Kucinich, the election, and Meyers-Briggs

[maggrwaggr]

Okay, how many know about temperment typing and Meyers-Briggs.

Basically this is a psychological profiling that divides humans into four basic temperment types, 16 overall (4 other subgroups within the main groups)

The groups, often known by the letters SJ, NF, SP, and NT, can be translated into "Artisan" "Idealist" "Guardian" and "Rational".

Kucinich is an idealist. A lot of us are idealists. Idealists believe in emotional arguments and think that the best way to appeal to others is through an emotional argument.

Unfortunately idealists only make up about 11% of the population (roughly).

The guardians and the "artisans" make up the lions share, over 60% combined. The guardians believe in heirarchy, rulers, rules, and the like. They are more than likely gonna be republicans. Any die-hard republican is more than likely a guardian. They're something like 38% of the population.

The "artisans" are people who live in the moment, who live for spontaneity. These are the most likely swing voters. They like to go with the crowd. They love crowds. If memory serves me correct, they're about 35% of the population.

The rationals are people for whom emotional arguments are suspect. Think Spock. They can be just about anywhere on the political map. They might be libertarians, greens, republicans, constitutionalists, democrats, anything is possible with these folks depending on how their own personal logic works. For them logic is everything. They are (again if memory serves me correctly) something like 15% of the population.

So. My point is ......... you can't just appeal to the idealists. I am definitely an idealist and Kucinich appeals to me a great deal! But the reason I say he's unelectable is that I just don't think he's gonna appeal to more than just the idealists.

I think Dean appeals to a HUGE cross section of the temperament types. He appeals to the idealists with his emotion, he appeals to the rationals because his arguments are always logical and practical, and he will appeal to the "artisans" because he's popular. He might even appeal to a lot of guardians because he's a doctor and a former governor and he seems to respect laws that they're into, like state's rights.

My two cents.

on edit: sorry if anyone finds this redundant because I posted this in another thread. I've been meaning to post this for a while here.

[mountebank]

1. Very Interesting Point.

I think the Meyers-Briggs test is a pretty good one, as far as tests that pigeon-hole everyone into 16 categories go. And it can certainly be related to the presidential candidates......

Yes - I think it's 60% of people that are S's - that means "Sensing." Basically what you see is what you get. They take life at face value, go on facts and observable phenomena. The N's are in the minority - they go on intuition, hunches.

Supposedly the greatest divided between people is on the S/N scale (as opposed to, for example, the I/E Introvert/Extrovert scale). On some basic level, N's and S's have a hard time understanding the world view of the other. I've certainly found this to be true of my friends.

I would guess that the percentage of S's in politics is much higher than the population average. Therefore, unfortunately, Dennis Kucinich finds himself in the minority.

Yet you could look at it another way. Perhaps a large number of N's (particularly NF's, who might not give a damn about politics) could be inspired to activism and politics by him. Certainly we've seen that he brings a lot of people into political awareness that were never aware before.

I wonder if any NF's have ever been President. Anyone familiar with the Meyers-Briggs personality profiles have any ideas?