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The S/N Gap: Psychological Types and Political Communication

by Ian Finseth

Here in the midst of another Presidential election season – or more precisely, on the upslope of another phase in the seemingly permanent wave-cycle of electoral politics – we are hearing a lot about the techniques of effective, or ineffective, political communication. The fate of candidates, parties, nations, seems to hinge on who best manages the alchemy of words and images; finds the right blend of theme, gesture, and utterance; marries the power of language with the aspirations of an audience; and, in today’s fashionable parlance, “frames” the issues in the most advantageous way.

One of the basic approaches to strategic communications emphasizes mode or venue: Use the Web more; appear on talk radio more; use simpler diction; expand the direct-mailing campaign; write a blog; write a memoir; and so forth. Another basic approach emphasizes demographics, defined primarily by race, gender, region, income, and religion: Support immigration reform but don’t call it amnesty; say you play touch football rather than badminton; avoid talking about the Confederate flag; know what a gallon of milk costs; make sure to meet with the archbishop on that campaign swing through Chicago. These two sides of political communication, of course, work together organically in any competent organization. They form what we might call the “grammar” of a political campaign.

There seems to be much less interest – interestingly – in how the concept of psychological type can and should influence political communication. In particular, the Myers-Briggs model of different personality types offers another way of thinking about how to define constituencies and how to communicate with them effectively.

Let’s start with a juxtaposition of two public statements by two well-known political figures – a juxtaposition that’s perhaps unfair, but delectable nonetheless. And revealing.

In 1963, at the Lincoln Memorial, Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered an address whose ringing words set the standard for civic idealism in the twentieth century. To take just one line from among many: “I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal’.”

Forty-three years later, in November 2006, the self-styled über-realist Dick Cheney had this to say to ABC News personality George Stephanapoulos: “The fact of the matter is, [the Iraq War] is the right thing for us to be doing. We need to succeed here. It has a direct bearing on how we do around the world on the global war on terror.”

From a rhetorical perspective, the two most important phrases here are the opening ones: “I have a dream…” and “The fact of the matter…” What different worldviews they imply! However, it’s not that King was unconcerned with the hard realities of racism, or that Cheney was being genuinely realistic, or even honest, about the relation between Iraq and terrorism. Rather, the key distinction lies in how both men are using the language to achieve certain effects, and how their words might appeal differently to different constituencies defined by psychological type.

One will appeal to those people moved by possibility, the other to those moved by actuality. One will speak to those who value the imaginative, the other to those who value the tangible. In the language of the Myers-Briggs psychological model, Cheney’s words will resonate with “Sensing” individuals (or “S”s) and King’s with “Intuiting” individuals (or “N”s). And therein lies an important clue for progressive politics.

In the Myers and Briggs Foundation’s own words (http://www.myersbriggs.org/my-mbti-personality-type/mbti-basics/sensing-or-intuition.asp), this is what Sensing means: “Paying attention to physical reality, what I see, hear, touch, taste, and smell. I’m concerned with what is actual, present, current, and real. I notice facts and I remember details that are important to me. I like to see the practical use of things and learn best when I see how to use what I’m learning. Experience speaks to me louder than words.”

And this is what Intuiting means: “Paying the most attention to impressions or the meaning and patterns of the information I get. I would rather learn by thinking a problem through than by hands-on experience. I’m interested in new things and what might be possible, so that I think more about the future than the past. I like to work with symbols or abstract theories, even if I don’t know how I will use them. I remember events more as an impression of what it was like than as actual facts or details of what happened.”

For years, marketing professionals, corporate managers, leadership consultants, and others of that general ilk have used the concept of personality type – especially the Myers-Briggs model – in order to improve on-the-job performance. Much has been written on how to communicate effectively, from a corporate perspective, with different types, and on how to get team members to work together smoothly. There’s been virtually nothing, however, on the implications of personality type for persuasive political communication.

So, to come right to the point: Progressives need to get better at communicating our ideas, values, and policies to those many, many Americans who are Sensors rather than Intuiters. Whether it’s an impressionistic hunch or a well-informed judgment, progressives seem to incline more to the language of theory, speculation, abstraction, and potential than the language of tangible facts and demonstrable results. The very words “progressive” and “conservative” hint at the problem. The latter implies conserving something real, something in existence; the former implies the desire for a society not yet brought into being. Bill Clinton spoke of building a bridge to the 21^st century; George Bush, Sr., spoke of “the vision thing.”

In practical terms, the difference between Ss and Ns might help to explain why progressives have lost ground to conservatives, over the last 30 years, when it comes wearing to the “populist” mantle. During the same period that conservatives have successfully pushed cultural populism over economic populism, progressives have found their audiences and constituencies increasingly weighted toward the N side of the scale. Intuiters, one could argue, are more likely to go into the creative knowledge-based fields, such as artistic performance, academia, yoga meditation, or innovative high-tech, among others, and there may be a natural, and deepening, congeniality between their professional habits of mind and the political language of a progressive movement oriented toward developing the latent potential of our society. Yet both the “N-fields” and a political class seen as trying to “improve” society are at risk of getting folded into that great bogey-man “the cultural elite” – which is exactly what has happened in the sausage-maker of the national media.

Numbers are on the side of the Sensors, as it has been estimated that over 73 percent of Americans are Ss, while fewer than 27 percent are Ns (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers-Briggs_Type_Indicator#Functions_.28S-N_and_T-F.29).

In other words, what might appear to be exclusively a difference of culture, region, or values – the “heartland” vs. the coasts, the “bubbas” vs. the metros – could be at some level partly a difference in psychological type, playing itself out in all these people talking past one another. What strikes Mark Metro as red-neckism or anti-intellectualism could actually be the expression of a strong S personality type, resistant to abstraction or theory but not to the underlying motivation or goal. And what strikes Joe Six-Pack as high-falutin’ elitist blather could actually reflect an Intuiter’s tendency to generalize or failure to illustrate a point with prosaic details, rather than a genuine difference of interest or purpose.

The issue of global warming perfectly illustrates how these two registers of language – Sensing and Intuiting – can shape the development and outcome of a political debate. The recent change in that debate has been generally very positive, if woefully belated, and it contains a lesson for the wise.

For many years, global warming seemed to exist in the realm of the hypothetical. It was for N’s like Al Gore. One had to see the patterns of cause and effect, infer the long-term possibilities, predict the consequences, get beneath the daily weather report. It was therefore denigrated, like evolution, as a mere “theory.” Sensors distrust theory. But they don’t reject it – as long as it is backed up by facts.

Which is precisely the turn the global warming debate has taken in the last two or three years. The facts, of course, were there all along, but now there are more of them, and they are being brought into the stream of political communication more effectively. Activists and political leaders have become much more adept at connecting global warming to real things happening in people’s lives. This has been, unfortunately, woefully late in coming, but it still a very positive development. The science of global warming has not fundamentally changed; in fact it has simply confirmed itself over and over, even approaching redundancy. What has changed is that, thanks to a number of high-profile extreme weather events during the past few years, people have tuned into specific events and direct impacts. They are connecting the dots: Hurricane Katrina, crop losses in Florida, jellyfish in Boston Harbor, a bad sunburn, high electrical bills, drought in Atlanta, another cancelled flight. This shift has occurred not only because global warming has accelerated, but because the language surrounding global warming has taken on, necessarily, a higher degree of factuality.

Progressive political leaders and their communications teams can learn from this. They can learn to balance abstract and intellectual arguments with simple factual information about how people are actually being affected by particular policies or programs. (Indeed, that was one of Ronald Reagan’s rhetorical strengths.) Of course, the abstract and intellectual dimensions of communications are important and, if handled adeptly, can lend eloquence and power to political speech. And naturally different situations or contexts will call for different rhetorical strategies. Yet the point remains. Progressives can and should speak more directly to the practical sides of a problem. They can deploy anecdote more effectively. They can learn – gasp! – to sound more like Dick Cheney.