Textual Reflexions

« Good evening, my name is Piotr and I am an INTP. »

These would be my first words in a hypothetical INTP Anonymous meeting. For those who are not accustomed to this terminology, an INTP (Introverted iNtuitive Thinking Perceiving) is one of Myers and Briggs’ psychological type indicators (in short MBTI) and it’s not a disease, even if many INTPs are outcasts in the “normal” society.

As stated by the excellent Portrait of an INTP, INTPs are people with a high tendency for abstraction and little interest in the outer world. This characteristics push them towards mathematics, but limit their interpersonal relationships. They are lonely wolves since they can neither become alpha wolves, nor they tolerate the status of omega wolves¹.

The interactions between Myers-Briggs types and sexual relationships have been analysed and published (e.g. see Personality and Relationships for a simple explication of the results), but I failed to find these principles applied in any of the On-line Dating Communities, such as Yahoo! Personals or Meetic that advertise themselves on every possible webpage.

I was thinking for some time of the best application of psychological tests to Computer-Aided Soulmate Search: let the computer restrict the choices of possible partners not using the usual descriptions of who you are looking for (since you didn’t already find someone matching those requisites, maybe you are looking for the wrong things), but rather the description of who you are. I won’t explain my theories here, since I had to modify them after the following:

Experiment

Eventually I found something that follows these principles, when I noticed the recurrent appearance of a Parship advertisement on my BOINC statistics page (here it is). I decided to analyse their methods and their free psychological test, to see if it fitted what I had in mind.

I was mainly struck by two characteristics of the test: it has much more questions to acquire knowledge about my habits, in a “what would you do if” way, that I had expected. It does make sense since practical habits like “smoking”, “working in the kitchen”, “cleaning the flat”, etc. have a bigger impact in a relationship than some behaviour predispositions. Other aspects that I didn’t take into account in my theories was all the “do you believe in monogamy” stuff. A theoretical test such as Myers-Briggs’ can show that you believe strongly in some principles, but it doesn’t collect data about the principles.

For example I have strong feelings about smoking, but a theoretical test cannot show if I don’t like smokers or don’t like people that don’t tolerate smokers (actually it’s the second one).

The other thing that attracted my attention in the Parship test was the part when I was supposed to choose between different figures the one that I liked the most. I could not find the pattern in these questions, but I suppose that they tested my predisposition for order rather than chaos (in every pair of figures there was a symmetric one and an asymmetric one).

Let’s go to the results. Most of them were not really a surprise and filled the INTP pattern: I am mostly rational (62%), with strong feelings (25%), but not impulsive (13%) and a great tendency towards introversion. Some of the advises are generic one (they work for everyone): Action: move yourself; Communication: express your feelings. Other are more original: I must be more tolerant with myself and find someone that leaves me some freedom; others are quite impressive: the test showed that I am a rather conventional person, while I still think of myself as of an eccentric and original mathematician that likes to write nonsense in his blog.

While the test is far from being original, I think that the approach taken by Parship opens new horizons to the whole Online Dating Systems and that the data they collected about me would have helped me to select a much better partner for me than I would find using Meetic, but I am not willing to continue this experiment, since I am not interested in relationships
right now and I don’t even have time for them.

The experiment showed me that I have still many flaws in my understanding of human nature and psychology, so I am willing to accept all references to academic publications that would allow me to improve my knowledge of psychology.

¹ I am talking about social life, not professional life. Professionally I have always sought the establishments populated by many sharks (the choice of the links is entirely arbitrary, the footnote is not big enough to mention all the names).

One of the most interesting psychological syndromes, in my humble opinion, is what I call the “You are not my friend” syndrome. Even if it is not so widespread, I think that its effects are worth to be noted.

The syndrome can cause a great discomfort, bad mood and turning pale. The triggering object of these effects is a person with a deep relationship with the sick, but which the latter hates secretly. The sick tries to break every relationship with the trigger, but usually fails for many reasons.

People affected by this syndrome are socially and emotionally unfitted. They are people that change oftenly mood and they share a low self esteem that generates problems in the relationship with other people. The first contact with the trigger, as far as I can tell, happens due to the “Red cross” syndrome that pushes the sick to try to help the trigger in a difficult situation.

The trigger is himself socially and emotionally unfitted and the sick tries to help him with some human contact. Very soon the sick understands that the trigger is in a no return situation, mainly because he doesn’t attempt to change his behaviour towards society. The situation degenerates and the trigger feels linked to the victim and calls her Friend, when, at the same time, the sick tries to break every contact with the trigger in a way, imposed by the “Red cross” syndrome, that won’t hurt the other person.

In this situation the sick is fully affected by the effects of the “You are not my friend” syndrome. The manifestations of the syndrome vary from person to person:

• At the lowest level the sick just feels uncomfortable when he is with the trigger.
• The sick may arrive to isolate himself from the society in order to avoid contact with the trigger. Mainly he closes his door, doesn’t answer to the phone, and generally avoids any unidentified communication. In the case when the communication is pre-identified, such as e-mail, cellular phone, the sick has just to ignore the communication.
• The sick says sentences such as “You are not my friend” or “We never were friends, so we won’t be” either directly to the trigger or when talking of him to the friends of the sick
• At one of the highest levels the sick has physiological answers to anything that reminds him the ‘trigger’. E.g. he can becomes of bad mood, he stops talking and he truns pale when his friends pronounce the name of the hated person.

Personally I know three people that were or are affected by this syndrome, one of them is me. I served also as a trigger for another “Friend” when considered with my eyes. It is selfexplaining that this “Friend” considers me in a different way.

The thing that most strike when considering this syndrome is that the sick cannot avoid the hated person even if he tries to. This is quite different from the normal human behaviour of “we don’t understand well each other” and presents two opposites vision of the same relationship, from the point of view of the sick and that of the trigger.

I am quite a illiterate, but I know an example of a similar situation from Catullus poetry, even if in this famous text the two opposite feelings dwell in the same person. For those who haven’t yet understood to what poem I am referring, it sound so:

Odi et amo quare id fortasse requiris
Nescio sed fieri sentio et excrucior.

5 o’clock in the night and I am still here wasting my time on my computer.

While looking for a linux PDA I encountered a link to an IQ test and did it. I don’t think the numerical results are important, they are usually pushed over the threshold of 100 in order to make people buy the test. It was for me a delusion but I can bring to my defense the late hour and the speed at which I took the test and the fact that I don’t have good linguistical skills in the English language.

But, as I already said it’s not that important. The fact that touched me and exorted me to post this first blog was the interpretation: I am a professional mathematician without quite any philosophical skill, but the resulting profile was the following.

Citation from the results of an IQ test on www.tickle.com:

During the test, you answered four different types of questions–mathematical, visual-spatial, linguistic and logical. We analyzed how you did on each of those questions which reveals how your brain uniquely works.

We also compared your answers with others who have taken the test. According to the sorts of questions you got correct, we can tell your Intellectual Type is a Visionary Philosopher.

This means you are highly intelligent and have a powerful mix of skills and insight that can be applied in a variety of different ways. Like Plato, your exceptional math and verbal skills make you very adept at explaining things to others–and at anticipating and predicting patterns. And that’s just some of what we know about you from your IQ results.