Writing About Difference 1: Individual Differences Exist
Of course they do.
You didn’t think I was going to even try to argue otherwise, did you? Individual human beings differ from each other, along a potentially infinite number of dimensions.
Glad we got that out of the way. Could have done this in one tweet.
Still here? Okay, let’s dive in.
Since this is a series on writing about difference(s), the question I’m more interested in is: how does one say (/write) anything intelligent about these differences?
One way is simply describe what emerges on comparison. One person is shorter than another. One person has darker (or longer, or curlier) hair than another. One person speaks one language, another speaks a different one. This is the most basic form of anthropology, also the most basic form of journalism: recording some observable facts about one or more persons.
We may want to record such facts for a specific individual, without making comparisons or drawing any judgments. This is also possible: in a life history interview, for instance, one would ask the person to recount significant events in their life, and simply record their narration. No inputs or editing from the person doing the recording — res ipsa loquitur.
We may want to record some facts about a specific individual, for the purpose of comparing and drawing judgments at a later time. This will typically involve measurement: devising a scale that can be used to assign some unit or quantity to the fact, and thus to compare two or more quantities (from two or more individuals, or from the same individual at different times or in different contexts).
Measurement is certainly a useful way to talk about individual differences. It enables multiple forms of analysis of those differences — their correlates, causes, effects, etc. The thing with measurement, though, is that it is only as good as a) the scale and b) the instrument.
The scale has to be consistent —easy enough with objective characteristics, e.g. 5 feet or 50 kilograms mean the same thing to all of us, in every context; a lot harder with subjective ones — how many smileys is your mood today, or how many units of pain are you experiencing right now?
The instrument has to be valid and reliable, i.e. it has to measure what it purports to measure, and it has to do so consistently (i.e. without wild variations in the measured value when the underlying thing has not changed.)
Here’s how to talk about individual differences unintelligently: use a meaningless instrument, or deduce from a measure a characteristic which it cannot reliably measure. Human history is replete with examples of such stupidity — consider, for instance, the pseudoscience of phrenology. (Lots more on this in a later piece in this series, which I will dedicate to IQ tests.)
Phrenology is not unique in wanting to devise ways to measure intangible and subjective human characteristics. The study of personality has been in many ways an effort to devise good scales and instruments.
From early theories of personality types — pretty much every single one of which has ended up debunked, though you wouldn’t know it from the amounts of money spent on the MBTI (which is about as scientific as a Buzzfeed quiz to determine which Game of Thrones character you are)— we have finally wound up with another intelligent way to talk about individual differences in personality: traits.
A personality trait is a relatively stable and enduring pattern of perceiving, thinking about, and communicating with the world and the self. (“Stable” implies consistency over time; “enduring” implies consistency across contexts.) We now have scales and instruments for various traits; probably the best known and best researched being “The Big Five”: Openness to Experience, Conscientiousness, Extroversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism/Emotional Stability (which helpfully acronym to OCEAN).
[You’ll have to pay to do the official Five-Factor Personality Inventory; here’s a decent free version you can do online, thought it adds on a trait called “Honesty-Humility”.]
Of course, these are still more fuzzy than physical characteristics. Traits are relatively stable and enduring; height is pretty much constant at a given time. Still, traits do make it possible to measure, compare, and analyse; to actually set up experiments to determine if there are causal links between certain trait constellations and specific behaviours or tendencies.
To reach such conclusions, however, you have to run the experiment with multiple humans. In other words, there are very few ways to speak intelligently about individual differences — barring sheer description — that do not somehow segue into talking about groups.
Which is the subject of next week’s blog : ]
