First, I'd like to deal with the MBTI-bashing. Most of the set-out-to-debunk claims written by Myers-Briggs skeptics show either lack of awareness of the variety of people (
including non-MBTI-affiliated psychologists) who have used and endorsed it, or misunderstanding of how soft sciences like psychology, and in particular psychometrics, work.
House Rule 2 reads: "Note that this includes controversial or extraordinary claims and opinions. Repeatedly posting these without providing evidence and proper argumentation to back them up will be considered trolling." I will thereby support my position
with evidence and proper argumentation. Have a look at
Debunking the MBTI Debunkers, by Reckful. (And as you'll see in this article, a lot more journals than just
The Journal of Psychological Type have published work on Myers-Briggs.)
Salmoneus, your case against the hunter-gatherer vs. farmer theory appears well-researched and accurate. I have a few comments, though:
It's particularly notable how the characteristics of "hunter-gatherers" - acceptance of minority sexualities, sleeping in late, being left-wing, thinking young people shouldn't be disciplined so harshly by their elders, having promiscuous sex, etc
A nitpick: Hofer says that it's
being monogamous that's characteristic of hunter-gatherers, and being promiscuous that's characteristic of farmers. You dealt with this one below, though.
are just traits of "young people" (i.e. the target audience for ego-fluffing on this sort of blog). Needless to say, traits that change so much with age have no business on a list of things purporting to be related to ethnic origin.
I agree that these are all traits of young people, or at least young people today. The number one reason I believe Howe & Strauss' generational theory has been debunked, in fact, is because they predicted in 1997, when the oldest Millennials were 15 by their count, that Millennials would come of age as young people pushing for conventional social norms of behavior in every arena of life, bringing back traditional gender roles, being intolerant of eccentricity, pushing a heteronormative worldview, marching off to war in huge numbers, accepting the draft with zeal (what draft?), opposing drug use and drug legalization, listening to music like the Backstreet Boys and *N SYNC (even the over-16 set and even the boys), dressing in a clean-cut, preppy, "all-American" style, getting behind the president of the Fourth Turning era, believing kids have too much freedom instead of seeking youth rights, trusting corporations and big brands, being loyal to their own corporation, going along with injustices to "keep the peace", and valuing unity, order and stability for their own sake. In their teens, twenties, and thirties! Howe & Strauss do say that Millennials will lighten up on their kids and be permissive when they have their own brats, but only once a new Ozzie-and-Harriet-like era begins and Millennials say, "Gee, our strict upbringing made us follow leaders too blindly! We almost followed King George and the Trumperor off a cliff! We better lighten up on our own children so they don't run the risk of doing what we did!"
Forget the arguments that generation theory is apophenic, that all cyclical theories in the social sciences are pseudoscience, etc. At least Howe & Strauss made many falsifiable predictions. And falsified they have been. </generation theory rant>
descendents of "farmers" (i.e. white people).
Or Asian people. Many of the biggest agricultural civilizations have been in Asia (China comes to mind). There have also been some agricultural civilizations in the Middle East. The Phoenicians weren't farmers due to their lack of arable land, and the Jews were primarily religious thinkers rather than farmers, but Sumer was certainly agricultural (and the civilization is believed to have collapsed when their crops failed).
Then again, in contemporary America, Asians (Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, Taiwanese) and Middle Easterners (Arabs, Lebanese, Jews, Persians) are stereotyped as people who work and study hard, so Hofer's theory fits the popular stereotype.
- the idea that hunter-gatherers were 'more monogamous' is risible. In reality, it's exactly the opposite: hunter-gatherers are more likely to tolerate premarital sex, promiscuity, sex outside marriage and serial monogamy; it's agriculturalists (with their worries about land inheritance) who tried to impose strict rules on sexual partners. And wait, hunter-gatherers are 'open' and 'liberal' and accepting of 'diverse sexualities'... but also commited to monogamy!? This is just a list of "things the author likes"...
I puzzled over this too.
- Hunter-gatherers are night-owls? I guess it depends what they're hunting and gathering. Certainly, from knowing some of the huntin-shootin-fishin brigade, they're not famous for their lie-ins!
This is an excellent point. I remember getting up early in the morning to go fishing in Colorado when I was 9. (But at least farmers are pretty much early-to-bed, early-to-rise.)
- Highly rebellious? I don't know. But many hunter-gather societies are almost military, at least when it comes to certain critical tasks, and it's not like the history of civilisation is one of meek obedience...
That last sentence is true. There have been wars and revolutions, not just from barbarians, but within civilizations. I think what Hofer is getting at, though, is what Mark Rosenfelder wrote in
The Conlanger's Lexipedia: "Premodern agricultural states (but not hunter-gatherers or nomads) are big on authority. Rulers are to be obeyed even when they're lunatics; savants advuse matching one's belief system to the state's; fathers may have life-or-death powers over even adult children." (p. 330)
For instance, he refers to "gifted, created, autistic, bipolar, borderline and other high oxytocin minds" - a big thing of his seems to be some high-oxytocin gene and "intuitive, gifted and autistic" children. But for one thing, 'intuitive', 'bipolar', 'borderline' and 'autistic' are all completely different things
True. It seems to be "chatty, sports/shopping-loving neurotypicals vs. everyone else".
(and indeed autism is more associated with intuition deficits than surfeits)
That was what I thought too.
Just going by the way Myers-Briggs proponents describe the theory, without getting into the question of whether Myers-Briggs is valid, I would have predicted the archetypal Aspie to be:
I: Because Aspies are usually shy and not interested in socializing
S: Because they're literal-minded, concrete thinkers, and are often said to "lack imagination"
T: Because they're ruled by their head, not by their heart
J: Because they're orderly and like rules and routine
So: ISTJ
What Hofer is probably thinking of, though, is things like this:
https://wrongplanet.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=62654
You'll notice that more than half the people answering this question on WrongPlanet, an Asperger's site, said they were either INTP or INTJ.
Also: the "like rules and routine" part is puzzling, because Hofer says autistic people are hunter-gatherers, and yet he says farmers like routine and hunter-gatherers dislike it. I'm going to ask him how he reconciles this.
and what little research there's been suggests that autism is associated with low oxytocin (or normal oxytocin but lack of sensitivity), and indeed artificial oxytocin intake has short-term benefits in socialisation for autistic people.
I thank you, Salmoneus, for teaching me this. I'm also going to ask Andreas Hofer about this.