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BonBon
04-11-2016, 21:27
I have taken many Myers Briggs type of evaluations over the years and have always been scored as a dyed in the wool ENTJ. Since my hike- I have been evaluated by two different tests and now have scored as an ENFP both times- scoring lower percentages in the extrovert category than I did before (my introvert is coming out) and also less the thinking and judging. (higher in feeling and perceiving) I find that very interesting. Another interesting thing I heard before the hike- INTJs finish the entire hike more often than any other personality type.

nsherry61
04-11-2016, 22:16
. . . INTJs finish the entire hike more often than any other personality type.
What types start the hike more than any other?
What types are most common among backpackers - independent of the AT?

Feral Bill
04-11-2016, 23:04
Could you share the meanings of those term?

One Half
04-11-2016, 23:10
I have found most people's personalities change somewhat over time. It's called experience. and change. Life changes people. Accomplishments, loss, joy, trauma, etc.

CamelMan
04-11-2016, 23:13
Could you share the meanings of those term?

Myers-Briggs are based on Jung's work. Here's one website: http://www.truity.com/view/types

rickb
04-12-2016, 03:25
I believe the best known study was done by O.W Lacey some years ago, and showed INTP as the by far the most common profile for AT Thru Hikers. At least at the time the study was conducted.

Some disciussion can be found in is thread: http://www.whiteblaze.net/forum/archive/index.php/t-69271.html

rickb
04-12-2016, 03:38
Here is an article on O W Lacey and his research:

https://archive.bangordailynews.com/1995/10/02/thru-hikers-find-way-to-higher-ground-appalachian-trail-becomes-spiritual-journey-for-many-researcher-tells-um-students/

I bet the full 1000 hiker study is online somewhere.

Traveler
04-12-2016, 06:36
I have found most people's personalities change somewhat over time. It's called experience. and change. Life changes people. Accomplishments, loss, joy, trauma, etc.

Pretty true. The combination of events in people lives will lend to an evolution of their personality. To me its a rarity if there is no change over years.

MtDoraDave
04-12-2016, 07:05
In preparation for my first section hike, I read a couple books about hiking; one just a generic hiking book, the second about the AT. One of the books touched on this subject. The author said that a through hike will change you. Just doing a week at a time 2 or three times a year has already changed me, I think. :)

I could write my opinion on some of the reasons why - but I'm not a shrink. I would be interested to read what someone (a hiker) in the psych profession has to say about this subject.

rafe
04-12-2016, 07:26
My wife is a psychologist. She has little regard for the Myers-Briggs test. It's very popular of course, but isn't very meaningful. Or as Wikipedia puts it, "it does not measure what it purports to measure".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers%E2%80%93Briggs_Type_Indicator

Starchild
04-12-2016, 07:36
One thing (among many) that the AT thru has done for me is I now can remember people's names in social situatioms, which I could not before. Not that I am perfect, but yes I can now, it is a great gift and very helpful, not remembering names is very limiting in ways I didn't realize.

BonBon
04-12-2016, 09:30
I noticed and journaled about my change in extrovert vs. introvert on the trail. I still identify as more extroverted but hiking alone for much of the time and then being around people with such big personalities for much of the way gave the more reflective and much quieter side of my personality the space to emerge. It is a rare opportunity to think without distraction and one of the most precious things about the experience for me. I also feel that I am more accepting of how others do things- and my staff says I am a different person- much less intense. I like these gifts from the trail. I am resisting the pull back to the retail mania I lived in before as a business owner.

colorado_rob
04-12-2016, 09:33
Interesting! I've always scored ENTP, I'll retake and see what is my current after having completed the AT and a few shorter thru hikes.

FlyPaper
04-12-2016, 09:40
My wife is a psychologist. She has little regard for the Myers-Briggs test. It's very popular of course, but isn't very meaningful. Or as Wikipedia puts it, "it does not measure what it purports to measure".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers%E2%80%93Briggs_Type_Indicator

Agree or disagree, when I read the description of her personality type to my wife after she took the MB it pegged her so accurately she thought I wrote it myself as a joke. And my own description (opposite of my wife's) pegged me quite accurately too.

CamelMan
04-12-2016, 10:49
I believe the best known study was done by O.W Lacey some years ago, and showed INTP as the by far the most common profile for AT Thru Hikers.

That's good news, maybe I'll make some friends along the way. There is a lack of them in most other areas.

dudeijuststarted
04-12-2016, 11:13
I went into my hike an introvert and had to flip flop to get out of the herd. I am still an introvert, preferring lots of quiet and personal space, which is kind of unfortunate as I'd love to be able to NOBO. I suffer from sound sensitivity (eating sounds) which I believe is related to an attention deficit.

The thru-hike did change me in some ways though. I believe it aged me faster, making me a little more accepting of life's nonsense, lowering my expectations, and providing an overall feeling of satisfaction and grace. I've found my job in IT much easier to deal with, have become less combative, and have found saying "no" so much easier. I'm hoping to heal my MCL and thru-hike Colorado Trail this year and continue the journey, no longer seeking, but being present and enjoying every moment. For prospective thru hikers: there is an inner peace that comes with looking back and seeing a life not wasted. The trail is transformative.

Dogwood
04-12-2016, 12:38
The "study" of Psychiatry is an inexact "science." It's approached for the sake of "science" by placing people who are actually more complex in reality into neat more easily understood defined "scientific" categories which are ever being added to with more categories by the "scientists."

rafe
04-12-2016, 13:48
Yes, scientists categorize things, and water is wet.

burger
04-12-2016, 14:03
My wife is a psychologist. She has little regard for the Myers-Briggs test. It's very popular of course, but isn't very meaningful. Or as Wikipedia puts it, "it does not measure what it purports to measure".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers%E2%80%93Briggs_Type_Indicator

This is my understanding, as well. In general, you should be leery of any system that takes something as complex as human personalities and divides them into arbitrary categories. Nature doesn't come in categories for the most part--everything is on a continuum.


The "study" of Psychiatry is an inexact "science." It's approached for the sake of "science" by placing people who are actually more complex in reality into neat more easily understood defined "scientific" categories which are ever being added to with more categories by the "scientists."

This, however, is not true. The scientific fields of psychology and psychiatry use rigorous methods to do actual science. We would not have treatments for depression, PTSD, or other mental illnesses without psychiatry and psychology (not to mention all sorts of fascinating but perhaps less useful insights into how the human brain works). The problem is that what most people think of as "psychology" or "psychiatry," like personality types or some types of psychoanalysis, is not actually science.

Don't let misconceptions about what constitutes science make you think that psychology/psychiatry are not real disciplines.

colorado_rob
04-12-2016, 14:10
The "study" of Psychiatry is an inexact "science." It's approached for the sake of "science" by placing people who are actually more complex in reality into neat more easily understood defined "scientific" categories which are ever being added to with more categories by the "scientists."Agree with what you're saying, even with the overdose of "quotes", but what does psychiatry have to do with studies of human personality and classifications?

CamelMan
04-12-2016, 16:52
The "study" of Psychiatry is an inexact "science." It's approached for the sake of "science" by placing people who are actually more complex in reality into neat more easily understood defined "scientific" categories which are ever being added to with more categories by the "scientists."

It's not a science in the Kuhnian sense, to be sure. It's like economics or sociology. More than one model can coexist without referring to anything empirical. The difference I think is finding one that operates well and has a lot of power to help people. There's a difference between prediction or categorization, and explanation. It's convenient to create categories that have no explanatory power and then find them empirically, thus creating a tautology. However, Jung's work is based on psychoanalysis, which, although it's also only a model, has lots of practical power, and it's a shame that it's fallen out of favor. It's been transformative in my own life and was a great accidental discovery. If it was more popular and not subject to criticism from defenders of more "scientific" paradigms (who don't really know what they're talking about anyway) then maybe it wouldn't have taken me so long to figure it out.

Part of the emphasis on useless quantification versus useful exegesis I would blame on capitalist medicine. But also what Jung would call phantasies of science.

burger
04-12-2016, 17:02
It's not a science in the Kuhnian sense, to be sure. It's like economics or sociology. More than one model can coexist without referring to anything empirical. The difference I think is finding one that operates well and has a lot of power to help people. There's a difference between prediction or categorization, and explanation. It's convenient to create categories that have no explanatory power and then find them empirically, thus creating a tautology. However, Jung's work is based on psychoanalysis, which, although it's also only a model, has lots of practical power, and it's a shame that it's fallen out of favor. It's been transformative in my own life and was a great accidental discovery. If it was more popular and not subject to criticism from defenders of more "scientific" paradigms (who don't really know what they're talking about anyway) then maybe it wouldn't have taken me so long to figure it out.

Part of the emphasis on useless quantification versus useful exegesis I would blame on capitalist medicine. But also what Jung would call phantasies of science.

How is psychology not a science? There are plenty of falsifiable theories, and with the new tools of neuroscience, many psychological concepts can be explicitly tied to certain brain regions or even certain types of neurons or neurotransmitters. Also, mainstream psychology has explicitly rejected the Briggs-Myers personality types, so I'm not really sure what your point is on the tautology of categories.

Some of the comments in this thread are just bizarre. Has anyone commenting here ever even read a scientific paper in a psychology journal? I think I might be the only one.

(FWIW, I'm not a psychologist, but I've known many)

Dogwood
04-12-2016, 18:01
Yes, scientists categorize things, and water is wet.

Yeah, but kinda misses my point. Those existing categories are based on making things EASIER for scientists to categorize and understand which….sometimes comes at the expense of who's being studied so that it(a person) can be jammed into existing categories. Yet, science isn't always all that exact particularly as it's ever evolving and especially in regards to the complexity of human behavior. Human personality and behavior is much more complex than those neatly defined categories and can absolutely include a complexity of several of just the limiting categories on the Myer's-Briggs index.

Society, including the world of science, sometimes(often?) likes to grossly simplify things for sake of it being easier to perceive and label things. The light switch is either on or off. It's black or white. Let's ignore considering frictional forces in the Physics problem for now. A person is narrowly categorized as an introvert OR extrovert, etc. She's good in math. He'll never be good in math, etc. He'll always get mediocre math grades. He's a gifted athlete. He's a nerd, etc. Makes it easier but things are most often more complex than that especially so with the wide ranges of human behavior and personality.

What's worse is people begin to believe these labels put upon themselves because the "science experts" or some "authority", usually with lots of impressive looking acronyms attached to their name and pieces of impressively framed paper on the wall, told them this is the category to which they belong. You have a slave mentality. You will always be a slave. You are too short to play in the NBA. You're not being a realist. You're going to fall off the edge of the Earth. Humans traveling to the moon is impossible. You'll never do a sub 4 min mile. You're stupid. You show an exceptional propensity for complex combinatorial mathematics. Now, don't veer too far away from that category or it would start making the science sloppy to understand or perhaps will just ignore there is more individuality than the "experts" want to entertain? Thank goodness for all those innovators that moved beyond the sometimes limiting categories of any authoritative source. These are the people that advanced themselves and thereby advanced humanity.

Dogwood
04-12-2016, 18:12
Some of the comments in this thread are just bizarre. Has anyone commenting here ever even read a scientific paper in a psychology journal? I think I might be the only one.

(FWIW, I'm not a psychologist, but I've known many)


LOL. More than my fair share. Made my head spin with all the contradictory approaches, conclusions, and lack of consensus. Psychiatry, perhaps at the top of the social science branch of science, is the most inexact when it comes to a great many aspects of human behavior. Talk about the harm to so many at the hands of "experts" in the psychiatric industry. OK, that's the end of my Tom Cruise rant.

rocketsocks
04-12-2016, 18:17
I think therefore I am...I think.

TiHiker
04-12-2016, 18:18
Our understanding of all things living and not, is enhanced by knowledge. That knowledge is ever evolving as tools for discovery evolve, as knowledge compounds itself and cross-pollination of ideas increases our understanding. Psychiatry and psychology are no different than biology, chemistry, physics, zoology, etc. As someone who is 66 there are an abundance of things that were "proven scientifically" have since been disproven or seriously modified. So what's my point...the study of the mind and what defines a "unique personality type" is an evolving attempt to classify people into discrete types. Like all science it will be flawed and simultaneously it is helpful in explaining our preferences and actions.

colorado_rob
04-12-2016, 20:37
LOL. More than my fair share. Made my head spin with all the contradictory approaches, conclusions, and lack of consensus. Psychiatry, perhaps at the top of the social science branch of science, is the most inexact when it comes to a great many aspects of human behavior. Talk about the harm to so many at the hands of "experts" in the psychiatric industry. OK, that's the end of my Tom Cruise rant.I suggest you look up yhe definition of psychiatry.

One Half
04-12-2016, 21:38
I noticed and journaled about my change in extrovert vs. introvert on the trail. I still identify as more extroverted but hiking alone for much of the time and then being around people with such big personalities for much of the way gave the more reflective and much quieter side of my personality the space to emerge. It is a rare opportunity to think without distraction and one of the most precious things about the experience for me. I also feel that I am more accepting of how others do things- and my staff says I am a different person- much less intense. I like these gifts from the trail. I am resisting the pull back to the retail mania I lived in before as a business owner.


I used to work where I had to be constantly "on." Most people in my life assumed I was an extrovert for that reason. But them someone explained "extrovert" to me as someone who is recharged by being around others. For the most part, people drain me. I can do what I have to do in business situations but it is draining. I need time alone to recharge. This was explained to me as being an "introvert." Makes sense to me.

ggreaves
04-12-2016, 21:50
Could you share the meanings of those term?

ENT = Ear, Nose and Throat doctor. They're called Otolaryngologists

Carbo
04-12-2016, 23:10
I always thought LSMFT = Let's Stop My Feet'r Tired.

Miel
04-13-2016, 01:16
When I was single and meeting people online, if someone brought up those tests I would go running in the other direction.

ridehard
04-13-2016, 10:47
I think therefore I am...I think.

Not everyone has listened to Moody Blues :)

damskipi
04-13-2016, 11:17
I just wanted to point out that the MBTI is not exactly a personality test, it is a survey that reveals your preferences for interpreting and interacting with the world. As an example, MBTI might reveal that someone is an introvert or an extrovert, while personality tests can describe someone's sociability. Sociability and introversion/extroversion are not the same thing, despite what many people think. You can be a very social introvert (which I am) and, less commonly, you can be an anti-social extrovert. Introversion/extroversion refers to how/where you gain and lose energy, not whether you like people. The other categories of the MBTI have similar differences in relation to personality tests, although introversion/extroversion seems to be the easiest way to explain it.

Dogwood
04-13-2016, 12:53
I have taken many Myers Briggs type of evaluations over the years and have always been scored as a dyed in the wool ENTJ. Since my hike- I have been evaluated by two different tests and now have scored as an ENFP both times- scoring lower percentages in the extrovert category than I did before (my introvert is coming out) and also less the thinking and judging. (higher in feeling and perceiving) I find that very interesting. Another interesting thing I heard before the hike- INTJs finish the entire hike more often than any other personality type.

You're in GOOD company! :) You're there. These thoughts you're having are demonstrating a conundrum. Do you attempt to exactly re-enter a life you previously had with a narrower perspective or do you possibly change some aspects of it that reflect including new thoughts, information, beliefs, values, and experiences?

One's personality certainly can change based on what you've experienced. You've evolved by letting yourself be removed from your previous comfort zones, from your previous value system, at least in part. It may be that you experienced the results of what another traveler who routinely placed himself outside of his comfort zones into new paradigms experienced. “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.”Mark Twain

No longer are you stuck in a narrower view. Challenging yourself by being willing to expand your comfort zones, what one is habitually accustomed and secure with, as one does when living abroad for a long time outside of their cultural and societal norms or on a long trail living daily with everything on your back walking, being incarcerated for yrs, being a world traveler, fighting in foreign wars, exposing oneself to more of a encompassing perspective, embracing more of LIFE, etc….being exposed to more than a narrow perspective as one does in their little corner of the U.S. or community compulsively locked into electronics and in their cars and at their desk or behind a cashier counter "awakens" people. Removing oneself from norms can and does change belief systems and consequently values and personality.

http://landlopers.com/2012/08/13/good-traveler-traits

I still find more golden nuggets of insight in Spirit Eagles's(Spirit Walker) Thru-Hiking papers. Great resource for LD hikers. Consider perusing this site as it can help to understand what you're going through. http://www.spiriteaglehome.com/THP_change.html I recognize myself in both Ginny's and the above traveler's traits article. Maybe, you will too?

Much of my own value system has changed as a result of LD hiking. I'm more sensitive to a greater environment than just my immediate narrow minded own, more patient, less judgmental, more free flowing, much less prone to consumerism and materialism, much more a critical thinker willing to question everything including cultural and societal norms and even my own long held beliefs, have a heightened sense of peace, heightened physical senses and another "sense, an awareness" which is hard for me to categorize, heightened concern of health in all it's aspects, I'm more conscientious, no longer governed by fear, solution rather than problem oriented, etc.

I like another Mark Twain quote: "Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear."

What I was getting at with my ranting posts is everything I just described about my character with LD hiking being the vehicle as much of the impetus was ascertained through my own thoughts not by some categorizations of a psychiatric personality test. IF I had considered "the test" categories and THEN tried to consider my character or let my character/personality be defined by a different "authority" it would have blinded me to my real character. IMO, don't let a psychiatric "scientific" test be the ultimate determiner or definer of who you are! :)

Take a course in good water and air; and in the eternal youth of Nature you may renew your own. Go quietly, alone; no harm will befall you.

Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul.

Keep close to Nature's heart... and break clear away, once in awhile, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your spirit clean.

The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness.

Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wildness is a necessity.

In every walk with Nature one receives far more than he seeks.

I am losing precious days. I am degenerating into a machine for making money. I am learning nothing in this trivial world of men. I must break away and get out into the mountains to learn the news

Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop away from you like the leaves of Autumn.

John Muir

You've found by actually experiencing it what Twain and Muir were talking about. These things have become REAL - AWAKENED - within your soul. You've experienced what another psychologist - Abraham Mazlow - termed self actualization. You've been afforded a great gift. What are you going to do with it going forward? Are you going to keep that light hidden under a basket? You obviously are not one that can easily do that. Experience greater self actualization? Use it for the betterment of all? :-?

JumpMaster Blaster
04-13-2016, 13:04
This is quite an interesting thread. I myself am an ISTJ (right now).

Dogwood
04-13-2016, 13:18
Blame it on Bon Bon for all this boat rocking. She drew me in as I'm a notorious boat rocker myself. :D Several times coming off the trampoline and posting added to my rants.:p

CamelMan
04-14-2016, 11:17
How is psychology not a science? There are plenty of falsifiable theories, and with the new tools of neuroscience, many psychological concepts can be explicitly tied to certain brain regions or even certain types of neurons or neurotransmitters. Also, mainstream psychology has explicitly rejected the Briggs-Myers personality types, so I'm not really sure what your point is on the tautology of categories.

Some of the comments in this thread are just bizarre. Has anyone commenting here ever even read a scientific paper in a psychology journal? I think I might be the only one.

(FWIW, I'm not a psychologist, but I've known many)

Do you really want to argue about this? I can, but nobody is going to change their minds and my heart's not in it because this is a hiking board. Sorry to not define what I was saying, though. According to philosopher Thomas Kuhn, something is a science when it has a ruling paradigm that can then be confirmed or falsified and replaced by a more precise one. Psychology is not there yet--pretending that psychology is the same as physics, and that neuroscience will take it there, is part of what I would call the phantasy of science.

Since I've done a lot of work with computers, here's an analogy for you: neuroscience thinks it can figure out the function and structure of software by looking at the hardware. But IMO, whatever Psyche is, it's an emergent property that just "runs" on a piece of hardware, which may limit it's functioning, but otherwise isn't going to be very useful. It's pretty obvious that mental states are going to be correlated with brain functions, but that doesn't explain them, or how or whether they arise from those functions at all. (Look at the "hard problem of consciosness" for example.) Psychology isn't so bad (but it's heading that way, probably) but neuroscience and psychiatry, especially, are telling us that they can fix the software by changing the hardware. In my analogy, at least, that doesn't make any sense. The programming itself has to be studied. IMO that's psychoanalysis.

Anyway, I wasted about 10 years of my life due to social anxiety disorder and depression, and I've read all sorts of books and theories. I have respect for Object Relations Theory but not much else, besides Jung, which is when my life really started to improve. I've used band-aids like antidepressants, but real, lasting change was impossible without Jung. Now I'm pretty much OK. I going to try finishing Liber Novus on my thru hike attempt this summer, it should be a good environment for that.

What's the difference between a psychiatrist and a shaman? A shaman knows how drugs work, but a psychiatrist thinks they're magical. :)

burger
04-14-2016, 12:56
Do you really want to argue about this? I can, but nobody is going to change their minds and my heart's not in it because this is a hiking board. Sorry to not define what I was saying, though. According to philosopher Thomas Kuhn, something is a science when it has a ruling paradigm that can then be confirmed or falsified and replaced by a more precise one. Psychology is not there yet--pretending that psychology is the same as physics, and that neuroscience will take it there, is part of what I would call the phantasy of science.

Since I've done a lot of work with computers, here's an analogy for you: neuroscience thinks it can figure out the function and structure of software by looking at the hardware. But IMO, whatever Psyche is, it's an emergent property that just "runs" on a piece of hardware, which may limit it's functioning, but otherwise isn't going to be very useful. It's pretty obvious that mental states are going to be correlated with brain functions, but that doesn't explain them, or how or whether they arise from those functions at all. (Look at the "hard problem of consciosness" for example.) Psychology isn't so bad (but it's heading that way, probably) but neuroscience and psychiatry, especially, are telling us that they can fix the software by changing the hardware. In my analogy, at least, that doesn't make any sense. The programming itself has to be studied. IMO that's psychoanalysis.

Anyway, I wasted about 10 years of my life due to social anxiety disorder and depression, and I've read all sorts of books and theories. I have respect for Object Relations Theory but not much else, besides Jung, which is when my life really started to improve. I've used band-aids like antidepressants, but real, lasting change was impossible without Jung. Now I'm pretty much OK. I going to try finishing Liber Novus on my thru hike attempt this summer, it should be a good environment for that.

What's the difference between a psychiatrist and a shaman? A shaman knows how drugs work, but a psychiatrist thinks they're magical. :)

This is a really uninformed comment written by someone who clearly has only learned about psychology from personal anecdote and has not actually studied the science. The phrase "all sorts of books and theories" suggests to me that you are self-taught and not trained in the science.

Also, you totally ignore the amazing advances being made in neuroscience and neuropsychology. If you are relying on Jung, you are ignoring 100 years of subsequent progress. It is increasingly possible to tie behaviors and brain functions to specific parts of the brains or types of neuron or neurotransmitter. The human brain is arguably one of the most complex structures in the universe, and our understanding of it is only in its infancy. But to glibly dismiss all that we have learned about the brain and human behavior as non-scientific is just silly. Comparing physics and psychology is equally silly. If the atom were as complex as the human brain, physics would still be in the stone age, relatively speaking.

It sounds like you've had bad experiences with therapists, and if so I'm sorry. But that does not mean that the entire body of knowledge is somehow invalid.

Do me a favor: if psychology is such a non-science, show me some scientific evidence that psychology has failed a science. Clearly, if psychology is as mystical and mythical as you say it is, I should be able to find scientific papers showing that the predictions of psychology fail, that it's theories have no validity, and that it's practitioners are making things up. There is nothing scientists love more than proving other scientists wrong, so if you're right, there should be a large body of work showing that psychology is a failure. Show me that, and I'll admit that I'm wrong. Otherwise, please stop trying to make your opinion out to be fact.

CamelMan
04-14-2016, 15:38
It is increasingly possible to tie behaviors and brain functions to specific parts of the brains or types of neuron or neurotransmitter.

Yes, but this doesn't say anything about the nature or origins of psychic phenomena. It's just proof of something that is going to be obviously true--that there are going to be neural correlates to internal states. What were you expecting?

My posts on this topic and any other, just like everybody's posts, are not "fact" but merely my opinion. They are also projection objects. ;)

I also said nobody is going to be convinced. So it's better to agree to disagree. :)

(The reason I mention and defend Jungian psychology, which btw hasn't died out over the last 100 years, is so that people who could potentially benefit from it aren't turned off from it by other people's opinions. I used to have the same opinion about it that you do.)

dudeijuststarted
04-14-2016, 16:11
I've always been sort of a pacifist. Even when I was younger, my father always told me: "Never hit anyone in anger unless you're absolutely sure you're gonna get away with it."

rocketsocks
04-14-2016, 19:09
I've always been sort of a pacifist. Even when I was younger, my father always told me: "Never hit anyone in anger unless you're absolutely sure you're gonna get away with it."i forget who had this as a signature, but I liked it.

"if you find yourself loosing a fight, your tactics sucks"

El Gallo
04-14-2016, 19:49
I would like to see the stats on which personality types start a thru hike or long section hike vs the percentage of each type that finish. I know age, injury and illness play a part. I don't think I can change my basic personality type but I am curious if my personality type stands a better than average chance of finishing. My guess is those personality types that are determined and feel they have some control over their environment do well.

MtDoraDave
04-15-2016, 07:23
From my non-shrink perspective, here's my take on it. (simplified version)
.
In our worlds (many of us, not all of us) we live in the illusion of control. We get mad, even angry or rageful, when people don't do what we think they should be doing or what we expect them to be doing. Driving is usually a great example. When people don't drive the way we think they should be driving, we get mad at them (to varying degrees) rather than simply being responsible safe drivers of our own vehicles.
We will alter our plans because of inclement weather.
We don't want to be inconvenienced in any way, and we don't want to stray from our routines.
.
While out hiking, we are shown or we see that we are not in control. Of the weather, of other hikers, of the trees that fell across the trail... mud, ice, wild animals - all out of our control. Sometimes, even our well laid out plans made by guidebooks or maps are sometimes dashed. So what do we do? We accept it and deal with it. We interact and/or bond with strangers in ways we typically wouldn't.

Many aspects of multi-day hiking trips differ so drastically from our previous notions of life, that I can't imagine it NOT changing us.
And no, I'm not under any delusion that a week at a time section hiker like myself gets the same life altering changes that a through hiker gets... these are just my observations.

rocketsocks
04-15-2016, 10:28
i forget who had this as a signature, but I liked it.

"if you find yourself loosing a fight, your tactics sucks"
correction...
"If you find yourself in a fair fight...your tactics suck"

ridehard
04-15-2016, 11:53
WRT to MBTI, maybe the ability to change personality type is age related to some degree?

I had certain characteristics prior to my career that suited my career choice. After 40 years the type certainly became more ingrained. As time goes by in retirement I find that some aspects of my temperament aren't reinforced daily, and maybe I am changing.

When I was hired, there were no screening tests. Now there are cog screens of various types. I am not sure exactly what is being tested. I have heard of people not being hired based on those test results that don't meet a suitable profile.

Not being too familiar with the MBTI is does appear to be a blunt instrument. I thought I'd try the MBTI for fun.

Doing the MBTI, at times I'm "E" and others "I". I like socializing and my job required that. I enjoy long quiet times that hiking offers, yoga/meditation, and being on my own. Even at work there were hours of relative quiet that I enjoyed, and sometimes got irritated by people that filled up the quiet time with fidgeting or useless conversation. I liked the party time that was also part of the job when the time was appropriate. Probably an "E"

"S" and "T" are consistent.

"J" or "P"?, I like facts to make a decision, but sometimes rely on my gut. I make a decision but I'm willing to include other peoples opinions and input if that needs to be re-evaluated. If it's a critical situation I can be totally directive and lay down the law. I'd prefer input -- if it doesn't take too long.

The job required a structure and almost every aspect of it was described by a rule of some sort. I liked that, but I wasn't totally bound by the structure. I knew the rules and how to bend them when need be to make the best end result. I didn't like to work with people who were fixated on a method, idea or were hamstrung by avoiding all risk. I didn't like to deal with people who were to cavalier, fail consider the rules, a methodical approach nor consider risk. To the day of my retirement I worked at doing better at my job and told the people that I worked with to "keep and eye me because I still don't know it all!" Probably a "J".

Pedaling Fool
04-15-2016, 13:00
Good read: http://www.forbes.com/sites/alicegwalton/2016/04/14/7-habits-that-may-actually-change-the-brain-according-to-science/#6e3788917a9c

Some Excerpts:


The brain is by far our most precious organ–others are good, too, but they all pale in comparison to the mighty brain. Because the brain works so hard around the clock (even while we’re sleeping), it uses an extraordinary amount of energy, and requires a certain amount of nutritional support to keep it going. It’s high-maintenance, in other words. But there may be misconceptions about what keeps a brain healthy–for instance, there’s little evidence that omega-3 supplements or green smoothies would do anything above and beyond generally good nutrition. So what does science actually tell us can help our brains? Here’s what we know as of now.

Exercise
Physical activity is pretty clearly linked to brain health and cognitive function. People who exercise appear to have greater brain volume (http://biomedgerontology.oxfordjournals.org/content/61/11/1166.short), better thinking and memory skills, and even reduced risk of dementia. A recent study (http://www.neurology.org/content/early/2016/03/23/WNL.0000000000002582) in the journal Neurology found that older people who vigorously exercise have cognitive test scores that place them at the equivalent of 10 years younger. It’s not totally clear why this is, but it’s likely due to the increased blood flow to the brain that comes from physical activity. Exercise is also thought to help generate new neurons in the hippocampus, the brain area where learning and memory “live,” and which is known to lose volume with age, depression and Alzheimer’s disease.....


Foods and Spices
The brain is a massive energy suck–it uses glucose way out of proportion to the rest of the body. In fact, it requires about 20% of the body’s energy resources, even though its volume is just a tiny percentage. This is justifiable since thinking, learning, remembering and controlling the body are all huge jobs. But the source and quantity of the sugar matter:....


Meditation
This connection is fascinating, because although there are thousands of years of anecdotal evidence that meditation can help a person psychologically, and perhaps neurologically, the scientific evidence for meditation’s effects on the brain has really just exploded in the last five or 10 years. Meditation has been linked (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1361002/) to increased brain volume in certain areas of the cerebral cortex, along with less volume in the brain’s amygdala, which controls fear and anxiety. It’s also been linked (http://www.pnas.org/content/108/50/20254.short) to reduced activity in the brain’s default mode network (DMN), which is active when our minds are wandering about from thought to thought, which are typically negative and distressing. Meditation also seems to lead to changes to the white matter tracks connecting different regions of the brain, and to improved attention and concentration.....

rocketsocks
04-15-2016, 23:58
After joining online hiking forums I've become more critical, cynical and hyper aggravated at times, but at the very same time have been satisfied, relaxed and energized. I'm fairly certain all this online buesiness is just another form of artificial intelligence...that is to say you're all mad, phone home.

BonBon
04-16-2016, 12:04
I guess it was a dumb thing for me to assert. When I took the first of these assessments it was in a professional context and I was in land surveying working for engineering firms. My brain was all about trig, geometry, law, and deadlines. Since that time I have owned an art studio for almost 13 years and hiked the trail. The brain has morphed into another brain at this point. The response here is very interesting though, and I guess nobody has to ask....how does that make you feel? You are all very expressive!

rafe
04-16-2016, 13:10
I guess it was a dumb thing for me to assert. When I took the first of these assessments it was in a professional context and I was in land surveying working for engineering firms. My brain was all about trig, geometry, law, and deadlines. Since that time I have owned an art studio for almost 13 years and hiked the trail. The brain has morphed into another brain at this point. The response here is very interesting though, and I guess nobody has to ask....how does that make you feel? You are all very expressive!

Always amusing and interesting to ponder what draws people to walk in the woods, or take epic walks in the woods and mountains. Seems to me, at the very least, it entails a healthy ego (or call it self-confidence) combined with a sense of adventure. That's just to get to the trail head and start walking.

twistwrist
04-16-2016, 18:10
Very interesting post! I remained an IFSJ after my hike, but the percentages were a bit different, significant for a couple of categories.
Makes you want to thru-hike another trail huh? For scientific purposes of course. ;)

Dogwood
04-16-2016, 18:12
No. ah ah ah. You, you are very impressive(good), you. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-_KlKiMp38

handlebar
04-16-2016, 18:27
....
Much of my own value system has changed as a result of LD hiking. I'm more sensitive to a greater environment than just my immediate narrow minded own, more patient, less judgmental, more free flowing, much less prone to consumerism and materialism, much more a critical thinker willing to question everything including cultural and societal norms and even my own long held beliefs, have a heightened sense of peace, heightened physical senses and another "sense, an awareness" which is hard for me to categorize, heightened concern of health in all it's aspects, I'm more conscientious, no longer governed by fear, solution rather than problem oriented, etc....:-?

That pretty much sums up my feeling about how my personality has evolved over the last 11 years and 12,000+ miles. I wish I'd read this thread before giving a presentation to 5 Senior high school English classes on the subject of "Planning a long distance hike" last Thursday. They had just read the book "Into the Wild" and in relation to that had an assignment to plan a long distance hike from the East Coast to somewhere in the Rocky Mountains. The inevitable question that always comes up was, "Why do you do this?" I explained that hiking keeps me physically fit. I could have added that it has seemed to make me emotionally or spiritually fit as well and I am probably a better person for it.:-?

RockDoc
04-16-2016, 20:38
I think, as some have said here, that it's true that introverts gain energy from long distance hiking, and extroverts gain energy by being with people. Of course you can do both these days on the trail. A few decades ago it was a much more solitary experience, you might see two people all day...

I tested out as the same sort of introvert as Amelia Earhart. We can't not do this stuff!

Pedaling Fool
04-17-2016, 12:50
Time...mind-boggling...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/perception-brain-time-slices_us_570fedb8e4b0561c9f043a79?

Excerpt:


“We do not experience stimuli and objects during their actual presentation, but much later when they are rendered conscious,” Scharnowski said. “Such a representation is akin to the answer to the question of how were your holidays: ‘We enjoyed the colors of the Tuscan landscape for three days, and then went to Venice for four sunny days at the sea.’ The response is a compressed post-hoc description regarding the temporal features of the trip even though the actual event was spread over a long period of time.”So how much faster is human vision than perception? Much faster.

“We can see the time difference when two bars are presented with a delay of 3 milliseconds,” Scharnowski said. “In contrast, conscious perception is much slower and can be delayed for several hundred milliseconds.”

This time lag is a good thing for perception, according to study co-author Dr. Michael Herzog (http://actu.epfl.ch/news/how-the-brain-produces-consciousness-in-time-slice/), a professor at the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne’s Brain Mind Institute in Switzerland.

“The brain wants to give you the best, clearest information it can, and this demands a substantial amount of time,” he said in a statement. “There is no advantage in making you aware of its unconscious processing, because that would be immensely confusing.”

If we don’t see the world as a continuous flow and instead process it more like a string of snapshots, human consciousness may not be as coherent as we’d like to think.

rainydaykid
04-20-2016, 18:09
Psychiatry and psychology are no different than biology, chemistry, physics, zoology, etc.

They seem much less rigorous. I'm a chemist, and my friend is a psychologist. His curriculum was much easier and less rigorous than mine. A key to this is math. If the major doesn't involve lots of math, it's probably not much of a science. It's inescapable.

Miel
04-20-2016, 18:15
They seem much less rigorous. I'm a chemist, and my friend is a psychologist. His curriculum was much easier and less rigorous than mine. A key to this is math. If the major doesn't involve lots of math, it's probably not much of a science. It's inescapable.

You do have to take statistics to get through a psych major, and this is what trips up a lot of psych majors. When I was in school, many psych majors took their stats course at a local community college, then re-took the class at their own school.

rafe
04-20-2016, 18:21
They seem much less rigorous. I'm a chemist, and my friend is a psychologist. His curriculum was much easier and less rigorous than mine. A key to this is math. If the major doesn't involve lots of math, it's probably not much of a science. It's inescapable.

I'm a electrical engineer (retired.) My wife is a psychologist. Her craft doesn't involve a whole lot of math, but she knows a lot more about statistics than I ever needed to. For that matter there was precious little calculus or diffy-Qs once I got out school.

Psychology isn't STEM exactly, but it's a rigorous discipline nonetheless. I watched my wife study and sweat for her licensing exams, and that was after a PhD and years of internships.