Every time Lynn goes downstairs to her clay-working area, she falls into a time warp. It is always later when she emerges that she thinks it will be. I have checked and the clock down there keeps the same time as all the other clocks so I can't figure out why time is different for her down there.
Years ago, we both took the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. It is a personality inventory that divides people into one side or the other of four personality types, inspired by Carl Jung and created by a mother-daughter team who were aware of the work done by the US armed forces during World War I. That work involved attempts to evaluate intelligence but the Myers-Briggs team wanted to create a test for personality. Jung thought that human personality was deeply influenced by the extroversion-introversion scale, where the extrovert expresses thoughts openly and the introvert keeps more of his thoughts inside. He also felt people tend to be "sensors" or "intuitives", people who pay attention to input from their eyes, ears and other senses or those who are more guided by what they have on their minds.
The third dichotomy was whether the person tended to be guided by thoughts or by emotions and the fourth split was whether the person liked making decisions and did so frequently or felt better gathering information in support of a decision and tended to put off making decisions.
The two of us are pretty similar on the first three dimensions but, especially when something is important, Lynn tends more to the information-gathering side than I do. Why the judgers like me tend to be more continuously aware of what time it is than the "perceivers" I don't know but they often do.
Once Lynn said,"Let's go for a walk" and I said,"For how long?" She said,"I don't know for how long, probably until we get back." She can go on a walk and look at what she sees. When I go for a walk, I keep wondering when it is going to end. I may not especially want it to end but I have the question of duration in the back of my mind.
This set of personality variables is not at the forefront of many personality investigators these days. The more agreed upon set is often called The Big Five. They are extraversion, agreeableness, openness, conscientiousness and neuroticism. These variables have been more investigated and studied recently.
You may notice that "extroversion" is spelled differently from "extraversion". I learned the "o" way so it is more comfortable for me. You may also know that Susan Cain (see her "Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can't Stop Talking") and others are promoting more respect and awareness of the introvert type, despite the fact that the louder, more noticeable and gregarious extroverts often get first billing.
