post by Dan Chaney, Humanities and Social Sciences Division
Perceiving vs.
Judging
Of the four dimensions, my favorite is without a doubt is
this one, perceiving and judging. Judging and perceiving is the dimension that
concerns itself with how we choose to live our lives – in either a very
structured way or a very flexible open way.
First, let’s dispel a couple of stereotypes. When people
hear this dimension is perceiving versus judging, the first assumption is that
perceivers are people who are particularly perceptive or observant, and judgers
are people who are judgmental. Not at all.
Judgers are people with a preference for living in an
orderly, structured way and are happiest when their lives are structured and
matters settled. Judgers love to make decisions and seek to control their lives
(and sometimes the lives of others.) Judgers tend to see things in terms of
black and white and they come down on one side or the other. They don’t like
decisions that are left up in the air, in fact, decisions that aren’t settled
actually can make judgers uncomfortable or cause them stress.
Perceivers, on the other hand, are folks that prefer to
make decisions in an open ended fashion. And really, perceivers prefer not to
make decisions at all. They love flexibility. They love to perceive options.
They don’t like to make decisions because, let’s face it, something better
might come along that they’d rather do so they’d just as soon not be pinned
down on anything. Perceivers tend to hate day planners, calendars, to do lists,
syllabi, etc. Forcing a perceiver to make a decision can actually cause them to
feel stress.
So, why is this my favorite personality dimension?
Background: I mentioned when you take the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, it’ll
give you a score and a strength of that score ranging from 0 to 40. I also
mentioned that most people fall within the bell curve on MBTI scores for each
dimension, meaning that most people fall within about 10 on the strength scale
for any particular dimension. That is certainly true for me. My Introvert score is a strength of 7, which
means I could go either way, depending on how I answered a particular question.
My Intuitor score was also a strength of 7. My Thinker score was also a
strength of 7. With me so far? A score of 7 in these areas is pretty typical.
My score as a Perceiver is a 39 out of
40, meaning there aren’t many people out there more of a perceiver than I am.
In fact, I would class myself as an archetype Perceiver, there isn’t much
Judger in me. I tell my students that if they are perceivers, I am their king.
Now, why is this dimension fun for me? This is one of the
easiest dimensions to recognize in your coworkers, your friends, you partner,
your children. Want to know how to tell if someone is a perceiver or judger?
Look at their desk. Look inside their purse. Look inside their car. It’s true.
If their desk/purse/car is messy they are a perceiver. If their desk/purse/car is
neat as a pin, they are a judger. Now, you may be wondering why this is so. How
can Dan be sure? Well, it’s in the nature of perceivers versus judgers. Think
about it. Judgers like to make decisions, they like structure, it follows that
their desks are neat and orderly. Perceivers hate making decisions, so we don’t
like clearing our desks. The surest way for me to lose something is to put it
away. Personally, it took me 10 years to file stuff in the filing cabinet in my
office. I’ve filled one drawer with files, and haven’t opened the drawer in
months. The other three drawers are full of stuff that isn’t files. If you ask
a perceiver how we can find anything on our desk, we will tell you we know
exactly where something is, we just won’t promise to be able to find it fast.
We employ organization by stratigraphy, an archeological concept where the
further down the pile, the older the item is.
Here is an example of Perceiver vs. Judger.
Nicole is unquestionably a judger, she loves being
organized and everything on her desk has its place. When I see Nicole’s desk, I
have to fight the urge to take her stapler and turn it a quarter turn, because
I suspect the first thing she’d do when she returns to her desk is turn her
stapler back the right way.
My desk, on the
other hand, contains pens that have run out of ink because I dislike making
decisions like throwing away a pen that is out of ink. As if might start
working again later. There are piles of stuff that I am not working on at
present, but might resume working on later, etc. You could turn the stapler
around on my desk, but first you’d have to find it, and my reaction would be “I
have a stapler on my desk?”
So, you may be wondering what the organizational strength
is of a perceiver, considering we don’t like to make decisions. Well, think
about it. Judgers love to make choices, but they find it hard to relax. Who
loves to relax? Perceivers love to relax, but they have trouble making
decisions. Perceivers and judgers need each other because the judgers run the
risk of scheduling themselves so tightly that they become inflexible and
dogmatic, while perceivers run the risk of procrastinating their lives away
Judging
|
Perceiving
|
|
Librarians (N=1600)
|
66%
|
34%
|
Library Assistants (N=84)
|
64.29%
|
35.71%
|
University Faculty (N=2282)
|
65.91%
|
34.09%
|
