Mindscape Theory and the Myers-Briggs

Mindscape is a completely different theory of social typifications than the Myers-Briggs. Since Myers-Briggs is the most widely used system of individual types, there may be a tendency for researchers to try to collapse mindscape types into the Myers-Briggs MBTI types.

About MBTI - MBTI uses four pairs of dualistic categories. Maruyama (2002: 167) says "these four pairs are considered to be independent dimensions to make combinations of." The four duality pairs make 16 possible combinations. You can proceed to Boje's leadership web site and take the Myers-Briggs test to find out your own type.

According to Maruyama (2002: 167) the MBTI dimensions are included in Mindscape Theory, but with four critical differences.

1. There are 25 items in Mindscape test, and a second visual perception TOB heterogram test; not just four dualistic simplicities - "Mindscape theory considers all aspects of a person's daily life as expressions of the same underlying mindscape of the person" (167). This includes such areas as "perception, cognition, cogitation, spatial organization, social interaction patterns, aesthetic preferences, and includes the four pairs of characteristics in MBTI" (Maruyama, 2002: 167).
2. Types perform in many jobs; not one type for each job- "MBTI assumes homogeneity of each job type whereas in the Mindscape Theory there can be individuals of many different mindscape types within each job type because there are different ways of carrying out any given job" (Maruyama, 2002: 167). As a system theorist, Maruyama contends that the individual adapts their type to fit the job (or organizational) situation at hand. MBTI tries to fit the job the person, and slot the person within a job category.
3. Types are transoccupational - "MBTI does not systematically consider the fact that individual types cut across occupational boundaries, and are, therefore, trans-occupational" (Maruyama, 2002: 167). Transoccupationality of the Mindscape types means that there is a heterogeneity of types across organizational and cultural boundaries, doing all types of jobs.
4. It is about power to suppress your type in the system- Instead of saying that an individual is one of 16 or even four types, Mindscape Theory suggests that "one of the types becomes powerful for historical or political reasons, and utilizes, ignores or suppresses individuals of other types" (Maruyama, 2002: 167). In short, the system develops (by design or emergence) a preference for one type over another. So the key is not just to know your own type, but to know the type that is in power. Individuals develop eight strategies for dealing with power when they are the suppressed or marginal type:
   1. "(a) to form niches to avoid the type in power;
   2. (b) to camouflage one's own type;
   3. (c) to intentionally switch back and forth between feigning to be of the type in power, and one's own type, depending on situations;
   4. (d) to reversibly repress one's own type into the unconscious;
   5. (e) deepen irreversible repression;
   6. (f) withdrawal or alienation;
   7. (g) rebellion;
   8. (h) emigration" (Maruyama, 2002: 167).

   Main conclusion: the MBTI is a theory of individual typifications that induces psychological stress and an economic loss to organizations. "All these strategies entail psychological stress and economic burden on the part of the individual, and waste of human resources from the point of view of the firms" (maruyama, 2002: 168).

Implications: Mindscape Theory suggests, for example, that there will be dominant and repressed types that is part of the socialization and training that is embedded in an organization. There will be dominant and repressed types of leadership stressed and institutionalized in organizations. These dominant and repressed types are socially constructed products of powerful interests that are historical and political. In teams, there will be dominant and repressed types. What is key to understand is the system of socialization, training, and institutionalization of types that has happened historically, and is on going.

There are definitions of social reality that form typifications schemes that get embodied into organizations and individuals.

MBTI and Mindscape are two competing conceptual paradigms. MBTI comes out of psychology of individual types; it is the most widely used and is the traditional paradigm of individual typifications. Myers-Briggs has a monopolistic hold on business, education, and American society. A cadre of "universal experts" Berger & Luckmann, 1966: 117) apply MBTI to every conceivable area of everyday life. MBTI is a monopolistic part of our society. Despite the fact that its empirical studies have not found it to be valid; the Myers-Briggs has such a cadre of experts doing so much training, the it is now a "reality-producing process" of habitualization, socialization, and widespread institutionalization in universities, government, and business (Burger & Luckmann, 1966: 117).

Both Myers-Briggs and Mindscape Theory operate at high levels of abstraction.The difference is the Mindscape is relatively unknown in comparison to the monopolistic MBTI. MBTI assumes a practical functionality that is without empirical reality. The findings come from the MBTI definitions of reality that are "promulgated by the universal experts" (Burger & Luckmann, 1966: 118). There are so many full-time MBTI consultants and trainers claiming to know the ultimate significance of MBTI typification schemes that it is now a social facticity, all its own.

Magoroh Maruyama is the rival definer of social reality. He has too few experts to consult and train in the new definition of social reality. MBTI has expanded over the past four decades; Mindscape Theory is just beginning to develop pragmatic testing program. MBTI has the "power to produce reality" (Burger & Luckmann, 1966: 119), to package and sell reality. Ironically, MBTI is removed from the reality of everyday life, with little or no empirical support, but so socialized that rival definitions of social reality are at a competitive disadvantage.

Myers-Briggs was concocted in near-total isolations of the broad movements in teams, leadership, and organization theory; all that was added on, adapted, and the paradigm is now stretched to the limits of credulity. By contrast, Maruyama's Mindscape Theory grow up inside the subcommunity of system theorists, known as the second wave of cybernetics. Since Mindscape Theory is embedded in systems theory it is more than a theory of cognitive types; it is a systems theory translated into cognitive terms.

It is now time to demonstrate that Mindscape Theory is pragmatically superior to the Myers-Briggs typification monopoly. Maruyama is the challenger, the revolutionary theorists whose Mindscape Theory is an open heresy to the Myers-Briggs. It is time for this monopolistic definition of social reality to change. It is time to breakdown the taken-for-granted acceptance of the Myers-Briggs in education and industry, and begin the pragmatic work of testing.

How will the Myers-Briggs Monopoly React?

• The two paradigms by coexist in autonomous isolation (division of labor and segregation)
• Myers-Briggs may subsume Mindscape Theory into its dominion
• Myers-Briggs may nihilate Mindscape Theory, theoretically

Of the three, it appears that Mindscape Theory is a nihilistic threat to the Myers-Briggs hegemony. It is also a threat to Hofstede's cultural types. Maruyama's is the deviant conception to both typology schemes. Maruyama proposes a "deviant definition of reality" (Burger & Luckmann, 1966: 127). Maruyama is the revolutionary intellectual problemetizing the Myers-Briggs scheme with a set of "counter-definitions of reality" (Burger & Luckmann, 1966: 127).

This is ideological combat - Maruyama's revolutionary ideology is confronting the traditional (monopolistic) ideology of Myers-Briggs. It is a dialectic match to change the social institutions, and wen them away from the traditional paradigm. The symbolic universe of business, education, government, and culture itself is about to be transformed. An illegitimate system of typifications is the challenger to the legion of experts pontificating Myers-Briggs.

The deciding factor is the way in which Mindscape Theory is a systems theory, and not just any systems theory; it is the second cybernetics, the deviation-amplying variety. The dominant type in power depends upon the situation that is socially defined historically and politically for reasons that are not always about economy.

Magoroh Maruyama spent 25 years developing the concepts for the MTS1 "Mindscape" types. Different scripts of our daily life are manifestations of the our underlying mindscape type. There are four types, as summarized in Table 1.

Table 1 - Four Basic Mindscape types

Defining Mindscape Conceptual Terms: Ocularity – refers to visual experience; polyocularity is viewing several perspectives; Homogenistic means one-logic; Heterogenistic means several logics occur; Universalist is belief in a universal or general principle that applies to social situations; Mutualist is defined as opposite or individualistic (all for self) or Universalist (universe rules over us); Sequential is step by step linear processing; Simultaneous means there multiple processes occur simultaneously and can interact; Unfolding means emergent or evolving; Absorption is the result of deviation-counteractive forces such as socialization or institutionalization.

In a given organization there are multiple mindscape types, and perhaps a dominant organizational mindscape. "In a given culture during a given historical period, some type may become powerful and official, and the powerful type may change from period to period" (Maruyama, 2001: 65).

Table 2: Four Types of Mindscape Systems

1. H-type = Newtonian physics
2. I-type = Thermodynamic of the 1940s; random movements of molecules
3. S-type = First cybernetics of the 1940s and 1950s, using pattern-generating deviation-counteracting loops (automated error-correction).
4. G-type = Second cybernetics of the 1960s that Maruyama initiated with deviation-amplifying loops

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