Correlations between Physiology/Neurology & Psychology

[sat2493]

I don't have a theory that I must report as much as I want to hear anyone's insights or observations on this. I don't have a concrete observation in mind. It's really case by case where I pick correlations up, but I can't explain them meaningfully on cyberspace.

I feel I can pick up a person's nature just by seeing how they're physically built and how they carry themselves. Knowing someone's nature is different from knowing who they are as a person. I feel I can pick up an abstract view of someone, which is their nature.

Confirmation bias? Hell yea. But like a fighter pilot who becomes biased to his surroundings, his instincts are reflective of real stimuli.

 

[Ex-User (8886)]

I feel I can pick up a person's nature just by seeing how they're physically built and how they carry themselves

I feel I can pick up an abstract view of someone, which is their nature.

I have exactly the same. I believe it's not every INTP trait, because you're the first one who describes it how I see it. Below is picture which is how I see people, the world and stuff.

Spoiler: picture

The theory of MBTI is that Ti is good at abstracting, it's about gathering general, simplified view of events and things. I also once heard that it's similar to something called model thinking - it's about noticing similar things from different phenomena making a general model that is true for all stuff from a category. It's always easier to analyze simplified models without details, you can notice the most important, major attributes.

Also, if you watched Mr. Robot, he says that reading people is easy for him, you just need to focus on imperfections.

It's more difficult to explain it on neuroscience level, but I guess it's generally how frontal lobe can work in people with great analysis skills. It's similar to machine learning - it doesn't know how it find correlations and results, it just tells you - this set of information gives you that result, because it learns from experience and knows how to process data in correct way.

 

[QuickTwist]

Look into Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. That's your answer.

As far as measuring people up, I have one friend who is also INTP who I meat this way. Something about him spoke to me and now we are good fast friends.

 

[Hadoblado]

There is a lot you can say about a person from what they look like, but the stuff you're talking about should probably be approached in a strictly statistical sense.

For instance, if someone is 6 foot six and heavily muscled, you can probably make inferences about how they've developed socially. They've likely experienced very little physical threat, and excelled physically. So you might guess that they're going to be comfortable in their own body, maybe developed a lot of confidence etc.
But you can still be wrong, and you should expect to be wrong a lot. You might improve your base-rate of correct judgements this way, but your point of reference should be how well other people do at these kinds of judgements when forced to make them. Any improvement is good but you're never going to approach a high degree of accuracy. There's just too much variance.

To me these things are most valuable when they overlap, but if that's the case, then the judgement of nature tends to subconscious to the point you hardly notice you're doing it.

Also I don't think it has anything to do with Ti or being INTP, I think most people do it to different extents and with varying degrees of success. It doesn't make you a jedi, it just means you're socialised.

 

[Ex-User (14663)]

So far in life, the biggest people I've met have had the weakest characters.

Actually, the most confident person (perhaps overly so) I've met was this chick who was 155 cm tall.

 

[Hadoblado]

Sure. I conjured that up from thin air to illustrate the type of thinking involved. I didn't have anyone in mind while saying it, or any trend I've genuinely noticed. It's not central to my point.

 

[Black Rose]

I go by emotion and intuition.
The inflection in the voice and their mannerisms.
I am more close up to people making assessments of them.
I am very controlled in what I say, try to maintain composure.
I absorb the essence of how they present themselves.

I am sure you can tell a lot from observation.
But I try to get what people are about up close.

 

[sat2493]

It probably has a lot to do with empathy. The degree to which you can put yourself in someone else's shoes determines how accurate you are.

Of course empathy can be misleading and your instincts and emotions can be absolutely wrong. But given enough trials, I believe you absolutely can get a cutting edge of someone's nature. That just comes with practice making "perfect", whatever that means in this case.

 

[sat2493]

I go by emotion and intuition.
I am sure you can tell a lot from observation.
But I try to get what people are about up close.

The most reliable way to get an idea of someone.