Two centennial cornerstones of Evolutionary Typology

2021 is fast approaching and it will mark the centenaries of two milestones in an evolutionary typology that were published in 1921 at almost opposites end of the world: in Switzerland and in New York. Both books are in the public domain now and available for free from Project Gutenberg:

Psychologische Typen by C. G. Jung (in German only)

How to Analyze People on Sight by Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict

Both Jung and Bedecit made a big splash when their ideas were published, however, the latter is usually considered pseudo-science and has almost fallen into oblivion, whereas Jung is still widely popular, in particular in connection with the Myers-Briggs test, about two million people take annually.  

Jung noticed that people tend to process information differently and called these styles sensing and intuition. David Keirsey categorized these different cognitive styles into four temperaments

Adding Helen Fisher’s assortative mating types to the picture, I have asked myself about the evolutionary origin of these four temperaments and came up with our ancestral modes of subsistence as the most likely scenario. These are in correspondence with Keirsey/Fisher:

I have discussed these types in detail elsewhere and merely want to compare them to Benedict’s five “human types”. Interestingly Benedict makes our 5 distinct rather than four, so they don’t map 1:1 onto the types discussed so far. She has two farmer types: a provisioning, more masculine one: muscular and a nurturing, more female profile: alimentive, both aptly named. Her thoracic type corresponds very well to the pastoralist/herder type. When it comes to hunter-gatherer types the correspondence is imperfect, as her osseous type sometimes corresponds to NT and sometimes to NJ, whereas here cerebral type corresponds sometimes to NF and sometimes to NP.

Andreas Hofer evolutionary type	hunter	gatherer	farmer	pastoralist
Helen Fisher dating types	director	negotiator	builder	explorer
Myers-Briggs/Keirsey	NT/Rational	NF/Idealist	SJ/Guardian	SP/Artisan
Elsie Lincoln Benedict human types	osseous/ cerebral	cerebral	alimentive/ muscular	thoracic

Despite these imperfect correspondences, anybody familiar with Myers-Briggs type will easily recognize Bendedit’s types. Rather than being “personality types” her types are “human types” and include anatomy and physiology. Benedict was a remarkable evolutionary thinker and knew that mind and body were tools that had to work together in an evolutionary context. Even though she never speculates on what that context might have been, she has remarkable insights, e.g. when she says that the best match for a muscular (male farmer type) is an alimentive (female farmer type), or that osseous (hunter) and cerebral (gatherer) make a good match. This is precisely what Helen Fisher has found out.

The fun part for me began when I started to verify Benedict’s observations in real life. To give an example, she says that the thoracic is optimized for rapid air intake, having large lungs (thorax, hence the term “thoracic”) and large noses with high bridges. From an evolutionary point of view these features would make sense for types that needed a lot of oxygen for sudden sprints, which was likely the case for ancient herders.

In Keirsey, this type is called Artisan and if fact many masters and virtuous are of this type. So I checked back with all SP types I knew and found that high nose bridges are truly a distinguishing feature of herder types. Herder types are so in tune with their own bodies and their environment that they are hard to beat when it comes to sport or playing an instrument. Almost all guitar virtuosos, from Jimmy Hendrix to the recently decided Eddie Van Halen are of the herder type.

Here is Benedict’s description of male farmer types, whose features are typically strong and square (face and hands/p):

So, here we go, three examples for the male evolutionary types:

ISTP herder type

INTP hunter type

ISTJ farmer type

If you are familiar with MBTI, try it out on the people you know - it’s fun! :)