicting a broad Polynesian history, which was more than a little short on fact from my perspective, one confirmed by John Bathurst who gave me useful context and data to confirm my speculations. Apparently the Church puts a lot of effort into this region because they believe the Polynesians to be one of the lost 10 tribes of Israel, a rather injudicious interpretation of certain parts of the Old Testament from this student’s view, but presumably sincere.

The Center is incredibly good entertainment in my view, but the representations about the culture it depicts are manifestly not accurate. Perhaps in this age where we’re led to believe that learning has to be entertainment people can accept this, but it takes my enjoyment away when people make claims that are unnecessary and inaccurate. The Center would still do as well if it described itself more appropriately.

A further adventure ensued when I discovered at midnight in my hotel room that my flight left in an hour. Typical INTP behaviour as one of my friends reflected when I told her, but not for this one, who’s usually at the airport, book in hand, for a few hours before departing. Perhaps that says something: type development, avoidance, confusion, delusion,old age or the yearning to be a traveller who pursues ideas and experience wherever he goes.I’ll take the last one, it sounds good anyway.

This article was published in the Australian Journal of Psychological Type Vol. 5 No.2 September 1996

Photograph courtesy of Jamie Johnston, CAPT Library. PETER GEYER (INTP) is a consultant, researcher and writer in the field of C G Jung's theory of psychological types. He conducts MBTI Accreditation programs and presents internationally on a regular basis. Peter is a life member of AusAPT and a professional affiliate of the Australian Psychological Society.