MBTI & Ideas
The Developing Mind (Daniel Siegel, 2012)
āPhilosophers have long noted the differing styles of knowing about the world;
they have contrasted creative, synthetic, emotional, intuitive, and nonconscious patterns with those of critical, analytic, intellectual, rational, and conscious modes of thought.
There may be a very basic reason for this long history of seeing dichotomies in human experience.
As weāve discussed, the anatomic structure and neurochemistry of the two halves of the brain are somewhat distinct.
But even more than mere anatomy and physiology, the processes that have now been identified to be dominant in the functioning of each hemisphere generally support the philosophersā observations.ā
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āStudies of emotion and bilaterality have led to several different theoretical models.
At this point, there is no clear view of some simple way in which emotion is asymmetrically processed.
One view is based on emotional intensity: It holds that the right hemisphere is able to generate and experience more intense emotion than the left. (ā¦)
It may indeed be the right hemisphere that is capable of sensing a āgut reactionā to something.
Emotions are directly influenced by the right brainās representations of the bodyās changing states.
The sensations experienced as visceral representations in the right hemisphere may be quite difficult to translate into the words of the left hemisphere.
The ālanguage of the right hemisphere,ā the nonverbal representations, may be a more direct means of both being aware of and expressing primary emotional reactions.ā
(ā¦)
āAnother view is based on a distinction between āsocialā and ābasic emotions.ā
Social emotionsāadaptations of emotional states to meet the needs of social situationsāare thought to be functions of the left hemisphere.
In this model, basic emotions include both primary and categorical emotions as these have been defined in Chapter 4; they are the value responses to internal or external events and are thought to be products of the right hemisphere.
In this view, sadness, anger, fear, disgust, surprise, interest/excitement, enjoyment/joy, and shame are all part of the right hemisphereās processing.
Display rulesāthe culturally transmitted lessons about which, and how, emotions can be expressed in social settingsādetermine the social appropriateness of affective expression and are presumably mediated by the left hemisphere.Ā
This view is consistent with the notion proposed earlier that the left hemisphere has an inherent external bias toward attention and memory processing, whereas the right is biased toward internal mental experience.Ā
Spontaneous motor output, the direct expression of internal states via affective signals, is a product of the right hemisphere.
The tightly controlled, routinized output of social display rules is a product of the left hemisphere in this model.ā














