How we change what others think, feel, believe and do

Preferences

Explanations > Preferences

Discussions about preferences | Preference scales  | Typing systems | So what?

What makes us different? One way of classifying people that appears in many systems of personality profiling is to determine a person's preferences in terms of how they perceive and respond to the world.

Discussions about preferences

Preferences are more than just making decisions

• Arousal Types: Four types of arousal.
• Attributional Style: Explaining failure.
• Four Types: Four classifications that have appeared through history.
• The Context Effect: Our preferences change with the environmental context.
• Control-Identity types: Based on two key needs.
• Culture: Cultural models here are often based on shared preferences.
• Tolerance and Action in Belief: How we view other beliefs.
• Types and Typing: Combining preferences into character types.

Preference scales

There are many scales of preference. Note that there are two styles that are commonly used. The first is an absolute score on a single scale ('How happy are you?') and the second is a position along a spectrum between (usually two) alternatives ('How happy or sad are you?').

 Here are just a few (also see beliefs about people).

• Attraction vs. Avoidance: We may be driven more by fears or desires.
• Blame vs. Explain: When things go wrong, we blame others or the context.
• Contrarian vs. Conformist: Go against what is asked or follow all the rules.
• Entertainment Preferences: Five different types.
• Extraversion vs. Introversion: Motivation that comes from either people or thinking.
• Head, Hands and Heart: We are driven cognitively, behaviorally or affectively.
• Imperative: Response to command may be conformance, independence or contrariness.
• Instant vs. Delayed Gratification: When to get rewards.
• Judging vs. Perceiving: Living a structured or unstructured lifestyle.
• Locus of Control: Internal vs. external view of where control happens.
• Maximizing vs. Minimizing: Making the most of life or simple living.
• Optimism and Pessimism: Ways of seeing the world.
• Reflective vs. Reactive Thinking: Speed and depth of thought.
• Rights vs Duties: Self and others.
• Risk Bias: preference to take or avoid risks.
• Pain Thresholds: Where action is triggered.
• Sensing vs. Intuiting: Attention and meaning based on immediate data or deeper thought.
• Similarity vs. Difference: Focusing on what is the same about things or what is different.
• Spirituality: Extent of higher integrity.
• Style vs. Substance: Preference for reality or perception.
• Subjectivity vs. Objectivity: Viewpoint when perceiving the world may be engaged subjectivity or detached objectivity.
• Task vs. Person: Getting the job done by task or person focus.
• Thinking vs. Feeling: Deciding based on logic or consideration of others.
• Threat Forecast: We may predict the future as negative and threatening or positive and hopeful.

Typing systems

There have been typing systems going back to the Greeks and probably before. Here are some of the better-known ones:

• 16PF: Cattell's sixteen basic personality factors.
• Belbin Team Roles: Nine roles people play in teams.
• Margerison-McCann Team Performance Wheel: Eight roles that people take on in teams.
• Big Five factors: A simplification to five factors from the 16PF.
• DISC Types: Four simple types.
• Jungian Type Inventory: The oldest modern system.
  • A New Look at Jungian Dimensions: Clarifying this popular system.
• Kolb's Learning Styles: Four learning styles based on two preference dimensions.
• MMPI: Clinical psychiatric conditions.
• Social Styles: Assertiveness and responsiveness.
• Type A and Type B personalities: Prone to heart attacks or not?

Also:

• Blevins' family roles: As played in family groups.
• Listener preferences: What listeners prefer.
• Berrien's Persuasion Tools Model: A four-type model of how we persuade.
• The Focus Vector Model: In-out vs. up-down.
• Kantor's Four Players: Conversation participants.

So what?

Don't push rope. Find the other person's preferences and play to these, rather than messing about at the other end of the spectrum.

See also

Learning Channel Preferences, Beliefs, Beliefs about people, Culture, Stereotypes, Emotions Analytics Types

Theories about how we understand people, Theories about how we think about ourselves